Guild Wars 2

Here’s the new string for Chuka if anyone’s interested it’s see-though and glows red-black, it’s definitely better then the old burlap-twine string which didn’t look very ‘legendary’ at all.

Obtena.7952:

Here is the problem I have with this thread;

Who else has ever encountered the specific issue that the OP is describing? I know I haven’t, and farming openworld is 99% of what I do in this game. So I don’t think the OP has encountered something that’s systematic with the dynamics of the game. Sounds like either 1) misinterpretation or 2) some kind of weird bug.

For the record, I’ve never noticed DR on events, especially after 30 minutes, nor doing map completions. So go forth with the confidence you do can map completion … AND get your proper, full rewards doing it.

As I said in a previous post I can confirm that I am having the EXACT same problem regarding DR. The other day I was trying to earn XP for my Tyria masteries so I thought I’d try Orr since it’s one of the few populated vanilla maps. After doing around 8-10 events I noticed that the experience I was earning per event would gradually decrease with every successive event (This is DR at work) it went something like this:

First ~10 events (<30 mins): 18k XP, 509 Karma, 81 Copper Per event.
^ (This is NORMAL for a GOLD level event @ 80)
Event #11 (30-35 Mins): 17k XP, 480 Karma, 78 Copper Per event.
Event #12 (35 Mins): 16500 XP, 440 Karma, 69 Copper Per event.
Event #13 (35-40 Mins): 15800 XP, 400 Karma, 60 Copper Per event.
Event #14 (40 Mins): 14900 XP, 360 Karma, 53 Copper Per event.
Event #15 (40+ Mins): 13600 XP, 290 Karma, 38 Copper Per event.
.
.
.
.
.
Event #30+ (1H +): 133 XP, 8 Karma, 3 Copper Per event. (This is the lowest I’ve seen DR get)
^ Keep in mind these are all GOLD level events.

The DR for Events seems to kick in WAY too fast, and is devastating to anyone trying to earn XP legitimately through events. Eventually when I started earning less than 5k Xp per event chain, this included events in any and all other zones as well. (I need over 4M XP) I was so frustrated with DR that I was forced to leave and farm CoF instead (Which I absolutely hated but it was the only way to earn ANY XP without AFK’ing for hours in between sessions to remove DR).

Just FYI there are 3 types of Diminishing returns in this game:

Type A – |Dungeon DR| which kicks in after running the same path once a day; resets daily; account wide.

Type B – |Event DR| Which kicks in after running a certain number of events in a row within a period of time; resets in 15-20 mins ONLY if LOGGED-IN and not doing events (reset time appears to scale with the severity of the DR); character only.

Type C |Monster/Loot DR| Which kicks in after killing a specific monster hundreds of times in a row; causes all loot drops from said monster to gradually get worse and eventually stop; removed by not killing that mob for a period of time; character only.

ALL forms of DR affect Experience Earned, Karma Gains and Liquid Gold Rewards.

Diminishing Returns is character bound not account bound which means it can ONLY be removed by either AFK’ing somewhere on the character with DR or doing dungeons/fractals/anything other then open world events. It doesn’t even get removed by spending time offline, it just gets frozen till the next time you log into that character.

This basically means that you can farm the hell out of Cursed Shore then quit the game for weeks/months/years and come back to the same amount of DR as you had when you left.

I personally HATE this mechanic as it literally does NOTHING to deter any bots as all they do is farm gathering nodes which are unaffected by DR.

IMO at the very least the amount of XP from events should NEVER get affected by DR because there is no way that a bot could use XP gains to somehow gain gold or exploit anything. It’s not like a real bot could even do events to begin with due to how they work.

Been having the same exact problem with cursed shore and trying to earn my Tyria Masteries worst part is that no matter what zone I go to on my main now all the events are giving me <5k XP and my only option to remove it is to afk in LA for hours.

One thing I’ve noted after playing with the 64-bit client for a few hours is that while the game seems much more stable and I haven’t crashed despite doing the Tarir event 3 times; the amount of RAM the game uses seems to be steadily climbing the longer I play regardless whether or not I move to less intensive areas such as solo instances vs massive zerg events.

From the last play session my game went from Overall 40% RAM usage at the beginning of a session to just over 60% after a few hours. While this isn’t a problem since I didn’t crash during that time and reloading the game resets the usage instantly. It just seemed to me that the old 32-bit client pre-HoT would periodically dump unused data stored in RAM to free up space and ensure it stayed below its cap. I would normally never see it go above 45% (total) RAM usage no matter how long I played.

Also not sure if this is related (AT ALL) but the 64-bit client seems easier on my CPU for some reason (no performance loss that I’ve noticed) and CPU usage seems to peak at around 35% whereas with the 32-bit client CPU usage peaked at around 45%.

This is all mainly conjecture on my part but I figured I might as well post my observations regardless.

I concur, this is getting EXTREMELY frustrating when trying to complete the many large-scale meta-events present in the new areas only to have the game crash out when you’re less then 10 minutes from victory and loading back in to an empty map with nothing to show for your time.

I would get these crashes less then once a month [if ever] prior to HoT launch and now it’s constant no matter what I do there’s the looming threat of getting a random CTD and losing everything.

Reason I’m posting this is because me and my group (made specifically for DC protection) just finished the meta-event in Dragon’s Stand and not 90 seconds later ALL FIVE of us crashed out of game and were dumped into a dead map. Now you can claim maybe one of us had PC issues but the fact that all 5 members among MANY others from that same map crashed out is FAR too much of a coincidence to assume it’s a problem on our end.

This is NOT my/our PC(s) fault as I’ve NEVER had any problems of this sort in the previous 3 years of playing this and I’ve done everything I can think of rule out a hardware issue from defragging the .dat to running client repairs and clearing up HDD/RAM space to updating drivers and disabling firewalls etc.. nothing works.

Just for reference I have 2 PC’s in the house I’ve tried playing on BOTH have this problem despite one being quite new and well above recommended:

PC 1-
CPU: Intel i5 6600K 4.4Ghz
RAM: 16GB (2 × 8GB) DDR4
GPU: Nvidia GTX 970
OS: 64-Bit Windows 10

PC 2-
CPU: Intel i7-980 3.4Ghz
RAM:12GB DDR3
GPU: Nvidia GTX 580
OS: 64-Bit Windows 7

Edit- Forgot to mention OS in case it wasn’t obvious they are both 64bit.

Wait… you were suppose to get a recipe chest for completing the “Master Daredevil” achievement?

I guess it’s bugged then because all I got was a skin with the rune in it that left me wondering “Now how the hell do I get more of these runes?”.

Made a post on this after the pistol buff patch: Here

Basically if you pay attention to the tooltip for unload/vital shot after taking Ankle Shots you’ll notice it will flip over and the damage actually drops by around 24-26% for those two skills after equipping it (also affects shadow shot) this is likely because when they increased the skills damage last patch and ‘fixed’ the range on ankle shots they forgot to update ankle shots to the new coefficient meaning taking ankle shots will give you the old pre-buff version of the pistol skills. It will still increase your damage by 10% against crippled targets but it’s still an overall damage loss of 14%+ even greater when the target isn’t crippled.

In short: Don’t take ankle shots right now; it’s currently very much broken and does the opposite of its intended effect.

Driften.8716:

Just as a side note Pistols vs Terrorgrifs = no good. Pistols mid fight keep dropping dmg and require you to re target repeatedly to sync back up. no miss/evade/out of range, just damage stops connecting. Seems after every charge.

This is because when Terragriffs use their charge they leave a damaging trail behind that blocks all projectiles in a fairly large area as long as it’s up which means that as long as they are inside their own trail they can’t be hit by any projectiles, the trail also seems to count as an invincible entity since shooting it with signet of malice actually heals you and trick shot seems to bounce into it.

Dang forum bug…

Playing the Daredevil both this week and last I have noted the following:

• Dash feels MUCH more fluid and overall better to use this week compared to last (is this still a placeholder animation?) while the other two still need work, particularly bound.

• QUICKNESS! this boon really hurts aspects of the Daredevil, particularly the staff skills Vault, Weakening Charge, Debilitating Arc, and most annoyingly Impact Strike. On all of the listed skills (possibly more) Quickness causes them to only go half their intended distance making them more often then not miss their target completely. For Example a Thief pops quickness via Utility/trait to get Impact Strike off faster but in doing so reduces the initial charge range from 300 to 150 (melee range) causing the first strike to miss and thus wasting the skill completely.

• Lack of synergy in the traits. This is a big issue for me and many others, the Daredevil trait-line feels very odd in that the only other line that seems to compliment it is Acrobatics which is another defensive line and not a particularly good one, it almost feels like these 2 lines are fighting over the same position while trickery remains as absolutely vital as ever. Recently I tried the Reaper specialization and was absolutely amazed at how much synergy the spec had between existing Necromancer traits/utilities and abilities, almost everything worked together flawlessly to produced a really powerful feeling and fun elite spec. In short the Daredevil offers us almost nothing that the baseline thief couldn’t already do better and has no traits in it line that scream “WOW! That’s cool I want that for my X build!”.

• Fist Flurry, The damage buffs this skill received following BWE2 made it more desirable to actually take. However it remains very hard to actually hit anything not standing completely still with this skill and while this may be intended it makes the skill feel very unrewarding to use if you land 4 hits only to miss on the 5th because your target moved very slightly backwards (this happens quite often even in PvE) which prevents you from using the main attack (Palm Strike). Perhaps this skill should only require the final punch to hit to trigger palm strike instead of all 5 or nothing?

• Channeled Vigor, Still sucks, wasn’t this one suppose to have its cast time reduced?

• Distracting Daggers, This skill could have great synergy with the Impacting Disruption trait, unfortunately it seems crippled by a random 1s CD in-between dagger throws which really throws it off, though the projectile speed increase was nice.

That’s all for now, but if I find more worth commenting on I’ll be sure to post it again in this thread.

LOL I can’t believe there’s already a complaint thread about thief getting a buff, and PISTOL no less.
You people realize that a 25%+ buff to a skill that has a base damage of 134 is needed for it to even be noticeable?

Not to mention one of the accompanying traits for pistols got nerfed (-150 range reduction) AND is now bugged to reduce auto-attack damage by 25%.

Overall Pistol/Pistol has been and still is the weakest option for a thief in any given game mode.

Also realize that when fighting a P/P thief they have almost no defenses outside of whatever utilities they took and that #3 Unload is the only useful damaging skill on their bars which costs 5 initiative to use.

kevvy.5081:

It’s just a tool tip error. If you test your dps you’ll find that it does work and gives 10% more damage. But yea it gave me a scare too lol..

Not so sure it is, Just tried this out in the mists on the same dummy and on the Light dummy my Vital Shot autos were hitting 620-680 non-crit (above 50%) but after taking ankle shots my non-crit autos were only hitting for 450-515 (above 50%) this damage still doesn’t exceed the UN-traited value when the target has cripple on them.

It appears that since the patch the trait Ankle Shots now appears to reduce the damage on the main-hand auto-attack by around 25-26% upon taking it.

Whilst having NO traits equipped the auto-attack (for me) does 495 but upon equipping the trait Vital Shot then flips over and the new skill now only deals 393 damage per hit, a LOSS of over 100 damage from a trait that’s suppose to increase it.

Just a warning to any would-be Pistol main-hand thieves out there, it appears that since the patch the trait Ankle Shots now appears to reduce the damage on the main-hand auto-attack by around 26% upon taking it.

Whilst having NO traits equipped the auto-attack (for me) does 495 but upon equipping the trait Vital Shot then flips over and the new skill now only deals 393 damage per hit, a LOSS of over 100 damage from a trait that’s suppose to increase it.

Well, there’s certainly room for more improvement and flat damage wasn’t even the main thing wrong with the p/p set. Hopefully we hear more on Tuesday but in the meantime…

I can just picture the perma-stealthed golem rushes now, made worse by the fact that only servers that are already totally dominating can even get a T3 SM. I guess we might see some use out of those Stealth Disruptor Traps after all.

Come to think of it, you might be able to do a stealth golem rush with the new Scrapper elites too.

I’m very much of the ‘wait-and-see’ persuasion regarding things like this, but even I’m getting a little nervous after the latest reveal.

The Dev’s seem dead-set on adding as many stealth ‘counters’ as they can into this expansion in an effort to curtail the apparent abuse of stealth in PvP/WvW. The problem I see is that stealth (currently) is really the only way for a thief to have any form of sustain in combat, without stealth and the Shadow Arts line currently we are practically nothing more then a Really squishy warrior with shadow-step skills.

We really don’t need to stealth for very long to use offensive abilities (maybe 1-2 seconds to get off a back-stab etc..) the main reason for a thief to stay in stealth for a longer duration is mainly defensive such as clearing conditions, a tactical retreat or to regen some small amount of health though the SA grand master.

Yes we have lines like Acrobatics (eww) and soon Daredevil that allow for a more evasive play-style but all these stealth counters almost seem to force us into running them to even 1v1 in HoT and it’s not like dodging is a unique defense for the thief anyways.

With more reveals being added to the game with longer duration’s the time we spend outside of stealth will definitely increase (not that I mind that so much) the main problem with this is we have no passive defenses to rely on like almost all other classes such as high health/armor, protection, water fields/regen, block, invulnerability, resistance etc.. without stealth and things such as those it will become much more difficult to fight many classes.

A 900 range; 6 second reveal on a 20 second CD almost seems like a direct slap to the thief from a class that was already very strong against us to begin with. Not sure how many engineers will run this but if they do they will not only be able to directly and easily counter our Shadow Refuge a 60 sec CD, with a 20 seconds one, but they will also be able to reveal us in a 360 degree area anywhere within our limited 900 range attack zone.

Please don’t read this as a complaint but more as concern over the narrowing options this already fragile class has for defense in the future.

Sorry if this is in the wrong section but I wasn’t sure if I should post this here or in the regular bugs form since it’s beta feedback.

The trait Hardening Persistence that gives you 40 toughness for each point of upkeep you have active is bugged and is permanently giving me all 10 stacks even with no upkeep skills active, I’ll attach a pic for proof below.

This occurs when you activate the Embrace the Darkness Mallyx elite skill then switch your active legend, it will give you all 10 stacks even after you deactivate all other upkeeps which results in a permanent 400 toughness.

Most of what I came here to post about regarding the Daredevil seems to have already been conveyed, several times in fact but just to reiterate the things I noticed the most:

1) Weakening Charge – This skill NEEDS to work like Heartseeker and track your target and NOT like some un-targetable whirl that shoots off in whatever direction you happen to be looking.

2) Grandmaster Dodge Augmentations – I feel that these traits are suppose to be the “Modified class mechanic” that the Daredevil has access to, so it was VERY disappointing to find that they actually make the thief WORSE at avoiding things, and after playing around with it I actually found the class worked better if you left the Grandmaster UN-SELECTED. The slow, awkward animations to these new dodges seem really hard to control sometimes and very predictable other times, they need desperately to be made more fluid and inline with the default dodge in terms of usability.

3) Staff Utility – I really wanted the staff to be good, especially since it’s just another melee weapon (when we probably could’ve used a ranged) but it feels like it has no real purpose in the thieves kit right now, it offers no combo fields, no boons, very little room for ability synergy with other weapons/steal/utilities and most of the abilities (minus Vault) don’t really hit as hard as you might expect from a 2-handed weapon. In general I found myself ignoring the staff in favor of Sword/X because sword had much more synergy with utilities and many of the traits (apart from staff mastery obviously).

4) Dust Strike – I don’t know about others but I found myself using this skill very little, mainly because it seemed to be very unreliable as to whether or not it hit its target (almost like Scorpion Wire). Even if the target was well within the skills range it seemed like the dust “projectile” was getting blocked/destroyed by the slightest terrain features.

5) Debilitating Arc – I see what was trying to be done with this skill, give staff a skill much like sword/dagger/dagger has that allows you to spend initiative in exchange for evade frames but the problem with staff unlike dagger or sword is it lacks a gap closer and the evade launches you back AWAY from your target making it really hard to stay on target (in PvP/WvW) if you use this skill a lot, the only ‘gap closer’ staff has is Vault which only has a 600 range and is way to expensive/slow to be reliably used to close gaps.

Which brings me to the last skill…

6) Vault – Now this skill I like but I still have a few issues with it, namely it feels SLOW and perhaps because of its damage it is suppose to be slow but the farther away you try and use it the longer it takes to land, and at max range (600) an enemy can literally just walk out of the impact site before you land whereas if you vault at point-blank range you can pound a target with damage almost immediately, also for 6 initiative I feel like the ending of the vault, the “blast” that does the damage should count as a blast-finisher if you land inside a combo field so that the initial ‘leap’ counts as a leap-finisher, and the final ‘blast’ would count as a blast-finisher this would make the skill unique and reward you for picking your landing site more.

I was really hyped to try the Daredevil after the PoI reveal stream, but after actually playing it I have to say I’m disappointed with the initial results and am hoping that many of the issues brought forth in this thread can be addressed before launch, because there is great potential for synergy here provided that everything is made less clunky-feeling.

TL;DR -In closing, I’ve Played this game for almost 2700 hours since launch, 2500 of which are on thief and in it’s current state I’m not sure if I would ever use Daredevil over even the current Acrobatics it’s just too awkward and clunky.

*Re-posting this from the Thief Forums so that it might be fixed.

Possibly found a bug with the trait Ankle Shots which when taken appears to REDUCE the damage of the Unload and Shadow Shot combo skills by around ~5% all other skills remain the same including S/P and P/D, as far as I know there is nothing in this specific trait that should cause damage to be LOWERED on any abilities, I tried switching between the other two traits available in the line and got the same results. Will re-post this in the Bugs forum later. Pic Included for proof.

Also if you notice in the picture I posted, Ankle Shots also increases the range on Shadow Shot by 300 but only 150 on Unload.

*Note – this was done with no other trait-lines equipped so as to rule out any other potential modifiers.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Nice try. Ankle Shot does not increase weapon range.

Try harder next time.

Umm.. Hate to break it to you but it DOES increase the range on pistol skills even if it’s not listed on the tooltip, try it yourself in-game if you don’t believe me.

Possibly found a bug with the trait Ankle Shots which when taken appears to REDUCE the damage of the Unload and Shadow Shot combo skills by around ~5% all other skills remain the same including S/P and P/D, as far as I know there is nothing in this specific trait that should cause damage to be LOWERED on any abilities, I tried switching between the other two traits available in the line and got the same results. Will re-post this in the Bugs forum later. Pic Included for proof.

Also if you notice in the picture I posted, Ankle Shots also increases the range on Shadow Shot by 300 but only 150 on Unload.

*Note – this was done with no other trait-lines equipped so as to rule out any other potential modifiers.

Really expected the rev to be the last one revealed, they must be having some issues with the remaining classes elite specs or something.

If this icon leak is to be believed: http://imgur.com/a/TzR20
Then it looks like Glint spec could possibly be getting 5 signets for their utilities, scroll down till you see the revenant icons (near the bottom), you see 5 blue themed icons of what appear to be signets for revenant including one that looks like a dragon head and one that looks like a dragon wing.

Steam/Cortex/Rivatuner aren’t third party programs in A-nets definition of them (Read Mods/game enhancements) they apply an overlay (usually just a few small numbers indicating FPS) directly to your computer monitor which shows you the current refresh rate of your monitor.

Hell, ArenaNet themselves openly endorse the Overwolf App for GW2 which also shows fps (and a whole lot more then the others), they even held an app development contest (https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/introducing-the-overwolf-guildwars2-app-challenge/) for it, I believe Overwolf even sponsors the GW2 PvP tournaments.

You can’t completely disable the skill effects visuals but you can tone them down considerably (especially AoE circles) by enabling the Effect LOD tick box at the bottom the graphics options.

This should also greatly improve FPS in large zerg fights, keep in mind this basically turns off the visuals of other players AoE circles (making them appear as just red/white circles) when there’s a lot of people in the area making it harder to tell what kind of fields your standing in, it also turns off any legendary auras you might have active while near a zerg.

Soren.9316:

The option for getting it that I know of is by buying online and you’ll just have to accept that you are going to have to eat the $30ish dollars due to exchange rate. I checked a few EB’s in Sask and they had no idea what i was talking about.

I figured that much, would still be nice to hear an official response as to why Canada and even Australia were omitted from their retailers list when other countries like Bulgaria and Malta (I mean c’mon really? There’s more people living in my city then in that entire country!) managed to make it onto their list.

I downloaded a free program called Razer Cortex (Yes the same Razer that makes PC accessories) it not only shows an FPS counter for all games but it also has features that allow you to automatically shut off pointless background programs chewing up CPU/memory when launching any game (and automatically re-enable them after you’re done) which can give you a performance boost while playing.

Yeah, I checked at EB Games here in Alberta a few days ago and they have no Pre-Orders available, in fact the first 2 guys had no idea what Heart of Thorns was, they needed to ask the manager and he confirmed they don’t have it.

Moreover I couldn’t even find any mention of HoT or even base GW2 on their Canadian site even Amazon.ca has no HoT pre-orders or otherwise available.

What gives Anet, no love for Canada?

The Combo Field provided by throw gunk in only really useful if you run Dagger Storm for the whirl, which I (and many others in WvW/PvP) do not, yes you can leap through it with a dagger main-hand to gain chaos armor for 2 seconds but that only applies to dagger, and even then since the field lasts 5 seconds, in order to get the 10 seconds you would need to leap over it 5 times and in doing so use all 15 of your initiative to get that.

I do recall once upon a time where I would use the field in combination with unload to stack confusion, but alas since both condi damage and P/P was nerfed that no longer seems to be worth it.

Edit* My bad It seems I was thinking of something else, Chaos does originally apply 5 seconds on leap but only 2 seconds for every leap thereafter, meaning I’d only take ~4 leaps to stack up 10 seconds.

I’d take Ice Shard Stab over the much more useless Tooth Stab any day, it may be a 1 minute bleed but with the nerf to condi damage that’s only like a whopping 20 damage per second that can easily be cleansed.

Throw Lava Rock is also pretty crappy in a non-condi build since the June 23rd patch.

As for Throw Gunk honestly even after adding an F2 to steal I still throw this one away as soon as I get it, the tiny amount of damage it does causing reveal makes it too risky to use, even if the enemy just stood in it for the full duration.

Much rather see it replaced with Throw Gear or Throw Net or even Shoot Rifle for the engineer steal, which make much more sense anyways imo.

In case you need to be reminded what these do see: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Steal

One of the biggest problems I have with AR being tied into gear is that it limits using different sets of gear in fractals.

Normally everyone just puts their (sometimes 150g+) infusions in their main PvE zerker gear that they use for everything from WvW to farming Silverwastes but in doing so that sort of locks them into that main set, which currently works because Zerker (and its slight variations) are the most optimal gear for nearly all game modes.

In HoT Anet said they wanted to try and experiment not only with different instabilities but also with the stats on the mobs themselves (think an entire fractal of mordrem husks) things that sound like they want to promote the use of more varied stat combos and the use of things like conditions.

The problem with this is that in order to change your stats you either need to craft a whole new set of ascended gear/accessories AND fill it with all new AR infusions OR throw your current stuff into the forge and change its stats, which is expensive and still causes you to lose all infusions and runes.

Short of allowing ascended to stat swap like legendaries (which will never happen) I think it would be cool if weapon/armor infusions could be freely removed from gear and placed into new gear without using a salvage kit or a stupidly overpriced extractor, this would allow you to have multiple sets of infusions for different game modes. (talking primarily for gear here, I know the pure AR infusions can only be put on ‘infused’ items.)

For example this would allow you to use a set of WvW infusions on your gear and then swap them out for a set of +5 X +5 AR infusions for doing fractals while also allowing you to swap them to different gear/alts without losing your “AR Progression”. Many people I met said they avoid fractals because they don’t wish to commit slots to AR when they could be used for stats useful in other game-modes.

Just something I thought might be a cool QoL thing, wouldn’t hurt the people selling the +7/8/9 etc infusions as much either since they would still require an “infused” item.

I think the Charr have some pretty cool animations for the thief even though I don’t have a Charr thief personally. Perhaps it’s just because I’m tired of the human animations.

Anyways here’s a picture for the thread of my thief AS a Charr:

Are you sure it was a mesmer that polymorphed you? With the June 23rd patch engineers gained the ability to toss Elixir X which is a ground-targeted moa morph which would hit you regardless of whether or not they could see you.

I never asked for it’s elite status to be revoked, more like.. re-evaluated much like guardians had done to theirs, now guardians see much more varied use of their elites, engineers got much the same treatment. As it stands right now, most thieves only use DS in large groups for AoE, and rarely ever use TG, leaving Basilisk Venom as the go-to skill for WvW/PvP, I’m just merely curious if this is because they feel it truly is powerful or rather it sees use over the others due to having no better alternatives for single combat.

As I said I realize it’s very powerful with venom share the problem I’m having is that it ONLY seems to be powerful with venom share and that only really works when running in a group, if running solo where venom share is useless BV ends up being much less useful compared to the elite/utility abilities of other professions.

One thing that I could see making it more desirable and “elite” without changing how it works would be to, like Pentalic said, allow it limited stacking capability (if both stacks land total duration would be 1.5s, same as before the patch) and add a possible passive effect (not sure what this could be, possibly a small chance to proc a mini-BV acting more like an interrupt?)

Going to be honest, every time I hit this skill while running d/d I curse myself for having accidentally wasted 4 initiative on nothing.

Let me start off by saying that I’m not trying to bash BV or say it should be removed or anything like that, rather I’m genuinely curious as to whether people feel that with all the recent changes/nerfs/complete overhauls of elite skills that have happened recently if they still believe BV stacks up to what other professions have in terms of stuns and elites.

Let’s start with what Basilisk Venom is now:

Basilisk Venom: Basilisk Venom (30 s): Your attacks turn foes to stone.
Stun: 1s
Venom Duration: 30s
Cooldown: 40s

Since the June 23rd patch they nerfed BV from a 1.5 sec duration down to a 1 sec duration apparently because they “buffed” it by giving it 2 charges baseline, now this is largely wasted because BV; unlike other stuns inflicts a unique condition called petrification which does not stack in duration, meaning the second stack of BV is wasted if you attack the same target twice. The only thing this really improves is the chances of getting a stun off on a target if they have aegis or evade the first stack.

As per the wiki:
- The venom is still used if an attack is blocked, evaded, obstructed, negated by Blind, or if the target has Invulnerability or Defiance.

- This is currently the only skill accessible to players normally that inflicts petrification.

- Petrification counts as a stun for stun breaker skill purposes, but does not count as a stun for stacking purposes.

In the past BV used to be the only stun available in game that was able to stun/interrupt bosses and champions with defiance which gave it a use in some PvE scenarios, It also used to be the only stun in the game that couldn’t be removed with a stun-break. Back then both of these things combined were used to justify the skills “elite” status but since then both of these “features” have been patched out; being cited as bugs despite having existed since launch.

With it’s inability to stack and it’s very short duration, currently it’s little more then an elite interrupt with a cast time, a 40 second CD and the ability to fail completely if you miss/get blocked/are blinded/get dodged.

This leads me to wonder if the majority of thieves continue to run this skill because it is currently the only elite that is viable in single target/PvP encounters since Dagger Storm only really works well if there is 5+ targets tightly grouped up and Thieves Guild is.. well it’s Thieves Guild, need I say more?

Now I understand that even a 1 second stun can be useful when trying to get off a surprise burst combo and that it’s effectiveness is compounded when running Venomous Aura but should our only viable single target elite be so heavily reliant on venom sharing in order to truly feel “elite”?

Other professions have (IMO) much better stuns that are more reliable, have better cooldowns, are ranged and most importantly aren’t tied to the elite slot but instead to a utility or a weapon skill.

Take the Mesmer’s Signet of Domination for example, a Utility skill that offers 3x the stun duration, 1/4 the cast time and is cast-able at 1200 range in addition to being a signet which means it gives a passive boost, all this with only a 5(s) increase in cooldown over BV (which can be traited down to 36s with a master trait).

So my questions are these:

1.Do you think that Basilisk Venom is currently worthy of its status as an elite skill?
2.If you could, would you rather take a 4th utility over our current elites?
3.Do you only use Basilisk Venom for PvP/WvW because the other options are even more lackluster in single target/small-scale encounters?

The first screenshot I took looks like it was a couple years ago in WvW, Picture of SM from that jumping puzzle tower thing in EB. Too bad this was long before first person was a thing!

I concur. I stopped using Signet of Shadows a year ago when I swapped my runes out for Travelers (which were much better back then) and haven’t looked back since. SoS just fails to stack up against almost all other possible thief utilities right now.

I’d love to be able to swap my travelers out for a more substantial rune set but i can’t fathom going back to using SoS or moving slow as hell in combat. It would be nice to see the 25% speed bonus folded into all classes though traits.

Another suggestion would be to change a couple signets like this:

Infiltrator’s Signet: Passive: Grants a 25% increase in movement speed. Active: Shadowstep to your foe.

Signet of Shadows: Passive: Regenerates one extra initiative every ten seconds. Active: Blind foes near you(if no target)/your target. Increase Initiative regeneration rate by 50/100% for 5 seconds.

This would specialize the signets more towards a theme (movement and initiative) rather then the seemingly random passive/active mix on them currently.

The 25% movement speed bonus would make much more sense on a signet with a mobility orientated active which also happens to have an icon and name that already fit it.

For SoS I took the passive from Infiltrator’s and added a completely new active in addition to improving it’s old one to work without a target. The idea was to create an initiative focused signet that didn’t completely overshadow the other initiative utility (roll for initiative) so instead of giving you all the initiative at once it disperses it over 5 seconds so you would end up getting a total of 3-5 at the end in addition to the blind.

Just a suggestion so take it with a grain of salt.

I’m on the fence about both rifle and staff as potential thief weapons. I was under the impression that the new “Elite Specialization” system was designed to fill gaps in the capabilities of each class (Guardian; Ranged, Necro; Melee cleave etc..) while the rifle would give us access to a (presumably) long ranged weapon for PvE and PvP, I fail to see what the staff could bring that we don’t already have other then some kind of support build.

A ranged weapon is needed now more then ever since P/P was basically burned to the ground with the last patch. I do however agree that a purist ranged weapon on a class like the thief; if done improperly has the potential to end up like the old P/P (spamming unloads till initiative runs out) which would be very boring for a so-called “elite” spec.

In my opinion I would prefer neither weapon as they are both two-handed and in being so they ignore one of our class mechanics; Dual-Wielding which is important because it allows us more build variety in our somewhat limited weapon selection.

Whatever we end up getting I assume the new elite traits will be designed to compliment the new weapon, much like the elite specs we’ve already seen. For the thief, a class that picks traits based around one primary weapon set this means that whatever we end up getting would need to be viable as a primary weapon (like d/d, d/p etc..) and not be a “secondary” weapon like our only other two-handed choice the short-bow.

A worst case scenario would be getting staff and having it end up as a melee version of the short-bow that requires being locked in a trait-line to even use, in addition to being limited to melee range which in many cases (especially WvW) means a thief will take excessive cleave/AoE damage.

This leads me to believe that if we do get staff as our elite weapon it will need to be a very tanky/evasive weapon with strong CC/support capabilities in order for it to fill a niche in the current thief kit.

The new Critical Strikes grandmaster “No Quarter” which reads as:

No Quarter: Landing a critical strike while under the effects of fury increases the duration of fury. Gain increased ferocity while under the effects of fury.

The bug with this lies in the “Gain increased ferocity while under the effects of fury.” part of it. This trait appears to change the fury boon that the thief himself applies to one that gives both 20% crit and 250 ferocity, what this means is that if you get fury from anything else (silverwastes carrier boons) or if someone overwrites your self-applied fury, you lose the 250 extra ferocity. What this also means is that if you run Thrill of the Crime the fury you put on other players will give them 250 ferocity also which I assume is equally unintended.

Basically this bug makes the second part of No Quarter pretty useless in a group setting where your fury boon is constantly being overwritten.

Found a new fairly significant bug that needs to be added to the list.

The new Critical Strikes grandmaster “No Quarter” which reads as:

No Quarter: Landing a critical strike while under the effects of fury increases the duration of fury. Gain increased ferocity while under the effects of fury.

The bug with this lies in the “Gain increased ferocity while under the effects of fury.” part of it. This trait appears to change the fury boon that the thief himself applies to one that gives both 20% crit and 250 ferocity, what this means is that if you get fury from anything else (silverwastes carrier boons) or if someone overwrites your self-applied fury, you lose the 250 extra ferocity. What this also means is that if you run Thrill of the Crime the fury you put on other players will also give them 250 ferocity which I assume is equally unintended.

Basically this bug makes the second part of No Quarter pretty useless in a group setting where your fury boon is constantly being overwritten.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

You only see the difference if you have points into Healing Power.

That’s why it says;

Healing coefficients have been increased by 10%…note “coefficients”

No healing power, no change.

This would make sense if not for the fact that this line:

Withdraw: This ability is now a trick. Increased the recharge of this ability from 15 to 18. Healing (both base and healing power) coefficients have been increased by 10%.

which is from the official June 23’rd patch notes specifically states that the base healing of the ability should’ve been increased by 10% which would make the heal go from 4344 (with 0 HP) to 4778.

Just to note, upon looking at it some more, it appears the blinding powder used with HT is the full version with the full 40 second cool-down (my test before was using a trait that reduced deception CD’s by 20%) which means that even an un-traited steal with a full 30 second cool-down will be unable to get HT to go off more then once every minute/second steal.

Because this is the full version it also gives 4 seconds of stealth instead of the 3 stated in the tool-tip making it even more wrong. Really hope this is a bug as HT is really quite hard to use in its current state.

Updated the OP to show this.

As the title states, the Shadow Arts master trait Hidden Thief is now somehow even worse then it was before the patch due to a unlisted cool-down of ~40 seconds.

This is because HT now uses blinding powder when stealing, which is nice if not for the fact that blinding powder has a 40 second CD and whether traited or not steal has a 20-30 second CD meaning that HT will only activate on every second use of steal.

If this was intended then it really should say so on the trait tool-tip which currently implies that it has no cool-down nor does it mention anything about causing an AoE blind on steal or the extra 1 second of stealth granted by blinding powder.

Literally all it currently says is:
Hidden Thief: Stealing grants you stealth. Stealth(3s): invisible to foes.

Pretty sure burning needs to be toned down after this patch, was in the mists trying out some new builds today and was dumbfounded when I seen the damage guardians were now capable of.

I was regularly seeing over 9-13k(!) burning ticks using abilities that all had less then a 30 second CD.

See Pic: http://imgur.com/qIwj50D

Shadow.1345:

No it does the stealth after the damage proc.

I just used it in-game and mug does indeed interfere with Hidden Thief giving 3 seconds of reveal instead of 3 seconds of stealth, I believe at one point this “bug” was fixed but a recent patch re-introduced it, and while it might be fixed again by Tuesday; they never said anything about fixing it in the posted patch notes.

The full Ready Up episode talking about these changes is up at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pbdl5WoAI90

The part talking about acrobatics starts at about 4:31:00 and it looks like Endless Stamina actually stacks multiplicity meaning its only 75% increase, or 25% nerf to the current Vigor stamina rate.

Softspoken.2410:

From what you’ve described, I think you’re stuck with Shadow Protector. Given that you’ll be in and out of stealth frequently during a fight, you might get some mileage out of it.

Yeah this is what I was afraid of, with Shadow Arts we’re already pigeonholed into taking Shadow’s Embrace in the adept tier due to the overall lack of a reliable condi cleanse (not to mention SR in the GM slot) and now a measly 3 seconds of regen with 0 Healing power amounting to a whopping ~300 healing per stealth seems the best option.

I was looking at the possibility of running Devourer/Basilisk venom last night but then I recalled another line from the patch notes:

Basilisk Venom: Stun duration reduced from 1.5 seconds to 1 second.
Devourer Venom: Immobilize duration reduced from 2 seconds to 1 second.

With both of these nerfed by 50% baseline and the removal of condition duration from traits, they will be much less useful outside of a venom build (which boosts duration by 33%). I realize that venoms now get an extra stack baseline but since basilisk doesn’t stack and 3 stacks of Devourer at 1 second is still 1 second less then it was before; taking this trait would entirely depend on how much the “life siphon” damage/healing will be.

Shadow Protector honestly wouldn’t be such a bad option if it wasn’t nerfed so hard, IMO they should have taken the duration down to 6-8 seconds and placed a cap on the max duration you can get from stealth (like guardians and symbol of swiftness) so you can’t get 30+ seconds using just Shadow Refuge.

This would hardly be “powerful” since we still have 0 healing power but it would at least be a little less meh; it’s not like we have boon duration anymore either.

So in preparation for Tuesdays patch I’m sitting here trying to pick out which of the new traits will fit best into a new D/D build, and that’s when i started looking at the new Shadow Arts line, currently this line is the go-to line for many D/D thieves due to the weapon sets reliance on stealth for survival and back-stabs for damage.

While the current master tier traits are lacking in this line; that isn’t so much of a problem because you can just use 2 of the adept traits instead, but with the coming patch you are forced to pick one of three (IMO) lackluster traits (for D/D) if you choose to take this line.

For reference here are the post-patch master traits:

Shadow Protector: When you grant stealth to an ally, they gain 3 seconds of
regeneration. No longer has an internal cool down.

Hidden Thief: Gain stealth for 2 seconds when stealing from an enemy. (Actually 3 seconds because of MwS)

Leeching Venoms: Siphon life from your foes when triggering a venom. This can only occur once per strike. Gain 2 stacks of might for 20 seconds when activating a venom.

So bearing in mind this is for a classic power based D/D (mostly WvW) build I’m having a hard time picking which of these will actually be the most useful.

First is Shadow Protector, currently this is actually a pretty decent trait that is seldom used due to it sharing slots with Shadow’s Embrace and Cloaked in Shadow, it gives 10 seconds of regeneration to you and allies every time you use a stealth ability which currently doesn’t stack if you already have Regen on you.

My problem with this one is twofold, firstly it’s been nerfed in duration by 70% which is pretty huge, however it now stacks if you have Regen (no ICD). The second problem with this is that SA no longer gives any healing power leaving thieves with a whopping 0 outside of gear choices meaning that 3 seconds of Regen will only end up healing for around 260-300 which is really weak and outside of Shadow Refuge you can’t really stack it anyways due to Revealed .

Second is Hidden Thief, another trait that seems good on the surface but is actually pretty useless to D/D for 2 reasons, first if you run the Mug trait currently any damage cause by mug will immediately cancel out the stealth caused by HT leaving you with nothing but 3 seconds of revealed.
Second is a D/D staple and one of the main reasons this isn’t used; the CnD/Steal combo which is universally better to use for stealth due to its high damage and synergy with Mug, running this trait would cause the combo to reveal you instantly.

Lastly is Leeching Venoms, Nothing wrong with this trait, overall it’s good however it’s only ever really useful with a primary venom build, which D/D – S/D are not, only potential use I can see is if you run Basilisk Venom which would really depend on how much the life siphon is.

TLDR; So i guess what I’m asking for are other opinions on what a good choice for this particular tier would actually be given that all 3 seem rather meh atm.

In all honesty while $50 (over $60 to us Canadians) is quite a lot for just an expansion (WoW’s most recent expansion was $80 for standard here), I still feel that the amount of hours you get out of it makes it more worth it. Some people brag about having 3000+ hours, for a 20-60$ game purchase that’s pretty good.

The part that really leaves a sour taste in my mouth is the lack of an additional character slot in the base version, I’m now forced to either spend additional money to unlock one or buy the deluxe version or to delete one of my existing characters if I want to use the new revenant which is a key feature of the expansion.