Guild Wars 2

They need something similar to engi’s Experimental Turrets. Maybe gain specific boons on casting different kinds of traps. The deploy time needs to be decreased as well, similar to a faster muddy terrain.

Making a trap build not a mandatory 30 points into Skirmishing would be fantastic as well.

The exaggeration in this thread is cancerous.

The base gameplay of a thief is still very strong. You still have loads of ways to disengage through teleports and stealth, survive through blinds and evades. You just have less of that now so if you kitten up enough times, you pay for it, like any other class.

Thieves also take kitten tons for granted. All their skills are highly responsive, low cast/aftercast time and low travel time compared to all other classes. They can react to the enemy faster than any other class, having access to instant cast dazes, blinds and the best panic buttons in the game on low cooldowns when you kitten up. And some of the best condi removal and heals if you play Shadow Arts in WvW. Why? Because you have zero pressure while you’re healing in stealth. Playing thief is like watching everyone else fight you while underwater and drunk.

Thief has been consistently toned down because their base design for what roles they were designed for is very strong. They have a specialty and everything they do works towards that specialty. The game designer for thief was absolutely brilliant and I wish every other class were as fun to play as thief. Other than guardian, I can’t think of another class where ArenaNet did as great of a job.

Solid play. Your evades and skills are very well-timed and you don’t waste any time. But I have to say a lot of your opponents seemed kitten without the ability to constantly run away to reset the fight at every opportunity. Haha, well played regardless.

You are most definitely not the only one who cares about animations. I couldn’t stand the clumsy running and bow drawing animtions of human females so I bought a makeover kit and went human male. Then I hated the lack of proper hunter outfits (furs, draped cloth, anything non-trenchcoat/facemask) so I gave up and went back to human female with generic tier 3 cultural. If I can’t link with my character, I can’t play well with it, so whatever.

On the other hand, I really enjoy the Sylvari female run animation. There’s no way a human running like that would be natural, but since it’s a fantasy game and a plant race I really enjoy the hyper-femininity.

That’s some good play. How do you hold up against D/P thieves and PU mesmers? They aren’t really shown in your video and they’re generally the most difficult to beat.

Good stuff, good changes.

- I especially like how failed burst skills will cost adrenaline. That had a long time coming.
- WvW Thieves can’t troll you as easily by perpetually alternating stealth and black powder (pulses once every two seconds now).

I know it’s an unpopular opinion among forum stars but WvW thieves and warriors are probably the two classes with the lowest risk and highest grief potential in the game. Thanks for your hard work.

Other notable changes:
-Daggers cleave two targets total

-Flanking strike costs one more initiative, larcenous strike one less. You need to hit flanking strike to use larcenous strike

-Choking Gas does damage on impact so it will reveal you

-Venom share scales off of your stats instead of your ally’s

-Pistol Richochet trait will give 115 (?) extra range

-Unload gets a faster cast time (?)

-Warrior greatsword: 100 blades and Whirlwind get 5% damage reduction, 100 blades first few strikes damage rebalanced towards the last hit

-Berserker stance adrenaline gain nerfed “by 40%,” more like using it will get you from empty to full, instead of empty to full + two more extra bars

-Signet of Rage gets 5 seconds off base duration of boons, 50% increased adrenaline gain while on passive

-Greatsword burst skill looks more like a nuke now

All that I remember. There were a bunch of other inconsequential changes like with Juggernaut Throw Rock but whatever.

uri.6521:

Im hearing all the complaints about the bleed overload, i just want to remember that on the second to last paragraph says that all that bleed wil come * Only when traite with two handed mastery* (Wich will also affect spear) , and also, the duration of the bleeds are considerably small so they wont be able to run a condition based build on its own, it

The reason of the bleed was just to try to make some use of the condition damage from using that line, in a more hibryd way, since the gs alone wont kill anybody.

Do you believe that adding a token amount of bleeds would make greatsword a viable condition weapon? With your suggestions, the player has to use and hit all five abilities to achieve a paltry 6-8 stacks of sustainable bleed on target. They also have to invest in a trait to make this all work. Not to mention two-handed training is obviously a trait meant for power builds.

I’m not complaining about your attempt at improving the class. But your suggestions reflect the sort of heavy, unfocused trait investment for mediocre impact that the ranger class is plagued by. Skills (for all classes) should be high impact, decent with no trait investment and strong with investment. There should be synergy between skills and traits, and a vision for what a weapon is meant to do for a class. ANet is finally taking steps in the right direction by making GS an impactful defensive power weapon without 20-30 points into a traitline. That’s why their changes – focused and impactful – make sense.

Casey.9687:

Well after 5,022 hours on ranger and this is all ranger gets? is the buffs to the same kitten weapons they have been buffing for a about a year. No love to traps? no love to shortbow? No active stability that isnt on a huge recharge? Guess its time to hang up this silly game

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Signet_of_the_Wild
5k hours on ranger and you somehow didn’t realize that Signet of the Wild gives your pet 8 seconds of stability on activation?

Seriously though, this one signet will be the one icon every ranger will have on his buff bar. Massive damage/movement speed increase, regeneration, stability. On a 60 second cooldown. Amazing for one utility slot.

Branden Gee.2150:

To quickly recap what you have all been saying, it looks like there are two significant groups that think they have the best solution to this issue.

The first being to scale all of the asuras up to be larger and scale down the charr and norn. The second is to turn everyone in the match into a human.

I think that there are a few things worth mentioning. The ‘generic humans from WvW’ are not like other character models in the game. They have a smaller animation set which would be unable to properly display all animations, which is exactly what the original problem is. The other thing to note is that with SAB the scaling did not make all races the same height.

Hopefully this provides some insight and can help drive discussion on more viable potential solutions.

Asura do not need to be identical in height to other races. If this were the case we’d have folks complaining about the height difference between human and norn. They just need to be big enough to see what the hell they’re doing. I’ll leave the details to you, that’s your job.

And about skill graphic scaling – why is this even a thing? What possible purpose is there for race to be tied to profession skills in this way? How does this help facilitate the competitive environment ArenaNet has promised to deliver?

This isn’t a discussion about profession balance or game design, but a fundamental fairness that every competitive game should have. The ‘viable solutions’ in this case should come from you, the developers. So when ANet offers a fair and balanced PvP mode, and there’s this bug/game feature that’s working against that, fix it, as quickly as possible. It doesn’t matter how difficult it is to do so. With all due respect, that’s the bottom line.

Hey, thanks for responding to us Branden. o7

imerp.7968:

Pope.1469:

imerp.7968:

TheGuy.3568:

As of this moment your just another person whining about the tone of my speech. I think its about time you all get over it. Argue the facts or give it a rest.

Learn the different between your and you’re before trying to argue.

Thanks

The most important quality to have in a debate is the ability to accurately discern the reasoning behind an argument. Grammar is definitely helpful, but in this case I’d hazard a guess that he’s not a native English speaker.

You understood his posts, right? That’s good enough.

But.. but people post in the forums because they want their stuff critiqued. Ask him he laid down this new precedent.

You know what is truly a good quality? Not making presumptions about other people.

Thanks

Thanks for the advice. Allow me to return the favor: Try to stay within the scope of the discussion in threads next time. This isn’t really aimed specifically at you, but everyone here who seems to take any sort of comment personally.

randomfightfan.4091:

lLobo.7960:

Is this serious? or is it a troll post?
How can you say something is “unkillable” if you go down 3 times in about 5secs?

To clear trash like this there are better ways to do it as a thief. S/P for instance.

When people say “thief sucks at pve” its not clearing trash that they meant.

Try the same group of mobs with a warrior, a guardian or a necro… it goes faster and smoother.

What this video proves is that thief is too squishy if he wants to do any dmg… going down 3 times for trash mobs?

I bet the warrior, guard, or necro would all die to that size of a group of mobs. And why do people hate on the downed so much? Seriously? Rallied no problem with each. 1 was immediately countered with a shadow refuge and had the entire mob sitting in the caltrops, the other 2 instantly rallied with 1 bouncing dagger.

Actually necro could probably do it easy if he used all of his wells then went into plague when they expired. Warrior would kill a few with 100 blades and endure, after that they wouldn’t have the dodges to survive all the aoes (not to mention the burning associated with every aoe). The guard, if it was the cheesing retaliation/burning on block guard, it might have a chance but it would most likely kill the stuff very slowly.

I suggest you read many of the posts too. I have stated many times that I was showing off all the OPTIONS thief has for aoe, not the damage or anything like that. The fact that it was on a large group of mobs was just b/c it was fun to do. When you’ve played the game for a long time, very little remains fun so you have to find challenges. If all you care about is big numbers, there are a lot better vids out there to showcase that. Most involve a player being sheltered by a group but still being able to dish out steady dps.

I’m not quite understanding your reason for uploading this video. If you just wanted to show us the AoE options available to thieves, it would have been more natural to just post a few links to gw2wiki. So I’m forced to conclude that you want us to see how you play, and frankly, it sucks. TheGuy kind of came on too harshly, but he’s right in his criticisms and there’s no need to derail your own thread with your defensive responses.

For guardians, a full cleric shout build can solo those mobs easily. Won’t be very fast, sure, but it would be much safer. Good warriors – and thieves, for that matter – can finish the job fairly quickly with high damage and judicious use of dodge (which your video fails to show).

Not sure about necros. The last time I touched one was in tPvP weeks ago, but I think power necro can do the job fairly well.

imerp.7968:

TheGuy.3568:

As of this moment your just another person whining about the tone of my speech. I think its about time you all get over it. Argue the facts or give it a rest.

Learn the different between your and you’re before trying to argue.

Thanks

The most important quality to have in a debate is the ability to accurately discern the reasoning behind an argument. Grammar is definitely helpful, but in this case I’d hazard a guess that he’s not a native English speaker.

You understood his posts, right? That’s good enough.

Just pile conditions on bunker rangers and they drop faster than guardians or pre-nerf elementalists. Just like how you’re supposed to crack any bunker. They have almost no on demand condition removal, you ever notice that?

For this reason alone, I’m amazed how necro never reached flavor status.

Errant Venture.9371:

Pope.1469:

Amaterasu.6280:

You’re kidding me right?

Even at 1200r, a ranger’s SB autoattack is impossible to straft dodge…I have to actually hit dodge to dodge them…

The new thief SB autoattack, you can straft dodge at even roughly 400r.

While I feel your pain, thief shortbow projectiles are now the same as other classes’ arrows, albeit slower. I always felt it was unfair that only the thief got a homing bow weapon.

Ranger shortbow is now harder to dodge because they specifically buffed ranger arrow speed by 30% a while back. This is how rangers used to be:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=poltQGmLu5M

Perhaps you’ll now learn to appreciate how polished the thief class actually is compared to other classes.

So…..you’re response is basically, “lol thieves are now broken in the same way rangers used to be before they got fixed”

How very useful and constructive.

He has my sympathy. I don’t understand why ANet didn’t learn from identical problems in the past and buff thief arrow speed after they removed its homing capability.

But all this crying about how thieves are utterly broken because you can no longer fire homing, unavoidable arrows is unnecessary. I’m trying to expand his horizons a little.

Amaterasu.6280:

You’re kidding me right?

Even at 1200r, a ranger’s SB autoattack is impossible to straft dodge…I have to actually hit dodge to dodge them…

The new thief SB autoattack, you can straft dodge at even roughly 400r.

While I feel your pain, thief shortbow projectiles are now the same as other classes’ arrows, albeit slower. I always felt it was unfair that only the thief got a homing bow weapon.

Ranger shortbow is now harder to dodge because they specifically buffed ranger arrow speed by 30% a while back. This is how rangers used to be:

Perhaps you’ll now learn to appreciate how polished the thief class actually is compared to other classes.

I think it’s too sensitive.

I type ‘temple’ three times in a really close game, and get suppressed. Now I can’t discuss further strategy and lose because some baddie forgets to cap gate, no one notices him, and I can’t remind him.

Thoughts?

My guardian.

15char

AllieMurdock.1785:

We’re reviewing Warriors and Elementalists as well. Perhaps we can get into that another time and in a different thread, though. As this thread is about Thieves, let’s keep it on track.

“People in the low tiers will always have trouble with something.”

Sure, but we still need to consider how the new player experience is going to be. Particularly when it comes to Thieves.

Thanks, but in all seriousness, does the dev team simply not consider Ranger to be need of any tweaking or looking at whatsoever? Hopefully you just forgot to mention them, Allie.

Jinks.2057:

ya well it seems cd/yak are pretty much the same on the solo/roamer aspect of WvW

as in non existent nor very skilled

I was hoping after exodus’s and what not they’d have a nice core, but it seems all i’ve seen is zerg harder mentality….o well maybe we’ll get someone new next week.

I could say the same for y’all. Three of us took Bluebriar on YB BL for 5 hours against several EB thieves, 20 YB, 5 catapults and 2 trebuchets last night. Some of you really need to sharpen up your team coordination and dueling skills. And all your thieves need to play some tourneys in the Mists; just Shadow Refuge and teleports do not a good thief make.

Luzano.6983:

Wreckdum.8367:

Why is EB so aggressive on these forums but terrible in the actual game? All I see is post after post accusing YB and CD of having terrible players… Yet both servers are crushing you right now.

I hope you drop a bracket this week cause frankly I’m tired of reading your empty insults. Have fun on your plummet. Glad we could be of service.

It is literally one dude, Archer, that is posting all of this.

Seriously, go read the thread again.

I dont think we have the numbers to beat you Yakkingtons or you CD players. We at Ebay have this weird population stuck between T4 and T5 with our recent transfers. I don’t think we’ll stay forever in T4, but you guys are only beating us by 23k so far.

I wouldn’t call that getting “crushed” or “terrible” and there has been good fights so far this week. Have you gone up against our PK/FTF/GH groups? Have you seen our roaming community? I think that is where we definitely do well. I know I have been having fun roaming and trying to score kills against your much bigger groups.

I’ll be looking out for [Vile Faith] Norns for sure.

I’ve fought some decent FTF from time to time, but your PK groups have generally been poor fighters. EB definitely has a good reaction time to flipping camps though, so props on that.

Ariete.6509:

I’m one of those that really fell into the whole “the world is your playground concept” yet the downscale in the game still isn’t enough, even after the recent tweak i still 3 shot everything in lower zones.
I hate the feeling of trying to do stuff in lower level areas and still bursting down every enemy with minimal effort.

What i want is challenging gameplay throughout the areas i come back to explore and for the first time ever, this game is giving me a wish to become a completionist and even more so because of the fact i haven’t gone much into jumping puzzles (only stumbled upon a couple).

So i came up with something to really downscale myself: gear. I care very little about cosmetics and it doesn’t bother me having gone through most content and not feeling very powerful.

The problem is that my pet still feels way too overpowered. I know i can simply toggle it to avoid all combat, but even not choosing ranger for the pet, i grew fond of micro-managing the pet, i’m even one of those that run dungeons with squishy pets for the challenge of keeping it alive.

Any other tricks besides equipping the crappiest gear around (i use some mats i have lying around to craft low-end gear, or even go up to armor/weapon vendors, anything goes to gimp myself), specially to make my pet weaker (i run 15 points in BM)?

Any thoughts from people with this same taste will be welcomed.

Don’t put all 70 points into your trait lines then. Definitely avoid 15 in Beastmastery. Depending on what you see as overpowered on the pet, either use a low damage pet or a low survivability one. If you really want a challenge from those low level zones again, you need to forgo all your advantages as a level 80.

Or just make an alt.

bhagwad.4281:

Khyras.8021:

You have 916 toughness and 1800 armor not 2800 from what i see. You probably copied glass cannon build off the internet then you went to pvp to kill your fellow players but got jumped by another no skill required burster, then you came here to complain about how unfair life is. Game is unbalanced in both 1vs1 and 5vs5, maybe you just realized that now, for the most PvPers tho it is a well known fact.

I’ve been playing since beta. From your comments I can only surmise that either you have no idea of what you’re talking about or you play a thief yourself. Saying “The game is unbalanced” is a bug. Not a feature!

You don’t add up toughness to armor and call that your total armor. The toughness displayed = the armor you have. If you’ve been playing since beta you should know this.

If the thief did approach you completely stealthed from afar – with Shadow Refuge for example – I do agree that particular capability should be removed. That’s pretty rare in hotjoin, however.

Royce.6835:

daydream.2938:

Because , if we had gear, players who played longer would build up an artifical advantage.

Look at league of legends-every play starts every match equal footing. Yes it has items, but its not an mmo where they last, everyone starts on an EVEN footing. Nothing is earned over the long run , yet millions of people play league.

The same is true of tournies. People start on an even footing (minus class balance and skill). Gear should not be a variable in pvp.

Yes, you are correct. League of legends found the one thing that “works” in pvp that everyone loves and keeps flocking to. However I dont think OP is asking for “gear”… he’s asking for a reward in general. Could be anything.

But what I think REALLY needs to be done is make the whole pvp scene more competitive. Let’s look at league of legends again. the difference between LoL and Gw2 is the fact that LoL is way more competitive. It has elo, leaderboards, and million dollar championships. If someone is good in LoL, EVERYONE knows it and everyone has a way to “show off” how good they are with their elo ranking or whatever it is they have.

In gw2, there is no reliable way to show off how good you are. The tournaments are there, but at the same time it feels like they’re not. Everything feels like its not really there, like as if you’re doing everything for nothing. To make gw2 pvp as desirable as LoL pvp they would have to revamp the whole tournament and ranking system. (which i think is very necessary to move on to bigger and better things)

Yep. They also need to:

• Make tooltips consistent, correct and well-defined.
• Give players thorough information on every aspect of combat.
• Patch more frequently with more content than once every month.
• List any and all changes in the patch notes.
• Iron out all movement, terrain, skill queue hiccups/bugs.
• Build up that infrastructure that they’ve been teasing us with since the creation of the Elder Dragons.

Those are the basics. What’s expected from a game trying to achieve e-sport status. I wouldn’t be so hard on ArenaNet if they hadn’t declared GW2 as a future e-sport from release, but since they did, they better suck it up and fulfill that promise.

Other than that, I would personally prefer more game modes, removing the ticket system (what kind of e-sport game charges players to compete?) and more swag that carries over to PvE.

Oh, two more things.

• Make the scoreboard update in real-time.
• Make the scoreboard keybind double as the sPvP keybind (How did they forget this?), separating it from WvW.

Pope.1469:

Blakvalhalla.6170:

So exactly, how is this even remotely considered balance? It’s not luck getting 27k damage, separate encounters, but back to back mind you. Stealth…stealth…dead. So fun!

/end rant

OMIGOD your so right, Theif OP

cant believe this crapp exists in game… anet you even trying??:(

another for proof

Blakvalhalla.6170:

So exactly, how is this even remotely considered balance? It’s not luck getting 27k damage, separate encounters, but back to back mind you. Stealth…stealth…dead. So fun!

/end rant

OMIGOD your so right, Theif OP

cant believe this crapp exists in game… anet you even trying??:(

SharadSun.3089:

Well, look at a game like League of Legends (which GW2 borrows rather heavily from).

There’s basically one playstyle. Hell, there’s one map. The variety kick in when you consider tournament PvP, and the different team comps/matchups/skill levels/rivalries you’ll undoubtedly cultivate when playing against the top echelons.

Until then, it’s kind of drudgery, just like any other major sport. The exciting part is the players and the thrill of melting face in combat.

Casuals are okay! Nothing wrong with it. But as a semi hardcore player, I can tell you that you’re missing out on the experience.

While it’s true that MOBAs only have one format of play, I have to point out that the variety comes from the different phases of play that kick in after a certain time – laning phase in the beginning, jostling for objectives like dragon or baron in the mid game, and ganking/teamfighting in the end. Gameplay and strategy are dynamic; the match and team priorities when viewed at the 15 minute mark are markedly different from say, the 45 minute mark. What helps this happen is in-game progression through levels and items, effective implementation of fog-of-war (which allows for surprising tactics), and the gradual transformation of the map through destroying turrets and pushing lanes.

The two games are fundamentally different so these ideas may not apply exactly, but Guild Wars does need something to fix the static gametype that is Hold the Point.

Tulisin.6945:

Pope.1469:

The problem is Shadow Refuge has become a sort of knee-jerk, low-skill cap reaction among a good amount of thieves that I’ve tried to argue provides too much benefit for a single utility slot.

As low as the skill floor (cap doesn’t apply here) is on effective use of Shadow Refuge, the counter skill floor is just as low. Go to circle (or aim at circle), use auto attacks until you get an exp message or stop getting hit notifications. A profession that has its defense based on evasion and deception has just confined itself to a tiny circle, this isn’t some masterful use of tactics, this is an opportunity.

Skill floor, thanks for the correction. You’ve definitely listed many of the more situational – and skillful – uses of SR, and I have no problem with any of those.

As for your advice, I’ve had this method of “countering” Shadow Refuge suggested to me multiple times, but it’s easy enough to dodge a few times, heal, soak a hit or two, and continue on your merry way stealthed.

Asum’s advice to use knockbacks or pulls is highly effective on certain classes, but this effectiveness is inconsistent across classes. I am biased, of course, since my main is a Ranger whose only knockback/hard CC option is longbow-4, which has a high chance of missing anyway if you shoot it into SR. The longbow itself isn’t the best weapon to use against melee-oriented (the majority of) thieves, so plenty of rangers don’t have that option when fighting a thief.

Anyway, all my points were made with the assumption of a 1v1 fight, without team coordination. That’s why SR is so ineffective in tPvP, but garners so many complaints in WvW and to a lesser extent sPvP scenarios.

oZii.2864:

Pope.1469:

frans.8092:

Pope.1469:

… He lost the fight, he should be finished off after he exhausts all his downed skills _like any other class.

He planned his escape, good player skill and use of his resources, I’d say.
PvP’s goals are not in killing PC’s, so there is no ‘should be finished’, all that counts is meeting the format’s objectives and while killing pc’s can be a means to complete these objectives, it’s not an objective in itself.

Yep, I agree with your summary of PvP objectives completely.

Now, if thieves actually did plan their escapes ahead of time and with skill, I wouldn’t have a problem with a good thief getting away repeatedly. The problem is Shadow Refuge has become a sort of knee-jerk, low-skill cap reaction among a good amount of thieves that I’ve tried to argue provides too much benefit for a single utility slot.

Your point doesn’t even make sense many classes have get out of jail free cards.

How can you not be monitoring the health of the thief your fighting? How can you not see if he used his heal or not. If you play a thief then I don’t understand your complaints because they sound like someone that has never played one. Your complaint is right before you killed a thief he happened to pop refuge obviously he did it because he was about to die.

You never seen a mesmer running around with a torch, veil, decoy, and mass invis before?

You never fought a ranger and they pop the stability buff and you can’t CC them as they get away. The only difference is you see them leaving the fight either way they got away. At the point in the fight where a thief pops refuge because he is about to die you should have already figured out what kind of thief your fighting.

I’m talking only about the thief because I’m on the thief forum. But I’ll bite. I don’t like mesmers stacking stealth either; my opinion is consistent. I did say that I wanted a hard stealth cap of around 5 seconds. But let’s put that aside for a second and take a look at your example: The Prestige + Veil + Decoy + Mass Invisibility. That’s a weapon skill, two utility slots, and an elite slot, (with MI having a 90 second cooldown) as opposed to the one utility slot thieves use to achieve the same result.

As far as stability goes, it doesn’t block immobilize or slows, it can be ripped or converted to fear, and you’re free to not guess where they are and hit them as they run. Definitely not as big of a problem as long duration stealth.

frans.8092:

Pope.1469:

… He lost the fight, he should be finished off after he exhausts all his downed skills _like any other class.

He planned his escape, good player skill and use of his resources, I’d say.
PvP’s goals are not in killing PC’s, so there is no ‘should be finished’, all that counts is meeting the format’s objectives and while killing pc’s can be a means to complete these objectives, it’s not an objective in itself.

Yep, I agree with your summary of PvP objectives completely.

Now, if thieves actually did plan their escapes ahead of time and with skill, I wouldn’t have a problem with a good thief getting away repeatedly. The problem is Shadow Refuge has become a sort of knee-jerk, low-skill cap reaction among a good amount of thieves that I’ve tried to argue provides too much benefit for a single utility slot.

Asum.4960:

Pope.1469:

As for my “impatience,” yes, I feel that waiting 10 seconds for a thief who may or may not be downed to appear in a PvP (whether it be WvW or sPvP) environment is completely unjustifiable. If you walk away, the thief lives, and he may be back for round two, or just walk away without any consequences for a lost fight.

How did the Thief lost in that scenario? He used a Utility skill (Shadow Refuge) to fool you into believing he got away, allowing him to rally. He choosed that utility skill to escape if the fight isn’t going well for him, or to come back for round two.
If you are not to be fooled, he just wasted 10 seconds of your, and his time, except if you have AoE’s to just kill him while he is downed is stealth, which i do multiple times a day, it works perfectly fine.

Pope.1469:

If you wait out the 10 seconds, that’s 10 seconds of time not spent capping a point, or working towards an objective in WvW. In short, the thief would have successfully locked you down and forced you to be useless to your team for those few seconds.

And what was the Thief doing in that time? Capping a point? Working towards an objective in WvW?
No, he’s bloody lying on the ground, trying to get up/buying time for his team with legitimate game mechanics.
Best case scenario it’s a even, not a plus for the Thief.

Pope.1469:

What makes this thought process even more difficult to reason out is the uncertainty of the thief’s status: sometimes you don’t even know for sure if the thief is downed or not. As I mentioned before, ranger traps and necro marks don’t even work against a downed opponent, so if you play those classes, you don’t have any way of figuring it out.

I don’t know what your point is with mentioning Necro and Ranger over and over again.
No ground target trap spell works on any downed profession. Whats your point?
Also have you ever thought about auto attacking the area around the point where the Thief got most likely downed, while watching your combat log or autoattack chain?

You very clearly never played a Thief since you make it look like a Thief can do all those things without perfectly timing them, without planning them, without giving up utility slots just to do that, without wasting time himself and so on.

It’s just about you, and that you don’t like to have trouble while playing, and every mechanic that actually needs skill, and not numbers to counter them is “completely unjustifiable”.

Ignorance is for fools. Don’t be a fool.

Indeed, I was ignorant of how “ground target trap spells” don’t target downed players across all professions. Thanks for clearing that up. And yes, I play thief, please don’t assume I haven’t because I don’t share your opinion.

Look, the reason why it isn’t okay for the thief to waste anyone’s time any more than the typical down -> interrupt/teleport -> stomp or just flat out killing the thief is because he should by all rights be dead. He lost the fight, he should be finished off after he exhausts all his downed skills like any other class. He should not have the option to gamble on his survival by forcing the enemy to guess on his status or position and waste the time they earned. The downed state skills should be the only method of stalling your death.

Of course, if you know for certain the thief is downed and where he is, by all means finish him off. But I don’t think it’s as easy as you claim it is.

frans.8092:

You’ll just have to wait 10 seconds. Shadows Refuge is the support skill for thieves rezzing downed team-members, it works as intended but you’re suggesting to obliterate it so you are never inconvenienced with guessing or waiting for the eternity of 10 seconds.

I’m sure I made it clear that waiting 10 seconds is much more than an “inconvenience.” However, I admit that I don’t have a suggestion to reconcile these two applications of Shadow Refuge.

Good points, although one little nit-pick: Pets will only force you into combat if they attack back at mobs, not if they are hit. Either set them to passive behavior (the blue dove icon), or spam F3 (Return to Me) when they get hit.

Rangers also achieve their best damage output when they are using all types of damage at their disposal. For example, even if you aren’t specced primarily into condition damage, it’s worthwhile to use a trap or two, or throw your torch at the enemy for some burn damage, then switch to your longbow or power-specced shortbow and fire away. Have a good amount of toughness as well, and make use of the plentiful access to vigor, regeneration, and quickness buffs.

I believe that’s what ANet meant by “Jack of all Trades.”

oZii.2864:

Pope.1469:

No, dropping stealth on damage would make it useless in combat. Unless, of course, that’s your intention.

Extend the reveal debuff timer, and implement a hard cap of around 5 seconds for all stealth. There’s no justification for having 10 seconds of stackable stealth from Blinding Power + C&D + etc, or from Shadow Refuge. Even if the thief dies from all the AoEs and random attacks thrown at him, that’s still 10 seconds of guesswork the other players have to sit through. Which, in PvP, isn’t acceptable.

Plus, Ranger traps and Necro marks (I think) don’t even trigger on downed opponents.

You can’t stack stealth of blinding powder —> CnD. You can stack CnD --> Blinding powder. 10 seconds of guesswork? Really that impatient? We should also make it so we don’t have to cycle targets anymore either. We should also put big arrows over top of the real mesmers so that we don’t have to figure out which one is which anymore.

Stop chasing the thief and your problem is solved. Not everything is a D/D glass cannon. If you run away from a P/D thief I have to use init to catch you if I want to kill you which means I either pop a invis skill just to suprise shot for imob or devourer venom or I blow my heal just to immob you. If you run away from a P/D thief before you have 12 stacks of bleeds and you didnt burn your condi removal there isn’t much the theif can do to you.

Sorry if the order I stated the skills was confusing, thanks for clearing that up. As for my “impatience,” yes, I feel that waiting 10 seconds for a thief who may or may not be downed to appear in a PvP (whether it be WvW or sPvP) environment is completely unjustifiable. If you walk away, the thief lives, and he may be back for round two, or just walk away without any consequences for a lost fight. If you wait out the 10 seconds, that’s 10 seconds of time not spent capping a point, or working towards an objective in WvW. In short, the thief would have successfully locked you down and forced you to be useless to your team for those few seconds.

What makes this thought process even more difficult to reason out is the uncertainty of the thief’s status: sometimes you don’t even know for sure if the thief is downed or not. As I mentioned before, ranger traps and necro marks don’t even work against a downed opponent, so if you play those classes, you don’t have any way of figuring it out.

Although you make a very good point regarding dealing with P/D thieves, I don’t believe I ever had a problem with them; my objections were to stealth duration specifically. I’ve fought many good control/condition damage thieves who solidly took me to town and you know what? They were great fights; I didn’t feel cheesed at all.

No, dropping stealth on damage would make it useless in combat. Unless, of course, that’s your intention.

Extend the reveal debuff timer, and implement a hard cap of around 5 seconds for all stealth. There’s no justification for having 10 seconds of stackable stealth from Blinding Power + C&D + etc, or from Shadow Refuge. Even if the thief dies from all the AoEs and random attacks thrown at him, that’s still 10 seconds of guesswork the other players have to sit through. Which, in PvP, isn’t acceptable.

Plus, Ranger traps and Necro marks (I think) don’t even trigger on downed opponents.

Hope they leave this option for ranger stealth (albeit a kittenty one) open, but knowing ArenaNet I think they’ll definitely patch this out at some point. Rangers are just that strong, after all. To have three seconds of movable stealth without using a pig would be ridiculous.

Heh.

Dagger/Focus, Focus4 gives 12 stacks of vulnerability if bounced off a single target, couple that with Well of Suffering and that’s an easy 20 stacks. I personally run 30/20/0/0/20 and can get slightly above 3k in dagger crits with berserker gear. A Sigil of Rage is nice too, makes the whole dungeon party (ranger especially, since you’re essentially doing their job for them) go WTF.

I’ve had success with this setup in sPvP as well, running chill on blind with the corresponding well, and the chilling hand. Lots of control, and damage.

FourTwenty.4268:

Pope.1469:

The thief is also the only class, when they fail to assassinate said target, that is able to (through stealth, multiple evades, and shadowsteps) instantly retreat, reset a fight, and try again with no repercussions. There is practically no risk for a thief in this regard.

You can pretend Thieves have unlimited initiative if you want, but that’s just not true. It costs SIX initiative for even 1 infiltrators arrow. That’s more than 50% of the your total allotted resource lol.

You can pretend we Thieves can stealth 24/7 but the more stealths/evades/shadowsteps(lol what? i guess you mean the 6 initiative arrow or maybe heartseeker) a thief uses for escape, they are unable to use for their initial burst attack

disclaimer, i do agree culling bug needs to be fixed

Alright, I’ll list out a few ways thieves can get out of fights easily, without resorting to Infiltrator’s arrow (which does cost a lot of initiative, and rightly so).

1. Withdraw, Roll for Initiative if that isn’t enough, then Infiltrator’s Arrow with the 6 initiative you just received if you need even more distance, or just Disabling Shot.

2. Shadowstep (the utility), Heartseeker away from enemy.

3. If using sword, use the second half of Infiltrator’s Strike.

4. The notorious Shadow Refuge (though this one can be countered easily if you know what to expect)

Those are the common methods. Then you have more creative ways involving Smoke Screen or traps. Note that none of these methods are very initiative-heavy, although I imagine a capable thief is able to manage his initiative well enough to easily have enough for a last Infiltrator’s Arrow.

And if you’re really feeling initiative-starved, you can easily trait into Quick Recovery in Acrobatics or 3 more initiative in Trickery. Then grab Infiltrator’s Signet for more regen and to help you chase even better (or run by targeting a random critter). All of this without compromising your overall damage as a backstab thief too much. You really have so many options as a thief.

Look, thief burst is fine. The fact that they are capable of a “cheesy” 3-hit combo and spam-2-to-win under 50% health is also completely fine. They are the premier assassin class, after all. What isn’t okay is a thief’s ability to approach a target stealthed for 10 seconds under Shadow Refuge. That specific application of the stealth mechanic is broken.

The thief is also the only class, when they fail to assassinate said target, that is able to (through stealth, multiple evades, and shadowsteps) instantly retreat, reset a fight, and try again with no repercussions. There is practically no risk for a thief in this regard.

Don’t want it, sometimes it’s faster just to let it regen after you leave combat.