Showing Posts For Retanaru.2901:
1. Not the last time I tried it.
2. It doesn’t.
4. Whichever it randomly chooses, which includes skillsets you aren’t using.
The trait recharges 1 of the 5 skill sets every time you steal, but it does not only recharge ones you are using. The only way to guarantee it works is to use all the skill types and only steal when all are on cool down.
Yeah it still randomly disappears off me sometimes even though other party memebers will still have it. Kind of annoying since the buff itself it actually quite good now days.
Anyone that relies on repeated sneak attacks definitely took a dps/ultility hit. I’m not just talking about d/d here.
In the recent state of the game they talk about how thieves rely too much on stacking huge amounts of bleeds. They talked about giving them more cover conditions to at least let the bleeds last through a bit of condition removal.
The patch decreased the duration of caltrops and made revealed last 4 seconds.
P/D now has a full second longer before they can apply bleeds again, a 25% damage reduction in a 12 second fight, and conditions only shine during longer fights in the first place. Caltrops ticks 5 less times, 1/3 of the damage removed. Condition really took a hit here when it already suffers against direct damage mechanically.
Blind on stealth is also effected, in dungeons you could mitigate quite a bit of damage with it due to the attack lengths of npcs, but the extra second actually pushes it just past a few of them, less blind = less long term survivability, another thing they mentioned wanting to add to thieves in the SOTG yet it decreases with this patch.
Sword/daggers only redeeming factor, the daze spam, was also effected by this.
An entire trait line received a nerf with this.
No huge nerf, but adding all the things together really hurts any sort of long term fight. Which is sad because in pvp people are complaining about burst and perma-stealth. Neither of which was effected much at all. PvP wise it just makes me want to make fights end even faster because my weaknesses in a long fight are ever increasing.
Basically the thief is balanced around stealth and any changes to it will have far reaching repercussions. Just look at the thief downed #3, it does nothing in PvE anymore aside from give you an extra second before a mob starts attacking again ever since the aggro patch (which was much needed even if annoying now).
The general haste nerf also effected a trait that did not receive any duration buff like the ultilities did (same with the sigil too). Builds that used the sword relied on haste for burst, but have lost quite a bit from that too.
Edit: Actually while thinking about it I realized that that has to really suck for anyone running p/d and caltrops. That’s a lot of lost damage.
(edited by Retanaru.2901)
Sword light #3 actually does some decent damage when in berserker gear and you can spam it quite fast. I’ve used it for fun in WvW and it can be quite hilarious.
as far as i observed regarding underwater battles, all professions have decreased damage output, making the #3 downed underwater outheal all the damages taken.
eg, the thiefs auto attack on land = 2k per hit, thief auto attack on water using long range = 400+bleed, thief auto attack on water using spear is 600
pet #3 on land 1200 per heal, pet #3 on water is still 1200
My thief using the spear hits for 2k non-crit and 3k crit with the auto attack.
You can either roll through it (takes a bit of skill, if you ever played monster hunter it’s that exact invulnerability frame thing) or teleport into it. I’m not sure if stability allows you to just run through the commander’s bubble like a normal guardians.
There’s a very effective way to fight this kind of thief as long as you have a decent dps ranged weapon to swap to. Exit the caltrops, and proceed to semi- kite the thief (you really only have to move to dodge). Any time he is out of stealth simply shoot at him, as long as you do ~1k dps you’ll be doing more damage than pistol/dagger can without the help of caltrops. This doesn’t even count in for the fact that you can remove conditions whenever you get a bad stack for example if they hit you with sneak attack or death blossom immediately remove the bleed unless you think they will death blossom again right away. Preferably you will dodge all of the C&D dagger attempts while kiting them. It has an extremely obvious animation (even if they use it out of range dodge it because they might teleport to you during the cast, if they do you will not have to worry about the teleport for a good 35 seconds or so) and death blossom on its own will not kill you before you can slowly dps them down. The stealth and baiting you to stand in caltrops is 90% of the build and avoiding both of these will give you a significant advantage in that they will heal dramatically less and be force to use their other ultilities or heal to go stealth in an attempt to make up for the lost bleed stacks.
It’s always feasible to get off the node for a second. Dying and the thief capturing the node is worse than the node going neutral until you get reinforcements or kill the thief. Caltrops isn’t as large as the node so you can always hunker down around the edges which is a lot easier if you don’t stand in the middle of the node, causing the thief to drop caltrops off to a side. Basically, avoiding letting the thief go into stealth by hitting you with C&D and stand outside of the caltrops means you’ll rarely have more than 5 bleeds on you as long as you bring condition removal and know when to use it.
If for some reason you have a 12+ stack of bleeds and haven’t used your condition removal yet, know that the majority of those bleeds are likely about to run out, which means you let them do nearly their full amount of damage instead of cutting them off at the beginning. Remove bleeds that come in stack at the first tick to hugely kill their dps.
Oh and unless they are dagger storming or canceled it for the stability go ahead and just knock them the hell down all day long. Not much they can do about it and this type of thief rarely uses daggerstorm when thieves guild is much better.
Attempting to go in stealth with the torch offhand should give you the revealed debuff, along with protection (or swiftness/vigor if they still want us to never be tanky, Burning speed haha) and you should burn people when you hit them for the duration of what the stealth should have been.
Basically the exact opposite of stealth.
I run a vampire thief, 10/30/0/30/0. All valk/berserker armor. Sword/pistol with signet of malice, shadowstep, infiltrators signet, signet of agility. Blood sigil on my sword and air on my pistol. All ruby orbs (although I’m eyeballing that new rune of altruism and will replace the lost crit damage with the new fractal rings/back piece, don’t really need more than 100 crit damage). Using omnomberry pie for the 66% chance of lifesteal on crit. Whenever I’m attacking there’s a flurry of healing rolling off my character (very much like a large bleed stack). Each pistol whip can heal between 4k-7k depending on crits and the amount of targets I’m hitting. I have around 18k health and as long as I’m hitting things I never drop below half health.
It works quite well in WvW as not many people can handle burst dps and healing at the same time and has plenty of ability to chase down anyone but really good d/d elementalists (damn chill gets me everytime). In PvE (mostly fractals) I’d recommend dropping 5 points from acrobatics and putting them in deadly arts so you can use poison cloud to spam area weakness, not to mention poison cloud ticks activate signet of malice so its extra healing (same with caltrops btw). Otherwise, same playstyle though if you keep sword 2 up you can sub out all your stun breaks for more group orient things as sword 2’s return breaks stuns. If you ever need quick stealth to rez a team mate just drop black power then 2 cluster bombs for 5 or so seconds of stealth. The 2 initiative 10 second trait in acrobatics coupled with the initiative on crit and signets giving initiative mean you never run out of initiative.
It’d be interesting if thieves got a torch as a weapon and whenever they used a stealth skill while wielding a torch they wouldn’t stealth, but would gain some other buff or attack. More of a saboteur approach to the class would be cool. Although it would never be allowed to drop a fire field as cluster bomb spam in it would be too powerful. A dark field on “stealth” when wielding a torch or fire shield that gave them protection to make up for the lack of stealth would be fun.
(edited by Retanaru.2901)
Pet is still rooted with its attack animations. So even with Sick-em it’ll hit someone maybe 2 times while they run away even though it’s running 40% faster for 10 seconds. On the other hand, once it starts an animation it will actually hit the target.
Hundred blades isn’t too bad, it just requires you to bring some CC to the table with your dps, or have a friend doing it for you. A point blank bladetrail with leg specialist usually does the job. The rest of the abilities are amazing for mobility and still have good damage.
Are you talking about the White moa F2 skill? Either the tooltip is blatantly wrong (it says it gives regen) or the ability got bugged and stopped working for me last night. Pretty sure the tooltip is blatantly wrong though and it just gives an actually useful 11s of chill. Now if only f2 actually worked well in combat…
Don’t forget the truffle steak dinner (10% crit dmg, +200 power for 30 seconds after killing something). Does fairly good if you like to stick around large fights.
I just put a bloodlust on one of my short bows and switch to the short bow whenever I down someone in 1v1 or if I dagger storm in a large crowd and they start to get wiped. I usually end up with 10-13 stacks before I die. If I do end up with a 25 stack I just switch to my other short bow that has endurance regen on it.
Basicaly if your in WvW use your bloodlust weapon whenever you are taking over supply camp and stuff and you’ll get a large stack fast.
All of the traits work, although hard to catch is fairly useless. Even potent venoms works, you just can’t increase your condition duration beyond a certain point (80% I think) and its quite easy to hit if you use food and runes along with the passive trait bonus.
D/D wise there’s not much you can really do for your team other than take out the most dangerous target right away. Then your forced to stealth or suffer a similar fate, and every second your stealthed is a second your not helping your team. Even if being stealthed is healing you.
If you have shortbow in your other slot you should switch to it when fighting with your friends. 15 points in deadly arts means the poison cloud will be AoE weakness (and destroys the enemies heals) which really helps your group out, and clusterbomb (don’t burst them)/trickshot do a serious amount of AoE damage while keeping out of the direct line of fire.
I run a no stealth Semi-glass cannon ( enough valk equipment and 20 points in acrobatics takes me to 1kittenealth). This is because I run with my guild often in WvW in quick 3-4 man raiding parties. Using sword/pistol because it gives amazing amounts of interrupt and immobilize to hold guys down while my team wails on them. Sword auto attack crits for 3k (6k on the last hit) and pistol whip regularly hits 10k.
I’m using pistol whip most often not because of the damage (it is worse than auto-attack), but because the evades help keep me alive while constantly tripping someone up. This is excellent for chasing those runners because of the immobilize and brief stuns. Basically my survival comes from being able to dodge roll very often when I get targeted (signet of agility helps), and flickering back and forth with #2 on the sword (which also removes stuns) makes me pretty immune to melee guys while still doing my job.
You should try setting your ultilities to mobility and relying on C&D for the stealth. Shadowstep/Infiltrators signet/X tends to work very well since people simply stop targeting me once I get far away from a fight even though I can come right back just as fast.
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IA as an approach sucks and is niche. Initiative doesn’t grow on trees. As long as it can be used to traverse area, that’s what it’ll be primarily used for even if it was reduces to 500m. Mind you I think both IA and Refuge are oddly powerful but lettuce be real tea here.
Other then that as has been said the SB is the model weapon. Powerful, useful in Power, hybrid and Cond specs. Utility you don’t get on other weapons.
IA is kinda off in its uses true. I’ve really only used the blind in 1v1’s against other thieves (where missing a C&D = death). Shadow refuge on the other hand isn’t too bad. Once people realize they can just use an AoE knockback in it to not only knock the thief out but remove their stealth and give them the revealed debuff it’ll become a lot less useful in pvp situations. Most classes have access to one too. Aside from other thieves, everyone else has access to a knock back that would work.
Make him whiff the C&D = half his initiative gone. This means using blocks/blinds to make sure they miss even if you can’t dodge. If you have a ultility that grants you the ability to take no damage for 3-4 hits pop it when you think they will start heartseekering, turn around and burst the thief.
Any time the thief hits you from stealth or has been in stealth for 3-4 seconds start spamming tab so you target him even if culling is keeping them invisible (if you do this the thief will be target-able 50% of the time). If the thief uses shadow refuge, knock them the hell out of it (warriors/guardians/mesmer/engineer/elementalist all can do it). If you push them out of shadow refuge before the animation ends then it will remove their stealth and give them the revealed debuff. If you have no knockback just run in there and start spamming attacks.
Knock thieves down, immobilize them, and generally CC the crap out of them. AoE fear whenever they go in stealth to wasted their stealth.
If the thief is dying and running away watch for the black mists swirls when they use abilities in stealth. Unless they managed to sit in a full shadow refuge they will show up before getting out of sight.
If you have AoE type traps just set them down under yourself, melee thieves pretty much have to chase you, especially if they are going for a backstab and will be forced to go through it.
Heal before you get to 50% health, no reason to give them a free kill because you let their best weapon come into play (If you can spam blinds or blocks 50% health is the time to do it).
If for some reason you think you shouldn’t bring a ultility to take a thief out, then no wonder why you die to them. Things like the guardian signet the knocks people down at a range of 1200 are amazing at denying thieves an escape.
Edit: I forgot to mention that channeled abilities will continue to hit a thief even if they go stealth during it. So things like the ranger rapid shot on longbow will be hugely helpful when taking on a thief that stealths a lot. Always spam your autoattack while they are invisible if you have nothing else to do. The worse thing that’ll happen is you either hit the thief or unblind yourself (also if your auto attack is a chain, recognize when it goes to the next step, since it’ll do that when you hit the thief).
(edited by Retanaru.2901)
Only reason to do a body shot before unload is if you have 25 in Deadly arts and don’t have any other conditions on target to get the extra 10% damage from. In fact that probably wouldn’t even be worth it unless you were in a very long fight with other team mates…
Interactions aren’t considered attacks. Anyone can use the F key without losing their stealth.
I’ve only got a couple things to cover. I’ll start with backstab because it gets the most flak. Once you really look at it, it becomes obvious the backstab isn’t the problem but that the other two abilities nearly always used with it are. C&D and the mug trait are where the most of the burst comes from. You’ve already decreased the C&D damage (acceptably in my opinion) and dancing dagger (too much imo). If it continues to be a problem the next obvious target would be to lower the damage from mug which does hit hard, but I’m forced to oppose this because lowering the damage on an offhand and a trait effects a lot more than just a “backstab” build. This is especially true with the already lacking Sword/Daggger combo ,which has amazing synergy, that almost no burst damage options aside from C&D and mug.
So the second problem with the “backstab” build is how fast the attacks land. To counter this I propose making it so that backstab rather than instantly applying its damage is turned into an unremoveable DoT that does damage the same way the Guardians greatsword pull does damage when you do not activate the second part. This might require renaming it to garrote or something more fitting and to stop a bug before it happens make it so that npcs remove it when they become friendly.
From here I want to talk about Sword and dagger’s dual skill flanking strike. It sounds amazing, but in reality it doesn’t perform well at all. You can simplify the problem down to that it takes too long to deliver it’s damage and suffers from pathing issues. You could fix the pathing issues by making it shadowstep the thief to either behind the target or to the other side of the target. This will cut down on the amount of time it takes too. From there in my opinion it should become similar to the D/P or P/D dual skill mechanic. When you activate the skill it should do the first stab that removes a boon, then shadowstep you for the “flank” and do the second stab that gives the damage.
Lastly, I’d like to talk about thief survive-ability. Most of it comes from stealth and evades. I don’t know if it was designed into the class, but another thing that can keep a thief alive is massive amounts of regeneration and traiting for other effects in stealth. Stealth is annoying to other players, and with all the traits that give it extra effects (condition removal, 5 second regen, a powerful innate regen, AoE blind, and faster initiative regen) it becomes extremely tempting to use it when ever possible. The other type of regen is the improved regen from leeching venoms (awesome buff to a underused trait!). Sadly the regeneration from stealth and leeching venoms do not work well together because they compete for the same trait slots. What I’m getting at is that thief wasn’t designed to take damage, and thus no one builds a thief to take damage. This means almost all thieves are building for damage first, and then survivability through simply not getting hit rather than living through damage (which is frustrating for other players in the PvP parts of the game). Buffing the regeneration side of thief by either outright buffs or the movement/changing of traits (make basilisks venom a utility and add a new signet that gives no damage, but more survivability as an elite? Make the haste trick a 4 second evade?)
would do well as giving thieves incentive to not build some new version of glass cannon. Maybe improving the non-off hand duel skills so that thieves are willing to sacrifice off-hand abilities to use them would spread the build types out more.
P.S. Other classes have single skills that do as much if not more damage than the “backstab” build combo ,let alone backstab by itself, in a similar if not less amount of time (killshot/hundred blades/mind wrack to name most I think), but are not being as targeted by complaints because there are many more choices for damage these classes can do. You may want to take this into account when balancing thieves who have very few weapons and thus skill options to use in builds. It would be interesting if thieves gained access to the other conditions.
(edited by Retanaru.2901)
I’ve been having luck going glass cannon equipment with a few valkyrie pieces to get up to 15k health and then traiting for survivablility. 1-10 signet of malice and well timed pistol whips are all you need even if you trait full glass cannon because you can kill the veterans extremely fast and switch to a better heal for bosses/evade tank the bosses. From there traiting for leeching venoms is quite good. With my build my venoms heal for 300+ so the spider venom heals for 1.5k or so, coupled with pistol whip and signet of malice I can often heal for more than 3k while damage multiple enemies (pistol whip itself can heal for 2.7k if you hit 3 enemies the whole time). Eventually I’ll have to switch to some other equipment to go farther since vitality is a bad counter to agony, but until then this works quite well.
Regeneration thief may be the only way to live through agony once you get hit by it all the time since our heals aren’t exactly too good. I’m thinking traiting for assasins reward, lifesteal venom, heal in stealth. Then have Spider venom and shadow refuge on the bar for the extra heals.
Edit: That isn’t to say you can’t also go shortbow/withdraw/roll for initiative for some beautiful cascading amounts of evade.
(edited by Retanaru.2901)