Guild Wars 2

Thanks for the advice. I’ll try again and bring an offhand pistol (thief) and see if headshot can finish his break bar off.

I have tried to finish this quest 3 times now and each time it has bugged in the same spot.

I am able to get to the final fight against Mordremoth, save all my ‘companions’ and get him to the phase where he stands behind the dragon face and sends waves after me. I defeat wave 1, pop reality rift 1, and burn him. He is left with about 5-10% hp. I then defeat wave 2, pop reality rift 2, and…. his defiance bar doesn’t go down all the way, so I can’t finish him. After this point he just stands there forever. No more mobs spawn, no more reality rifts spawn, the allies just stand there, and that’s it. There is absolutely no way to do anything as Mordremoth is invulnerable and there is no way to break his defiance bar since the reality rifts don’t spawn.

This is extremely frustrating as the primary reason I even own HoT is for the storyline, and I can’t finish it because the last fight is very clearly lacking some much needed QA.

The best way to decide runes is to put your entire build into GW2skills.net and look at the skill tooltips with different runes. This way you can see if that +20% condi duration actually puts you above fractions of a second or not.

I’m running all the runes and trying them out. Right now I’m on scavenging and I like them a lot. Overall condi boost that helps poison and bleed, and the heal is pretty awesome on top of the heals we already get for evading. Also as long as you have Vit in your armor (you should) they give one of the highest condi dmg stats possible.

inharmonic.1975:

Quinci.5968:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZUQRAqY4Yl0MhunYbTw5JQ/ELtEmXZ4OkimHhrwXoWAoLsAA-TFSAABgq+T0nBgC3fQ6DCAAPAgB1PMpSwxU+FAABYmlZZWmBDdoDdoDdoNzZOzZOzZWKgFVWB-w

^ This is what I’ve been running in HoT. It’s been really fun in PvE and seems to be working pretty well in WvW as well. I haven’t tested it in sPvP yet though.

I’m not 100% certain on the choices. I was using shortbow instead of D/D before HoT and I may go back to it. If so I’d switch Deadly Arts #1 to trapper’s respite of course. I think my favorite part of HoT is that my dodges are now essentially death blossoms that also give +10% condi dmg.

Needle trap and caltrops are definitely good. The thing with Thief traps is that they are instant, so you don’t really have to rely on someone walking into them; you drop them directly on top of the other person. If you already have caltrops down and you drop a trap on them, then they now are stuck in the caltrops field.

Skill #7 I flex all the time. Not sure what I want there yet. In PvE I usually just use signet of shadows to run around even faster. Roll for initiative is nice for more Death Blossoms and as a stunbreak. And Impairing Daggers looks pretty interesting.

Good luck and have fun, Condi thief is awesome!

pretty interesting build. looks fun. have you considered replacing the traveler runes?

Ya the runes are definitely not set in stone. I was originally playing a trapper build kinds like the “ghost thief” only I actually used my pistol #1 since I was going for real effectiveness instead of just cheese with perma-stealth.

I swapped out the trapper runes when they got nerfed to 2 seconds and also because I don’t use SA anymore so the stealth isn’t as helpful. After playing with this build more I’m actually starting to consider getting rid of the pistol altogether since D/D is better when I’m not stealthed and the sustain from Driven Fortitude is surprisingly good when using Death Blossom and dodges. This would allow me to bring shortbow back for #5 and the poison field.

The main reason I ended up with Traveler is the 10% condi duration and the 25% speed. Then it still gives a decent amount of condi, power, and defense stats. Other options are Adventurer, Afflicted, Scavenging, Orr, Krait, etc. The problem is most of the runes only buff a particular condition’s duration and I was looking for a generic condi duration like Trapper has. I’ll probably switch the runes around every week until I settle on the one I like the most lol.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZUQRAqY4Yl0MhunYbTw5JQ/ELtEmXZ4OkimHhrwXoWAoLsAA-TFSAABgq+T0nBgC3fQ6DCAAPAgB1PMpSwxU+FAABYmlZZWmBDdoDdoDdoNzZOzZOzZWKgFVWB-w

^ This is what I’ve been running in HoT. It’s been really fun in PvE and seems to be working pretty well in WvW as well. I haven’t tested it in sPvP yet though.

I’m not 100% certain on the choices. I was using shortbow instead of D/D before HoT and I may go back to it. If so I’d switch Deadly Arts #1 to trapper’s respite of course. I think my favorite part of HoT is that my dodges are now essentially death blossoms that also give +10% condi dmg.

Needle trap and caltrops are definitely good. The thing with Thief traps is that they are instant, so you don’t really have to rely on someone walking into them; you drop them directly on top of the other person. If you already have caltrops down and you drop a trap on them, then they now are stuck in the caltrops field.

Skill #7 I flex all the time. Not sure what I want there yet. In PvE I usually just use signet of shadows to run around even faster. Roll for initiative is nice for more Death Blossoms and as a stunbreak. And Impairing Daggers looks pretty interesting.

Good luck and have fun, Condi thief is awesome!

Dagins.5163:

Eisenwald.8562:

In a way I feel like I’m being trolled seeing as how THIS got a response rather than the other dozen much more valid posts that weren’t just about game design but even bugs.

Best solution for devs -> never post on professions forums, because some people feel like being trolled or start to complain every time they see a red mark. Instead, stalk forums and make notes, or ask community managers to highlight for them the most interesting topics.

Or, once a week, spend 30 minutes to post in multiple threads? I don’t think 30 minutes out of a 40+ hour week would be too much time to communicate that you actually do care about an entire group of people who play a particular class. Other class forums DO have more red posts than this one.

rennlc.7346:

They could increase the range on Pistol but reduce it’s damage from 900+. They could also leave the damage the same but make attacks have a 30% chance of missing or 50% of delivering a glancing blow from 900+. This would solve the issue of people throwing magical hammers farther than people shooting bullets, while also keeping it impractical to play Thief solely as a ranged class.

I think this is a marvelous idea. Increase pistols to 1200 but make them do less damage from further away. You could even split it into 3 categories, 80% damage at 900+, 90% at 600+, 100% inside 600.

I personally like Carrion as a set in-between Dire and Sinister.

Unfortunately there is still no Carrion accessories though…

I would really love to see an internal concept of what they are trying to do with each class. They used to have something like a “class vision” when the game released (in the descriptions of each class), but those are so far removed from the current game that they can’t really be considered valid anymore.

Who said something can’t be both a bugfix and a nerf? If a bug was making a class stronger and they fix that bug, it’s a nerf, and the devs should pay attention to see if there’s a way to compensate for it to keep from weakening the class.

If any of you play League of Legends you will know what I mean. Each time they patch something they have reasons and concerns listed with it. So if they fixed a bug that was helping a champion they will say something like:

“Fixed bug Y. Since Champion X was previously balanced with this bug being in place, we gave Champion X a buff to Z to make up for this fix weakening it in area Q.”

I would quite literally pay an extra $50 for this game if it gave me access to patch notes like that.

This makes me sad. I haven’t had a chance to get HoT and I was so looking forward to playing my trapper condi thief with the DD traits.

Guess I’ll go back to playing perplexity cancer…

Why can’t different skills on the same weapon have different ranges? Shortbow #5 could stay and #1 and 2 could be increased.

Chaos staff imo.

It was explained by the devs prior to BW3 even starting that Bound was bugged and on release it will work like a normal leap finisher that you can use from within the smoke field to gain stealth.

Thieves coded as minions?

With the introduction of Daredevil it would make the most sense for them to just get rid of the acrobatics line altogether and replace it with something else entirely. They could easily merge some of the current acro things into the DD line.

I like using Carrion instead of dire for my weapons and armor (dire still for the trinkets since there is no ascended Carrion). I don’t feel like I miss the toughness that much and it’s nice having some extra power to increase p/d #3 and shortbow #1 and 2 damage.

The difference in base HP pools are a left-over remnant of the game’s early design and should be scrapped anyways. Give everyone the same base health pool, there are literally no advantages that are tied to having a lower health pool. It’s not like low base hp classes have more defense to make up for it.

If any difference is necessary, your starting health pool should decrease based on your armor. Light = highest health, Medium = medium health. Heavy = lowest health.

I don’t think it’s really correct to say that people are missing toughness/vitality in their builds. I currently and always have run a build with full dire on the trinket/accessory side, and I am much much squishier than before.

The issue isn’t that we lost defense, it’s that all classes (including thief?) gained offense. With the spec patch the game is now really close to something like an FPS where 1-2 shots with a gun will kill you. Whoever gets seen first dies.

I’m actually considering simply dropping all defensive stats for more burst potential, because whoever bursts first will win.

Offhand torch would be my preference. We need some burning in our condition toolbelt and we don’t have enough offhand weapons imo.

I’ve actually been conflicted on whether I like it or not. It’s really nice for SB5 but I usually release my aoe’s outside max range as a quick way to cancel them. Also sometimes I want to land an aoe on a specific location so I’ll just fire it there, if you have the max range option turned on it will land short rather than not firing at all and saving your initiative.

I’m having a lot of fun stealthing when I use Withdraw.

While we’re on the topic, any chance I can get Carrion stat trinkets soon?

Much less exciting than the previous iteration to be honest. Kind of disappointing.

I already do this all the time. With the exact example you gave.

Go try it in a game, steal from a warrior, wait 30 seconds, then hit F1 twice. You will use spin move and then shadowstep to the enemy while still spinning.

Instant skills don’t break channels or casting so you can always shadowstep while using a skill, stolen ability or not.

Most important question here is what content this is for. Open world pve, dungeons, wvw, pvp, etc.

In general I don’t think Celestial is all that useful on a thief, even a hybrid one. Carrion/Sinister/Dire is the way to go in my opinion.

I personally run Sinister armor, dire+rabid trinkets, and Carrion weapons. I would probably switch the trinkets to carrion if they existed though.

Color is what kills the sword for me. I’d never buy a weapon that doesn’t match my armor. I don’t really see how it would be that difficult to sell it in different colors.

pepper.6179:

Quinci.5968:

ChoChoBo.6503:

Spear of Justice’s tether is the same as Necromancer’s Deathshroud’s Tainted Shackles. You just need to move away to break it. No biggie.

The real issue will be how much ‘Revealed’ debuff they’re giving to all the professions to counter Thief’s stealth. Though I think they should of added more counter to stealth ages ago, so I’m rooting for it. The real question should be how thieves are going to counter all the added ‘revealed’ debuff.

My guess is by playing mostly acro instead of shadow.

gonna need better condi clear than

Agreed. I currently put 2 points in SA specifically for the condi clear. Not sure how I’ll do without it. A few seconds of resistance at the very start of the fight isn’t going to make up for it.

ChoChoBo.6503:

Spear of Justice’s tether is the same as Necromancer’s Deathshroud’s Tainted Shackles. You just need to move away to break it. No biggie.

The real issue will be how much ‘Revealed’ debuff they’re giving to all the professions to counter Thief’s stealth. Though I think they should of added more counter to stealth ages ago, so I’m rooting for it. The real question should be how thieves are going to counter all the added ‘revealed’ debuff.

My guess is by playing mostly acro instead of shadow.

I think Sinister gear works well with it.

I’m still waiting on Carrion accessories for my thief…

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Might as well make Thieves breath fire and every time they use “Scorpion” Wire they yell; “Get over here!” (not that I already do it, but might as well officially add it).

I yell that at my monitor…

Well, thieves aren’t ninja/assassin, but a specialization could theoretically change that. Ranger’s aren’t druids either (yet).

Most P/D now is Dire conditions utilizing dagger 5 and pistol stealth attack. Usually with perplexity or krait runes. This gives you a ton of tankiness and also good damage from bleeds.

Since we’d probably want to go into CS anyways since that is where all the pistol traits are being hosted, maybe we could use SoM for our heal and pick up the 5 might stacks on signet use? I know Withdraw will be better for using normally with trapper runes + Trapper’s Respite, but SoM has the same cooldown and nothing else in the Adept tier for CS is any good. This would give us passive healing in-between activating the signet, and when we active we get 5 might stacks + stealth + trap.

My main concern is condi removal without taking SA (trickery is a must). Perhaps since we want a signet we can also take signet of agility, along with shadowstep maybe that would provide enough condi removal.

It’s an interesting idea. Honestly I feel like it won’t work for pvp though because you really need the condi removal from somewhere. I just don’t see how you can fit that into the build without sacrificing CS for SA, and at that point you may as well just go p/d since you aren’t using the pistol specific traits.

I want a Sigil of Generosity as a trait in CS, that would make it possible.

Maybe if we get our rifle we will at least be able to shoot back at the ranger instead of just running away.

This is one of the most annoying things about playing a thief in WvW. It’s especially frustrating because it is completely unnatural behavior. The first time you see it happen you have to assume it’s a bug.

I think that both balance wise and thematically the skill should continue to channel at the location the thief went stealth, as that is the last known location of the thief from the attacker’s perspective. Alternatively it could just break the channel altogether, perhaps putting the skill broken on a lowered CD.

This will allow even stronger specialization as a ‘zerker’ won’t have to waste points in things like condition damage or duration because he/she needs a trait from that line.

You won’t be able to use full zerk armor then points in the vitality line to make up for the lack of health. If you want to add some health you will have to mix/max armor sets.

I expect mixing armor sets to be much more popular but we will see if people can survive on their zerk characters with base health.

As Kousetsu said above me, if you actually interrupt a skill cast it does proc the confusion. I run perplexity on my thief with daze on steal so I can say this with certainty.

Increasing base move speed wouldn’t nerf mobility classes at all. They would still have their increased mobility on top of the base.

If movespeed right now is base 100, then it is 125 with signet, and a full mobility build is something like 150. If you increase the base to 125, then the mobility builds would just go up to 175, maintaining the same +50 movespeed difference.

So, you just eliminate the frustratingly low base speed to make the entire game feel faster and more dynamic.

Think of the difference between a slow paced standard military FPS and Unreal Tournament. GW2 is the Unreal Tournament of MMOs and needs a slight base move speed increase to really feel right with it’s active combat. The reason why +25% is the number I’m coming up with is because I have already tested how the combat feels when you are moving 25% faster (with the signets) and it feels much better.

PS: My main is a thief, my secondary is an ele. I’m not mentioning this to “buff” the classes that lack the movespeed signets, I’m mentioning it because playing GW2 without the signets sucks, and I want my utility slots back.

Doggie.3184:

I actually wish they’d just increase everyones’ movement by 25% and remove all the signets and passives that raise movement.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve thought this in game. At least on my Ele the signet provides a nice 25 second CD stunbreaker, but on my thief it’s just a wasted utility slot so that I don’t go insane from running so freaking slow.

Seriously, if you ever use the 25% speed increase signets it is virtually impossible to play the game anymore without them. The game just FEELS so much better with one of those signets on your bar than not; it feels as if it was the default movespeed originally and they nerfed the default by 25% to add the signets. It would be great to actually get that utility slot back on my characters.

My current WvW build:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZUQNAqYVlsMp0pdOx2JsPNRSRw9SQi3tz7d1B-TVSEABIcCAERfAAmgKQJoxq/U8+DOcIAmS5XzPBgAAIAG6QH6QH6QbmzcmH9oJFwiKrA-w

The utility skills get switched out quite a bit, specifically signet of shadows gets changed for shadow refuge when I’m actually fighting.

I’ve tried running the 20% reduction on deception skills but frankly I don’t think it’s worth it. Even if I switch scorpion wire to Blinding Powder.

Also Bountiful Theft is probably better than ricochet… but I really like the extra range that ricochet gives.

roachsrealm.9284:

thats what the blog is for. read that. they explain why they did what they did already.

I’m sorry but I’ve read every single blog post and I have never seen them do anything near this detailed of an explanation. They explain general principles but don’t actually talk about any specific changes, so when the changes come out players are left with the feeling that some of them contradicted the general principles.

They need to explain the specific changes so we understand how exactly they fit into the principles that they are supposed to be reinforcing.

I have no intent on promoting any other games, however, I wanted to point out a game that recently does patch notes extremely well, and which I feel Anet could improve their own patch notes by considering.

Check out these patch notes: http://na.leagueoflegends.com/news/patch-38-notes-0

Every balance change whether nerf or buff has a reason explaining why it was done, granting the playerbase insight into the reasoning of the developers. I may not always agree with that reason, but at least the developer is being honest with the player and giving information.

How many complaints could be avoided if we knew why a nerf was implemented, rather than just trying to guess at the motives of the developers?

Arenanet, I would greatly appreciate if you took the time to do something similar to this for Guild Wars 2’s patch notes.

I’m having this issue on Yak’s Bend server in Eternal battlegrounds. I know at least one other person is having the problem as well.

Saw it for the first time tonight after the patch and it has happened multiple times since then. Latest patch definitely broke something.

Ya, and when Guardians use Aegis it should give it to all his enemies nearby. And when a Ranger uses cripple it should also cripple the Ranger. And when a Necro uses fear it should fear the Necro as well

etc.

Okay, I think I see the confusion here. I was not understanding because your complaints don’t actually have anything to do with Thieves leveling worse than other classes at low levels.

You’re complaints are related to Thief strength in pve as a whole. Many people have complained about recent nerfs including the revealed nerf and stealth no longer dropping aggro as making thief weak in pve. Also many people have complained about P/P being a worthless set and very few people would actually disagree with you on this point (just check out the thief forums).

Well, I know anecdotes are a dime a dozen, but I wanted to give you my experience as well.

I leveled a thief as my first character from 1-80. I’ve played with D/D for a short time, S/P for most of the early game, and D/P for most of the late game leveling (I switched to D/P when pistol whip got nerfed so hard), and of course shortbow as the secondary at all times. I never had much trouble leveling. I did feel squishy at the beginning but I quickly got used to the game and using stealth, blind, and dodging to make up for this. Pistol offhand #5 is especially OP in PvE, you can stand in this and wreck stuff without taking barely any damage. Not to mention you can use this and/or the smoke wall to shoot through with SB or pistols to keep an opponent permanently blinded.

I found that during leveling with my friends I actually ended up being the “tank” of the group since I would shadowstep in and pull most of the aggro, and then tank through blind and dodging.

I think the thief is harder to level just because he is a harder character to play. Guardian and Warrior are just easy classes. It’s not like the thief suddenly becomes easy at level 80 and Warrior and Guardian become harder.

Also, P/P is largely considered the worst of all the thief weapon sets. It’s not a matter of “you have to use this specific set,” but it is a matter of “user any set but this one.”

This is by far the best news I’ve heard all week. I have to play the game in a ridiculous 1920×860 resolution to get a decent FOV, and my monitor is only 22 inches so it makes my screen obnoxiously small.