Guild Wars 2

Dondagora.9645:

This isn’t a QQ about thieves, for those of you misunderstanding. I personally am fine with a mesmer’s place against thieves, it’s a l2p issue, mainly, and not having a counter for a thief’s mobility and stealth and spam are an issue with the build and/or player.

What I’m asking about here is consistency within the game. It is not that interrupts don’t punish thieves, but that the trait which should increase the base punishment of interrupts does not do so for thief initiative skills, which I see as a hole in the trait design.

I am not pretending to know everything about thieves, so that’s why I’m asking, what do you thieves believe the best adjustment for initiative skill interaction with Power Block is?

@Pinkcomet
That’s a good point, pausing initiative regen for a second or however long might be a less situational effect than initiative draining.

Look, if you really don’t understand and are not trolling, I will explain it to you. The reason as to why Power Block does not affect thief is because it will break the thief class. For the same reason why summon clones does not reveal a stealth mesmer, decoy bypass reveal, or how you can’t dodge a phast summon. It will break the mesmer class if everything is consistence across all professions.

PU has elements of all thief’s defensive Grandmaster traits; Shadow Rejuvenation; Resilience of Shadows, and Assassin’s Equilibrium (regen, protection, block/stab). When you have to compare PU to 3 GM traits…something is wrong. Either PU is OP or thief GM traits need a serious buff.

My calculation:

All Ascended:

Armor: 235
Weapon: 134
Accessories: 376
Trait 30 points in CS: 150
Runes (I use Ruby Orb): 84
Food: 70

Total: 1049/15= 70%

Current ingame crit damage per character panel = 115%

Difference= 115 – 70 = 45% or A kittening 40% NERF!!!!

Any burst build for thief is thrown out and right into the trash. Can we even kill anyone in a decent time with 70% crit damage??? I already have a hard time killing tanky classes with 100% crit damage. This is assuming I go almost full glass…

I would prefer if it was a leech. That way it does a bit of damage plus healing.

Viking Jorun.5413:

2500 hours and rank 37 isn’t much to brag about. Farming Skyhammer you could have gotten there in mere days, and even without it and playing semi-casually it would only take a couple of months. Rank does not ensue authority on balance. Sorry to be “that guy”, but you’re obviously out of touch with PvP if you don’t realize that blind outlasts stealth, shield stance and endure pain outlast stealth, there are mass AoE blinds everywhere on point, and thief is the only one who can quickly take down a spirit ranger who does have AoE blind access on sun spirit.

The fact is that there’s too much going on for this to make any effective balance at all, because players would simly start taking plenty of aegis/blinds/evade spam and thief would immediately be shut out of PvP. Until they fix the rest of the game, make backstab/sneak attack/tactical strike unblockable and thief immune to blind while in stealth, I don’t see this ever being a viable option to “balance” the thief. ArenaNet simply isn’t this misguided as to destroy a profession with one adjustment to a skill/stealth.

I also see that you’re swapped to shortbow for this screenshot, and I highly doubt that you run anything but S/P with little access to stealth (utilities) due to your simple demands to change a function without seeking the repercussions and consequences. On the off-chance that you do run D/P, think about these things before you go and post them on the forums, and at least explain to people (and more importantly the devs) how this could impact the game and class, because it would break the thief on all but S/P.

Sorry to be “that guy” but you’re out of touch with how balancing should work. If an enemy stealth and you use a defensive ability such as endure pain or shield block, why should the thief get a free hit? What you don’t understand is risk vs reward.

FYI – I see nothing wrong with his utilities and heal. Withdraw is one of the best heals the thief has. He is also stealth heavy since he has BP and SR. S/P thiefs usually take IS for the extra port. Regarding D/P, this ends stealth stacking as the second HS will reveal you. If you want to stack stealth, you have to time it right before stealth ends to HS again. I like it!

Regarding the OP suggestion, I see nothing wrong with it. It punish thief that just spam stealth attack over and over again until it hit instead of timing your attack. I do agree with others that the hit should be more reliable. If you can’t survive 2 secs outside of stealth, holy kitten l2p.

Thedenofsin.7340:

OP you are 100% correct. Chill is too effective against elementalists, and not effective enough against thieves.

Chill needs to not affect weapon swap, but affect initiative.

With the recent buff to inititative regen, I’m not agaisnt applying chill CD increase to thieves.

Also, should chill affect RTL now? We have to be fair right?

Carpboy.7145:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/New-GM-Traits-announced

Sustain out of stealth! Yay!

For Spvp, this is mostly for SB and S/X.

For WvW, there will be more qq for builds like X/30/30/X/X. Healing in stealth and healing outside of stealth. GG

FelsPinguin.5902:

Let me tell you the solutions to all your Problems:
Placing yourself inside the Blackpowder field.
-> The thief will attack you with his heartseeker
-> Thief becomes revealed

Let me tell you why this is not a solution.

-Placing yourself inside the Blackpower field
-You get blind
-The thief will attack you with his HS
-The thief becomes revealed
-The thief will start AA
-You try to counter but you’re blind so you have to waste AA to clear blinds
-You cast BV to try to burst him
-3 secs between repositioning and casting BV
-Thief BP and stealth again

Standing in the BP is good vs noob D/P thieves, not so good vs decent/good D/P thieves.

With the recent change to initiative regen, I feel like some builds are out of control.

Back in the days, you either pick the condi cleanse on stealth or the blind on stealth. You couldn’t have the best of both worlds since you always needed Infusion of Shadow for the initiative regen. Well…you could but you couldn’t chain CnD as much. Regarding trickery builds, thief having 15 base intiative and the new regen is a bit too much. You really don’t have to manage your initiative pool as much.

Of course you will still run out of initiative if you spam like a kitten but it is so much more forgiving now than before. What do you guys think?

Overlord.1035:

So today, since this game has gotten boring and I’m pretty much just waiting for ESO to release, I did the thing I said I would never do. I changed my full glass thief into p/d dire perplex. I have always hated this spec since I believed it was extremely easy to play and required very little skill to kill people with. But, since I was bored I figured what the hell and spent 60 gold re-gearing into full dire with perplexity runes.

After full gearing up and re-traiting I went into eternal to do some roaming. My stats with full stacks are 2k toughness, 21k hp, 2100 condi dmg and since I am condi bunker no other stats really matter. My first solo fight was against a d/p zerk thief who appeared to be competent. I had been playing this spec for about 15 mins by the time this fight started and basically rolled my face along the keyboard and before I knew what happened the D/P thief was dead.

My next fight was a 3v1 vs a thief a warrior and a guardian. I targeted the thief first and pretty much ignored the guard and war since they did no dmg to my full tank spec even though the warrior had 25 stacks of bloodlust. I did not even have to dodge their attacks they were just irrelevant. With shadows rejuvenation and my high stealth uptime their dmg was negligible. After stomping the thief killing the other two was simply a matter of time since they would never be able to do anything to me.

My last outnumbered fight of the night was against two d/p thieves. As soon as they saw me one of the thieves refuged and instead of stealthing or trying to predict their movements as I would have to on my zerk thief I just decided to try to stand still and take their backstabs. They each hit me for about 4-5k each taking me to a little more than half life, and as soon as they were revealed I almost instantly condi bursted down one of the thieves. In a matter of seconds he had 11 stacks of bleeding 8 stacks of confusion and 4 stacks of torment. (he died trying to heal himself and taking 2k dmg from a confusion tick. The other thief tried to refuge his friend but I continued to faceroll the keyboard inside of it and soon got one loot bag. Instead of running as I expected him to do the other thief attempted to fight me and soon met with the same fate as his buddy.

So basically this spec is overpowered as all hell. I currently think it is not close the best 1v1 or 1vX spec in the game right now with almost no equal. I can do almost as much burst dmg as my zerk thief but with insane amounts of sustain and survivability. I had been playing this spec for less than 30 mins and was able to demolish these people who seemed to be somewhat not terrible in 1vx fights. This post not only applies to perplex thief but pretty much all condi bunker classes as they are all ridiculously overpowered. PLEASE nerf this spec. It was boring as hell to play and took almost no skill or thought in order to be successful.
TL;DR: Condi bunker classes, especially perplex thief, are insanely overpowered right now and need to be nerfed.

They are going to nerf zerker and, depending on how hard they nerf, I may join the condi crowd. What’s your spec?

Proposal Functionality
Change Reward depending on Fractal Lvl. This allows the player to control the type of reward they get.

Example: (all daily should give Pristine and normal relics)

1-10 – Nothing other than Pristine and normal relics
11-20 – Ascended Ring only
21-30 Infused Ascended Rings only
31-40 Fractal Weapon Skin only
41-50 Ascended Weapon chest box only
51-60 Ascended Armor chest box only
61+ Anet to add higher level as new content or gears get added.

Basically if I just want weapon skins, I pick the level range that drops skins.

coglin.1867:

Maybe you need to re-read his post yourself.

You do? You apply that with every single swing of your auto attack, which is what you are clearly attempting to imply. That is impressive. What build is it that accomplishes this. What is your total damage in 10 hits with this mystical and magical auto attack? Perhaps you could actually try offering some facts and information rather then I made a such and such profession and proced a few of my traits and my sigil on one crit once. I killed a gopher with a stick once. Does that mean every time a swing a stick that gophers dies?

Every post that tries to use a specific skill makes a reference to necromancers. If you want to talk about condition do so, but use more then one specific skill on one specific profession.. If you have an issue with necros, make a cry about necro thread and stop trying to derail this into a necro is OP thread please.

I am trying to understand how a single profession has a single weapon, that you feel you can use to represent all conditions, and use a specific weapons auto attack on a specific profession to claim that conditions across the board, on all professions need a nerf.

You are taking my post totally out of context. I was merely using necro AA has an example of how you cannot dodge condition as easily as BURST combo/skills.

Of course you could argue that power AA will hit, hit, and hit and apply damage. But I was talking about BURST – so please re-read my post.

coglin.1867:

Daishi.6027:

Most major burst or spike damage sources are easy to avoid and obvious and need to be out played. Condition damage is “I have 10+ skills plus a string of condition applies on my auto attack, lets see how many doges you have.” true their are more major condition applying skills that do a significant amount, along the lines of signet of spite and pin down for example. (both come out really fast btw unlike most burst combos) But the level of power with the added sustain is usually enough to carry the builds even without the larger “burst condi” skills.

First thing I see, is you are suggesting direct damage can be dodged while magically condition damage attacks cannot. So what are these magic builds that have 10 skills that apply damage conditions? Then you go on to list 2 of the longer recast heavy hitters for their respective professions. Both of which have similarly clear tells. Seems like your being unreasonably hypocritical here. Your claims that they come out really fast is just that, a claim, and a very inaccurate one. As well, the term “burst conditions” is an oxymoron.

I think you need to re-read his post again. He said most “burst” such as mesmer shatter combo. This is different versus conditions . I mean as a necro, you swing your AA and apply bleeding, bleeding, poison, some more bleeding, and a burning proc.

What is it:

Hidden Assassin is minor GM trait in the Shadow Arts trait line for the thief. Everytime you gain stealth, you get 2 stacks of might for 15 seconds. It doesn’t matter if you were already stealth – it procs every 3-4 secs while you are in stealth. For example, if you use Shadow Refuge, you will have about 10+ stacks of might after the duration of stealth.

Why do I think this is imbalance:

The Shadow Arts line is, for the most part, defensive. You are giving up offensive for defense but this one minor trait allows you to hit almost as hard as a glass cannon thief.

Lets compare two specs; 25/30/0/0/15 vs 10/30/30/0/0

The first is purely offensive with no traits in defense. This is a pure glass cannon spec. You have 15% more damage from the 25 point minor trait and from dagger training. You also get about another 5-10% from the additional power.

The second has tons of survivable traits such as heal in stealth, extra toughness, increase stealth up time, condi cleans, blind on stealth, or regen in stealth. This spec has 150 less power than the first spec.

When you take Hidden Assassin trait into account, the total power from the defensive spec exceed that of the GC spec. With 6-8 stacks of might, you will have 60 to 130 more power than the GC spec. 100 power is equal to roughly 8-10% more damage. When you add it all up, the defensive spec does roughly 5-10% less than the GC spec.

So why should a defensive spec be afforded close to GC level of damage? I see this as imbalance.

Solution:

They could either move the minor trait to the power line or keep it where it is and put a 10 seconds ICD.

gesho.9468:

MIrra.3604:

You saying PW is not interruptable?

it is interrupt-able with negligible consequences. if you interrupt ele fire grub or engi healing combo, its game over. if you interrupt pw, there is another one coming 5 init down the road.

Why are you comparing it to healing abilities now?

Oh well, let me ask you how do you interupt a guardian shelter?

nyqwist.2360:

MIrra.3604:

Interrupt on a thief will cancel the attack and COST the thief the init to cast it.

Not really, it basicly only applies on heartseeker. It would also apply on flanking strike, but that’s a evade, so it doesnt

You saying PW is not interruptable?

gesho.9468:

nyqwist.2360:

No weapon skills are put on CD when interrupted.

It’s by design, not a bug.

i think they should. else thief gameplay largely remains beyond informed counter.

Need to make this clear.

Interrupt will normally put that ability on a 5 secs CD.

Interrupt on a thief will cancel the attack and COST the thief the init to cast it.

Allie Murdock.8152:

Hey everyone,

I’ve been seeing a lot of threads pop up with varying feedback about this skill. I’d appreciate it if you guys could toss some feedback in this thread about the skill, and try to be as concise as possible.

Also, try to answer these questions:

• Do you main Thief?
• When do you feel that Pistol Whip is unbalanced? (scenarios would be great)
  • How does it feel unbalanced compared to other class mechanics?
• What would you do to change Pistol Whip to better fit the class/game?

Additionally, if you feel Pistol Whip is exactly what it needs to be, I would like you to say so in this thread.

This thread is for me personally so I can properly communicate to the designers how you guys feel about it.

Thanks!

PW is actually subpar and needs a buff. The lead dev, John Peters, said the team is looking at ways to buff PW. /thread

unleashed.8679:

WhiteRose.6934:

-Anti-Condi duration isn’t a stat you can build for like Toughness is to counter damage.

It is a stat, that is build through runes, traits and skills. I wouldn’t mind, if it would be a armor stat, but then you lose other stats. If this would be implemented as armor stat, it should a) not be mixed with toughness and b) be hard capped so you can’t build for complete condition immunity.

WhiteRose.6934:

-Immunity works against everything.

And?

WhiteRose.6934:

-Condi cleanse is viable (obviously) however in contrast conditions are much easier to apply than they are to cleanse as the fight goes on.

Are you capable to prevent every direct damage with any build? No!
So why should this be possible against condition builds?

You got hit, so you receive damage. For direct damage this is normal, conditions are some kind of evil and there it is getting OP, if you get even hit by the enemy.

WhiteRose.6934:

-Blind/block/evade all work against attacks, while you’re probably taking damage from conditions already on you. Whereas in contrast you dodge a power attack and you’ve just diminished your foes dps completely. As a condi user if you dodge my attacks I’m still keeping dps up time while you roll around like a fool.

The damage dealt to you while blocking/didging is the damage, from attacks you received previous. A direct damage attack would have dealt this damage instant, conditions start to tick beginning from their application.
You do not dodge the conditions already applied to you, you dodge the new ones, that would be applied to you. Just like you would do it vs direct damage.

FYI – All physical attacks can be dodged. Not all condition attacks can be dodged.

Keira Ferland.5619:

every single condi attack is telegraphed. they take a while to do their full dmg. it is ur fault if u don’t have enough condi cleanse.

I wouldn’t say “every single” attack is telegraphed. Can you let me know how I can precisely know when a necro will Doom (fear) me?

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

MIrra.3604:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Distaste.4801:

When a single class can put on burning, bleeding, torment, confusion, and poison of course it’s going to be more of a burst than attrition,

What class is this? Necros and Thieves don’t have Confusion, Engineers and Rangers lack Torment, Warriors and Mesmers lack Poison, Eles lack any damage conditions other than bleeding and burning. Guardians have nothing but burning…

(WvW)

You forgetting about Runes and Sigils?

No sigils cause Confusion and necros aren’t prone to using Perplexity due to the 6th bonus not working with Fear. Thieves lack Burning as well (another one that sigils can’t inflict, and the only runes that do it are terribly ineffective).

So, I suppose it’s possible for engies and rangers to be using sigils of Torment, but they usually run other sigils (Earth or Geomancy, usually), I still have to question what one class is putting on all of those.

Necro with 4 piece Perplexity will have access to all conditions; Confusion, Poison, Fear, Bleeding, Immo, Chill, Cripple, Burning, Weakness, Vul, Blind (did I get them all?).You are also forgetting corrupt boons and well of corruption will convert Retal to Confusion.

I answered your question. The class with access to all conditions is the Necro.

coglin.1867:

MIrra.3604:

Let me help Ozii out.

“You cannot mention one manner in which direct damage is “fully” negated that doesn’t “fully” negate condition damage."

Hello…endure pain.

Ah and berzerker stance that completely negates conditions and last twice as long should doubly help my point based on your logic, thank you.

MIrra.3604:

Also, direct damage is mitigated by a lot of things and one of which has a 100% up time, armor.

Feel free to read my post, I am fairly certain I put “fully” in bold. Secondly, does armor negate 40% of direct damage as bowl of lemongrass poultry soup. As well, cleanses can negate all of a round of condition damage. It is simply a fact.

So you state “direct damage is mitigated by a lot of things”, please feel free to list them. As of now your making the argument of many here, by making blind and uninformed statements yet not offering any facts, please, by all means, list them.

You asked for one instance "where direct damage is “fully” negated that doesn’t “fully” negate condition damage" and I gave it to you. Then you tried to switch the focus to something else. Good job?

“Ah and berzerker stance that completely negates conditions and last twice as long should doubly help my point based on your logic, thank you.”

It makes perfect sense to me. Since condition builds are OP, they need to make it last longer. What other proof do you need when Anet said 4 secs of Berserker Stance was too weak vs the condition meta so we DOUBLED the duration to give the warrior a chance?

“So you state “direct damage is mitigated by a lot of things”, please feel free to list them. As of now your making the argument of many here, by making blind and uninformed statements yet not offering any facts, please, by all means, list them."

Physical damage is mitigated by
Armor –
Protection –
Weakness –
Blind-
Invul-
Block-
Evade
etc

There you go. I listed some example to further explain my comment of “direct damage is mitigated by a lot of things.”

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Distaste.4801:

When a single class can put on burning, bleeding, torment, confusion, and poison of course it’s going to be more of a burst than attrition,

What class is this? Necros and Thieves don’t have Confusion, Engineers and Rangers lack Torment, Warriors and Mesmers lack Poison, Eles lack any damage conditions other than bleeding and burning. Guardians have nothing but burning…

(WvW)

You forgetting about Runes and Sigils?

WyldKat.4712:

Chicago Jack.5647:

It doesn’t help that most thieves are terrible with shortbow.

I can’t explain it. I used to be able to hit anything like it was magic or something. Now, the arrow goes where I aim and I can’t hit nothing.

Or they can just strife left and right at round 700+ and all of your AA will miss…

phaeris.7604:

Well I guess I was wrong Solari, since you pointed it out. I guess I made the mistake of expecting not to be hit in quick succession for 6k damage a time by an ability which requires 0 setup to use.

Your amazing opinion due to the fact you are such a well recognized player clearly dwarfs my own and all classes are balanced and even in equal hands. Your spvp experience clearly marks you out as being the pinnacle of all knowledge of class balance.

And Mirra…sigh..how many heartseekers can you do in one initiative bar. 0.75 is a cooldown now? I didn’t realise we were being super petty. Heartseeker is 0.25 secs slower than an elementalists air auto attack. That’s not exactly a cast time equivalent is it. It’s not ’ Oh look!, he’s about to cast heartseeker! i better avoid this one!’

If you’re having trouble understanding what happened re-read my initial post. It wasn’t 1v1. Who sneaks up on their opponent as a thief? Shadowstep/steal/Signet….gap closing on a thief is extremely easy, i played one.

I wouldn’t mind if it were a C+d/steal/mug into backstab combo, least that takes a modicum of skill and has a cooldown. Heartseeker is like me firegrabbing 4 times in a row.

The problem with HS spamming is that it’s utilised by every nub thief out there (which there are many), and produces significant damage without having to even try.

“And Mirra…sigh..how many heartseekers can you do in one initiative bar. 0.75 is a cooldown now? I didn’t realise we were being super petty. Heartseeker is 0.25 secs slower than an elementalists air auto attack.”

If you read my post, I said .75 sec is the cast time and initiative system is the “cool down.”

" It wasn’t 1v1."

So it was a 1v2. You die, I don’t see a problem here…

“Shadowstep/steal/Signet….gap closing on a thief is extremely easy, i played one.”

My point exactly! They need to gap close to attack and HS to finish. All of which is part of the “setup.”

“Heartseeker is like me firegrabbing 4 times in a row.”

I didn’t know firegrab had a health threadshold and HS had a burning requirement.

Let me try this again. Instead of saying “HS does too much damage it should be nerf” please provide constructive reasons as to why it warrant a review. Below is a sample format to follow that would faciliate discussions:

Ability – HS
Reason – e.g. low counter play. I have no skills that can counter it. etc etc
Proposed Rework – Rework so HS does more damage at 10% vs at 25% or increase cast time to 1 sec, etc etc
Compensation – Due to lower overall damage, decrease init by xx or increase range by xx

phaeris.7604:

I’m an ele. 2500 armour.

How can I get hit for 6k each time by a spammable attack.

My churning earth has a 3 1/2 sec cast time and does that damage to soft targets.

It involved absolutely no skill, no sort of setup and it has a gap closer attached. If youre fighting someone else (i was), thief jumps in, presses 2 twice and that much damage?

Attacks which involve no setup, no cooldown and no cast time shoudn’t hit for that much.

“Attacks which involve no setup, no cooldown and no cast time shoudn’t hit for that much.”

Actually, the cast time is .75 per HS. The amount of skills a thief can perform is based on how many initiative they have – a resource and or pseudo “cool down” mechanics.

So, I addressed the “no cooldown” and “no cast time” parts of your comment. Let me address the “no setup” part. A thief doesn’t magically appear out of no where and bam bam HS you to death. He either needs to use a stealth ability to sneak up to you or use gap closeer for the HS. If the thief spam HS while you were at low health, the attacks he performed before that is the setup for the HS (a finisher). I have now addressed all of the points in your comment and deemed it to a baseless request for nerf.

coglin.1867:

oZii.2864:

A large part of your damage is from auto attacks in a condition build and usually ranged.

Yes, because the engineers 2s bleed on thier auto attack is obviously breaking the game. I mean I can appreciate your opinion, but for the love of Pete, keep it reasonable.

Applying your damage is easier with a condition build then a direct damage build since there is only one way to stop the damage once it’s applied and that’s through cleansing.

You guys have to get over this irrational thought process like this. Care to offer a reasonable argument to support this? Perhaps compare a popular direct damage build to a popular condition build, and offer a reasonable break down of how conditions magically are easier to damage with then power builds. A dodged, blocked, or cleansed condition does literally 0 damage, just as a dodged or blocked direct damage attack.

And this *
“there is only one way to stop the damage once it’s applied and that’s through cleansing”*
How do you negate direct damage once it is applied? You cannot mention one manner in which direct damage is fully negated that doesn’t fully negate condition damage.

Let me help Ozii out.

“You cannot mention one manner in which direct damage is “fully” negated that doesn’t “fully” negate condition damage."

Hello…endure pain.

Also, direct damage is mitigated by a lot of things and one of which has a 100% up time, armor.

Malforo.6391:

MIrra.3604:

Malforo.6391:

Karolis.4261:

Emm this is basic everyday d/p build just with tanky gear- solely based on hidden killer and backstab crits. And you act like you uncovered some deep hidden secret or smth lol.

you have no idea….try dueling her

hardly anyone knows about this build, when you say you have over 2k toughness and you still hit like a truck…everyone just says youre trolling or lying

bad thieves who use this build will look good
good thieves who use this build will look like gods

Hit like a truck? Are you kidding me?

Lets assume for a sec you full ascended gear and you have 3175 attack (1030 Damage from Ascended Weapon) and 94% crit damage and 31% crit chance.

(1030*2145)*2.4/2350 armor (vs a 30 SA thief) = 2256 damage * 2.44 crit damage = 5505 Backstab or 2752 Facestab.

That is hardly “hit like a truck” unless you’re referring to toy model. What happens when you fight people with higher armor?

Vs 2800 armor
(1030*2145)*2.4/2800+ armor (build with some toughness) = 1893 damage * 2.44 crit damage = 4620 Backstab or 2310 Facestab.

Vs 3200
(1030*2145)*2.4/3200+ armor (high toughness build) = 1657 damage * 2.44 crit damage = 4043 Backstab or 2021 Facestab.

You need to land BS 3-4 times before you can kill anything.

I haven’t even factored in the low AA damage due to low power and crit chance or how build lacks movement speed. Goodluck trying to AA people with swiftness.

I ran something similar over a year ago and I personally do not like it because I like to play burst build. Just because people do not share their builds, it doesn’t mean we don’t know about or tried it.

attack goes all the way up to 3500-3700 with hidden assassin hope you know that

Actually I didn’t know that. Care to explain?

Malforo.6391:

Karolis.4261:

Emm this is basic everyday d/p build just with tanky gear- solely based on hidden killer and backstab crits. And you act like you uncovered some deep hidden secret or smth lol.

you have no idea….try dueling her

hardly anyone knows about this build, when you say you have over 2k toughness and you still hit like a truck…everyone just says youre trolling or lying

bad thieves who use this build will look good
good thieves who use this build will look like gods

Hit like a truck? Are you kidding me?

Lets assume for a sec you full ascended gear and you have 3175 attack (1030 Damage from Ascended Weapon) and 94% crit damage and 31% crit chance.

(1030*2145)*2.4/2350 armor (vs a 30 SA thief) = 2256 damage * 2.44 crit damage = 5505 Backstab or 2752 Facestab.

That is hardly “hit like a truck” unless you’re referring to toy model. What happens when you fight people with higher armor?

Vs 2800 armor
(1030*2145)*2.4/2800+ armor (build with some toughness) = 1893 damage * 2.44 crit damage = 4620 Backstab or 2310 Facestab.

Vs 3200
(1030*2145)*2.4/3200+ armor (high toughness build) = 1657 damage * 2.44 crit damage = 4043 Backstab or 2021 Facestab.

You need to land BS 3-4 times before you can kill anything.

I haven’t even factored in the low AA damage due to low power and crit chance or how build lacks movement speed. Goodluck trying to AA people with swiftness.

I ran something similar over a year ago and I personally do not like it because I like to play burst build. Just because people do not share their builds, it doesn’t mean we don’t know about or tried it.

Malforo.6391:

iBlasiannn.4279:

For some reason I sense a bit of sarcasm and a sprinkle of kitten in this post.

I was mad when i first faced this build as it was a 3v1 in OUR camp…and he got 2 stomps off and lived

3v1 and in your supply camp and you guys couldn’t kill him/her? Sorry if I sound harsh but these players just suck.

A build will carry you only so far…

Regarding the build itself, I have no complaint other than you lose about 30-40% of your DPS; lower powr due to cav primary stat is toughness (roughly 100-150 if you use all cav trinkets), -15% crit damage from armor, another 10% from runes, and anywhere from 5-10% for lack of crits.

Corpse Flakes.5369:

Hi, I’m about to get Incinerator for my thief and I run 20/30/0/20/0 D/P & D/D I’m not sure which sigil to put in it. Im considering the Superior Sigil of Generosity because I don’t have much condition removal other than shadow step and assassins signet. I can manage fighting condi built classes with my melandru runes but every now and then I still get overwhelmed with conditions. I wasn’t sure where to post this but does anyone know if the Superior Sigil of Generosity procs as much as it says it should? I’ve had sigils a that don’t nearly as often as they say they do. Considering it’s a 40g sigil I need to know before I buy it. If there is a better place for this I’ll delete it and move it, thanks.

Buy sigil of nullification….

Works the same but w/o the transfer to foe.

Thighum.7295:

Dual.8953:

S/P would become a very strong control Spec… I wouldn’t call them OP… With P/P, it’d be a welcome change to bring P/P into serious usability, however it’d pretty much steal P/D’s purpose and function in doing so…

P/P needs a buff. The life stealing would provide it with additional survivability and a little damage.

I disagree that it would steal d/p’s purpose.
P/P would most likely remain physical damage based, I would guess the most likely rotation to be something like Black Powder -> Sneak Attack -> Unload. Repeat many times.
P/D would most likely remain more condition based, maybe a slight change would be required to reinforce this.

ensoriki.5789:

The only real point of /D off-hand is stealth access and a poor snare… you’ve made the /P off-hand better not just in a D/P since but completely for every /P set vs it’s /D counterpart since it does Half of what the /D kit does instead of being different. At the moment only D/P has that amount of overlap and you want to extend it to the other two?

I agree that the #4 dagger skill is severely underpowered. However that skill being weak and needing a buff to be more useful should not be a reason to ignore black powder.

Keep in mind that with this change CnD -> backstab would provide way more damage than Black Powder -> Backstab. Giving a tradeoff between the two weapon sets. Currently there is no tradeoff, d/p is just better than d/d in most situations. I don’t like this either!

I didn’t suggest a buff to black powder, but a change. It would be a nerf to d/p, an addition of one more option that would most likely not be used much to s/p, and a buff to p/p.

I agree that some attention would need to be given to the /d #4 to keep the p/d as a more condition based alternative (different role), maybe even a slight change to the p/d #3.

style.6173:

1. Stealth is spammable? Maybe if you have an initiative pool of 50.
2. Give S/P access to stealth? This spec doesn’t need anymore help…
3. If you can’t predict the location of a thief after a bp/hs combo, that’s more on you. You can see the way they jump.

1) No you do not need 50 initiative to be in stealth for 95% of a fight. Granted wouldn’t do much, but when you pop in and out of stealth just out of range for an extended period of time waiting for the perfect backstab opportunity or retreating when your health is low, it can be rather annoying for others to fight against. This is what I do on d/p when I am playing defensively against someone.
2) I doubt it would change the s/p that much because it would cost more initiative than would be worth to use Tactical Strike.
3) I think you are taking this as me complaining because I couldn’t beat someone. Since I play a thief I have very little AOE right off the bat, this was more to help other classes who have more AOE (like eles, 95% of which die without much of a fight). In addition, the distance you jump with HS changes with how you angle your screen when not targeting someone (last I checked).

MIrra.3604:

You do not fully understand the thief class and how thief use varies tools to gain long duration stealth even without the use of a /p weaponset. I’ll link a build later to show this.

Yes, I am well aware that there are other ways to enter stealth, nor did I complain about long duration stealth. Instead I focused on a weapon skill combo that allows you to get into stealth too easily.

I love how you started by insulting my knowledge of my main character, what a wonderful way to add something to this thread!

Sorry, I misread your post. Just to be clear – you are saying the main problem with D/P is how easy it is to stealth and not the ability to stack stealth, right?

If my statement is correct and as you said yourself that you do not have a problem with stealth stacking, what are you proposing to compensate d/p theives for losing their ability to stack stealth?

LOL. You really think Anet cares about even competition? They are interested in how to make Gem sales. 1800 Gems for server transfer is a great cash cow. I don’t blame them, it is a buy to play game with no subs. They have to make money somehow right?

Thighum.7295:

There have been a ton of suggestions to change stealth over the past few days. Almost all of them seem to be targeted towards stealth in general, instead of directly at the main offender: the d/p thief. Many of the proposed suggestions would absolutely destroy /d thieves, which are reasonable to counter because they have to land CnD to enter stealth.

The problem is not “perma stealth,” because their stealth is not really permanent, but the ease of access to their stealth, which can be “spammed.” Due to the blind on the bullet from blackpowder, it can be very hard to interrupt the bp + hs combo in time.

I suggest changing the black powder skill, as it is the main offender.

1)Black Powder now creates a dark field instead of a smoke field.
2)The field still blinds.
3)The shot fired from Black Powder no longer blinds but grants stealth when it hits.

What does this do?
1) It is possible to dodge the fired bullet, so it can be more easily countered like CnD.
2) The bullets damage is very low, so stealthing from range comes at the cost of the difference of damage between this skill and CnD.
3) Since heartseeker would not be used, it would be easier to predict the thief’s exact location: near the field.

Other things this would do:
Give s/p and p/p access to stealth at the cost of 6 initiative.
I am doubtful that this would change gameplay much on s/p. S/d has access but rarely uses it because the s/ stealth attack skill does very little damage.
P/P needs a buff, maybe this could help that weapon set.

You do not fully understand the thief class and how thief use varies tools to gain long duration stealth even without the use of a /p weaponset. I’ll link a build later to show this.

Pyriall.5027:

K U T M.4539:

Fade.9124:

spvp is dead, this is coming from a rank 61. WvW is where it’s at. Sad, but true.

There’s actually DRAMA and COMPETITION in wvw atm.

It’s amazing

Drama? Yes…Competition? WHA???

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/community/links/WvW-4-tM-vs-9-4-RIOT-5-lv80s-Vid-6/page/2#post3624922

Team RIOT (I think they Spvp) vs TM (mostly a WvW roaming guild?). Drama + a competitive fight to come.

/popcorn

Fortus.6175:

I think we can all agreed that currently thieves are stealing (no pun intended) all the attention when it comes to damage dealer/roamer/squishy.

Their OP superb damage coupled with spammable blinds, teleports, dodges, stealth, backstabs is driving to extinction the few eles and mesmers that remain (today we lost 2 top mesmer players due to this, on top of the countless nameless elementalists which plead for fixes long time ago after getting the boot up their …..feet)

Backstabs, without any kind of interaction on the taker other than bending over and taking it regardless of skillfully blocking it, blinding or evading the attack.

Blinds, which reapply on literally every second and then there is the fact that every ranged skill on thieves (except autoattack) applies a blind through this field.

Teleports that cure conditions and break stuns, rendering any form of CC, soft or hard, useless. On top of not only having one, or 2, or 3, or 4 , or 5……. just as many as initiative permit, on top of 2 freebies on low CD.

---

You cant give one class all the best tools for survival regardless of stats, give it the best single target damage and then allow it to take anybody else’s role and call it a day.

Suggestions; blind fields, same treatment the earth storm ele got; once every 4 seconds.
Teleports, increase initiative cost, give it 1/2 or 3/4 seconds precast, 1/2 activation.
Damage and boon stealing; needs an ICD and the damage needs some shaving down, specially spamable skills, something not along the lines of 8%, but rather 15-25%.

Thoughts?

At the end of the day, you can only bring 5 players into a match and sometimes they stack classes (typically they will not stack thieves). That mean, even if you wanted to, you cannot bring all classes into a spvp match. Someone’s going to get their feelings hurt. It is the undeniable truth.

Is it the thief fault that it is working as intended? Built for DPS and mobility, they are well suited as a roamer and far point assaulter. Look at the bunker gaurdian. How long have they been in the role? Do they need a nerf so that other classes get a chance? No because then you will see post like “Mesmer/Ele driving away damage dealers please buff thief so I can play sPvP again.”

What I’m trying to say is, the problem isn’t the class – it is the gamemode. They need to add more gamemodes so there’s a reason to take other classes. For example deathmatch, I wouldn’t mind a shatter mesmer in a team deathmatch.

Natsu Dragneel.1625:

This needs to happen,

Too long have we been blocking attack after attack while the thief or Mesmer or other class just sits in stealth like nothing happened, and just continue on attacking until the block ends, while still being stealthed.

Any and all players that are stealthed should be revealed for the normal revealed time on blocks. A block is a hit, however, It doesn’t count as a hit, this needs to be changed.

Thoughts?

Edit: Removed the small section about blinds/misses/evades.

Does that mean when I cloak and dagger and it is blocked I will still gain stealth?

Yamsandjams.3267:

Stealth stacking doesn’t really bug me because it means the thief will need to remain in stealth. They did also partly nerf this already by changing how infusion of shadow works.

Instead I find stealth chaining to be more of a problem, especially since you can do it off keep walls, other structures (i.e. Khylo treb), and random mobs around WvW maps that make no effort whatsoever to try and twart your attempts to do so. I’d prefer that a thief was revealed every time they exit stealth instead of just on attacking or being kicked out a refuge, but I seem to be in the minority on that.

The funny thing is at one time they were going to implement revealed every time a thief exist stealth. The thief community was up in arms over it (including me). So eventually, one day will come when the devs will nerf stealth to the ground just because of one stupid weaponset. Hence, why I am recommending changes now rather than have a blanket nerf.

Thoth Divine.8642:

Title says it all. Stealth is a great mechanic in this game, but the fact that it is absolutely impossible to prevent or counter is ridiculous. Thieves rely on this skill a great lot which is fine, but in my opinion it’s a broken and cheesy mechanic. I think Thieves would be in a much better place if they didn’t rely so much on it and were compensated in other ways to make up for this.

Thoughts?

Each time I hit a necro, it prevent life force regeneration for X secs
Each time I hit a mesmer, a clone dies.
Each time I hit a warrior, it reduces adren
Each time I hit a ranger, a pet or spirit dies
Each time I hit an ele, it locks a random attunement for X secs
Each time I hit an engi, it prevents use of toolkit for X secs
and finally
Each time I hit a thief, it remove stealth

Kontrolle.3514:

Aegael.6938:

If thieves cry that stealth is their only defense since they don’t have protection, then give them protection in return for reworking stealth. What a useless argument.

Its even more useless because thieves have the best mobility, teleporting skills, evades, evadeskills, blindspells and even stunbreakers without CD. Coupled with The shortest CD on elites which are abused like no tomorrov with lyssa runes.

Stealth is a gamekiller since release. Im the last one off app. 20 people that started together with gw2. Most of them left because of the broken stealth madness.

You do not have a clue what you’re talkinga bout. That’s coming from someone that is asking for a stealth nerf…

Israel.7056:

MIrra.3604:

Love this statement…

One of the best roaming group from Mag challenged RIOT openly on the forum for 5v5 and/or roaming fights and was either turned down or made excuses that they couldn’t 5v5. A lot of roamers during the BG/Mag/JQ/SOR season 1 wanted to see that fight but it never happened.

Which group?

Which group isn’t important anymore. Whats important is making a statement which you can’t back up.

Zero Day.2594:

MIrra.3604:

Zero Day.2594:

“perma stealth” – one more scrub that’s easy to kill, you’re close to realizing that it’s not “perma” rather stacking… check the dictionary on what permanent means…
Anyways, I’ll be adding your post to the nerf wishlist….
Keep it going guys! Nerf everything, don’t give a kitten about roles (or lack thereof), and other reasons why stealth is a must right now for thieves!

Yummy tears….

Thank you for adding nothing to the topic of discussion other than correcting me on a nickname given to thieves that abuse stealth mechanics.

This is why us thieves keep getting nerf so hard each patch. When we keep saying l2p you kittening noob! QQ more! Yumy tears! I have done that in the past but I think the best path forward is to give constructive changes so that the nerf will be negligible and with compensation when required.

Yes constructive, non-emotional, feed back…
Compare your post to:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/Thief-Mug-and-CnD-change-suggestions

Both suggest a nerf/change… can you tell me the difference? And i’m not going to troll him either, unlike you.

Plus most nerf requests are narrow minded… “STEALTH IS THE PROBLEM… NERF NERF NERF…” (or evade, or …) well… why do you use stealth so much? Are there alternatives? What roles need stealth?

I use stealth as a class mechanic within the scope the game developers intended. Such as chain CnD and when I’m in a pinch, Shadow Refuge. It compensate the class for its lack of protection, stability, etc. Since stealth stacking via using the same skill over and over again is not intended, then that is grounds for a nerf. Correct me if I’m wrong.

Yes, there are other fun builds out there with limited stealth uses. Try the 10/30/0/0/30 S/P build as an example.

There are no roles that need stealth. Stealth just complement a role.

FLiP.7680:

Or make skill finishers (except projectiles) be able to combo twice at maximum in a single field.
I believe that the only skills able to do 3+ finishers are HS, Cluster Bomb and Ele’s Lightning Swing.

No that’s a bad change. One of the best group support a thief has is blast finisher. When a ranger put down healing spring or we steal healing spring from a ranger, we can bast it multiple times for aoe healing. Reducing the finisher to a max of 2 will be a significant nerf to thief group support as we are already limited in that capacity.

Zero Day.2594:

“perma stealth” – one more scrub that’s easy to kill, you’re close to realizing that it’s not “perma” rather stacking… check the dictionary on what permanent means…
Anyways, I’ll be adding your post to the nerf wishlist….
Keep it going guys! Nerf everything, don’t give a kitten about roles (or lack thereof), and other reasons why stealth is a must right now for thieves!

Yummy tears….

Thank you for adding nothing to the topic of discussion other than correcting me on a nickname given to thieves that abuse stealth mechanics.

This is why us thieves keep getting nerf so hard each patch. When we keep saying l2p you kittening noob! QQ more! Yumy tears! I have done that in the past but I think the best path forward is to give constructive changes so that the nerf will be negligible and with compensation when required.

Quick and simple – stealth stacking via spamming the same ability over and over again needs to be toned down. Yes, I am asking for a nerf!

Their ability to stack stealth in excess of 10+ secs duration is a bit overwhelming to counter. There are different builds ranging from tank/condi to pure 10K+ BS burst all of which can maintain perma stealth. If you want perma stealth, I expect your BS to hit like a wet noodle.

I’m requesting the following change:

Leap finisher through smoke field gives 2 secs of stealth instead of 3.
Example BP + 3 HS combos:
3*2=6 secs of stealth
3-4 secs used to execute combo
Net gain of 2-3 stealth after complete combo.

VS.

Original BP + 3 HS combos:
3*3=9 secs of stealth
3-4 secs used to execute combo
Net gain of 5-6 secs of stealth after complete of combo.

Basically, I want to reduce the “reward” for low risk skills.

Bazzoong.7145:

Cyricus.2981:

CnD is already easy to counter with a dodge or block ability, as it has a cast time, even when using mug. In fact, the bursty nature of this is about the only reason to use D/D over D/P, which is superior in almost every way.

You would not lose the “bursty” nature of D/D, since a succesful backstab would (almost) make up for the loss on Mug CnD due to the vunerability stacks.

I addition you would gain some sustain by successful CnD.

Yes it will. You do not fully comprehend the implication of your proposed change.

I’ll give you a hint – there’s a cooldown on steal.

Sanny.1270:

azerte.4365:

Like Sanny and Logi said, just do a 4v4, with the same people as in the video. No pugs, bosses, other people from tM and RIOT, … .
Fight it out in the battlefield instead of the forums. Both sides are complaining about one another without getting anywhere.
And to avoid any future complaining both sides record the battle so there are no excuses to be made.
(Ps: Caed, i hope that’s sarcasm)

pretty much all that needed to happen and this is for anyone in gw2 is if they want to us fight feel free to pm anyone of us and we can set sumthin up. its not like we are going to say no… whats the point in pvping in this game if you don’t fight. win/lose we have no np’s fighting any 1v1’s – 5’s.

Love this statement…

One of the best roaming group from Mag challenged RIOT openly on the forum for 5v5 and/or roaming fights and was either turned down or made excuses that they couldn’t 5v5. A lot of roamers during the BG/Mag/JQ/SOR season 1 wanted to see that fight but it never happened.

I vote (1) New Maps.

A new game mode is just stupid.

cyyrix.6105:

You jumped my guys while fighting alongside the most OP champ in EOTM. GGs, but careful with that ego.

What is up with this passive-aggressive kitten?

Isn’t that part of being a “roaming” group? Running around the map looking for good fights and always being aware of your environment? You guys just basically failed roaming 101.

By the way, wasn’t RIOT invited to beta test EOTM? You guys should know the map layout like the back of your hands (knowing which direction your enemies will likely come from).

Marsares.2053:

Reesha.7901:

Slim.3024:

Reesha.7901:

Slim.3024:

I hope this isn’t a bug, ‘cause it didn’t make much sense for them to instantly attack a stealthed player when he came out of stealth, before the mesmer even realized where the stealthed player was to begin with either.

None of the tooltips suggest that illusions come outfitted with the most advanced satellites and tracking devices of any sort.

So, if your opponent stealth, you should loose 90% your damage and defense. Mmmmm, nope, I really don’t think that is an idea you would like to see implemented to your own class.

But it’s fine that you can cast phantasms and clones without being affected by evades or blocks and that they always know where the player is instantly. Clones and phantasm in this game are smarter than the actual player and can not be juked.

Is that fine?

You can blind the cast of the phantasm and you can evade or block the actual attack.

This is not a topic regarding what you do not like about Mesmer.
This is not a topic regarding what you would like to see changed.
This is a topic about a bug that cripples Mesmer, against any opponent that has stealth.

+1

Players complaining about being beaten by horrible AI says a lot about their own intelligence.

The MM necro says hello…I eat brains..