Confirmed on human male thief. Very annoying.
Same problem. Very annoying. Totally ruins my look.
You’re partially right here. My intention was to show, that Stealth is the main tool of every thief.
But ok, let’s have a more valid comparision – take traps from a ranger and he will still be powerful. Take minions from a necro and he still will be powerful. Take shouts or whatever from a warrior and there will be lots of good builds left. But … take stealth from a thief … and all you will hear will be “nooooo, don’t nerf us”.
Your comparison is still invalid. Stealth is Thief’s class mechanic, not a specific build or utility. Taking it away is like taking pets away from Rangers and saying they’d be fine.
One of the male sylvari in the grove greeted me with a female voice when i spoke to him.
Working as intended.
If you gave Feline Grace as an innate trait, that would make thieves way too OP, and if you removed the heavy armor on warriors/guardians, they would be too useless. The way things are its fine. They don’t have to make things 100% balanced, every profession got its ups and downs.
- Rangers have more evasion than thieves, far better healing, higher HP, access to Protection, etc. and they’re not OP. Felinge Grace being a class passive wouldn’t make Thieves OP at all, it would fit with the squishy but evasive theme of the class.
- Warriors/Guardians have base armor of 2127, Thieves and other medium armor users have 1980. That’s a difference of only 147 armor before any toughness on gear. Armor makes little difference in survivability in this game, and armor type even less. It’s all about evasion, Protection, Aegis and healing.
Backstab is fine. Thief class is far from strongest in PVP or PVE (especially PVE). This change would only weaken the class further, therefore it is nothing more than a nerf call.
No, because stealth is not a boon.
2.5 minutes of trolling a zerg of terribads, and you didn’t kill anyone. Indeed, what’s the point?
Fix is simple, make sneak attacks unblockable. They’re already adding unblockable attacks in game to counter bunkers, adding stealth attacks to this list would perfectly fit with that trend. Oh but that’s not the answer you were looking for?
Keep digging that hole.
The only thing I disagree with is the Last Refuge thing. It’s one of our few really great skills, and I always have it on my bar no matter what build I’m using.
You’re talking about Shadow Refuge.
Last Refuge is 5pt minor trait in Shadow Arts line that stealths you automatically when your health reaches 25%.
“2.). P/P.
It’s a weapon set for fun. If you want damage output, there are obviously better alternatives."
“5.) Traps – Ambush is decent, the rest are pretty garbage.
You need to identify which skills are for fun, which are for casual, and which are for competitive. Then you’ll understand why some skills are perceived to be “garbage”"
lolwut? So the sets that do work are not fun? Fun sets cannot be viable at the same time? It’s ok if something sucks as long as it’s fun? Is it by same logic ok if something is not fun, as long as it doesn’t suck?
You made stupid comments, people called you out on it. You’re now just digging yourself into an even deeper hole trying to justify your earlier stupidity.
Dude, just quit trolling. Nobody agrees with you.
He brings up some valid points, read the rest of what he says. He made 9 points and you commented on 2. If anyone’s trolling here; its you.
I don’t need to analyze every one of his comments to prove a point, those two were bad enough to discredit anything he had to say… and you for supporting him.
Honestly, I don’t even think warriors are that strong in PVE. Yeah they can do a lot of damage, but the same problems that plague them in PVP are visible in PVE as well, and that’s weakness to conditions and lack of staying power. Discussing how much easier a warrior is to level compared to some other classes is irrelevant, because leveling is a joke on any class.
“2.). P/P.
It’s a weapon set for fun. If you want damage output, there are obviously better alternatives."
“5.) Traps – Ambush is decent, the rest are pretty garbage.
You need to identify which skills are for fun, which are for casual, and which are for competitive. Then you’ll understand why some skills are perceived to be “garbage”"
lolwut? So the sets that do work are not fun? Fun sets cannot be viable at the same time? It’s ok if something sucks as long as it’s fun? Is it by same logic ok if something is not fun, as long as it doesn’t suck?
You made stupid comments, people called you out on it. You’re now just digging yourself into an even deeper hole trying to justify your earlier stupidity.
Dude, just quit trolling. Nobody agrees with you.
Agree with the OP.
As for Vincent… I can’t even begin to comment on how stupid and illogical everything he said has been.
*Did you know that pistol dagger thieves can attack you with 3 -I think 4 possible, to- heartseakers while remaining in stealth? So much for attack breaking stealth. Check it out. Black powder/heart seeker combo.
Wrong. Revealed.
Some podcast name ideas that fit the warrior’s current state: ‘Conditioned’ , ‘Unsustainable’, ‘Hamstrung’, ‘The predictable’, ‘Paper Berserker’.
I like it just fine the way it is and see no need for any kind of fix. That is what I think.
The 4s reveled nerf was implemented due to QQ from wvwvw players, the problem was never the 3sec, the prob was culling. It makes no sense at all to keep the 4sec in sPvP but I guess they dot want to admit they were wrong and are making believe that is needed in one aspect of the game.
This.
Putting a heal on an opener doesn’t make much sense. Something like 10s Protection/Regen would have been more useful.
Given how limited our stealth options are underwater, and therefore how lacking our condition removal is, I go with a sigil that removes conditions on a 10s cooldown on at least one of my weapons.
How many of these “this skill throws off my otherwise perfect combo timing” topics must we have? I play a pistol/pistol build, and those 2 seconds of stealth has saved me more times then I can remember.
So they can make it a major trait so that you CHOOSE to use it. I can’t count how many times it’s gotten me killed instead of saving me, and I have no way of disabling it. Yet specing into that tree is mandatory for any CnD PVE build for “Infusion of Shadow”.
Or they can make it ignore “Revealed” debuff and make it an actual reliable trait.
Ignore the post above. PVE dungeon content can be challenging, and boon duration builds can be very strong, especially if you’re going for a more tanky build.
Here’s a sample boon build:
Just FYI Okamakiri, when folks say PvE they mostly refer to zones not dungeons. Yes dungeons are against npcs. However they are not same as general PvE roaming.
No, that is YOUR assumption of what people are referring to. Unless they explicitly specify roaming or dungeon, then PVE applies to both. As you said, open PVE is easy so anything will work. However, dungeons are not (some anyway) and a boon build works very well there. Therefore, it would only make sense to choose a spec that would work for ALL forms of PVE instead of pretending that dungeons are not part of it.
He did ask about WvW as well, but since I have not played my guard there, I didn’t comment on boon build viability there.
Ignore the post above. PVE dungeon content can be challenging, and boon duration builds can be very strong, especially if you’re going for a more tanky build.
Here’s a sample boon build:
(edited by Okamakiri.8746)
Worthless comparison when you ignore:
- Aegis
- Blind
- Protection
- Regen
- AH
- Traits and utilities in general
full berserker trinkets/armor on both with gs my guardian does about 4-5k/sec, while my war (use axe because gs blows for sustained damage) does anywhere from 10-25k/second
/facepalm
The downside is that I can’t really 1vX against larger numbers anymore.
Then again, should any class be able to?
I absolutely agree to some extent. The things in which a thief could do to a large group of players was pretty ridiculous.
The thing is, most of those good 1vX videos were against bad/unaware players. I have seen similar warrior videos where I warrior goes into a zerg, trounces a few people, then escapes. I’ve seen a video where 4 staff Ele’s kill an entire 30 person zerg by slowly kiting them. I guess it’s just that the thief mechanics made it much easier to do such things against unaware players.
No, culling made it possible. Fix to culling was enough to put a stop to that. The revealed nerf was completely unnecessary. It broke the class for me in PVE.
My expectation is that damage will be reduced yet again as the next change, as they mentioned that in the SoTG. In addition I seriously doubt there will be "buffs"n (added mobility, ability to to ‘hang in the fight’ longer/better…and the ‘boon hate’ idea seems a total waste for pve and probably a disaster to implement in pvp…and WHAT has THAT got to do with a thief???)
This is my worry as well. They’re using the “boon hate” idea as an excuse to further nerf us, with zero compensation in PVE. I’ve shelved my thief for now, spending my time mostly on the warrior and guardian.
What I see here is more nerf to PvE Burst and damage, then compensating this damage loss in PvP with boon hate, which means nothing in PvE.
Exactly. Nothing it those posts indicates that they give even two kittens about PVE. Probably why they posted it in sPvP forum and not here.
So still staying in stealth despite having an attacked block, an attack that takes you out of stealth the second it hits something (which in this case is a barrier) makes sense to you? I have a thief, I understand how absolutely hellish it can be if we’re taken out of stealth with each attempted attack that is blocked or evaded, but as of right now when you can just constantly spam stealth to stay in it and have almost 0 repercussions from it, how is getting revealed on an evade or a block going to make things any more different than they are now?
Given ANets track record this far, any implementation of what you’re suggesting would only further destroy the thief in PVE while making minimal (if any) impact in PVP. Enough with the nerfs, it’s time for some PVE buffs before any other PVP “balancing” can be applied to this class.
There is a pro and a con when it comes to mobs dropping aggro.
Scenario #1 (drops aggro): Fighting a Level 80 Vet Mob and it’s almost going down. Stealth to backstab – invulnerable – mob dropped aggro – nooooooooooo!
Scenario #2 (no drops): I walked into a hornet’s nest – Stealth – they’re staring at me – revealed – dead – noooooooo!
Which scenario do you prefer?
- without a doubt. Playing BS build exclusively in PVE since BWE#1, what you describe has NEVER been an issue. Mobs resetting only ever occurred on extended stealths and could be prevented by applying any condition.
Thief damage is fine, but make it so EVERY attempt to hit somebody while in stealth (regardless if blocked, evaded, etc) force the reveal status on you. In no other game do those in stealth get penalized less than in this one. In every other one, EVERY attempt to hit somebody or do something (such as use a finisher) force you out of stealth.
Wrong. In other games the abilities are grayed out and are not even usable if you’re out of range of your target. Most other games also don’t have dodging and attacking without target, so apples and oranges. Don’t bring up other games to justify your crusade against thieves.
At least, ANet should make #1 wep skill a dual wield attack animation too, which is weaponset-unique-wise , like if you’re on D/D your #1 D/D will be dual dagger attacking,if you’re S/D your #1 will be a combo chainof Sword slashing and Dagger stabing or else…
It could be much cooler.. thoughts?
Agreed. This has always bothered me as well. I can understand they wanted to keep the development cost down, but it really does look bad. I hate it on my warrior too, as he swings the one axe while the other just hangs there uselessly.
We have to wait for patches to move through the system of developing content, refining it, iterating on it, getting it tested, and then getting pushed to live.
Like you did with the “Revealed” nerf?
The revealed nerf has to go, but Infusion of Shadow cannot be changed. It’s crucial to maintaining the initiative pool for DPS sustainability. It would destroy PVE DPS on any fight that lasts more than few seconds.
Thanks for the video.
However, important thing to note here though is that this was also modeled on a pure GC thief. Anybody who runs a more balanced build (i.e. higher HP, lower crit) will have their DPS more skewed towards contribution from BS due to Hidden Killer. For example, my crit rate is only about 40% (60% with fury), so my auto won’t be critting as often as zerker thief’s, hence BS is a bigger portion of my damage. Hence the new rotations will have a bigger negative impact to my DPS than to a pure zerker thief. I don’t know how many thieves run full GC for high end PVE content, but I certainly don’t feel comfortable with it.
Backstab, while a large chunk of your damage, is still not enough that you would want to take hidden killer. The 20% damage below 50% health, I think of that as a flat 10% damage boost, while hidden killer only gives you 40-60% crit chance with 1 ability.
Some basic high school math.
Let X = BS damage
Since AA + CnD does roughly two times the BS damage, let AA + CnD = 2X
Let C = crit chance
Let D = crit damageI’m not using tooltip damage from builders because it does not take into account your stats and skill multipliers. You can test your own numbers in game and substitute instead of X, you’ll find it’s not far from reality. In fact, the higher your power, the better BS scales, hence becoming more than AA + CnD / 2.
Left side of the equation = Executioner
Right side of the equation = Hidden KillerFor Executioner to be superior to Hidden Killer, the following equation must be true:
(3X * ((1.5+D)C + (1 – C)) * 1.1 > 2X * ((1.5+D)C + (1 – C)) + (1.5+D)X
(3 * (0.5C + DC + 1)) * 1.1 > 2 * (0.5C + D*C + 1) + 1.5 + D
(1.5C + 3DC + 3) * 1.1 > C + 2DC + 2 + 1.5 + D
1.65C + 3.3DC + 3.3 > C + 2DC + 3.5 + D
0.65C + 1.3DC > 0.2 + DMost damage oriented thieves should have around 100% bonus crit damage. Hence, D = 1.
0.65C + 1.3C > 1.2
1.95C > 1.2
C > 0.6154Therefore, with 100% bonus crit damage, you need to maintain at least ~61.5% crit chance for Executioner to be on average better. The higher your crit damage gets, the higher the minimum crit chance requirement also gets for Executioner to remain superior. The converse is true as well. For tankier builds that don’t have as much crit damage, a lower crit requirement is needed.
Therefore, for ME personally, even with constant fury uptime, Hidden Killer is the better trait.
So we agree. Good.
Thanks for the video.
However, important thing to note here though is that this was also modeled on a pure GC thief. Anybody who runs a more balanced build (i.e. higher HP, lower crit) will have their DPS more skewed towards contribution from BS due to Hidden Killer. For example, my crit rate is only about 40% (60% with fury), so my auto won’t be critting as often as zerker thief’s, hence BS is a bigger portion of my damage. Hence the new rotations will have a bigger negative impact to my DPS than to a pure zerker thief. I don’t know how many thieves run full GC for high end PVE content, but I certainly don’t feel comfortable with it.
Backstab, while a large chunk of your damage, is still not enough that you would want to take hidden killer. The 20% damage below 50% health, I think of that as a flat 10% damage boost, while hidden killer only gives you 40-60% crit chance with 1 ability.
Some basic high school math.
Let X = BS damage
Since AA + CnD does roughly two times the BS damage, let AA + CnD = 2X
Let C = crit chance
Let D = crit damage
I’m not using tooltip damage from builders because it does not take into account your stats and skill multipliers. You can test your own numbers in game and substitute instead of X, you’ll find it’s not far from reality. In fact, the higher your power, the better BS scales, hence becoming more than AA + CnD / 2.
Left side of the equation = Executioner
Right side of the equation = Hidden Killer
For Executioner to be superior to Hidden Killer, the following equation must be true:
(3X * ((1.5+D)*C + (1 - C)) * 1.1 > 2X * ((1.5+D)*C + (1 - C)) + (1.5+D)*X
(3 * (0.5C + D*C + 1)) * 1.1 > 2 * (0.5C + D*C + 1) + 1.5 + D
(1.5C + 3DC + 3) * 1.1 > C + 2DC + 2 + 1.5 + D
1.65C + 3.3DC + 3.3 > C + 2DC + 3.5 + D
0.65C + 1.3DC > 0.2 + D
Most damage oriented thieves should have around 100% bonus crit damage. Hence, D = 1.
0.65C + 1.3C > 1.2
1.95C > 1.2
C > 0.6154
Therefore, with 100% bonus crit damage, you need to maintain at least ~61.5% crit chance for Executioner to be on average better. The higher your crit damage gets, the higher the minimum crit chance requirement also gets for Executioner to remain superior. The converse is true as well. For tankier builds that don’t have as much crit damage, a lower crit requirement is needed.
Therefore, for ME personally, even with constant fury uptime, Hidden Killer is the better trait.
Ok im done with this thread…..
Thank God.
Thanks for the video.
However, important thing to note here though is that this was also modeled on a pure GC thief. Anybody who runs a more balanced build (i.e. higher HP, lower crit) will have their DPS more skewed towards contribution from BS due to Hidden Killer. For example, my crit rate is only about 40% (60% with fury), so my auto won’t be critting as often as zerker thief’s, hence BS is a bigger portion of my damage. Hence the new rotations will have a bigger negative impact to my DPS than to a pure zerker thief. I don’t know how many thieves run full GC for high end PVE content, but I certainly don’t feel comfortable with it.
You are severely over-estimating the DPS of AA. Note I said DPS, not damage… CnD→ BS not only does way more than the entire AA chain, it also does it nearly instantly, hence way higher DPS.
To put it in some simple to understand numbers. If CnD → BS → AA does 15k dmg in 3s, that’s 5k DPS. Lets say that of that 15k dmg, 5k is AA, 4k is CnD and 6k is BS (I’m being conservative here. Due to “Hidden Killer” trait, BS will average way higher than AA on anything but a pure GC build with 100% Fury uptime). Even if you’re able to put out 1/3 of the AA damage in that extra 1s, that means the new rotation damage will be 5k + 5k/3 + 4k + 6k = 16666 over 4s, which is 4166DPS. 5000 / 4166 = 20% DPS loss. And that’s ignoring the reduction in might stacks from “Hidden Assassin” and the effect of “Hidden Killer”.
Also, we don’t have the initiative to support another attack between AA and next CnD. Even with “Infusion of Shadow”, we barely have enough initiative-per-second to maintain the rotation as is. For optimum DPS we also need to keep our initiative above 6, to get benefit from “First Strikes”.
Yeah I’m in the same boat. People already always prefer my warrior over the thief for dungeons. This was just another nail in the coffin.
The change does reduce backstab dps. But ONLY backstab dps; you’re total dps does not take a 1/4 hit.
It’s likely more than 1/4 hit. They’re taking a 3s chain and stretching it into a 4s chain, with maybe first AA attack added in the 1s gap (there is a pause between AA chains). Add the reduction of might stacks from “Hidden Assassin” and we’re easily looking at 25%+ loss in DPS. Not to talk about the survivability loss with now less healing in stealth, less condition removal, less aggro management.
I didn’t say dps isn’t lower; I just said 33% isn’t the right number. It’s grossly inflated, actually.
It’s not inflated at all. The raw damage loss may not be as high as 33%, but it will be pretty kitten close. You’re basically taking a 3s rotation and stretching it into a 4s rotation, with perhaps the first attack of the AA chain added in. However, once you take into account the loss of might-on-stealth stacks as well, I wouldn’t be surprised if it adds up to even more than 33% loss.
All x/D builds got hit hard in both DPS and survivability. And the worst part of it is that it affects PVE way more than PVP.
Every trait you have got nerfed by 25%, so did your damage and survivability.
Neither 25% or 33% is remotely accurate unless a player lives almost solely in stealth which pretty much nobody does.
This combo is just as viable with just as much damage: Steal/Mug, BS, HS, HS, HS.
Sure there are thieves that live in stealth but those are primarily griefers. All they did was add 1 second of out of stealth damage when coming out of a stealth attack. It will have an effect but not nearly 25%.
99% of thieves who play use stealth.
Holy hell… 1 extra second on the reveal absolutely cannot effect a thief by 25% or more. Period… cannot be done and under any circumstance. Do people here think for that one extra second a thief is standing still not using some non-stealth attack/skill or that most thieves constantly spam some in-stealth attack?
Only players who stay in semi-perma-stealth by spamming CnD or the like the entire time will notice a significant drop in DPS.
It does have an actual 33% affect on long term dps of several builds. One example is a 10/30/30/0/0 build that uses a CnD BS followed by full AA chain for poison then CnD again to repeat combo. If I don’t need to heal or purge conditions you won’t even notice me go into stealth because I keep positioned at the side or back of the target. This nerf kills that Rythm and lengthens the time between repetitions by 33%. So does it do anything to a single burst? Not at all but long fights against bosses and large groups will definitely feel the effect.
It reduces the stealth rotation by ~33%, but the additional space in the overall rotation gets filled with #1 spam or something better. That addition mitigates the 33% down to something more palatable. It would take a bit of math and some assumptions to figure out what that number actually is – at least offensively. It’s hard to quantify the part of being more vulnerable and even how that affects real-world offensive capability.
In terms of hard math though, 33% is definitely erroneous.
No it’s not. At the end of an AA chain there is a pause before it starts again. So for that extra second of revealed we’re mostly just stuck there twiddling our thumbs. This is a huge nerf to both DPS and survivability.
Good changes. I have a thief as well. However you could b in stealth 90% of the time with cloak and dagger. This new change to stealth is a GOOD one. Especially for WvW.
You can still stealth near infinitely. Now you’re weaker if you don’t stealth near inifinitely.
Isn’t it hilarious?!?!? It’s such a poorly thought out change that I can’t help but just laugh in disgust.
General
•Stealth: The duration of Revealed has been increased to 4 seconds when coming out of stealth via an attack.
Well, there goes my S/D dungeon build. Right out the window. Thanks, guys!
I know the feeling man. Now we blind every 4 seconds not to mention our other SA goodies.
It’s even more than that. I had a BRILLIANT melee pattern of stealth, daze, auto-chain, repeat, and I could stay at the front line of a fight for extended periods of time provided that I kept the momentum going. In this chain, Revealed would finish at the exact moment I hit C+D to restart the pattern. I felt rewarded for perfect execution. I was in favour of revealed on attack or not, as it would have little to no effect on skilled Thieves and punish one-trick-ponies that mess it up, as well as reward opponents who effectively counter-play stealth attacks. Instead, we get this hideous and stupid extension to Revealed. Now my entire dungeon playstyle is out the window and I suppose it’s back to crummy S/P or D/D glass like they seem to want to pigeon-hole us in to. Venoms aren’t even worth mentioning at this point and Traps are total BOLLOCKS, this patch doing absolutely NOTHING to make them viable. But hey, we drop more Caltrops on dodge!
D/D got kittened by this too. CnD -> BS -> AA chain -> repeat worked perfectly based on 3s revealed (hmmm… could it be that the skills were specifically designed with 3s revealed in mind… /gasp). Now as we finish the AA chain, we get to sit there for another second with a thumb up our kitten Another kitten you to PVE players, on a class that’s far from overpowered in that area.
As we played with the stealth changed mentioned in the SotG, we recognized that in conjunction with the change to culling this was an unpredictable change to make. We also felt that it was too big of a hit to these stealth professions, so we ended up pulling that change in favor of just increasing revealed duration by 1 second.
Congratulations on completely destroying the PVE D/D rotation. I can tell this game doesn’t give two kittens about PVE, and PVP is the only priority.