Guild Wars 2

I was disconnected from GW2 for quite a long time but I heard the news and I had to come to wish him well.

Colin was awesome and a big part of everything good about GW2, as a game designer I learned a lot reading from him during the development phases of the game, I hope you keep doing extraordinary stuff and live happy wherever you go!

Shadow Arts. I love team support with my venoms build. Also I’m going for a P/P bleed build (thanks to the new stealth on Black Powder from Daredevil) so my it’s good to enhance my stealth. All those dodges coupled with stealth and Trickery give you tons of survivality so I can be wherever I want to support my team (be it in the middle of combat or shooting from a distance) and be effective.

Gray.9041:

I think venoms need a rethink.

• Venomous Aura – hard to balance. it’s either too strong in a group or too weak on it’s own.

• Condition types – are we going for damaging conditions or control conditions? because they’re very different and it feels like venoms don’t really know what they’re doing right now

• Specialisation – why is VA in Shadow Arts? it’s not a defensive trait, I’d expect to see it in Deadly Arts – the (supposedly) condition tree.

- Agree on VA being hard to balance. I use it and you need to use Thieves Guild to optimize it a bit when you’re alone. But I think it would be easier to balance if each venom had it separate cooldown according to what it can do instead of the exact same cooldown for all of them including the elite one.

- Many utility families have damaging conditions on just some of them, it’s not a major problem here. Even some of the new “physical” skills the Daredevil is getting are based on condition damage.

- They unified all traits enhancing specific utility lines on the same trait line with the trait system revamp. Leeching venoms that heals is in SA, VA allows you to make your allies leech life. It’s also “team support”.

Black Frog.9274:

Where, exactly, will the conditions come from on a P/P build? In WvW, it’s not 1v1 with interrupts and blinds. It does NO good to blind or interrupt one guy while his ten friends burn you down.

Black Powder into traited leap finisher dodge (now you’re stealthed) into Sneak Attack (5 x Bleed). It’ exactly the same amount of bleeding for the exact same amount of initiative you get on P/D, plus you add a lot of blinds through Black Powder and the fact that Sneak Attack is 100% combo finisher projectile. Then you add venoms (I use venom share with the poison and torment ones) or even caltrops for fun.

It should work like any P/D condition build with higher free survivality because you use the same initiative, apply the exact same conditions at the same rate, don’t need to touch anyone to stealth (but it’s a good idea for extra damage on the traited dodge) and you spam blind fields and projectiles for free cost compared to what you were already doing in P/D.

Yeah it doesn’t have the dual skill applying torment… but the best condition damage per initiative point comes from stealth and you’re better at it than P/D.

PS: In case anyone missed our first red post in months, Karl confirmed that the traited dodge works like Heartseeker so it won’t break stealth when comboing through Black Powder if you damage anyone. That’s the part we needed to be sure that P/P will work as I described.

Take any P/D build. Change it into P/P with the leap finisher trait. Tweak a bit for the lack of one of the previous 3 traitlines. Enjoy your new bleed+blind set.

I’m going to adapt my venomshare P/D build really fast to this. I’ve become really good at surviving in the middle of combats with my Thief, and now that I can spam all those blinds while using the same initiative than Cloak and Dagger and not even needing to touch them (only to optimize the damage from the dodges), I know it’s gonna be great. Just as many bleeds with extra blinds for everyone. You will have to pay attention to endurance but if you don’t go crazy mode with the dodges it should be fine.

You can choose to stay away from danger (no need to touch to get your stealth, and your stealth attack is a 100% combo through the blind field too) or jumping head in using the same strategies than CnD (for example Black Powder precast into Steal to instantly plant a blind field at your target’s feet, then dodge over him for damage and stealth combo) as it’s even safer than P/D in close combat.

Tarkan.5609:

Karl McLain.5604:

Lokheit.7943:

I was distracted, did they mention if Bound breaks stealth on hit when comboing? Or it will work like heartseeker? It looks great and the damage is solid, so I hope I can synergize it with my build.

It works the same as Heartseeker.

Wow a Dev Response in the Thief Forum! Keep it coming Karl, you just won the hearts of a lot of thieves!

Question my internet dropped for a second during the stream, did you mention when the CD for Disrupting Daggers starts?
Right after you activate the skill or after you consumed the last charge? (hope the latter as it would otherwise be a really bad mantra)

Awesome indeed, I couldn’t believe I combo triggered a red logo in the Thief forum haha.

Hopefully now that the reveal is in place and it won’t spoil stuff, Karl can talk to us a bit more?

Karl McLain.5604:

Lokheit.7943:

I was distracted, did they mention if Bound breaks stealth on hit when comboing? Or it will work like heartseeker? It looks great and the damage is solid, so I hope I can synergize it with my build.

It works the same as Heartseeker.

Thanks for the answer Karl!

Now I’m 100% replacing my P/D for P/P “in your face pewpewpew”.

PS: It still works if it hits multiple targets right?

I was distracted, did they mention if Bound breaks stealth on hit when comboing? Or it will work like heartseeker? It looks great and the damage is solid, so I hope I can synergize it with my build.

T raw.4658:

I’m all for build diversity but (I’m gonna generate some hate here) I want to keep the thief a class that relies on the skill of the player.

I’m sorry but let’s face it…S/P and P/P do not. I cringed every time I saw high level play with a S/P thief in it in the past.

S/P: Pistol whip is why this set requires minimal skill to play. Literally 1 PW can down a zerker class or get them to extremely low health. The fact you get a stun and evade frames is just icing on the cake. Before anyone says the wind up is an easy tell remember we are all thieves here and understand all the tricks used. Now we are adding on demand stealth which makes your PW’s even easier to land……

P/P: Again the 3 skill is the culprit, and all I really have to say is we can compare it to LB ranger skill level….

Now don’t get me wrong I’ve ran these sets and have enjoyed running these sets, but I do understand what they are. Heck I even have a my wardrobe set up picked out for running P/P gun slinging face stomper….but I realize that it needs to stay niche + not meta.

Well, with the new leap trait both builds will require more skill than pressing 33333 non stop.

kitten widget.9301:

Lokheit.7943:

Justine.6351:

I had crazy idea. With daredevil leap finisher dodge could stealthing pp become a thing?

P/P is a better version of P/D now

No for condition builds

Yes it is. Same amount of bleeds, same initiative usage rate, you don’t even need to touch them to get your stealth, you also apply lots of blinds for the same cost.

Justine.6351:

I had crazy idea. With daredevil leap finisher dodge could stealthing pp become a thing?

P/P is a better version of P/D now

Azure Prower.8701:

That’s great! Now if we only knew Spanish…

Well, just saying it to point that THERE IS an official alternative as the bame used a word that means Outlaw.

I don’t care much about the name (keeping or changing it) but just giving some info to those that are looking for alternatives to sugest as this is one a-net themselves used to describw the specialization.

In the spanish version of the blog post, they refer to the Daredevil as “Forajido” which means “Outlaw” in english.

This is probably because in spanish the direct translation of the term daredevil would need many words and sound really lame.

Just letting all the “Daredevil change name” supporters know that he is already “Outlaw” in other languages.

PS: This isn’t the first case, our Ranger is called “Guardabosques” which means Forestal Guard.

Niels.5396:

Whatever it is, in PvP it’ll require a Shortbow to do +1ing and the 2nd set is not going to be p/p.

This is something I’m saying in multiple threads.

My build os going to be that, just my P/D venom share build only that P/P with the leap dodge trait is better than P/D at getting those bleeds with the same use of initiative. Full ranged Thief just became possible and is also good at fighting close.

Really guys, P/P just stole the show from P/D.

Forget about unload spamming, the new P/P is Black Powder into traited leap dodge into pewpewpew bleeding and blinds. It looks like a better version of current P/D (same initiative usage, lots of blinds, don’t need to land CnD for the Stealth, can fight close and at range forcing opponents to chase you through your blind fields, your dodges and your stealth).

It also looks to be more fun than 333333333.

I plan to translate my venom share bleeding build to P/P.

Azure Prower.8701:

There’s literally no reason to use P/P over short bow.

On the contrary I plan to use both.

Kicker.8203:

Finally some well deserved focus on thief’s dodge. (ATM masters of evades are eles and rangers, and even warriors or mesmers have a better on dodge effect but its gonna change! x) )

Bounding Dodger

• Your dodge changes to Bound, which gives you the ability to leap in a direction, dealing crushing damage at the location where you land. This dodge ability also functions as a leap finisher.
  — if it is like heartseeker so it deals dmg then hides you. If it’s like cluster bomb it instareveals you. This could end up favoring stealth camping :/ would be good for other weapon sets but D/P has too much stealth already

It better work like Heartseeker (it should as it’s a leap, not a splash), it’s the only thing keeping my interest in this game right now, if you can’t synergize it with Black Powder, then I’m losing any interest in Acrobatics 2.0 presented as something new.

About the more than 2 bleeds at a distance: The new trait making dodge a leap finisher and black powder make some interesting P/P bleeding+blind build. You might have to get a bit close if you really want to optimize it (for the AoE damage from the dodge trait) but you can also sit back and apply your bleeds from a safe distance.

The initiative usage is the same than with P/D and you also get blinding fields and dodge damage if you do it at close range.

I want Rifle too, but this trait (that wasn’t included with the datamining) has my hopes up a bit at least.

If you’re defeated to someone spamming dodge in your face, you deserved that.

I see that one more as a valuable and needed utility (P/P stealth+blind+bleed build here I come) than “spam in your face for the lulz”.

Dorian.8542:

Sorel.4870:

Oh my god. SP will maybe be a thing finally.

i dont know about you guys, but ive been running S/P since launch.

I leveled up with S/P but it quickly became boring. This can make it interesting again.

Thinking about P/P, as I’m used to P/D and I learned how to keep fighting between lines, in and out, I think I can switch to P/P and still optimize the dodge damage while planting blinding fields around the area, keep the fight close and personal even if I have ranged weapons, force them to chase me on close spaces full of blinding powders and dodging what they manage to throw at me.

Considering that with P/D I almost only used 1# and 5#, this will be the same only than adding a lot of blinding and a handy interrupt if needed.

You precast Black Powder instead of CnD with your use of Steal, dazing them with the trait in adition of the pulsing blind, then dodge over them for damage and stealth (leap finishers don’t break stealth on hit) and throw your bleeding burst (that is guaranteed to combo through the smoke field too), then step out of the blinding field and force them to chase you through it (as you reach longer than melee) while waiting for revealed to go and repeat the process. The cost is the same than CnD and the combat distance is the same only that you don’t HAVE to touch them for the stealth (only to optimize the damage from the dodge) so it should be really easy to adapt the strategy.

TheLastNobody.8319:

I am very very hopeful this will pull people away from the stealth heavy builds I’ve been fighting ever since I came to GW2.

You will be disappointed, the new dodge trait to make it a leap finisher means that now Black Powder gives stealth so more weapon sets will be based on stealth.

All that dodging is what you will see the time revealed is active before safely stealthing again.

Aaaaaaaand… as not everything can be perfect, they made it mutually exclusive with dash… (and also with the condition throwing dodge which would work well with the bleeding build).

S/P will benefit a lot from this though as it will optimize the extra damage from the traited dodge and its stealth skill is a daze. It’s a better version of S/D considering you have plenty of dodges and both 5# abilities cost the same.

Still may try it as P/P but it definitely looks to be designed to work with S/P

Source of that dodge trait? If that’s true I’m switching my P/D build for P/P (finally an excuse to dual wield Lyss and Ilya), BP costs the same than CandD and you won’t need to touch them for bleeding build, plus you get an interrupt.

Rain.9213:

I don’t understand how people can say this is Acro 2.0 when:

1. New traitline doesn’t give vigor

That’s the same than saying you don’t understand how a backstab build is DPS when it doesn’t use multihit attacks.

Vigor is endurance recovery, just in the form of a boon (a nerfed one at it), the new traitline have many different bursts of endurance but at the end of the day the focus is on keeping you dodging, just exactly the same function than vigor.

Volrath.1473:

Chaos Archangel.5071:

Uh.. Am I missing something? Was there a reveal / article or is this all speculation based on data-mined stuff? Cuz uh.. Eles got a sword datamined and I believe Wars found different/scrapped abilities.

Seems a bit early to be bashing and crying.

^ this

Ele got the warhorn datamined. The sword thing was much older and not right before the reveal. Thief reveal is this week and the datamining is from recent files, so it’s set in stone.

I don’t get how people can still be delusional with comments like these when this stuff has been proven correct time and time again.

But then, this is the community that said we weren’t getting Mesmer during development even if literally everything was pointing in that direction… or even Staff Thief for a more recent example. Smh.

Guys, you can’t seriously defend this:

THE SPECIALIZATION UNIQUE ADDITION is something that the Thief ALREADY HAD AS A REGULAR TRAIT on early builds of the game, they nerfed it and now they present it as something we should be thankful for.

That’s the same than a food company making its burguers a bit smaller each month, then sell you the original size for double the prize saying it’s new and big.

It also proves that they don’t know what to do with the Thief identity, we have too many small mechanics that aren’t even that good when you combine all of them, and there isn’t something you would say “this is what defines the Thief”, the fact that instead of working over one of those small mechanics they added a new one (not new as it was a simple regular trait long time ago) shows they still are confused about what the Thief is supposed to do with his resources.

Yeah some stuff of the spec sound cool… but that’s only because that’s what we always wanted on our NOT SPECIALIZED Thief, and we’re too used to getting the short stick so getting something “ok” feels incredible.

If the Daredevils gives enough fancy evasive skills I might try a ranged Daredevil just to be a pain in the @$$ :P

Not getting my hopes up too much, if it’s too centered on melee I think I will keep my 3 core trait lines instead of specializing.

Kocoff.7582:

Look at the colors guys! I am so excited. That red scarf, and that sharp armor right there, definitely looking forwards for this week.

Looks NOTHING like ordinary medium gear dajslhbdljahsbdjbsahdbajshdbhjasbdljsahbdjlabshbcasjlhdbajslhbd * dead *

10/10 artwork just beyond amazing.

ps: Is that some sort of shadow in front of him? COULD IT BE? * dead again *

You’re forgetting the part where it’s looking EXACTLY like a medium armor already in the game that even your summoned thieves wear:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Sneakthief_armor

Anyway, hoping this is worth it. I’m almost giving up on GW2 class balance and this could be the one that breaks it or the one that extends the period of judging.

Kocoff.7582:

Daredevil fits perfectly. It’s a well thought out name, and frankly, I don’t see the fuss with name they are better than typical name such as “Berserker” , “Druid”. “Forge” is very original, So is “Tempest”, but let’s get down to the dictionary. the New Oxford Dictionary:

Thief : a person who steals another person’s property, especially by stealth and without using force or violence.

The Thief in GW2 does exactly what the dictionary says. Not using excessing force or violence, but rather excessing stealth.

Daredevil : a reckless person who enjoys doing dangerous things.

If we follow the same logic, the Daredevil is only the natural succession of the Thief. Except this time, the Thief turns increasingly reckless and actually enjoys doing crazy things.

Now what those crazy things are, we leave it to Arenanet to decide. Nevertheless the wording is undeniably accurate and well thought out.

Better than Assassin, or Rogue. Also stop talking about a American superhero character who shares the same name… Not everybody is into superheros and it doesn’t mean anything if they share the name…

Got to say I didn’t know it was an actual term in english.

Btw I’m watching the first season of Daredevil series and it looks really good, and I’m the type of Marvel fan who is hard to impress with screen representations of the heroes. If the Thief can fight like that I guess it’s ok (would’ve prefered a different weapon and specialization for my specific build, but this can be really cool).

I have an idea: make them have different cooldowns from each other so each one can be balanced on its own way.

It makes no sense that they all have the exact same cooldown, even the elite one (wich is what’s preventing it from being something worth of calling “elite”). I get that they put a “30 seconds effect” on you so they want a window of that effect not being active before the recharge but they could either make each one be active for different times or keep it and let some of those venoms recharge before the effect is gone to balance it in a way where it doesn’t matter if you can throw it frequently.

I digress but this reminded me how I miss how great GW1 build making was with all those synergies between skills.

GW2 is like they’re afraid to give the player any ability to use synergies, specially on the defensive end. We could have just the 4 main attributes instead of so many stupid secondary attributes overcomplicating things, and have the trait system be the one making conditions and criticals effective.

Prefer rifle but it’s gonna be Staff. I’m fine with Staff too anyway. Would also like offhand sword or focus.

stof.9341:

OH sword will not happen because D/S and P/S make no sense.

It can make sense if designed correctly. You can use your offhand sword for defensive purposes while your more skill right hand get the job done.

If the sword gets some sort of block + counter (with a shadow wave so you can counter from range and synergize with pistol too) and some sort of area control skill (like creating a field of slashing winds at your position) plus dual skills that make sense to synergize with each weapon, you can have something interesting there.

If they make it look like a martial artists using a bo and the skills look like what underwater spear does (specially the block and retaliation skill and the multievade one) I’d be happy.

Zero Day.2594:

btw, what’s left out of utility skill types? Like mesmer got wells, ele got shouts, guard got traps… what’s left?

My personal theory considering staffs puts the Spec on a martial artist line, is that we’re getting eaither Stances or Mantras.

arenta.2953:

Auesis.7301:

EremiteAngel.9765:

ranger is getting staff…so no thief wont be getting it.

Both Elementalist and Necromancer got Shouts. Exclusivity isn’t an argument. I’ve actually never read or heard anything from Arenanet saying that 2 Elite Specialisations can’t get the same weapon.

skills are one thing

i mean weapon

And what’s the logic here? I’d say stealing a family line of skills 2 times would have less possibilities than 2 professions adding the same weapon (specially since each profession gives each weapon their own flavor).

For what is worth, Revenant is supposedly getting a Shield in the specialization and Mesmer got it too.

EremiteAngel.9765:

focus 4 = dark tethers grow on the ground, chill + immobilize on hit up to 5 opponents in a 380 radius

focus 5 = dark magic circle forms on the ground in a 240 radius, locking in all opponents without stability, if opponent breaks out with stability, instantly strip all stability stacks and inflict blind.

Not want to derail the thread as I don’t think we’re getting that kind of weapon (even if I think it would be cool) but… that stuff would cost the full initiative bar per use. This got me memories of Daecollo’s ultra OP ideas.

Oh come on, is this “Mesmer is not confirmed yet 2.0”?

Also one thing is the datamined skill description and another is a datamined ingame art for the traits tree, which means the staff thing is pretty much set in production.

Plus I think I’ve read the warhorn skills were known before too and the “sword skills” were just some modified dagger skills they were toying with.

We have a design showing a Thief with a staff, sorry but this is as set in stone as Mesmer was despite everyone saying “nonononono it’s not confirmed you’re wrong it’s not confirmed”.

If the mesmer can have stealth (arguably BETTER stealth), why shouldn’t the agile Thief have access to blur?

We are even the profession that has a blur animation implemented on its base dodge (yet it’s only something visual and it’s the same as everyone else). Blur would help all those low tier acrobatic builds a huge lot if implemented correctly on traits and sword skills.

For example the first part of S/D dual skill could give you some blur instead of just being and evade. Some traits could give you some blur under certain conditions. Etc…

Yeah there was a reason they had to split it. It won’t be viable if it returns to its previous state (though I guess if they developed a brand new target tracking technology for the Revenant sword attack, something could be done with this skill.

To be honest I was surprised about the jade wind elite considering how many nerfs basilisk venom has gotten over time.

At least they could remove the casting time to make it work like all other venoms.

Another thing I never understood is why they decided to make all venoms have the same cooldown instead of different cooldowns so each one could be balanced considering its bigger or smaller cooldown, this could work well with BV making it stronger but decreasing its spammability.

Well, I was talking about the need of it outside of the specs system.

It really could be any other OH weapon but sword just makes too much sense, even with a dagger if the OH sword is used defensively, so that’s why I say it in the title, but any other weapon could do the trick. We could even have a focus to act as an anti-beacon emiting shadows for example. Many solutions here.

All professions are getting an extra weapon with specializations, the Thief needs that extra OH weapon baseline in adition to anything he’s getting on the expansion (probably staff according to the leaks, which won’t increase versatility as you can’t combine it with other weapons) to be at the level of most professions in terms of build versatility, specially when many of our limited builds aren’t competitive right now, making the virtual versatility even lower.

I’m starting this after seeing how easy it was to hear the community and increase the versatility of the revenant by adding an extra main hand weapon, also an extra off hand weapon, plus a weapon swap button.

Ever since the early development days, back in gw2guru and the start of this official forum, something that all Thief players claimed that it was going to be a problem was the lack of versatility.

- The Thief has access to a total of 7 weapon combinations (S/D, S/P, D/D, D/P, P/D, P/P and Shortbow).

- The Thief benefit little from weapon swap (initiative is shared among all sets) so the secondary weapon has to be there mostly for utility (Shortbow in most cases).

- Even if we consider any weapon set viable as a complementary set, the Thief still has access only to 21 combinations of main set and secondary set (no repetitions, and eliminating cases where main and secondary sets are switched as they’re the same).

- This number pales to others, specially the Warrior and his 171 different combinations (171 to 21, I know the Warrior is supposed to be versatile, but woah). And even the Elementalist, with no weapon swap, has access to 20 different combinations thanks to its mechanic, and unlike the Thief that can only be effective with one at the same time because of initiative, it can freely switch between 4 of them when others are on cooldown.

- If you add an offhand Sword to the Thief repertory, the combination of weapons jumps to 10, which is still less than the Guardian (12) and the Ranger (11) and on par with the Necromancer (10) and the Mesmer (10).

The problem with being so handicaped in terms of versatility, is that the moment that a set is less effective in the metagame, your options are drastically reduced and most players of this profession will end up playing the same, which IMHO isn’t good for the game.

An offhand sword for the Thief makes a lot of sense (Mesmers can dual wield and Thieves that are supposed to be agile adventurers and even have dual wielding as a profession mechanic can’t, like for real?) and thanks to the dual skills you can craft something interesting to combine it with any set. I remember writting years ago an extensive skill list of viable combinations with our current weapon sets taking game balance into account (though some of those skills are now exactly or really close to what the Revenant got lol so would have to think a couple of different ones). It would be important that the OH Sword gets some way to throw shadow waves or any other ranged attack to combine with main hand pistol or you’re already killing some combinations by default.

The part that makes me sad isn’t Shiro itself, it’s how easy it was to put the weapon swap button and an extra main hand and off hand weapons when people started crying.

I remember during the development days, everyone that wanted to play Thief was asking for an offhand sword, or a rifle, or something, and here we are, literally the least versatile profession in the game, and that’s including the no-weapon-swap professions that have access to other forms of versatility.

I wish with the expansion instead of exclusive weapons for specializations everyone would get a few weapons and this could be used to give the Thief a couple more to close the gap with the other professions.

If Shiro is there, I think his “buddy” Khilbron aka The Lich should be there too (buddy as in they were both tricked to be part of the 2 biggest events that put Abaddon closer to returning and they even teamed up against the player character in Nightfall).

Master Togo would be great too.

Honestly, as a side point, I don’t like how legends are being managed, because each legend has its own trait line and also as there is a limit to total utility skills, you can’t have more than a close number of legends. I would’ve liked a system that allowed us to see a lot more legendary characters from the old days.

This change was really unnecesary, specially considering most burning applications were buffed instead of nerfed. If this one was nerfed in fear of it becoming powerful with the new conditions status quo, same should’ve been donde with the others…

Choking gas should be reverted to its previous state, and to be honest, it wouldn’t hurt if Lotus Poison cooldown lasted as long as the applied weakness, this way you can’t stack it for way too long but you can keep it if they stay on a choke point (which would be great to support a team in dungeons and not OP in PvP with players moving all the time).

I used a venom share build for years and it has always been 1 heal per strike no matter how many venoms I had activated at the same time (maybe in beta/early stages of the game it wasn’t like that I can’t remember that right now).

Always had to time them to make sure I wasn’t using more than 1 at the same time to optimize the leeching (always found more helpful the damage part than the healing as 6 guys doing armor ignoring damage on a focused target is brutal). As far as I’ve always known, this patch didn’t change anything about it.

If you mean that the tooltip was wrong before and you were being healing without the game notifying it (I didn’t stop to check that, only the damage numbers the interface told me), then it’s called a bug fix so that’s alright anyway.

I never understood the HP differences in this game, the differences on Health tiers are waaaaaaaay higher than armor tiers.

Armors have a physical reason to provide better defense, but you can have 2 humans with the same physique and different base HP.

I really really really liked how in Guild Wars 1 every naked character would have the exact same stats and only their profession armor would provide them their bonuses (and each profession had specific insignias to pick to make each one stand). And back then Warriors were always big and necros were always slim but as humans they shared the same Health and Energy pools until you equiped an armor.

Probably the devs were playing a lot of Team Fortress 2 as many of them are known fans (I’m a fan too, probably the best balanced shooter ever and really fun) and thought “hey, if this is so well balanced and there are high HP differences between their classes, let’s do the same! brilliant!”, problem is that GW2 is designed in a way that anyone is supposed to play any role (I love playing support Thief for example) while in TF2 each class has its specific pros and cons and when you equip different stuff to change it, most times your health pool changes (all their items have pros and cons instead of each one being better than the previous one, which is great). So GW2 shouldn’t have followed TF2 model for class balance as it’s a completly different game.

Yup it really looks like a Thief, so we’re getting the “martial artists” instead of the “guerrilla” specialization then.

Would’ve like the second one more but I’m fine with it and I’ve been a supporter of the “melee staff” idea since the beginning anyway, but because of my build I think for now I will stay a “regular” Thief so I can keep 3 core specializations.

Now if the Thief takes some sort of “shaolin” approach, I think his new utility line will be Mantras (like Guardians borrowed traps and Mesmers borrowed wells).

Sorry the title didn’t allow me to type something more intuitive.

This is an idea that I’ve seen posted as a response in some threads (credit doesn’t go to me) and I think it would be a good idea to make sure the devs see it:

Last Refuge should get Smoke Screen instead of Blinding Powder and Concealed Defeat should get Blinding Powder instead of Smoke Screen. Basically asking for a change of what each one pops (Concealed Defeat keeps the 20% recharge on Deception skills like current iteration).

Why you do this?

- Last Refuge is widely considered as a trait that hurts you (by applying revealed at the worst possible time, making you unable to stealth and survive, resulting in your death) more than it helps. This is the main reason it was removed from the “you get it even if you don’t want” section of traits.

If it poped a Smoke Screen instead, suddenly you have something you actually want when you’re under pressure: a way to stop pressure.

A barrier that bloks projectiles and blinds melee foes actually is really useful when you’re still alive but close to your death and it changes the tempo of the fight and allows you to take a breath.

- While I’m liking Concealed Defeat (mostly because of the Deceptions recharge synergizing with my long time build) and I consider the Smoke Screen useful, many players think it’s bad because it points your position, like a giant target saying “I’m downed finish me”.

If it’s changed to Blinding Powder, in this situation it’s not something that will hurt you (as it won’t force you into a revealed state while in combat), it applies an initial blind to whoever was bursting you and allows you to stealth 2 times during your downed state.

I think this simple switch between both traits instantly makes them sexy enough to compete with Shadow’s Embrace condition removal.

I’d be happy with either rifle or staff (or off hand sword). I’d been theorycrafting about the 3 of them sinze release and want to know if a-net was close to my ideas about them on a Thief :P

I made a thread detailing this theory, but I think this is the first step to make the skill become a shadowreturn after use once the specialization comes. They needed to free the F1 button after using it.

Also, I’m liking the new improvisation trait a lot (2 globs of ecto? to free stealths? 2 healing seeds? give me moar!!). At the end of the day it’s muscle memory and if you ever played other profession not named Warrior for a bit you should’ve a F2 binded somewhere.