Guild Wars 2

Gray.9041:

Sunflowers.1729:

But can you run your elementalist without water, arcane, or cantrips? No, right?

I can. I run arcane right now, but I could live without it.

also, by without water do you mean the traitline or the attunements?

The trait line. Run a Fire/Air/Earth ele then, with no cantrips and a zerker amulet. Bet you wouldn’t survive 20s against anyone.

But can you run your elementalist without water, arcane, or cantrips? No, right? Similarly, I can run Thief with D/D which is not ‘optimal’. But I still maintain condi clear from SA trait line, lots of stealth, lots of burst damage, and only lose out on blinds and a daze. But try to run an acro/trickery/CS P/P build and you’ll die just as fast as that theoretical elementalist.

It’s true that changing from D/P to S/D loses a lot of defense like BP and head shot but obviously you get things like lots of teleports, evades, and immobilizes.

Also yes, I don’t see what’s wrong with people being able to counter stealth. Guardians can trait heavily for boons, and stack a bunch of them. Suddenly a necro can, with one single ability, change them all to conditions. Warriors can use cleansing ire (a GM trait) to counter conditions, but one well timed blind makes it useless. Engis can take both shield and toolkit to have lots of blocks, but an unblockable CC skill (necro mark) will mess them up. Just because you traited heavily for stealth doesn’t mean people shouldn’t be able to nullify it!

Aren’t you missing the fact that the revenant, engi, or ranger has to take a very specific trait line or skill which is in itself a big sacrifice too? Instead of Sic Em you could take signet of stone, or another ability that is less situational. Glint is a control build, what if your build doesn’t use Glint? Surely you aren’t going to use it just to counter one or two classes. Lock On is on the same tier as Engi’s perma-swiftness trait, although to be fair that trait line is quite popular. And again I compare things to D/P because it’s the best and most common build right now.

Like, everyone always complains about Ele right? Well, they have to take 3 cantrips, water/arcane traits, one specific healing skill, and use a dagger in main hand. That’s a very restrictive set of requirements too, and of course they complain about it. But again it’s not just Thief. Rangers must take wilderness survival grandmaster trait for any condi removal, and Guardians must take shelter. Warriors must take fast hands and cleansing ire (not too sure about that one).

If you’re comparing against the best builds of other classes, you should use the Thief’s best build too. Like, if we compared D/P to zerker S/D ele it suddenly looks like we have a massive advantage simply because S/D ele isn’t very good.

Also Withdraw > Hide in Shadows – you already have lots of stealth easily available. Steal from a mesmer clone (which can’t dodge) and you get 2 free stealths. Stealth on steal is nice too, as well as the BP+HS combo which can be done as a last resort.

Right. Sorry if it sounded that way, I was replying to Jana’s completely unfounded comments about not playing Thief at all.

Anyway once again I think stealth reveal will be slightly more common, similar to boon strip. People can take it in their traits and it will be on some weapons, but adding it in in such amounts will hardly send Thief to the garbage dump.

Ok yeah. Sorry. I still think I’m right though, but you can choose to disagree with it. Going to stop arguing with him cause it’s going nowhere.

Yeah so thieves are in there too, nobody is being forced to run full tanky gear because our active defenses are good. What’s your point?

Enlighten me, please, which part do I not understand? That we lack blocks, invulnerability, and innate tankiness? Oh wait look at all those active defenses. Look at the number of classes who can run a completely glass setup and get away with it? Oh wait look Thief is in there.

I’m done with this argument, L2P and then come back.

Edit: And damage doesn’t break, remove, inhibit, or reduce the effectiveness of stealth in any way at all. To answer the question above I think they will probably add counter stealth skills to a few skills, but not very widespread. Look at boon strip – not every class has it and it’s in varying amounts. I’m guessing anti stealth skills will end up being like that.

I knew someone would come up with that argument. Just because I actually put time into playing Thief and can kill people means I’m somehow lying? Want a screenshot? Or will you just say that I stole it from someone?

Jana.6831:

Sunflowers.1729:

What point am I missing? The only actually viable counter stealth skill now is Lock On because you don’t have to take a valuable utility slot right now.

But you have to take a master trait and are missing out on other traits – also I find easier to change a skill than to change one’s build.

The point is that there’s stealth counter given to some classes but thief don’t get anything in return, so we are being nerfed by that. We’re just lucky that a) 99% of all rangers I ever met suicide on my daggerstorm, no stealth needed for that and b) no one uses these skills/traits. Still, implementing them into this game is bad design.

Why is it bad design? From that logic we should remove flanking strike’s boon strip too since it ‘counters’ guardian hammer’s defense

What point am I missing? The only actually viable counter stealth skill now is Lock On because you don’t have to take a valuable utility slot right now. You can take Sic Em, okay, but it wastes a utility slot for a 40s skill that does pretty much nothing else but reveal.

Other defenses like protection have counter skills like boon strip so why shouldn’t stealth have some too?

Edit: Damage isn’t a counter to stealth any more than damage is a counter to protection/regeneration/healing/anything that isn’t invincibility or blur

Faux.1937:

Thats the problem, thieves already are forced into play a set way, we dont have options like other classes, and if Anet keeps adding ways to deal with our ONLY means to stop Incoming damage we will be garbage.

You just explain the 1 build we have for us, if Anet gives a few classes a way to deal with that build, what are we going to do then?

From you?

Edit: Oh that, sorry. Not from you. But I’ve seen a few people keep saying that ’D/P sucks now, Thief is worst class.etc"

Most classes have only 1 or 2 strong builds anyway. What’s going to happen to Eles if people have more ways to permanently chill them, for instance?

EVERYONE is forced to play a set way. I don’t like it but don’t pretend it’s only us who gets shafted. I’m not saying that crappy builds like P/P shouldn’t get buffed, I’m saying to stop pretending that our best build (D/P) sucks too.

Jana.6831:

Sunflowers.1729:

Our defense is being able to reset the fight at any time you want, keep an enemy permanently blinded, and also a zero-cooldown ranged daze (hi rapid fire)

Edit: Permanent blind may vary depending on enemy,

No sorry, we still have cooldowns, you still need to stealth to blind your enemy and that trait setup leaves you even more vulnerably than any other thief build – so yeah, the revealing in game is really bad for us and we got nothing in return.

You know shadow shot blinds right? All I’m saying is that you can keep your enemy blinded whenever you want.

Our defense is being able to reset the fight at any time you want, keep an enemy permanently blinded, and also a zero-cooldown ranged daze (hi rapid fire). Withdraw is another dodge and you have 50% vigor up time just from trickery.

Edit: Permanent blind may vary depending on enemy. Also Glint’s reveal is on a small radius (360), it’s nowhere near that of a shout (600)

Kageseigi.2150:

I don’t know about that. What’s really the point in roaming? It’s kind of like being a very weak and scared bully at school. Choose your fights VERY carefully. And only pick on the defenseless when they are alone. But if someone stands up to a bully and punches them in the nose, there’s really no course left to take other than to run away.

The reason for Thief and Mesmer roamers is because of stealth and mobility. They can hide and run away. Great for world exploration and scouting, but not much else. Kind of like running around in Minecraft picking on zombies. There’s no real purpose.

But in PvP, not being able to 1v1 on point in a combat-centric game feels like a pretty bad spot to me. Either let me be able to sustain a fight or have the capability to end it in one skillful burst. If I’m really supposed to just decap points when they are empty, then give me some unarmed capture-drones to fly around the map while I’m sitting near my spawn.

From what I’ve seen in PvP post-patch, damage has gone through the roof for everyone. That makes Thieves feel even squishier than before, especially with conditions like Burn and Confusion. It also feels like the Thief’s damage potential did not keep up with other professions’ defensive increases. It’s a “glass cannon” vs. “steel cannons.”

You’re missing the point completely – I still kill people 1v1 in WvW all the time. In T1 NA, where the roamers are pretty good (usually). Sometimes I do it solo, sometimes in a small group of 2-3. And it’s not just me, you still see tons of Thieves dominating people because they figured out the proper builds to do so. Basically we aren’t weak, you just haven’t figured out how to adapt to the patch, either through playstyle or build.

Also, not being able to 1v1 doesn’t even mean everything. Let’s take LoL or Dota as an example. Some characters are unable to 1v1 anybody but are still #1 priority in every game because of how strong they are in certain facets. Similarly bunker Guardian isn’t going to kill anybody but they can hold a point for ages.

Being able to both 1v1 (even better than we can right now) and decap would permanently seal in the current meta of always having one thief in every pvp team, because why take any other class which can “1v1” you but doesn’t also have the super fast decapping potential? Even now you see Thief is more popular than Mes in competitive games.

You can also use it to bait people (on all classes). Everyone dodges the Illusionary Berserker wave-sword-in-a-circle animation but if you cancel before the phantasm goes off it goes on a short CD and they just wasted a dodge. It’s especially good on powerful long-CD abilities since people will always want to dodge them (good skills to use it on are moa, phantasms, cloak and dagger.etc)

Oh yes, of course. My point is that the best Thief build (D/P + SB) is still competitive with the top builds of other classes (e.g. D/D ele). And the reason why I bring up WvW roaming is that it shows the actual potential of the class.

In PvP, there is no reason to try to 1v1 people. You can, sure, but it’s usually better to just go +1 a point since you have the best mobility. But when roaming in WvW, you have to fight because there are no circles to capture (well except like guards, but that’s seldom the case). If people still use Thieves there, then it means that they aren’t ‘crap’ like this forum likes to claim, but in fact still very good and even top tier at things that are not decapping - such as actually fighting someone.

That being said other builds like P/P and S/D need a buff. But this is the case with most other classes anyway. When did you last see a non D/D (or D/F) Arcane/Water/X Elementalist? Or a PvP ranger without a Wolf pet, or points in the Wilderness Survival line, or with an off-hand axe? It’s not just Thieves with sub-par builds. Yes these off-meta weapons and trait lines should be buffed, of course. But to pretend that we are being unfairly targeted is absurd.

Edit: Also thieves were stupidly broken back at release, why do you think after so many nerfs the class is still widely played and meta in every game mode (except zerging) even today?

Nocta.5274:

Outside of unfair situations, Thieves have a very hard time winning 1v1 against any classes beside themselves, so keep that in mind. They have to play dirty to be worth something.

Not true in the slightest. I have a very easy time killing Rangers, Mesmers in general, as well as all glass builds. Other tankier builds like D/D ele or Guardian it is true that you have a hard time winning since they can regenerate continuously but they aren’t going to be killing you either.

Also I might add that they are traiting to be tanky and hold a point and it’s hard for many people – not only Thieves – to kill them 1v1.

Edit: How to fight D/D eles is you chill them after they switch to water attunement, interrupt Drake’s Breath if they try to hit you with it, steal to them at the moment they cast burning speed (you swap positions, so it doesn’t hit you), and don’t run through the ring of fire. And don’t hit them when they have shocking aura up, obviously.

Edit2: Or just don’t fight them. I mean, why would you waste time doing that when you can just go to another point and claim it/+1 a point for an easy win instead.

I mean, the stealth is slower since you have to cast two skills….not that it’s slower at moving around.

Edit: Yeah PvE is a separate concern, I don’t claim to be very knowledgeable in that area. But it does seem that Thieves are still in the meta, judging from the amount of ’LF1M fractal 50 Meta Thief/Ele/Warrior" posts I see. Not too sure.

Raiden.1375:

Only the stealth granting portion of CnD wouldn’t be blockable, the damage still would be, and you would still have to be in range to stealth. D/P has been able to stealth just as easily without even being in close range forever now, while also applying lots of blinds in the process. To help compensate for this, measures are taken to discourage camping in the easier to access stealth as well as #5. Also, I think a lot of people would disagree about thieves currently being in a good spot right now, other than their mobility potential.

D/P is also slower and you can interrupt the HS. Making CnD’s stealth unblockable and more importantly unevadeable would catapult D/D to the status of absurdly broken.

And I know a lot of people disagree about Thieves being in a good spot, but just looking at the class distribution in WvW roaming will tell you that currently Thieves and Mesmers are still doing amazingly well. Again, PvP teams always have a Thief. What more do you want?

Did you really suggest that CnD can’t be blocked or even evaded?

Thieves are in a good spot right now, for both PvP and WvW. I mean, if you had a class which could not only decap better than anyone else, but also 1v1 anyone, would that be balanced? I don’t think so. As it stands you can 1v1 some people anyway, but obviously it may be a waste of time and you should just go decap something else instead. Not because you can’t beat them, but because it’s just better to decap.

In WvW again you see that most roamers are Thieves or Mesmers (T1 NA, it’s about evenly split), showing that they are in a good spot. Venomshare is nice in zergs too. Note that you can use D/D in WvW, it’s pretty good there for the absurd burst potential.

What does need buffs are builds like P/P and S/D, not buffing the already popular and good builds like D/P (and D/D, which contrary to popular opinion does have a few benefits over D/P like faster stealth (for less init) and higher burst)

Edit: Disclaimer I play thief about 80% of the time, don’t pull that ‘you never play thief’ crap on me

Edit 2: What they should do is massively nerf thieves and mesmers so that their burst zerker builds are on equal footing with other zerker classes defenses (S/D ele, static discharge engi.etc), and give them more stat-based defenses rewarding them for building tanky. Like for example, a trait that says “every point of armor increases your endurance regeneration by x%”

Maybe PU should be changed to read:

“Abilities that grant stealth have a further 50% reduction in cool down” instead (and the boons.etc). Obviously it doesn’t have to be 50% exactly but you get the idea.

The main complaint is that PU provides very long stealth durations in which it is hard to predict when burst will come. On the other hand PU should still maintain its defensive nature. This change would satisfy both requirements, allowing Mesmers to stealth more often but for shorter periods (like thief).

Also Anet please fix “The Pledge”, it’s broken to give way more reduction than it should. Like seriously, this trait alone just exacerbates the problem so much. In fact it snowballs on itself – if you can stealth more often with it, you can reduce your cool downs to stealth more…

Edit: It says ‘further’ because there are traits that already reduce the cool downs, so it should stack, obviously.

Akamaru.7415:

Sunflowers.1729:

you can use certain keybindings to turn your character instantaneously and roll forwards.

I don’t think that works anymore. I have been struggling to get that ‘about face’ working on my mesmer recently. It turns the camera round but your character won’t turn, even with “w”.

I did know about this, in my original post I said it would mean our revenants will funnily be travelling through Tyria backwards. That post is out of date now though and this one is abit cluttered too.

I think the conclusion seems to be that revenants will be the second class that won’t be getting any map mobility. Unless Glint brings a blink, which is unlikely.

No you can still do it, I repeatedly used the dodge skill to travel forwards earlier today. You need to key bind both “Free Camera” and “About Face”, then press and hold the first one, then about face, then press the skill. Release Free Camera after.

Well, I tried to make a build based around healing with auras. Using the trait that says “auras heal” (tempest grandmaster), it can theoretically put out a ton of healing, significantly more than the warrior healing signet’s passive anyway. Link is below.

http://dulfy.net/gw2traits#build=AgACeAW0Bvw~

Basically, what you will do is swap to an attunement, say fire for example. Cast whatever skills you want to and then channel the overload. Completing this channel gives an aura, which heals people through the trait (the trait doesn’t have a cooldown on the healing part, only on the frost aura proc).

Conveniently, it takes 5 seconds (wait for overload to become available) + 5 seconds (channel overload) to rotate through an attunement. This coincides with the base cooldown on attuning. Thus, you can do this:

Fire>Water>Air>Water>Earth>Water>Fire.etc (don’t overload water)

Combined with the healing shout which heals all allies, as well as the fire and water shouts (both of which apply auras) you can put out a good amount of sustained healing.

Of course the traditional sources of healing like attuning to water and evasive arcana are still there. That’s why you don’t overload water, so you don’t get locked out of it for too long (but obviously use the water overload if you really need to)

Also, I used trooper runes to help with condition clearing, since it is a supportive build.

For weapons use whatever you want, maybe warhorn for the boon sharing.

Edit: math. With 400 healing power, applying an aura heals for 680 health.
From overloading, you apply aura once per 10s, which is 68 hp/s
From “Feel the Burn”, you heal for 680 hp every 20s, which is 34 hp/s
From “Flash Freeze”, 680 hp per 25s, this is 27.2 hp/s
“Wash the Pain Away” is 3680 hp per 25s, that’s 147.2 hp/s
Attuning to water once per 10s is 1699 hp = 169 hp/s
Evasive Arcana is another 169 hp/s

Ignoring other healing effects from weapon auras, auras on proc, combo-field auras, regeneration, weapon skills, that’s ~600 hp/second to your entire group, which is not bad. It also removes lots of conditions and obviously gives people auras, which are great.

Admittedly the aura heal just doesn’t do that much in comparison to the last 3 sources of healing.

Akamaru.7415:

Sylent.3165:

Sunflowers.1729:

Use Riposting Shadows (Shiro utility skill 1) as a ‘leap’ since it has no cooldown. Granted you have to do the fancy reverse keybinding trick but apart from that you can move around pretty quickly.

Staff 5 is also a dash, although obviously that requires you to use staff.

Right, it’s a 1200 dash to target. That’s massive.bind to e key and your all set for a dash.

I’m talking about moving from A to B, so ooc (out of combat) e.g. WvW, if you have a target then there is no problem as there are many shadowsteps

I meant utility skill 1, which is the backward dodge. Much like Withdraw on Thief, you can use certain keybindings to turn your character instantaneously and roll forwards.

Use Riposting Shadows (Shiro utility skill 1) as a ‘leap’ since it has no cooldown. Granted you have to do the fancy reverse keybinding trick but apart from that you can move around pretty quickly.

Staff 5 is also a dash, although obviously that requires you to use staff.

Ygdrad.7839:

Speaking of condi mesmers being broken let me tell you my story. My friend on his condi warrior and I on my medi guardian just puking out aoe heals and condition removal were having fun during WvW reset last night. We were pretty much single(duo?)-handedly responsible for holding onto all 3 bloodlust buffs for a good 6 hours straight. We 1v2’d, 2v3’d, even fought 4 to 5 people a few times and came on top because we worked together and communicated over voice chat, healing, cleansing and CCing for each other, we were basically unstoppable.

At a certain point we ran into a trio of troublesome condi necros working together and modified our build for heavy condition countering and beat them. Not too long after, while still running anti-condi(I’m even using -40% condi duration food) builds we run into just this one mesmer who used PU + condis + perplexity. We were just plain unable to kill him thanks to mesmer’s plentiful survival tools, and while we were able to survive indefinitely in up to 2v3 and some 2v4’s earlier, he could singlehandedly wipe us both out with a neverending spam of high confusion and torment stacks, no amount of cleansing or healing could save us, we would eventually go down. The few times we were actually doing not-so-horrible all he had to do was moa one of us after a condi bomb so we couldn’t counter it and then just sweep up whoever was left.

This is not a “get good” problem, we fought and won countless fights and held all 3 bloodlusts for 6 hours, if we ran into a problematic combination of players we just adapted our builds and countered them, but NOTHING we could do allowed us to beat this one mesmer 2v1, something IS broken.

So why is it a problem when the two of you can 1v2, 2v3, 2v5.etc as you mentioned, but it’s not okay when the condi mesmer can 1v2 you? Maybe he or she just knows how to play very well (better than the two of you), and adapted their own build and playstyle to counter yours.

If skilled players will dodge the last bounce of Mirror Blade anyway, then the only effect of the nerf will be against people who are can’t dodge the bounces, or when you catch someone by surprise with the stun mantra.

So in games with a lower skill level, Mesmers will be easier to deal with, which I don’t think that’s a problem. Stealth burst is less as well, which is fine again because 100-0ing people shouldn’t be possible. And it’s not that big of a nerf anyway, Mesmer will still be a good class.

And can you guys stop going off topic and discussing PU…? FWIW I don’t even use PU any more because Inspiration is so much better (aside from WvW veiling)

Keira Ferland.5619:

Sunflowers.1729:

Use your spammable stealth and great mobility to go to the back of their zerg and pick off the squishy targets.

I’m assuming you’ve never played gank since the ranger buffs. Do you know how hard this is with rangers in their current state?

Yeah, Rangers are a bit difficult to deal with. But apart from them there isn’t really anyone else who you have to watch out for.

In any case, I think most people realize by now that Thieves (in general, not you in particular) complain all the time. Remember stealth trap and how they complained that it would make them unviable? Or the revealed change? Or like Mug not being able to crit? Or CnD damage reduction?

Yet somehow Thieves did fine after all the changes. Even now I am not having too much trouble, and also see many other Thief players who are doing fine too. I wouldn’t put too much stock in the constant “wow Thief is useless” complaints.

DHawk.2687:

besides the fact that you cannot permastealth unless you always have all your stealth skills on cd and use up your ini all the time
in addition to that you cannot do it while infight because you cannot weaponswap all teh time for pistol#5 shortbow#2
plus it only works when playing x/p
(yes d#2 will also grant stealth but bow works better)

well yeah, i can pick off the squishy targets at 50% hp
so can a ranger, or a mesmer
since most mesmer run rune of the traveler they don’t need an extra blink, they go stealth for 6 sec, run over, burst him down, blink out, done
same thing as thief, only thief uses up half his ini on the way there

Okay…then…run Rune of Traveler on Thief and you can do the same thing too with Blinding Powder (and steal). What kind of argument is that?

illenos.5134:

Apolo.5942:

And here i thought thiefs had stupid burst in pvp.

19k hp 3.3k armor from 100% to 0% in what 1 may be 2 seconds?.

Before they patched the whole trait thingy you had to options on thief: go full zerker yolo mode or use a more balanced build. Full zerker is still there and the other build died because you have to kill your enemy before they kill you and it got quiet easy with all those changes to kill thiefs…

I’m doing fine as a non-full-zerker Thief. Yeah obviously other classes are better at sustained fights since that is what they were designed for but don’t forget you can reset the fight as many times as you want, until you win (or get bored).

You’re doing it wrong if you think Thief is useless. Apart from stealthing dolyaks and scouting (in perma stealth, which Mesmers can’t do), there are lots of other things we can do better than any other class.

If you try to run in the zerg (ie with the guardians and warriors) obviously you will die. Use your spammable stealth and great mobility to go to the back of their zerg and pick off the squishy targets. Mesmers can’t do this as easily because they have one teleport skill so they have to manually walk behind which takes lots of time.

It’s like playing a burst assassin in league. You don’t have to be able to 1v1 everybody to contribute greatly to your zerg. I mean it’s nice to be able to, and Thieves still can (if you don’t suck), but even if you aren’t able to it doesn’t mean you are useless at all.

You can also run venom share or medic Thief, both of which are great although they don’t conform to many players’ expectations.

I just wish that they increased the CD on Mantras instead of fixing the background recharging behavior, because Mantras have gone back to being very irritating to use (when you have 1 charge left and have to expend it, then wait for the cool down, then cast it again).

That said my build didn’t even use Mantras so it probably won’t make any difference.

Either
a) Stealth Trap and if the Thief/Mesmer sucks they will die quickly. But they have to be really bad, or somehow have all their other defensive skills (Shadowstep, Distortion.etc) on cooldown.

b) Ignore them. Not that easy since Thief in particular has great mobility and can keep chasing you. Mesmers are easier to escape from but they can burst you before you react. And if you are on a Guardian or something good luck running away.

c) If you can’t beat them, join them. I have always played Thief (they are still good although the skill floor is higher than before the patch) and also recently dusted off my Mesmer after the buffs. If everyone else abuses stealth I don’t see why you shouldn’t either.

Edit: What Xenesis said above. You can be the best player in the game or whatever but if you run into a group of 3+ you’re gonna die unless you have stealth (or you can outrun them).

And as a Thief main they (we) are still very dangerous, it’s just that you can’t face-roll anymore and expect to win or escape all the time.

Ok I’ll make an exception and post one last time. Do you even hear what you are saying?

Seriously, anyone else can just read his original post (I didn’t quote the entirety of it above) and you see the hypocrisy. It’s so big and obvious.

Basically what Alpha said above. Your comparisons are not fair in the slightest and nobody will take you seriously.

Edit: Okay I really should have organized it better. Basically you said that when I use steal to stealth, that’s making a sacrifice? Really? I guess all Mesmer stealth is a sacrifice then because it has a CD. Decoy uses a stun break, that’s a sacrifice if you don’t use it when stunned. Pledge is my condi removal, that’s a sacrifice if I use it without a condition. MI gives reflection when traited, oh no I sacrificed it too.

Now you’re just being disingenuous and ignoring the facts.

Does PU give condi removal (no, but torch trait removes one). Does it give cooldown reduction (no, but pledge does, for two skills only). A massive hard hitting attack? (no). Consistent might? (No, it gives crappy amounts of might). The SA line gives all of those benefits consistently, all the time.

And try to counterplay my instant 1200 range dazing 20s CD stealth. Gotcha. So it puts me into melee range. You speak of it as ‘counterplay’. Guess what, you can use it on any clone, or even without a target. And I want to use it as a teleport. Are all teleports bad now because they put you into melee range?

Furthermore BP is 4 seconds when traited into SA Get your facts right. With each post it just reveals that you have never played Thief.

I’m not going to continue arguing with you, this is pointless and a waste of my time.

bhagwad.4281:

And are we even addressing the torch CD reduction the longer one is in stealth? You mention 25% less damage in stealth? Weigh that against the boons a PU mesmer gets when in stealth. Blinding powder = 3 seconds stealth. Decoy = 6 seconds with PU.

Can I get condi removal, might, cooldown reduction (initiative), health regeneration, movespeed, less damage taken, and a massive hard hitting attack in stealth? You can get some of those with PU, true, but it’s not anywhere as much. Oh yes make it spammable on my weapon skill too.

Your claims of “everyone knows that I’m right” are kind of showing that you don’t have anything to argue with now.

Contortions? That was just how to counter someone standing in BP. I didn’t even mention all the other instant stealths available to Thieves, or all the passive benefits from stealthing.

Let’s list them right here:
Blinding Powder (can be used when stunned, or to instantly combo with BP as it is a blast finisher)
Stealth on Steal (21s CD, traited, can be used when stunned)
Stealth from stealing from other Thieves
Shadow Refuge (it’s instant, technically).
Edit: And Last Refuge for completeness although nobody uses it.

And I, too, have played both classes. I can also claim to know that you are wrong, although that doesn’t prove anything

You can run back into the BP and HS away from the enemy standing inside, to continue stacking stealth. Shouldn’t be too hard if you do it with the camera facing down. And really doing that is putting a big “BACKSTAB ME” sign on your head.

Also, if you block my Backstab, I pay the heavy price of….waiting 1 second and Backstabbing you again. While gaining might, removing conditions, taking less damage, and regaining initiative.

Really? CnD into Steal is too hard? I have a very hard time believing that.

Edit: You can also trait it to automatically stealth you so there isn’t even a need to CnD.

DHawk.2687:

Sunflowers.1729:

I don’t know what kind of thieves you’ve been fighting who don’t have a million different instant ways to get behind you to backstab.

Edit: As a Thief player myself stealth has very little counterplay. And where’s the counterplay to our spammable teleports? Or instant get-out-of-any-trouble Shadowstep? There isn’t either. So….yeah.

spamable teleports xD all together we have shortbow, which you don’t use in a fight to get behind the enemy, the Shadowstep, Steal, Infiltrators signet, Sword 2# which doesn’t really matter since sword is somewhat dead, and dp #3 which won’t help if you are stealthed
sounds like a lot but they all have a lot of cd/ini cost
a port is a port, none of them are counterable, ele has a port, necro kinda does, guard, mesmer, etc
big deal
but the fact that except for Mass Invis every stealth of the mesmer is insta cast, the only one the thief has is blinding powder. That gives the mesmer an unfair advantage for some ppl, since it is impossible to counter the instacast, unless you wildly predict it’s coming, which won’t work every time, as you might know

I’m not riding the Mesmer is so op train pls nerf, I’m just trying to point out that the teleport argument is irrelevant to the comparison of stealth

You can chain DP3 into backstab, from stealth. Just press 3>1

And anyway, Mesmer has 2 instant stealth skills, while Thief has 2 as well. Trait for stealth on steal, that’s a 20s CD instant stealth.

I don’t know what kind of thieves you’ve been fighting who don’t have a million different instant ways to get behind you to backstab.

Edit: As a Thief player myself stealth has very little counterplay. You forgot that the BP+HS combo blinds you with a projectile making landing CC extra difficult. And where’s the counterplay to our spammable teleports? Or instant get-out-of-any-trouble Shadowstep? There isn’t either. So….yeah.

And the counter to “Oh look he has Aegis and I’m blinded never mind I will just 1111111111111111”

Personally I don’t mind the WH at all, since – like the Mesmer – Eles will get more mechanics instead of just a new weapon. So they can be used with different weapons.

But there are a few reasons why a lot of people don’t like WH over sword:

1) They made/bought some kind of expensive sword skin and are annoyed that they can’t use it anymore. Well this is kind of self-explanatory.

2) Swords are ‘cooler’. Again this is up to your preference but it seems a lot of people think that way.

3) Sword – as a main hand weapon – means there’s a 3rd choice between scepter and dagger. And it has more skills too, although 4 of them would just be the auto attack.

Pyriel.4370:

The relationship between classes is more symbiotic like the pokemon elemental system where one class may be weak in certain areas but exceed expectations in others. E.g. A well played d/p thief will lose to a well played medi guard. A well played Ele may lose to a well played Ranger.

Tiers would never work for this type of system, even 1v1. It would be more like a Chart.

I know this is slightly off topic but competitive pokemon players make tiers too.

Mesmer trait “The Pledge” (Illusions minor) is bugged to cause Torch skills to cool down much faster than intended while in stealth. Instead of 1.5% of total recharge per second it is giving about 3 times as much.

That doesn’t change anything you can just cast your stealth skill 0.1s after stealth expires. It just makes stealth more annoying to use.

I think they just forgot a percentage sign and instead of a 1.5 percent (of total CD) reduction per second, it’s an additional 1.5 seconds each second.

Would make sense right? 30/(1+1.5) = 12s CD.

Actually if you land CnD while in midair, the fire and air sigils don’t prokittenil you reach the ground (and are thus in stealth).

It was on a thread somewhere like a month ago…

Oh I just tested it, if you stay in stealth permanently, Prestige cools down in 12 seconds. (I think) this is a bug

The trait should cause Prestige to cooldown an additional 1.5% of 30s every second (0.015*30 = 0.45 second every second from the trait).

Therefore, if you remain in stealth permanently, Prestige should cooldown at a rate 1.45 secs every second, so the actual CD should be 30/1.45 = 20.7

But it isn’t so it’s bugged. IF it worked properly, and you used both Decoy andPrestige with PU, you would get 12 seconds of +1.5% CD reduction, which adds up to 18%. So actually, a 20% flat reduction would be better than an un-bugged state of Pledge.

Summary: Pledge is broken, cools down super fast. 20% CD is actually better than Pledge (assuming it works as listed)

Edit: Thanks word filter, you can’t type 0.45 seconds because it changes it to kitten

You can’t with just 1 mesmer. At 7 mesmers and a 72s CD on Mass Invis (traited) you can keep stealth up almost permanently using just the elite skill. So, there is some number in between 2 and 6 where you can – depending on traits and weapon/utility skills chosen – keep an entire group of mesmers permanently stealthed.

Or maybe they are grouped with a Thief, who can provide much better group stealth.

Anyway we can do the calculations for a group of 5 mesmers.
over a period of 72s, 50s is through Mass Invis, leaving 22s.
Torch 4, assuming permanent stealth, has a cooldown of <30s. So you can use it twice or more in the 72s period.
Decoy as well has 32s CD (traited). Again you can use it twice, at least.
2x 6s (decoy) + 2x 6s (prestige) = 24.
24>22 so with 5 mesmers running torch and decoy you can keep up permanent stealth as well.

I’d like to add that you can do this on Thief too, although they will sometimes have to stop and blast smoke fields or stand in SR.

Edit: With Pledge trait, Torch, Illusions line (for decoy CD reduction), MI, and of course PU but no veil or mimic you can theoretically keep stealth up with a group of 4 mesmers. But only barely.

With 3 mesmers, mimic (if used with decoy) and all of the above skills except veil, you can have 70.4/72s uptime (97.8%) of stealth. You can get perma stealth if veil is used by one of the 3 mesmers.

Note that I assumed stealth was permanently up for the sake of the math, so if someone screws up it might affect torch CD reduction and cause their permanent stealth to mess up.