lol at repair costs. Is this really what the death penalty has become? I don’t even notice them anymore than teleport costs.
I really wish some of have you had played Asherons Call/DT server or Everquest or even DAOC where you could lose hours of XP, all your phat lewts and you had to get all your buddies to retrieve your corpse, often with another guild sitting on it waiting to gangbang your friends.
Repair costs affecting gameplay? You have seriously got to be kidding.
I think there is a minority, perhaps significant that also Valkyrie Armor and Zerker trinkets.
I use Valk pieces other than Chest/Legs (Zerker) and Zerker Trinkets.
it’s a classic MMO design flaw and it’s not surprising that ANet fell for it.
The issue is with negative feedback, i.e., giving the bigger sides rewards that make them more powerful, which makes them kill more and get better rewards, which makes more people play that side, which makes them kill more, which makes them more powerful etc etc while having the opposite side influenced in the exact opposite way.
How about revive times being 50% more if you outnumber a realm and 25% less if you are outnumbered?
Downed state and revive add a lot of interesting depth to the combat system but the fact that it so aggressively favors zergs seriously detracts from the game.
There are all kinds of bigger zerg favoring rules in the game, not the least downed state (AOE limit etc) that prevent smaller, better (if) groups from winning over pure facerolling numbers.
Malforo are you Snuffles press agent?
I also run D/D and understand where you are coming from.
2 solutions – I used to never use BV and never used DV.
I now use both, DV as my third Util (if I’m feeling offensive).
I generally open up with BV/CD/BS I rarely find people who stunbreak fast enough to keep me from landing BS.
If that doesnt get them into HS territory as soon as revaled is close to off I DV/C/D precast/Steal – then B/S again.
This almost always does the trick or you are in one HS territory.
Of course this is cooldown dependent. If these C/D are down you just have to be very patient.
Dagger 4 is good versus runners. I definiely use it if I can’t catch them and of course heartseeker is a leap.
I run traveler runes too – I don’t think I could do it without Travelers or SoS
“plus you would be surprised how much 31% can crit…”
31% of the time?
We are dangerously close to thieves being deleted. In the second post on this thread evilapprentice mentioned that we are very close to the"thief is op" singularity.
With WA being overpowered we really only had “hard to catch” and “vital shot” to count on.
Well….
in this post
“https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/Guardian-List-of-useless-traits-and-skills”
Under “virtues” the OP says the following.
" Really? Other classes get things like shadowstep away on cc, "
I ask you, does this qualify? I am pretty sure it does. He is not outright saying hard to catch is OP but he is surely implying it.
Hold me, I’m really scared of deletion now.
I agree with Deejay – if you change SR like you suggest that is a thief buff (which is never going to happen). I’d love for SR Elite to heal more/faster and give protection.
I could then take an extra util.
They should lower the cooldown on BV and make it insta cast and make it a util in compensation. That would be cool.
I suppose I should watch some D/P videos. I have never really tried to use it. How do you go about your attack runs?
I assume 5, then 2,2, a few times to build stealth then chase into them?
Or do you sit in a smoke field then 2 at them when they get close to stealth?
Do you basi venom them on the heartseeker into stealth?
Some protips would be appreciated.
Constant nerfing of thieves.
Bad thief traits.
Might I suggest since Annet thinks this is an awesome trait they simply move it up into the adept tier and move slowed pulse (anything but master of deception) down into the minor 5 pt slot.
If it’s as good and useful as Anet thinks surely lots of thieves (i.e zero, without any possible doubt) will take it. This will be a slight buff to thieves, swapping out something actually worse than useless (gets you killed a lot) for a minor one condition buff.
Seems like a pretty easy switch to make and we know it’s been done to move things around the tiers so can’t be hard to implement?
ANet can save face and Thieves never have to deal with it again?
It’s funny that the players can see the disaster train coming down the track and the devs are going to do it anyway. From the thief perspective:
This wont change the PvE Meta, zerker will still be the max damage set and everyone will still use it. If one assumes they are trying to change this then – lol.
This will make the Condi imbalance in small scale WvW worse. This will cure one large QQ in that power thieves will be much weaker D/x thieves – much weaker. This will lead to more P/D condi/perplex thieves – is this what you want?
I don’t sPvP much so I will leave that to others.
Valkyrie – good bye. If you had Valk gear your damage just got much worse, more people will be condi tanks so your acceptable targets just went down a lot (back to condi P/D troll thief with Perplex and Dire).
I am fine with the change, if that is what they want, but I will really want an ascended gear swap option for Valk and Zerk stuff. It took me forever to get my gear. I can’t see myself doing it again. No rage quit but a lose interest quit most likely.
Maybe I’m wrong, but Anet has a certain track record of Fail. We’ll see.
i noticed you only have ToTC for speed buff and no traveler or SoS.
Getting around in WvW will be a chore unless someone else is providing your swiftness.
Last refuge should be moved into the adept tier as a choosable trait. ANet must think it’s awesome and lots of thieves will choose it (unless they are actually trolling us, which I sort of don’t doubt).
Any of the adept tier traits other than Master of Deception should be moved into the minor in place of last refuge.
This way ANet doesn’t need to change the (perfect?) last refuge, and thieves who don’t want to constantly die to it don’t need to anymore, and it will provide anywhere from a minor (slowed pulse) to a very nice (the others) buff to thieves who are in SA line.
I am worried that this is going to make it really hard to compete as a valkyrie WvW thief (D/D).
As of now without stacks I am B/S Veteran Guards (the ones that are sentries) for about 7.7k with the really expensive +10% crit damage food (10/30/30/0/0). I have all ascended armor (just completed) and weapons – Valk/Zerker combo armor and Zerker trinkets. It took me a real long time to grind all this.
I get that they said overall 10% damage reduction, but you know you can’t trust ANet – if 10% is the average then it could be worse for some users. If I start B/S those same guards for like 5-6k (obviously this used as a control for PCs) it’s going to make it very hard to win fights (for me) against tanky chars.
I wouldn’t even mind the change if I hadn’t invested so much time into the gear. If it really becomes bad for Hidden Killer gear I hope they let us do a one time swap and the swap into Dire gear or something and go back to P/D.
I just don’t want to have to re-grind the armor and weps – change I am relaxed about.
i took devourer venom for 3rd slot and it changed my life (for dd) – other 2 are LR and SS
Those of you who have played GW1 or Gw2 a long time – do you think Anet will let us refund Valk or Zerk ascended gear? I spent months on that, anythign with a ferocity stat should get a refund or do-over if it gets nerfed as hard as it sounds like it is getting nerfed.
I wont rage quit but i think i will lose-interest quit if Valk becomes totally crappy.
Would you mind showing the current build with trait choices? For WvW.
I have been doing D/D 10/30/30/0/0 lately and want to mess around with other power builds.
I really loathe the cast time. Do they honestly think squishy thieves have 1 second to wait when they need a stun?
I like to come out of Stealth, C/D the DV then BS/Attack chain – this pretty much guarantees 2 hits and the full 5 sec imob unless they are super pro. Sometimes you can get the second hit after they insta cleanse too.
With crappy BV you can’t do it, you have to use it on the FIRST hit which can often be dodged, blocked and even if it goes it is usually stunbroken or wears off before your attack chain gets them.
GL if you power it up before you attack and the dude gets aeigis or whatever. It’s wasted. With DV you use it when you KNOW it’s going to hit.
Thieves aren’t crappy typically, we plan, we have instincts, we pay attention to when our attacks work the best. DV is very unforgiving and crappy.
If I wanted to play a forgiving, noobish, easy playstyle I’d make a warrior, but that doesn’t mean our abilities should be crap, especially our élites’
Throw us a bone here
Hi, I just started using Devourer venom and Basilisk venom (in WvW) on my D/D thief build. Previously I’d been more defensive with black powder or RFI and Dagger Storm.
Anyway, I decided to try thee to get people to hold still so I could more easily BS them but what I’ve found is that I much prefer the Devourer Venom utility to the Basilisk Venom “elite”
1. Devourer Venom’s effect is longer. I can usually get a BS and 2/3 of an autoattack chain off before they even start to move. Also, people don’t really like to blow a condi cleanse on immob in my experience as much as they due a damaging effect. Devourer venom is affected by condi duration, BV is not.
2. DV is instant cast. BV is 1 sec cast. They are both 45 sec recharge with 30 sec duration.
3. BV is a stun and everyone has a stun break that is instant cast it seems.
I’ve killed a 100 dudes now using each about equally, the DV is far superior for me. I don’t get how BV is even an elite – because it ignores defiant? That may be useful occasionally but I haven’t really come across it and it doesn’t make up for it’s obvious shortcomings. Short timer for Lyssa? Still doesn’t seem elite and if you are running Lyssa you aren’t running Traveler which means you don’t have DV typically
I see BV as a crappy second immob/stun to let you BS, far inferior to DV and completely un-elite. I guess the only real use is if you run Lyssa.
Suggestions:
Make an attack with BV unblockable (goes through Aegis etc) – this is far more elite.
Make it instant cast – honestly why not? – it’s crappy as is when you want to use it to finish someone off. I don’t use it as an opener because I want to hit them, not watch them stunbreak away. However, waiting the second to charge it up in combat when i’m trying to stay alive is meh.
Make it guarantee a crit – this would allow for build diversity in DD thieves, they could trait for venoms, and use executioner vs hidden killer if they were going shadow arts.
If I’ve got anything wrong would appreciate your thoughts and feedback
Interesting you asked since yesterday I kept having a 2v2 vs a guardian and a necro in WvW, with a condi thief as my partner.
The Necro I think was a wellmancer power type.
I lost the first fight badly but then won 3 or 4 more. The key for me was having lots of patience. Get your burst in then stealth and move away. The wells are on Long CD – shadow’s embrace is absolutely key and I use HiS as well.
Against this Necro I found that an early shadowstep in to attack was good rather than steal – after my burst I shadowstepped out and removed 3 condis.
You can burst down necros if you immobilize them or perhaps he was bad, but i dont think so.
I have more trouble with engis – anyone have tips on how to beat engis in WvW?
if you make Kohler drop empyreal fragments I will kill him every time
/needsmorefrags
frans,
that is what I’m doing.
How about if you think there is an issue you solve it by buffing whatever you want to solve rather than nerfing something that is actually useful.
It’s not like Thief is in a state where it needs more nerfs
Has anyone tried a DD build for WvW that uses 20 in Shadow arts instead of 30?
I’m trying to get something with more dodges without using Truffle and Meat Stew.
So I thought perhaps the following?
I have all the gear listed without the Ascended armor – I have the mats but am waiting for the balance patch.
You lose the stealth heal but gain pain response. You get more HP from having points in acrobatics. The last 5 in Acrobatics could go to Deadly arts for the poison on steal.
I will try this to see if I miss the stealth heal but I just wanted to see if anyone had tried before.
(edited by animalmom.1062)
You can guest to a high pop server too.
Hah, this would have annoyed me in Everquest or the original DAOC but since there is no death penalty in GW2, it doesn’t.
I actually think it’s pretty cool
For Guardians, you mentioned some bad traits. I main a thief which is pretty straightforward but have a guardian alt.
You said “hogging virtues, wrong utilities etc”. Can you please tell what you want out of Guardians (I have full zerker gear for the guard) – what you dont want them to do?
“I see thieves running around all the time, one hitting like it was nothing,”
No we don’t one hit people. These sorts of clamis make rational discussion impossible.
Thieves can potentially one hit people by utility stealthing and backstabbing – you could one hit glass cloth wearers I suppose, but that is a risk you take and only if the thief is also very glassy or has a time gated burst package which is really no fun to play – kill on guy every 60 seconds if he is alone?
“I have seen what he is talking about and he killed two warriors in the process.
It is not uncommon to see a thief that can staff invisible as long has he wants in WvW and be able to kill anyone in the group he picks out. For example, today I had my Warrior, Toughness= 2100 Amor=3100+ Health=22000+ struck the thief with my hammer he stood there dazed for two or three seconds with my hammer smashing in his face and he walks away and kills me and the guy that was with me…”
All this means is that he is a better player than you, and not because he is good, the other reason.
I’m not trying to insult you but you take by far the most OP character in the game and complain about getting killed by a perma stealth thief?
What: Thieves wearing ascended gear
Why: duh?
“Now I know Traveler Runes are a choice, but since I run a standard 0/30/30/10/0 build without Mug (I like to Steal in order to setup Backstab rather than have it trigger Mug) I often opt for Fleet Foot, which is kind-of redundant with Traveler Runes.”
I use traveler for the 25% movement speed increase that frees up the third utility slot for infiltrators signet (or black powder or scorpion wire, depending on my mood)
I’m not sure how FoF removes the need for Traveler runes. Can you explain what you mean?
Also, with Traveler and the extra Util you can go 10/30/30/0/0 and you can open with infi signet active rather than steal to get your c/d backstab off and then still have steal for a second SS later that is longer range for runners and also provides the extra damage/heal combo.
But back to your original question – for outnumbered roaming I think Traveler is far better than scholar as I’m rarely at full health during outnumbered fights for long and the free util is really useful.
Orbs are great if you dont have a lot of money.
I think Traveler runes win hands down for WvW.
this one has 50% CC and 108 CD with valk weps, valk armor and zerker trinkets
Should i make valk trinkets to get CC down ? I dont know how i can get CD up.
Maybe butternut squash?
Hi, please help me critique these three choices for my ascended armor and weapons (for WvW) > This is for Havok and Roaming. I currently use zerker weps and valk armor and Zerker trinkets.
i’m leaning towards the middle one which is the same but I read a lot about more toughness and mitigation being better, or at least theoretically better. Any suggestions and opinions are welcome, i don’t have any preconceived notion of what’s most optimal.
Thanks
EFP: 4902
EFH: 20643
CC: 54.6
CD: 87
Mitigation: 29.49
Health: 14,555
EFP: 5301
EFH: 17570
CC: 57.43
CD: 108
Mitigation: 20.52
health; 13,965
EFP: 4996
EFH: 1778
CC: 60.7
CD: 97
Mitigation: 25.67
Health: 13,215
It is in this thread, it was sort of the purpose of the whole thread. There was a long discussion on the guardian forums to support it as well.
Essentially to optimize your effective power and health you take take the armor pieces with the biggest stats and change to soldiers, and the remove valkyrie pieces and change them to zerker (with zerker trinkets)
The goal was put in the first post I think by Wish. The goal was to have >21k EH and get as much EP you can while staying >50 Crit change IIRC)
Of course it was the goal in this thread – essentially it was take Yishis build and make it more optimized.
I was running all valk with zerk weapons and zerk trinkets. If you run Soldiers weps, coat, hat, legs and zerk gloves, boots, shoulders and triks you get more EP at about the same EH.
Here is another thread discussing it : https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Valkyrie-vs-Berserker/first#post3414502
OF course you can go full glass, but the premise of this long thread is that it doesn’t work well in WvW ymmv.
hmm, i thought optimal was 2x soldier daggers, soldier coat, helm, boots and zerker gloves, shoulders and shoes with zerker trinks.
Is this not the case anymore because im about to finish my ascended dagger (got incinerator) and was getting to work on my ascended armor in the above way
did something change?
ty liquid /15 chars
Sorry to bump an old thread but I am using traveller runes with inf signet and cloaked in shadow post the initiative bump. I dont notice a difference losing infusion of shadow.
I also would like thoughts on orrian truffle and meat stew?
bump for help pls
while i agree that thieves need more viable builds (ranged and non stealth come to mind), for WvW P/D and D/D are just fine for small scale fights.
I like D/D more than D/P in any case.
Sure, we aren’t good in a zerg other than SB but SB on demand blast finisher and poison field isnt awful
make last refuge optional and make one of the five ten skill traits non optional like slowed pulse. Slowed pulse is not OP.
The arenanet can see if anyone takes last refuge. Less than 1% of thieves will. Problem solved with no re-coding or admitting that they were wrong.
They can say “we felt the extremely popular last refuge was far too powerful so we moved it up a tier and made it optional for the legions of thieves that cannot live without it, and in return gave you a slight regen to help with survivability”
they can then say that is the most taken selected thief trait. Everyone winns.
Question: For Gear I have knights/melandru, I have exotic assassin weapons with the same sigils.
I have enough laurels for the Cavalier amulet but that is it currently
What rings and accessories and Backpiece would you reccomend?
One other question why assassin weapons over zerker? I thought the maths had been conclusively proven about power vs precision. Maybe im crazy, but i thought i read a long thread on that somewhere? Same for sharp stones?
is it for the bleeding procs?
(edited by animalmom.1062)
I’ll try and answer this – I played a thief for a long time but now play a necromancer for reset days to be more helpful in a zerg. If I’m being asked to scout I’ll play the thief.
Anyway, when you say “why can’t reaper’s mark pull foes out of stealth” what you are really saying is “why can’t xxxx make useless a player’s class defining skill for a set period of time on a cooldown”
The thief class is forced with the recent patch to rely on stealth (they nerfed non stealth sword/dagger builds to the point of uselessness) .
They also nerfed a build i didn’t use (d/p permastealth) that was annoying but nothing to worry about for competent players.
If a thief said on the thief boards “why can’t I nerf the Necro’s ability to make wells and mark’s for a period on a cooldown” I think this board would be outraged.
Preventing a thief from stealthing means that you get a free kill since high stealth thieves have low mobility, armor, HPs and no blocks.
Maybe this is what you want, but it doesn’t sound interesting.
Mesmer’s have higher access to effective stealth than thieves in any case. They are better stealthers.
To be fair, I have issues with thieves on my necro (power wellmancer) but very few issues with much else. Perhaps that is balanced. I know on my guardian I get absolutely wrecked by necros (I’m not a good guardian player though).
this works really well – I haven’t been able to get dire armor yet
In WvW I have a lot of success with P/D and perplexity runes. 10,0,30,0,30
I use my Steal to interrupt his heal. Then use skullcrack to stun again.
Typically if you Steal (interrupt) C/D and then Sneak Attack followed by a shadow shot they will have poison, 8 stacks of confusion, vulnerability, blind, bleed and torment on them. They see all the conditions and they start shouting to get rid of them and blow up on the confusion.
The fights really end fast. of course they have to not be great players but I find most WvW guards aren’t too savvy.
I’m curious if developers have the tools to tell how often a skill is being used and for what?
For example, can they tell that there are say 250,000 thieves in GW2 and only 3 of them use trip wire ?
I would assume they have these tools. If so, do they base balance decisions on this data?
“The Necromancer on the other hand. Am I suppose to kill a necro now or just run? It’s already a pain to kill a necro, and now they can be even more tankier…”
You know, I really don’t have that much time to play , i mostly do daily and then play on reset with my guild and decided to make a more zerg friendly character and my boys recommended I make a necro to help out.
Well there is this level 20 scroll and a birthday booster and crafting xp so I said, why not I’ll make a necro and level it up, should take a few months. It took 14 hours, didn’t even use up the BBooster.
I only used staff and played sort of while watching TV and died like twice. I’m not complaining about Necros, but umm, they seem like they are a great class to play – massive AOEs, really hard to kill, super tanky….
Bottom line 45 sec cooldown is total crap. Venomshare it’s still crap. So everyone stacks on you, you VS then hit the opposing group or zerg at full health and heal from 100 to … 100?
I mean if you get jumped you can’t stack for the VS, if you are doing the jumping when you stack for the VS you don’t need healing.
Did I mention it’s on a 45 sec timer – that means that after the VS stack you better not need to heal for the duration of the fight, which is you know, pretty common. I mean I often go 45 seconds without needing to heal. I’m so sure I’ll use this over withdraw or HiS.
VS builds are for when you have time to stack and you are hitting opponents loaded for bear. I.e. when healing is not as important as killing.
I think it goes without saying that no VS, you would never use it, and with VS, you would never use it.
I typically don’t go apekitten over things before they are implemented or mock the devs like a demented fanboy but this. is. dumb.
We are being trolled, obviously, especially with the Warrior heal.
I don’t think it’s that bad – we do 30 guys on rest, 4-5 are thieves. When I WvW, far more than 1 in 100 are thieves. I’d say at least 10 in 100, maybe more.
This is only WvW though, myabe it’s worse in SPvP and PvE