Guild Wars 2

Tulisin.6945:

Teerwik.1650:

I have yet to see anyone however successfully use SoM in wvwvw (successfully as in not melt in something larger then 1v1-1v3) much less without SoS.

SoM is an excellent WvW heal, but you have to adopt a much more offensive playstyle. With SoM, things like shortbow’s poison field become powerful heals, dodges with Uncatchable are a good way to heal up, and Dagger Storm becomes near-invincibility. This means you have to maintain pressure instead of the attack->retreat style that some builds prefer. The important thing to remember is that, in a pinch, SoM has fairly good active healing for an escape.

SoS is great for travel if you aren’t traited for perma-swiftness, but I’d switch it out when preparing for actual combat if you can, it doesn’t pull its weight. Because of this, I encourage people to not put it in their listed builds. It is assumed that you’re going to slot it in for travel, might as well list what you’re actually using for combat.

heh, you again.
1. SoS does pull it weight, you are still moving faster in combat.
2. If you are going for perma swiftness you are losing big time on other things
3. SoM does jack in wvwvw. At most you will get 100-150 per heal out of it, even an arrow cart will out damage your SoM even with Assassin’s reward. SoM might become useful in wvwvw if we get a 1200 range weapon so you can just sit back without being in everyones range or at least at the edge of it. Why waste a healing slot on a 90 second cooldown elite, that is the jist of it’s worth. There is no way in heck SoM can ever be compared to the sheer target drop of HiS, much less the heal AND cond removal. I would even take Withdraw over SoM any day, especially when coupled with Roll for init

JaNordy.6149:

Guys I caught this Teerwik guy camping jumping puzzle earlier, he is breaking TOS by building siege and he disguised himself as a pink moa. Thinking Murguma cant catch him in the act. He stands out more than Bill Murray did in Edward Scissor Hands.

Maybe more effort at playing legit, and less at trolling you guys might have some respect. But no matter, it is not uncommon for people to insticually resort to humor when faced with guilt. Until then, kiddo

saiyr.3071:

Anubbyss.3805:

When it comes to Maguuma on the other hand I have nothing against the server as a whole, rather I feel sorry for them having to deal with Goon Squad who always lives up to the bad reputation they’ve earned across numerous games for many years now :\

The only reason you should feel sorry for Maguuma is because of the people who incessantly pile on hatred for [GOON] and lump other people in with them. Like I said before, many people have played with us on Maguuma and don’t have anything bad to say about us.

reputation, reputation, reputation.

I thought we already went over this, you only hurt yourself when you post.
Yes tons and tons of people just incessantly put the blame on GOON, accross multiple games. Yea, all those many people, must be wrong. haha
See what I did there.

Keep being overly defensive (or rather keep playing like people outside your guild are overly defensive ABOUT your guild) lmao..
See: guilt

Sure, you can let damage thieves take in stealth make them “Predator” transparent, but then you have to give them perma stealth for at least initiating combat. (only useable out of combat).

Sure you can give backstab an initiative cost, but you have to make it do more then damage, currently it only benefits 1 build, have it do conditions as well

stinkypants.8419:

Since we’re playing the build game, here’s my iteration…

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQRAoY4YlcmSOHcy8E+JFxmCfKU/DfVXQ3jrq1qC;TwAgyCuo8xAjAG7XOfkftCYswOg5CA

High initiative generation and stealth abilities. I’ve been running this with D/D, but have been trying P/D as well. SB as my second.

PVE or Spvp im guessing? I can see it working for sure.
I have yet to see anyone however successfully use SoM in wvwvw (successfully as in not melt in something larger then 1v1-1v3) much less without SoS.

Rabh.2493:

Thank you for leaving our server at some mysterious point in the past Teerwik, you did all us maguumans a huge favour. Funny how none of the guilds in our server alliance feel the same way as you do..?

edit: furthermore, Emry Bays reputation for having some whiny forum babies has been well an truly held up.

Ofc your “server alliance” doesn’t feel the same way, perhaps you forgot to read the part about of “loyalty” above “legit”

“Mysterious”?
“Whiny”?
“Forum babie”?

You sure are opening up on here, but sorry I am not a therapist. This is not the place for that.

DrWhom.3105:

Us Maguumans will never surrender to your “guilty until proven innocent” New WvWvW Order, Teerwik. These colors don’t run buddy.

Denial, Naiveness, and apparently talking in 3rd person; go hand in hand

Sladeakakevin.4162:

Wow I have to say that nearly everyone in this post is acting so immaturely. Crying that 1 or 2 hackers represent the ENTIRE SERVER. Or complaining that they got night-capped and it “isn’t fair”.

The beginning of this week was a great fight, but your (EB) night-team is too small and couldn’t defend. That’s just how it goes, crying about it isn’t helping your case at all. Better luck next time we fight.

There it is again. Claiming “Crying”, because someone doesn’t agree with your point of view. I am sure if you google maps “Therapist” I bet you can find a highly rated one within a 10 mile radius, most likely less. This deep seeded issue is further exposed by you saying almost everyone in the thread is acting immature, but of course not yourself.

Do I need to explain or post a definition of reputation?

I was on Maguuma before EB. I witnessed the same issue from maguuma when I was there, even asked multiple times in team chat everytime I witnessed one if they are seeing it as well and could get a video of it. But I am sure it is either members of a large guild or a general “Loyalty” thing that causes the defensiveness that was and gets presented. Even TAC was on Maguuma before EB, and they moved at the start of last matchup. I am sure you can even ask their members what they have witnessed from maguuma players as well as the reputation of GOON.

Interesting how EBs last couple matchups didnt have this problem, nor were the servers opposing maguuma in the matchup before last engaged in these activities.

If someone is the only one you know with the reputation for stealing, and something is stolen. Then you can justifiably expect it was them.

If certain guild(s) on a certain server are the only ones you know with the reputation for exploiting, hacking and engaging in activities that are not intended. Then you can justifiably expect it was them. Furthermore, with such reputation is now up to the accused party to prove they are not guilty, rather then the accuser. It is how the world works, and with the extensiveness and chronic occurances, your entire SERVER now has that reputation.

lol is this a joke, or is a mod also playing on maguuma…

saiyr.3071:

It is literally impossible to prove that one server has more numbers than the other unless one has queues and the other doesn’t. It’s not even worth talking about it. However, your attempts to slander our guild can be proven by a single screenshot, and your inability to do so implies that you are just lying. And I like how you think any disagreement from us means we’re obviously guilty. Very logical.

Impossible? hardly. I can say the same from this single screenshot you expect, especially with your attitude and reputation, what is stopping you from claiming it was someone from another goon guild. But hey, reputation is everything, and your guild has a very bad rap, so that leads to very justifiable expectations as well.

Let me help you out since you don’t seem to understand the concept:

de·fen·sive (d-fnsv)
adj.
1. Intended or appropriate for defending; protective.
2.
a. Intended to withstand or deter aggression or attack: a defensive weapons system; defensive behavior.
b. Of or relating to the effort to prevent an opponent from gaining points in a game or athletic contest.
c. Performed so as to avoid risk, danger, or legal liability: defensive driving; defensive medicine,
3. Of or relating to defense.
4. Psychology Constantly protecting oneself from criticism, exposure of one’s shortcomings, or other real or perceived threats to the ego.
n.
1. A means of defense.
2. An attitude or position of defense.

noun
6.
a position or attitude of defense: to be on the defensive about one’s mistakes.
7.
Obsolete . something that serves to defend.

http://www.core.eqi.org/empathy_defensiveness.htm
http://www.docdreyfus.com/psychologically-speaking/defending-oneself-or-being-defensive/

Yahtzee

lil baby anime.6834:

hey if you have a problem w/ hackers might I suggest reporting them to the people who can actually do something about it rather than bogging this thread down with your useless whining?? thanks everyone!

Yea, hey, kinda like if you claim you have less numbers or if you only have 10-20 nightcrew that can take every map, you should provide proof too instead of bogging down the thread. Also, if you think my post was whining, just to give you a helpful hint, that shows just from a psychological aspect some serious self esteem issues. Kinda like how kids think anyone that doesn’t agree with them is trolling. I like the 3 very defensive posts that followed my above post. You know what they say about guilt

P.S. They were reported, but doubt anything will happen just like the botters that have been reported over and over and never any action has been taken against

BabelFish.7234:

I’ve tested out my full set, with 3313 attack I’m averaging around 6k total damage from the ravens, if they crit I’ll reach 10k.

screenshots…….

elorei.6251:

There may have been some TAC killing your yaks in the opener over and over, but I didn’t see them. That was shadowmoon doing it, maybe we were just invisible so much that you couldn’t see our guild tags? We practiced permastealth for a week just for this tactic.

I was at first upset that we were not getting the props we should have for all of those dead yaks, but in hindsight, if you saw us so little that you thought we were someone else, we were doing a good job.

TAC was killing their Yaks over and over as well as their player escorts, taking their supply camps over and over. Only doing that however is boring, so TAC players are usually built to actually kill other players, not perma stealth

Suralin.3947:

The thing about Death Blossom are the 3 Bleeds you tack on and you can only spam it 3 times before needing to steal to do one more.

I currently run a Condition Thief build focused more on spamming DB to get those bleeds up, dodging to drop additional caltrops that cause bleed, and then stealing to get an additional death blossom. Afterwards, I stealth, create distance, and use the shortbow until I can spam more death blossom. It works well in WvW and PvE. For PvE, you can swap out Blinding Power for Roll for Initiative to get more bleed stacks in.

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQRAoY4YlcmSOHcy8E+JFxmCfKU/DfVXQ3jrq1qC;TwAgyCuo8xAjAG7XOfkftCYswOg5CA

So my tip, as a D/D death blossom is to increase condition duration a bit more.

Yikes. That is a really bad build no offense.
You have points wasted in critical strikes, when you are not crit based and don’t have enough prec/crit damage on your gear to make light of it. You also have 5 in DA for the poison on steal. Not only is that single target, when you are focusing the build on an AOE ability, but poison is lackluster anyway (might be worth it if it was 10s of burning).
You can get good init regen from acro and SA trees and quadrupling the survivability of your build. If you want even more cond duration, grab some pizza for the food buff

My roommate has been condition on his thief since the week after headstart
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQRAoY4YlUmKP3ey5E+5EB3Dji0m6posjtTBXtKA;TwAgyCuo8xAjAG7MOfkzsCYswOg5CA

Copy and paste

I def like it. 2 things tho…
Poison doesn’t stack, you have an ability stating it stacks poison twice.

2nd, Id prefer a chain weapon (like the one from Ninja Assassin) with all abilities ranging from 500-900 and mostly AOE, with that same scorpion wire weapon ability on 1 of them.

We def need more specialized sets tho so builds aren’t being left out with only 1 viable attack in multiple weapon combos.

Yes Ehmry didn’t get any major transfers except [TAC] near the beginning of last matchup.
Could def use more Oceanics tho

Ok, someone was saying 1k per hit earlier, so I figured you were basing off of that. I still want to see screenshots of this 1900-3900 damage. They were hitting for 50ish in my condition gear+build and 80ish in full burst gear+build. They hit about 13 times total sometimes less, for over 30 tests so far..

Runcore.5107:

I like runes of the mad king. I have tested it 10x on 80 level orrians and with some critical hits I did average damage to single target about 1900-2687 damage.

Screenshot or it didnt happen. Quit trolling or be reported as such, how would such a 6 set only do 50 damage a hit to players in wvwvw and 1-2k in PVE.

Tried the set, the birds only hit for 30-50 damage, so much for 1k hits

might actually have to whip out the fraps and keep it ready at all times, my roommate saw a maguuma engy and thief speedhacking yesterday in maguuma BL, then a ranger today in Eternal

I agree the cap is silly. Otherwise they need to make it so bleeds have a secondary function like doing direct damage to the target if they are cleansed. You don’t see a cap on the amount of burst/direct damage you can take do you? Conditions already kill you slower then burst, and every class gets multiple condition removers/transfers. Heck you can already tell Condition damage builds were an after thought in the devs eyes, when Orbs in wvwvw only effected burst damage and not condition

Actually would like unarmed weapons, they could just make it knuckle weapons or spikes just so you have something with stats to equip. Have it be fastest weapon in the game, low damage, couple stuns and dazes, with 1-2 attacks that have a chance on hit to do like direct condition damage (like 20% chance apply: 2000 poison damage for 1s)

“My Warrior was backstabbed for 15k in 5-6 seconds and I actually wasn’t using frenzy”

Daecollo.9578:

DesertRose.2031:

Fun fact:
Backstab deals more damage than Kill Shot.

The reason why you don’t see 20k crits on your Backstab is because your 10k Mug and 10k C&D has already killed them. Also, the Warrior trait [Berserker’s Power] is bugged and gives you +12% more damage for every additional foe you hit.
The reason why nobody screams OP about this is because it has a huge visual tell and deals only about half as much damage as the BS combo.

Fun Fact:
Warriors get 35% More Critical Chance then Thieves, , More Traits that Increase Base Damage, There Kill Shot can hit Multiple Targets (Unlike Backstab which can only hit one target.), and it only does 14 (YES a whole 14!) damage less then backstab, and has 1370 more range too! AND is a Combo finisher: Projectile.

I’d rather get 35% Innate Critical Chance, better base damage, 1370 more range and “Combo Finisher: Projectile” and an AOE attack, it also has an 8 second (cooldown) if traited, then Backstab.

And guess what? You don’t even need to be behind the target!

Exactly lol,
But expect to see Warrior buffs and Thief nerfs in Nov15 patch.
Because the Dev is biased and plays Warrior, you can also expect them to consistently get buffs till every single one of their weapons can do that killshot damage on every single weapon ability.

Condition damage tank with some decent low end direct damage hits? Full Carion
Condition damage with a lot of tank, but pitiful direct damage hits? Full Shaman

For some reason all the edit buttons are gone, but I guess the last 2 could be taken out, so once the edit button is back I will remove them

NinjaEd.3946:

I like the idea and how the op laid out set-backs for using said “training” so you dont just get a flat out buff. However people keep looking at those numbers like thats the only suggestion. Look at ideas and just treat numbers as a extra layer of shine on them because if ideas from the community are every added into the game, we can safely assume Areanet will adjust any values to be balanced b4 releasing it. I for one play thief main and would like an extra profession skill that affects my play style and not just does something or damages someone. (All we get is nerfs because people cry that they don’t know how to counter glass cannons.. disgusts me.)

Question for OP, are those buffs under each Training all on at once or did you just lay out some ideas that could be used? Because honestly, that many buffs from one skill (No matter elite or profession) is a bit much. Still creative and +1 for that.

The last 2 of each I kind of just put there. But other then that there is a pretty equal amount of drawbacks for the amount of buffs. Cannot crit, that is huge. Steal interupting channeled abilities means no more CND before steal, no more PW before steal. half effectiveness on quickness is also very big. And yes, all at once

Thank you for the support though.

@Jrunyon Actually you seem to be the only one raging in here. That would make you the one being childish. BTW,Master thief? My roomie is in the official thief guild, I just play one in spvp and tpvp and like to come up with ideas that I believe the class should have had since launch

YumCHA You are trying to explain it lore wize, and if we can magically shadowstep, use stealth, create stealth fields and persistant walls of smoke, there is no reason why we shouldn't be able to do something like burning damage. That is why I called it Shadow Flame. Also 40% is not alot. You have to remember burning doesn't tick very fast and cannot stack, it only increases in duration but I put an internal cooldown 3s higher then the 5s duration ( 8s). Thief already has many way to apply poison, and generally it is a lackluster, burning brings something else to the table.

moose.6973:

Teerwik.1650:

Tulisin.6945:

Teerwik.1650:

Incurafy.6329:

Actually, you don’t have to go burst, condition, or a balance between both. What ever happened to pure damage based DPS builds like the one’s that many people run with S/D? For example, I run a 0/30/20/20/0 build which has no “burst” to speak of, and no condition damage either. It’s a balanced DPS build which, quite frankly, would be ridiculouslyly OP with “Assassin Training”.

I can’t tell if this a troll or a joke. There is no pure dps build on a thief not involving crit or cond , period.

He’s pointing out that you can run a power/crit build without necessarily using a burst play style. Burst is not synonymous with power-based damage, afterall.

And I can 100% guarantee it won’t be a viable build at killing anything other then 100% afks if it runs Just Power and not crit. If it is crit based, with the scaling of Crit damage, no matter what he is going to be doing burst with the hardest hitting attack in the weaponset.

Maybe he is playing a different game and doesn’t know what forums this is. The attack animations/attack speed in this game (at least for this archetype) are crazy slow (barring quickness ofc), compared to other games. Add that to the unnaturally limiting initiative system (slow regen too), there is 0% chance for Power only DPS

I dont like how you are so absolute with the way you are against power builds. They can work against some things, but you are saying they work nowhere.

High, non-burst, sustained damage works wonders and is actually better than “burst” in many scenarios. My ranger counters the hell out of burst-y thives, due to signet of stone and protect me synergy. Me and my pet take zero dmg for 6 secs.

Because I am talking about thief class which is the topic here. No power build, is viable for thief and the current init system. Yes it is absolute. Lets say in a future patch they make it so a power build thief is viable. That would still not be a valid argument against my suggestion in the OP. There is nothing stopping said power build from playing either Training. They are still getting benefits

Jefzor.7145:

Wouldn’t this basically be a buff? Since burst thieves would only use F2 and condition thieves would only use F3.

Would make more sense to split it between stealth/mobility and Damage (not that I want that).

No its not a buff. Basically it increases the TTK (Time to Kill) for Backstab thieves on all targets. Since if they used Assassin Training, they would not be able to que up CnD and steal to the target, because steal would interupt the CnD. So that leaves the backstab thief with the following options:

1. CnD after steal
2. Trait out of a bunch of their damage and go for Stealth on Steal
3. Start in Shadow Flame training and do the CnD-> Steal uninterupted but lose out on either CnD nor Mug being able to crit.

Also remember that running quickness on ANY weapon set, when built for burst (assassin training) will have 50% (-65% + 15% see next sentence) effectiveness, further increasing the TTK. However while in Assassin training, the baseline attack/cast speed for all abilities will be 15% faster increasing the DPS (not burst) of Thief which is lacking.

Also note, not a single Dual Skill a thief has in ANY weapon set is in the right place atm, most are unpowered or broken (FS pathing). DB might be argued as the strongest atm, used to be PW, but DB suffers from far too much init cost for the amount of bleed stacks applied + an evade frame that doesnt last through the animation.
With the 15% increase to Dual skill damage it brings PW back to its pre-nerf damage but you have to be in Assassin Training, you would also be able to use PW on the move AND it would obviously be hitting 15% faster, but quickness would be next to worthless to use with it (Assassin Training). With the 15% damage increase it also makes the direct damage element of dual skills like DB and FS more appealing for the burst builds and now worth the initiative cost. Just like being in Shadow Flame training makes weapon abilities usually only viable for Burst builds, now appealing to Condition builds as well.

Thinking outside the box, and giving many options for a player to choose from based on situation, is the baseline for increasing the skill cap. The change, and increasing the TTK even if only for 1 or more seconds (based on target) is just what we need to quell the whines (by giving them more time to react), at the same time it adds more versatility + fluidity to our class AND gives our class mechanic more flavor.

Knyx will invite you all in a few hrs

Tulisin.6945:

Teerwik.1650:

Incurafy.6329:

Actually, you don’t have to go burst, condition, or a balance between both. What ever happened to pure damage based DPS builds like the one’s that many people run with S/D? For example, I run a 0/30/20/20/0 build which has no “burst” to speak of, and no condition damage either. It’s a balanced DPS build which, quite frankly, would be ridiculouslyly OP with “Assassin Training”.

I can’t tell if this a troll or a joke. There is no pure dps build on a thief not involving crit or cond , period.

He’s pointing out that you can run a power/crit build without necessarily using a burst play style. Burst is not synonymous with power-based damage, afterall.

And I can 100% guarantee it won’t be a viable build at killing anything other then 100% afks if it runs Just Power and not crit. If it is crit based, with the scaling of Crit damage, no matter what he is going to be doing burst with the hardest hitting attack in the weaponset.

Maybe he is playing a different game and doesn’t know what forums this is. The attack animations/attack speed in this game (at least for this archetype) are crazy slow (barring quickness ofc), compared to other games. Add that to the unnaturally limiting initiative system (slow regen too), there is 0% chance for Power only DPS

Incurafy.6329:

Actually, you don’t have to go burst, condition, or a balance between both. What ever happened to pure damage based DPS builds like the one’s that many people run with S/D? For example, I run a 0/30/20/20/0 build which has no “burst” to speak of, and no condition damage either. It’s a balanced DPS build which, quite frankly, would be ridiculouslyly OP with “Assassin Training”.

I can’t tell if this a troll or a joke. There is no pure dps build on a thief not involving crit or cond , period.

@ Tulisin You seem to be the only one against anything that gives viability to condition thieves, so until I see some variety, creativity and evidence to support your argument, I will pass here.

@ ASP Thats easy. A P/D condition thief that doesn’t spec into hidden thief, would still use CnD->Steal without interupt to generate stealth and get off their Sneak Attack. Many cond thieves still use dagger storm, they will be able to steal to a target while dagger storm is still channeling while in SF training. Caltrops->Steal? Shadow Assault-> Steal?
You are thinking way to narrowly, try outside the box, there are tons of reasons how anyone can benefit from both, Heck there is nothing stopping a thief skilled enough to sit in Shadow Flame training, then use CND->Steal and switch to Assassin training right before they use backstab, it will just cause CND and mug to not have a chance to crit but backstab still will. Just like everything should be, a trade off.

This is not pigeon-holing, or reducing options either. You clearly don’t play Guild Wars 2 if you think a thief is actually going to be viable without going for either burst(crit), condition, or some of both for killing their target. There is no other option there, and that is the same for arguably every class in this game, and every class in 80% of games. You are either killing your target with hard hitting attacks, with damage over time elements, or a little of both(dps). These changes will add more viability to builds of ALL shapes of sizes, while buffing the low end and reducing the extreme.

Thank you. Yes it a big change and a smidge on the complicated side, at least on paper. But looking at the big picture at all of the thief issues on both sides of the spectrum, that it solves, it is actually a very simple addition. Something I would actually think Thieves should have had from the beginning.

So I came up with a fresh idea to our class mechanic system, by adding to it. I came up with this idea while playing my elementalist, and how much I love the creativity of the Attunement design. The following suggestion should be taken into consideration with the Rendering/Culling issues fixed first.

These new Mechanics for F2 and F3 will work as toggles, like an attunment, to where one has to be active at all times. This addition will also make it so weapon sets will no longer need to be streamlined as many are requesting and some are against, without even touching them. At the same time this will provide the fix for the backstab issue that A-net is currently attempting to address at the same time adding flavor and fluidity to the class without overpowering it (and increasing the viability of arguably lackluster weapon sets). Each “Attunement”, in this case called “Training”, has benefits and negatives inherently balancing it out and still providing a choice for ALL build options (Extremes and Hybrids alike)

On to the goodie:
1 Must be active at all times, Granted at Character creation, 10s global cooldown effecting F1-F3 when switching/activating a Training.

Assassin Training (F2):
Steal interupts any casted or channeled abilities
Thief can now use any self rooting ability on the move
Dual skills do 15% more damage
Condition damage reduced by 10%
Skill and Action speed increased by 15%
Quickness effectiveness reduced by 65%
Vitality increased by 5%
Boon duration increased by 5%

Shadow Flame Training (F3)
Thief can no longer critical hit.
When bleeding stacks applied by a Thief in Shadow Flame Training are cleansed, the target that was cleansed takes 20% of the total damage that would have accrued from the stacks instantly.
Condition damage increased by 15% while moving
20% chance everytime one of your bleeds tick to steal 200 health (1s IC)
40% Chance to cause Burning @5s on your attack.(8s IC)
Toughness increased by 5%
Healing increased by 5%

Examples:
Backstab Build thief, will obviously use Assassin Training.
They can no longer que up CnD before steal because it will interupt it.
So there is more of a given and take if they want to wait till after steal, or switch some traiting (and lose some damage) to go for Hidden Thief. Backstab and Mug will still do the same damage however quickness will only have 35% effectiveness, however all attacks will be 15% faster at all times while in Assassin training, so really 50% effectiveness on quickness.

S/P thief? Now you can use PW on the move and it is back to its damage before the nerf, but while using that training, quickness will still be 50% less effective, with the same drawbacks (on haste)

Condition Thief?
Yea you cant crit anymore, but you don’t need to. Also now you have a chance to apply burning no matter the weapon set, as well as steal some health on bleed ticks. Since these builds take much longer to kill the target, they need more staying power anyway. Having problems because every class has at least 1 condition removal ability, usually multiple, and some have passive ones as well (all of them remove ALL stacks at once)? Well now the person who just cleansed themself or got cleansed, will still take some damage from all the work (and initiative spent) you just did stacking them up.
This also makes things like Backstab still useful on condition thieves without having to touch the weapon ability, because you still have that chance on hit to do burning

A good balance to this is that your condition damage is buffed but only while moving, so just by an enemy rooting you, stunning you, or knocking you down, will effectively lower the damage the bleeds, poison, and burning are ticking you for. There is also internal cooldowns on all the procs to balance it out, not counting the obvious inability to crit.

For a Hybrid Rampager geared thief (bleed on crit sigil), well you are still viable. You can just sit in Assassin training. There is ONLY a 10% reduction to your condition damage, thats not much. Yea your losing out on the burning or chance to steal a little health, but you are still gaining the increased attack speed, and harder hitting dual skills.

Thanks for reading.

I completely agree we need synergized weapon sets for specific purposes or everything must have both. I see a lot of dagger burst thieves against the idea, but their argument doesnt hold much merit since All 3 hits from the auto chain benefit them more then condition (3 has a very lackluster poison), Heartseeker only benefits them, CnD only benefits them, Backstab only benefits them, Dancing dagger could be also argued to only benefit them (high damage and a D/D cond thief is gonna have caltrops for cripple anyway).

So that leaves really D/D condition thieves with only ONE viable weapon attack, with burst thieves having 5 including the stealth attack.

Its the same for every weapon combination we have atm, with P/D being the only weapon set that actually synergizes the most for BOTH builds but still has off-and-on abilities.

So yea, its pretty clear we NEED (different from what burst thieves may WANT) a fully synergized weapon set for condition and a seperate one for burst OR all abilities having both. If you want to make Pistols the condition specific set, there has to be a talent or changeup that gives the weapon set AOE/Bouncing (not 5%, more like 50%+)

Everyone so far has been invited

Shizzlenit.7648:

5. Daggers -> B

so i can stealth whenever i want? Man this would cause so many whine threads

Still costs the initiative and no longer does damage, CnD currently can crit for 5-6k yaa’know. Seems fair and is the reduction for the backstab “combo” damage

@bwillb The point is to turn s/p into the control+tank set. The daze is still very powerful, and it will be a much faster attack @ 2 hits, also no longer self rooting. I also meant 9 hits rather then 5. So if 2 hits hit for 513 base damage when now 9 hit for 1026 damage, it is actually a buff (EX: If you used 10 initiative on 2 of the new versions of PW you could reach the same damage then 1 of the current pistol whips, in the same time frame as 1 pistol whip. Aegis is not as powerful as a complete evade frame covering the length of the ability but it makes sense as a reposite stand-point people have been asking for. I see this as a buff and big QoL change for S/P, if you really think otherwise, I could also put an initiative cost reduction in the suggestion.

@Ichishi No reasoning required as most of these suggestions were taken from other threads and posts and from posters other then myself. The only ones I can take credit for is the Venom changes and the Steal->Knockdown trait, which also got quite a bit of positive feedback. The PW and Flanking strike changes were my room-mates. Other then that every change was from someone else.

@Ranzou They are still being forced to waste initiative on IA to reach a maximum mobility potential, which is draining the same lifeblood they need for most/all (depending on build) of their damage. Also this maximum potential I speak of is all that crosses the line to actually set thief mobility above (even slightly) a multitude of other classes potential. If it were up to me I would get rid of all movement based weapon abilities for thief and just add in that they shouldnt have a movement speed reduction in combat, and have a base movement speed increase granted at character creation.

4. VENOMS

5. DAGGERS

6. Misc

Enjoy.

I am making this thread to try and organize a lot of the suggestions made to counter any Backstab/Glass Cannon nerf, even though a lot of these suggestions should be put into effect anyway without any corresponding nerf.

This is organized to make it more of an understandable and enjoyable read for devs and community managers/liaisons. Please vote on which sections as well as the subsections of which changes you think would be the best fit to make live. Example: I vote 1a and 1b and 2c. I will update the OP next to each subsection include the amount of votes.

1. PISTOL

2. SHORTBOW

3. SWORD

KK Knyx says he’ll invite you two in a few hrs

You forgot ones that classes get for their 1200 range weapons allowing them to have 100% piercing. Yet we have a 5% chance to bounce on a 900 range weapon? Just by changing that single trait to 100% chance to bounce twice makes the Pistol weapons set leaps more viable

Everyone should have been invited last night. Guild is running strong. Ehmry Bay should be thankful to have [TAC] :P

@ Silent Yea I love the idea of how u combined them

Or they could just make it so all our dual skills not only do the dual skill but the single wield skill as well in one quick animation, they are weak enough that this would not effect balance really at all.

Example: Death Blossom does the flip frontwards and as soon as it lands it does Twisting Fangs really quick (animation sped up from current)

F2-F6 should just be our non elite venom abilities. They aren’t worth the utility slot, and steal really isn’t all that on par with class based abilities like Shatter/DS, thats just my personal opinion

A. )More conditions. We def need a weapon ability that applies burning (unload, body shot, dagger #1 chain are possible options here). Poison across the board as a condition could see a slight buff. Maybe a weapon ability that applies a moderate duration chill. You dont have to reduce Direct damage on abilities to apply more conditions, however if there was one Id say burst builds would be okay with is removing most of the direct damage of Death Blossom and increasing the bleed stacks to 5 per target hit OR lowering the init cost to 3.

B.) Trait increasing Pistol range to 1200. Changing Ricochet trait to cause pistol shots to have a 100% chance to bounce twice. Now that you can bounce shots and have increased range it makes Pistol/Pistol very viable, and the trade off is having to take the traits

C.) S/P. Move the focus of S/P to be the tanking set and not S/D. Have the second hit in Sword #1 (slash) grant 5s of Vigor. Remove the damage element of Pistol Whip completely. Increase the stun to be 1s. Remove the Self root. Have it just be 1 hit with an evade frame. Have it also grant 5s of regeneration and place 5s of Fumble on the target. Since the initiative cost will not change, this is very balanced.

D.) S/D. Lets move the focus of this to be the pseudo damage and control set.
Have Flanking strike now shadowstep you to your target, hit them with the first hit, then shadowstep you right behind them and hit them with the second. Increase range to 200 to remove any geometry errors. Have the same boon removal have the first hit be unblockable, however increase the damage of the second hit by 20%. This will be a quick animation and the evade will be removed. This is balanced because the init cost is staying the same, the evade is being lost, also you can always block or dodge the heavy hitting second hit.

E.) Shortbow projectile speed needs to be increased, even if its only 10%

F.) Stability on Dagger Storm ELITE needs to be replaced with the effect you see on bosses so it cannot be stripped or corrupted by say a simple 10s cooldown weapon ability… The downsides are already that we move slower and can be meleed as well as immobilized..as well as AOEd…..etc

G.) Venom abilities
Venom share talent needs to have its radius to whom it will be shared with tripled. Yes I said it, triple the share radius.
Utility Venoms need to be either buffed OR removed from the utility slots and each placed in certain weapon abilities. This way you can change venom share to just have every ally in the radius apply the last condition the thief applied on their next attack (instead of just venoms).
Basilisk Venom needs to be instant cast. You already nerfed it.

Thats it for now..

@ Crewthief he is probably one of those people where he encountered a group of all thieves a few times in wvwvw and will say it happens all the time. He probably just faced the Thief guild we have going whos main purpose it to hunt people….lol

Guild is getting really strong. Knyx said something about 60 members or over 60 members so far. There is a website theassassinsclan.enjin.com with forums
The guild also has a 50 man mumble available just for the guild and an unlimited slot TS from a gaming community.