Guild Wars 2

The outmanned buff is a nice consolation prize to a team that’s being crushed, reward faster growth to players that make the effort to wvw even though they have no chance… but what if an opposite condition existed?

Outmanning
You greatly outnumber the enemy in their borderlands.
-20% magic find
-33% experience
-33% karma

I know the counter argument is not to penalize servers for having high coverage, which is why I suggest this only exist if a team is outmanned in their own borderlands (ie. if you have all of your own borderlands, and eb, and both of the opposing servers are still outmanned in their own borderlands, there should be discouragement from farming them). This would help protect third place from being ganged up on as much, because first and second tend to divvy up third place for points, rather than fighting each other (as was the intention of having 3 teams, second and third gang up on first more often than not simply because there is more to gain from fighting them).

This would discourage beating a losing team into a pulp, and seeking out more fair fights for wvw farming.

Anvil Rock!
The other T5, that is undermanned but well skilled. We don’t run great numbers, but when we get groups together they do great things.
(Plus let’s kick some Ehmry Bay butt, we’re currently in an unofficial “truce” will BP to take down E Bay who wins just about every week)

selan.8354:

Jinks.2057:

WTF are you doing in those 3 seconds to allow that “16k” damage to happen?

3 secs is an extremely long period of time

2 seconds stunned, 1 second trying to heal and phase retreat back…phase worked, heal failed… backstab heartseeker,heartseeker,heartseeker shadowstab heart seeker

And where exactly did this d/p thief’s 2 second stun come from? Note that BV is only 1.5, and maybe that seems nitpicky, but in a 3 second fight .5 sec makes quite the difference

Kabooky.8071:

Make a fool of yourself by defending this.

http://youtu.be/Q0QtQ1sotHo

dude… they just stood there most of the time and took it, and the thief did next to no damage by just using C&D, sure he pestered them well… but little was actually done. Also that mesmer had to be the worst thing I’ve ever seen… being picked on with 1/4 health – “maybe if I just stand here he wont notice me”….

I don’t know why people are so in a knot over BP + HS combo for stealth, that combo costs 9 initiative, out of the standard 12. Outside of traits that means the thief is left with little options until some initiative regens (sure some will regen during stealth, but only 3 if they wait the full duration). So while the thief gets stealth it is at a high cost, and has some counters. I’d argue the real stealth skills issues are C&D (easy enough to land, and low cost) and how shadow stepping works while stealthed. I’d say that changing C&D to require a hit in back to gain stealth would add a lot more balance to the skill (maybe add 2 more stacks of vulnerability from the attack to add a little balance to the new difficulty) and shadow stepping while stealthed should break stealth. As it is the shadowstep utility skill and steal (without mug) will allow you to shadowstep while stealthed and leave the enemy unaware of this. The most incredible disengage combo is SR, then with the 10 sec of stealth Shadowstep 1200 units away and continue running while stealthed. This means you can easily make it 2500 units in distance without any indication to your opponent, and can do so in any direction.

(I play a thief but generally don’t use stealth much, trickery cond damage all the way, but I’ve run SR and Shadowstep, and have never encountered a time where a player could catch me, there’s really little they can do about it)

Penguin.5197:

“Paulie want a nerf!” – Random parrot

But in all seriousness theres no way we can get another nerf. Im actually expecting a buff with no strings attached for jan update. Hopefully.

lol. that is all.

Tallis.5607:

They once thought about getting thief DPS atthe same level than others.

But the thiefs cried and cried and cried so much that they didn’t do it.

They got the highest DPS, they got stealth, they got clones, they can transport a mile away, but according to ANEt they are not overpowered.

It’s really sad

Oh and don’t forget they’re the squishiest too…. and clones? Tell me about how you brought dual professions back from gw1?

nagymbear.5280:

Sooo… you’re saying that my options are:
a) Get moar armor ’n healz,

The best way to counter a thief stops at ‘a’. thieves make short work of glass cannons because they start the fight when they are ready but you are not, you spend the first 3 seconds recovering and preparing your response while they spend it killing you, and when two glass cannons collide 3 seconds is all the fight needs.

(note: don’t nitpick the 3 seconds, exactly how long the thief has up on you is irrelevant, the point is the thief is killing you while you’re getting your pants up, and glass cannons don’t have time for that)

Hyung.6140:

Suralin.3947:

They should just make it impossible for players to mist form from a downed state to run into the tower/keep. That’s it. It’s not the skill that needs to be nerfed.

This is 100% correct. Not quite as important as vengeance imo, as eles can rally themselves once they get inside whereas warriors are reliant on others to help out.

I third this movement. Warriors in vengeance do not act as a downed player, eles in mist form still do. Disable the ability for downed characters to move through these gates. Otherwise there is no reason a thief or mesmer (randomly) shouldn’t also be able to enter the keep as they have movement downed skills, and I am definitely not suggesting giving them this ability.

nagymbear.5280:

A thief looking to gank/grief/troll someone won’t pick targets basedo on the uplevelled arrow, he will pick targets based on their looks, movement, behaviour just like every predator.

I’m not targeting thieves specifically, I know they receive a lot of hate in WvW because of their burst, I’m saying that roamers in general tend to target uplevels (I used thief as an example because they tend to roam), as roamers tend to see smaller fights where the level of each character makes more difference.

MarkusParkus.8467:

The upscaled arrow is a good thing, most of the time it makes an easy kill for the predator.. you can’t say you’ve never focused a ‘green arrow’ player OP.
Also it gives the upscaled guy a little baptism by fire of WvW, making them a better player in the end.

Actually I can say I haven’t, I only have one lvl 80 and rarely play them, I have pretty much always played WvW upleveled

Let’s face it, upleveled characters are prime targets for classes like thieves that try to pick off squishy targets. This mechanic is fine, but it would be nice if enemies weren’t shown who was upleveled, so they wouldn’t be able to spot and pick on newer players. Just removing the green arrow would be enough to remove certainty. While gear can make an uplevel noticeable (based on skins) it is far from a sure bet and would make it trickier for roamers to spot and aim uplevels, removing some frustration for these uplevels who are consistently targeted.

VOLKON.1290:

That idea is so 13 days ago.

thank goodness, I didn’t think it was all that creative, if other people are thinking it maybe devs will think it too….

Another idea for the loot bags is for them to automatically be added to your inventory, and behave similar to how other bags that contain crafting gear are done (ex. large moldy bag, small bag of supplies, ect.). They could be called WvW bags (or something to the like), and when you open them you receive the contents that you would normally from the loot bags (there could even be a few different loot bags, player kill loot bag, gaurd kill loot bag, animal kill, ect. if you wanted to make it easier to determine what should loot from what kills, seeing as keeping track of unique contents of each unopened bag would probably take quite a bit of memory). In this way say 4-5 open bag slots are all that are needed while going through WvW, and bags automatically just stack on eachother. At the end of your running around once you’re at a shop you can open and sell the contents of all your bags and continue on, again only needing 4-5 bag slots. This clears up the issue of how WvW eats bag space if you pick up the loot, as well as needing to worry about bags, they should be an afterthought after the fighting is done, but as it is now, you can really only leave them as an afterthought if you know you’re going to win the fight.

Gaurdians ha! My necro laughs at them! Boon your self, yes do it! Those will be your own end! (spinal shivers and corrupt boon for the win)

Dina Van Heyr.3018:

removing mug critical hit still makes thiefs in www too strong as due to www environment they can stay perma invisible and cloak delay from 4 to3 second was a mistake as it actualy make fight against them results in certain death as well with ability to finish in stealth
conditions removal and healing in stealth with ability go to stealth and hit from stealth without any penalizations as they can cloak within second with heavy dmg makes them extremely hard to kill even with several experienced players as they can fully regenerate in few seconds because stealth remove agression from them

I`m not sure that people realize that invisible is not the same as invincible. Stealthed enemies can still be attacked, even with the auto-attack, just swinging your auto attack during their stealth can keep the damage up without even considering AoE. Also, stealth is very predictable. When a main hand dagger or sword thief stealths they will try to work behind you. Keeping in mind that with your movement it can be difficult for them to get behind you without making a pretty straight path. This means the thieves will most often move from where they stealthed to a fairly direct line to your back to get a backstab, unless they use up some dodge rolling (which is a tradeoff they need to consider). This means not only are the thieves able to take damage during stealth while dishing none, you also know the probable route to do damage, and that a dodge roll of your own towards the end of their stealth will often leave them unable to land a backstab.

While thieves can get around the short stealth by stacking stealth this is a costly endevour, and leaves them less able to stealth throughout the fight.

Lastly, I believe people are upset with thieves because of stability. All classes have some access to stability, which prevents them from being cc’ed, allowing the individual to continue dealing damage without minding their enemy’s actions. Stealth bypasses this, in that the effect is not applied to the target, but to the self, meaning that damage is interrupted simply because attacks are hard to land. This means the thief can impede your damage if you cannot predict him regardless of your buffs. However it is important to note that while a thief is stealthed they deal no damage and take normal damage, as long as you anticipate the thief properly you can actually turn stealth into a handicap.

(I play a thief don’t hurt me) Wouldn’t it be interesting if chill increased the revealed debuff duration by say one second? The point of chill is to lower dps and slow movement, well forcing thieves out of stealth for longer would prevent some of the dps they can do during chill’s duration, though it would allow them to attempt to hide it out by not attacking (though this wouldn’t really affect thieves that don’t use stealth much, but no one seems to be upset with them)

I am both a necro and a thief, and would like to add that the thief can either choose to get a backstab in without you seeing them coming or have a certain escape because of shadow refuge. SR is on a 60s cd (40s traited, which can actually give the option of both the escape and entry), but can give 15 seconds of stealth if they stay within the area for the duration. Also, shadow refuge is a quite obvious field (it has a house over it even), and if you see that field you know you need to be on your guard. Really, the best way to shut down backstab thiefs is obviously, don’t let them backstab you, or at least try to be in DS when they do, so it doesn’t come out of your health. Really, it all comes down to anticipation, thieves are ironically one of the most predictable classes, if they go stealth they’re trying to get behind you. Once they stealth is the best time to pop up some retaliation (spiteful spirit/unholy feast) as they wont be able to preform a backstab without taking damage back (unless they don’t have mug, which would allow them to use steal and stay stealthed, but then they probably aren’t bursting)

I’m not saying that complaints are unwarrented, but I think misdirected, the issue isn’t so much with the thief, but moreso with the limited mobility of the necro, the only way to combat a thief as a necro is to try to limit their mobility in return (which thankfully the necro has a lot of options for).

It would be nice to see effects from traits show up in tooltips for skills they effect (perhaps in a different colour to indicate they are because of a trait). For example take the mug trait, it would be nice if the steal tooltip reported its damage, or the gaurdian’s monk’s focus caused meditation skills to report the healing. Just small things so we can see what the traits are doing a little better.

Pavel.8531:

1 – I use s/d with a 10/30/30/0/0 almost full GC build and it works wonders . Flanking strike is bad, because it doesn’t keep with the target, sometimes you can miss a totally still target too, because of its bad movement.

Wouldn’t it be nice if instead of moving around to the back of the opponent it was simply a shadowstep to their back, instant and attaches to their back, so as to take the movement out of the picture while still fitting in perfectly with the skill. It could even be such that the first attack is done to the front, and the second attack after the flank and does the boon stripping to ensure you actually have to land the attack.

Thrashbarg.9820:

Don’t waste your shadowstep to get in if you can avoid it. That’s mistake #1. When fighting anyone who isn’t just going to die to 2 hits, save your cooldowns, make them burn their’s early if you can.

D/D bunker ele beats D/D glass burst thief. Like a rock beats scissors. Switch weapon sets and specs. Blinding powder is pretty much a hard counter to D/D, can’t hit anything in melee range with that dang smoke field always up. The blind on stealth trait is OP as hell also.

Don’t burn all your initiative. Ever. A little part of me cheers any time a thief uses HS to gap close on me when I’m at full HP, that’s a pretty good sign I’ve already won.

Sword is a good weapon to sort of anti-troll the troll spec bunker elementalist. Spamming #2 for juking is annoying, you probably won’t kill them this way, but you can tie them up as long as they would have you. Pistol whip can be brutal if you can force their cantrips and water swaps before using it much.

As was mentioned, D/D elementalists are “everywhere” for a few reasons, but in WvW many of them are staff eles just trying to get to the zerg…..

Sorry, by shadowstep I meant either use steal or shadowshot generally, not the shadowshot skill itself (I hold onto that one for the escape). I also don’t run the glass thief, it can be great when you have the advantage… but every other time you get face rolled

ensoriki.5789:

We need another Off-hand.

I’ve already put my vote in for torch, a less sneaky condition damage offhand, though offhand sword could be a decent idea as well.

Also fully on board for rifle, all aboard the weapon train! WHOOT!

Tulisin.6945:

I agree, initiative doesn’t restrict spam. What it does do, however, is compartmentalize weapon capabilities. Most professions don’t have the dilemma of a weapon skill being sub-par because they’re almost always going to do something more useful than auto attacking, so you might as well burn the CDs. Thief skills, on the other hand, are directly comparable since they all draw from the same resource, almost like a shared CD. This is why something like Body Shot, which would be decent for any other profession with cooldowns, is viewed very unfavorably by thieves. It is a certifiable opportunity cost in initiative that means any benefit derived from it must be directly compared to the benefit of spending a similar amount of resources using another skill.

I agree that initiative makes the decision to use a skill a more complicated one than other classes because of the shared use of initiative. But this moves the question away from whether or not initiative works well towards how balanced the weapon skills are. Basically thief weapon skills need to be less about which skill is stronger than another and more about which skill is useful for what purpose. Though I agree that some weapon skills don’t satisfy the criteria of having a particular use.

covenn.7165:

draner.5213:

d/d eles, I’m a thief and I want to kill you, how do you suggest I go about this?

If we are specced and geared decently for 1v1 fights, you really can’t. It might be frustrating for you that an ele gets away from you or forces you to run away from him, but I can tell you without a doubt that it is equally frustrating for us…. you attack us at a time and place of your choosing, and if things go badly you can get away the vast majority of the time with no consequences due to stealth. Instead of stressing about it, it is just easier to accept it for what it is and then take joy on the few times someone sticks around to fight when they start to lose.

Yea, that`s kind of my current tactic, shadowstep in, get a taste, and see if I should scram, the high mobility of the d/d ele is mostly the problem I run into. I’ll stealth and book it, but if I come out of stealth visible to them at all I better hope safety is nearby, cause their chase is a force to be reckoned with.

Hyo Jin.5630:

Didn’t mean to taunt, but obviously it’s insanely annoying to see all those Elementalist running with EXACTLY the same bunker/heal D/D OP build. Guys, seriously, aren’t you bored to play this way? (Never crosses an Elementalist with Staff, or maybe 1 – 2 times..)
Everytime I cross an Elementalist in WvW it’s the freaking same thing : Tanking 10 of us & then running away while killing 2 – 3 of us (full exotic, good players, not casual afk players looking at the birds).
Even with CC (so that Elementakitten D/D can’t move, his weakness for this build), poison (so that they won’t heal as much), insane burst & so on.. Those freaking Elementalist just won’t die. Why? Because they got SO MUCH condition removal, so much heal (they obviously out heal themselves), so much stun breaks you just CAN’T do something.

I ALREADY KNOW there are a lot of posts running through this forum, but please, Anet do something. Or maybe you want all the players to reroll Elementalist D/D so that there’ll be only this kind of class fighting in sPvP / WvW? Players like the easy way, they got something with the Elementalist D/D.
I may add that I played Lv 80 Elementalist D/D in WvW, I know what I’m talking about. There’s something wrong with this class & it’s need to be fix as soon as possible.

Thank you for reading this post, I really appreciate it.

I’ll admit I’m not much of an ele myself either, I’m mostly a thief. On that note coming to the ele forum to rage at ele’s for being good at killing you in PvP is kind of out of line (the thief forum gets that often, but less than most of the thieves on there believe), in PvP expect every class to try to kill you from the other team. Balance issues belong in either the Bug or Suggestions forums. Perhaps you meant to rephrase your question into the same one I came here to ask…

d/d eles, I’m a thief and I want to kill you, how do you suggest I go about this?

After reading through this thread I’ve noticed a few complaints popping up consistently about steal.

1. The trait line doesn’t do enough for it
2. Thieves don’t have enough skills
3. Bundles aren’t useful
4. Initiative restricts spam (this one I disagree with completely, initiative does the opposite)

So what about if steal was reverted to its classic image? Steal a weapon that you can swap to. This was originally removed because the dev’s thought that adding more skills was too confusing, however I think it could breathe new live into the thief, it could add a lot more utility. Also, having these bundles’ skills operate on normal cd’s rather than initiative would give them a useful place, if you burn your initiative, switch to the bundle.
Another thing that could be considered is changing steal cd rate in trickery to stolen bundle damage, but that’s a whole other can of worms.

Toroquin.3605:

Invis does already make you unstompable (by interrupting incomming stomps and not allowing players to start another stomp until stealth is over), but i might be just be misunderstanding your point.

I haven’t encountered stealth stopping people from stomping me once they’ve started, they continue their stomp.
But really my point is that the movement from skill 2 should interrupt stomps regardless of how far the shadowstep goes, because often terrain will prevent you from moving far (the camera angle can make it difficult to) and a person will continue their stomp with their back to you or the like.

Each classes downed state has at least one skill that interrupts an enemies stomp (WvW/PvP), shadow escape is supposed to be the thief’s, but often times you cannot shadow step far enough away and the enemy’s stomp goes unhindered.
I would like to see Shadow escape always cause stomps to stop, because very often (especially when fighting on uneven terrain) you don’t get the opportunity to interrupt the stomp at all.
In fact even better would be using the aquatic drowning skills in place of the terrestrial downed skills (a bleeding auto-attack, a knockback, and stealth would be a great change)

As it stands the duration of revealed is not overly important. This is because it is a debuff that you cannot do anything about. If you see the revealed icon it means you cannot stealth, until how long? until it’s gone. You don’t really need to watch it, simply check for it when you consider stealthing. Is it there? yes – don’t stealth. no – go for it

Timers on normal conditions let you decide if it’s worth it to cleanse or wait it out, revealed you can’t do anything about, so a duration indication isn’t overly helpful.

You could just not healing and elite skills from being effected by the traits, all it would take is rewording the trait such that " ‘blank’ utility skills recharge 20% faster". Assuming you didn’t want the traits to effect them (the traits don’t currently effect them, but if each type of skill had a corresponding healing and elite they would all equally benefit from it)

Panda.1967:

Ok… let me see if I’m getting this right…
Also I don’t see where your getting 6 skill types for Engineer…. I sorta see where your comming from on Mesmer with Phantasm/Clone being 2 types… but theres 2 of each thus filling the 4 skills of a type for Illusion… whereas the Engineer has 4 types 5 skills in each type yea they have “Weapon Kit” and “Device Kit” but thats 3 Weapon 2 Device, and they are all 5 still just Kits…

That was actually my mistake, I haven’t played a lot of engineer but thought I remembered them having 4 types as well as device and weapon kits, just misremembering

Panda.1967:

Ok… let me see if I’m getting this right…

Guardian: Consecration, Meditation, Shout, Signet, Spirit Weapon
- Current Healing – Signet – 4 new Heals
- Current Elite – None of Above – 5 new Elites

Warrior: Banner, Physical, Shout, Signet, Stance
- Current Healing – Signet – 4 new Heals
- Current Elite – Banner, Signet – 3 new Elites

Engineer: Kit, Elixer, Gadget, Turret
- Current Healing – Elixer, Kit, Turret – 1 new Heal
- Current Elite – Elixer, Turret – 2 new Elites

Ranger: Shout, Signet, Spirit, Survival, Trap
- Current Healing – Trap, Survival – 3 new Heals
- Current Elite – Survival, Spirit – 3 new Elites

Thief: Deception, Signet, Trap, Trick, Venom
- Current Healing – Signet – 4 new Heals
- Current Elite – Venom – 4 new Elites

Elementalist: Arcane, Cantrip, Conjure, Glyph, Signet
- Current Healing – Glyph, Signet – 3 new Heals
- Current Elite – Glyph, Conjure – 3 new Elites

Mesmer: Glamour, Manipulation, Mantra, Signet, Illusion (Clone, Phantasm)
- Current Healing – Mantra – 4 new Heals
- Current Elite – None of the Above – 5 new Elite

Necromancer: Corruption, Minion, Signet, Spectral, Well
Current Healing – Minion, Well – 3 new Healing
Current Elite – Minnion – 4 new Elite

Actually a lot of the current healing and elite skills could be categorized under the utility skill types but simply aren’t as there is little reason to. Example, thief’s hide in shadows could easily be considered a deception skill, and his withdraw a trick. The mesmer’s moa morph could be considered manipulation, and time warp is very similar to glamour skills. The labels may not be there, but the theme is on most of the current elite/healing skills already.

Each profession has 5 utility skill types (mesmers and engineers both kind of have 6; though phantasm and clone skills are really just illusion skills, and device kits and weapon kits are really just kits), of which they have ~4 utility skills of each type. These different types of utility skills are meant to help define the different ways each profession plays.
Some of the healing and ultimate skills are already quite tied into these utility skill types (especially signets, which are quite common), but I propose that each utility skill type should have both a corresponding healing and ultimate skill. This would help further distinguish the different roles each class can effectively fill.

(I know many people may argue to ‘fix’ the ultimate/healing of their choosing before adding more, but that isn’t the principle of my suggestion. My point is that each different utility skill type help define each class, and that this definition should carry over to healing/ultimate skills as well)

Using the BLTC to sell things will quickly result in finding L2B (looking to buy) postings that are 1 copper, or more specifically, L2B postings that are lower than the vendor value of the item.

For obvious reasons you cannot sell to these postings (it removes value from the economy).
My question is, why are these postings allowed?
If the posting cannot be filled, why can an individual create a L2B that is lower than vendor value that can never be filled?

Suggestion: Do not allow L2B postings that would result in a lower or equal net profit of selling to vendor (eg. profit from selling to the posting needs to be 1 copper more than vendor value)

Ok, so most people are well aware that racial elite skills are underpowered compared to profession elites, to cause favouritism towards profession skills over racial skills. This I understand, so the question is:

Why do racial elites exist? Well two reasons come to mind,
1. Added utility, racial elites can serve functions that profession skills do not
2. Added immersion, make your character feel more unique, in that they make you feel like a norn/asura/human/sylvari/charr

So how can racial skills be changed to provide these two functions better and make them viable choices, my take on the subject.
All but the norn race have a racial elite the summons a unit related to the character’s race. These units tend to have lacklustre performance, face long cool downs, average durations, and a lack of control. Also is the lack of immersion that they provide.

Let’s say I’m a charr. I call in my warband for support. These fellows answer the call and throw their life on the line for me, but who are they? where did they come from? where do they go? what’s their story?
Unfortunately I know the answer, they don’t really exist.

So I recommend to remedy this by blending the racial summons into something similar to necromancer minions. You summon this unit, and it’s permanent. It has no duration. Also the elite skill is replaced with a new skill that you can trigger on the summoned unit. This would give the racial elites more immersion (that’s my asura’s golem, yes we go everywhere together, yea we mess enemies up, he watches my back), would add a measure of control to improve utility (it’s great that my d-series golem has this awesome shield, but I’d rather he not use it off in some far corner at a random time), and would avoid the need to buff these units (if the summons have no duration and you can trigger their skills they already have been buffed substantially).

Other Ideas:
These units don’t die when their health reaches 0, they go into the standard down state for npcs where they do not move or attack, and can be revived by anyone other than yourself (to prevent you chain rezing your unit). Or revive and return to you after combat.

You can name your unit, who doesn’t want a Sparkles 2.0 or a pair of balthazar’s hounds referred to as hell hounds?

Personal story choices have some measure of impact on the summoned unit. This is seen in warband support, where the summoned units wear armour relative to the warband you chose in your story. Why not take that a bit further and have their skills influenced by your story? Ash legion units might flank around enemies to attack and iron legion units might use a rifle, some ideas.

How would that sound? I think it would be an interesting dynamic (sorry norns, seem you draw the short straw in my suggestion)

jportell.2197:

You never use thieves guild or ambush? I’m impressed those are like thieves “I want out of jail free cards” The damage from both of them is kind of ridiculous.

those are both great skills, the point is you choose if you want to use them in your build vs them being imposed on your character.

randomfightfan.4091:

Agreed there, love initiative and hate pets. I want to do my own damage. Hate relying on outside sources to succeed, especially unreliable sources that can’t even dodge roll. Also resource management > cooldown imo

Yea, I don’t like the idea of having an AI character integrated into your character, sure you have a measure of control but I prefer the option to take AI when I want it like the necro, or opt alone.

randomfightfan.4091:

sounds like to me you want to play a ranger. Not kidding here, you’d like sbow and x/torch ranger. Drop the torch aoe, swap to sbow, victory through poison, bleeds and burns!

I do enjoy the ranger as well, though I don’t exactly enjoy the pet mechanic, and really enjoy the initiative mechanic as I find it makes skill use more tactical

The use of burning represents an option for prolonged fights, where condition damage comes into play. Sure the thief can apply bleeds quite constantly but having a single condition type that you focus on makes for simple countering. Most professions have a skill or trait that allows them to drop one or two conditions quite regularly. If you’re banking pretty much all of your condition damage into one condition the ease of removing is increased (it is true that placing other conditions on them will make it harder to cure bleed specifically, but the chance is still there). The theory behind giving the torch is that should your opponent be able to keep much of your bleeds at bay there’s still some lesser condition damage able to get through by sacrificing some cc.

jportell.2197:

If you go to PVP and look at the condition that is most damaging on breakdowns it is bleeding… Which thieves do better than ANYONE… After that it may be poison another thing that thieves are amazing with… Lets say guardians are the most reliant class on burning (frequency of application) never ever do I see burning be the highest condition on a death breakdown… It is bleeding… Not burning…

True, bleeding will result in more damage than burning, but that’s due to the nature of bleeding. Bleeding stacks intensity, each stack is doing its own damage, whereas burning stacks duration, meaning chances are if you run a damage build focused on burn any kill will likely have a lot of burn damage still on it. My point is burn really acts as a supplementary damaging condition, and so it would be helpful if the thief had the option to utilize it to supplement their bleeds.

jportell.2197:

You ignored the fact that thieves can still cripple/weaken/vulnerability on par if not better than every single class in this game… You also have more blinds. I am saying that currently I feel that thieves are by far the best condition appliers and therefore do not need more ways to apply conditions like burning… Look at say guardians… They really only get burning and blinds… Ele’s don’t get poison or weakness at all… Mesmers can’t either. Really the mesmers only get confusion which is sad in pvp currently… You guys have it top tier as long as conditions go… Specced for it or not.

It’s true thieves can apply many conditions, it’s just that their options for damaging conditions aren’t huge. Allowing the torch in the offhand would provide some burning skills while taking away some options at other conditions through weapon skills alone (depending on the skills used you would either have poison or bleed and vulnerability). Meaning using the torch would sacrifice cripples, blinds and stealth in order to focus more on condition damage. Allowing the torch would mean trading cc conditions like cripple and blind for a more damage based condition, burning. The goal of this would simply be to enable condition damage builds to have a better place for thieves, especially in PvP or WvW without gaining something from nothing.

jportell.2197:

Poison is used to limit their healing which in turn helps out your damage… And condition builds are the nemesis to mesmers and warriors and other thieves… Just a simple trait can make poison last up to a minute and the only time I have every really gotten my tail handed to me be a thief is a venom/bleed thief… These are scarier than the BS burst thieves because they can keep reapplying the conditions easily… To the point where two of them is enough to take out an anti condition guard…. (One would do it under other conditions) But you have to accept the fact that currently people run condition cleanses because they feel that other wise the conditions are too strong to ignore one venom caltrops and stealing is enough to keep a full up time of poison on your target… And you also have the inflict weakness when you inflict poison trait… This is pretty much the antithesis of might… Dodging sucks and so does damage… Change your build around some get some sigils of venom/debility and condition damage runes and you will be fine… No need to introduce another weapon that is more than likely gonna suck worse than other weapon options.

While I would never disagree with the usefulness of poison I agree with your stance that it is ultimately not a damaging condition in itself, it is used to prevent healing. However healing is only one of the many ways to prevent damage in guild wars (see: aegis, protection, dodging, ect.). Also condition builds with thieves tend to benefit from stealth to improve survivability (stack conditions, stealth to recover, rinse, repeat). As such it would certainly help the thief to be able to apply another damaging condition so that condition damage can be spread over more conditions rather than being concentrated so that it is less effected by cleanse if built that way. Confusion would see less benefit to thieves because of stealth, stealth often presents a break in battle where skill use is lessened, meaning few procs to confusion. This leaves burning as the superior option, it just needs an implementation.

The reason I suggest the thief get the torch is because I would like to see the thief gain burning without tweaking the pre-existing skills (thief has seen some unkind changes, and reworking a utility skill to provide burning would likely mean it losing its current use). By adding the torch as an option current builds wouldn’t suffer (don’t like the torch? just don’t use it and see no change). The torch wouldn’t need a corresponding trait to improve it as it really is on the fringe of how a thief would behave.

The thief can excel at applying damaging conditions when they want to, stacking long poison and lots of bleeding. The problem is that these can be easily cleansed, 2 condition removal skills cleans out all the stacks, and it can be difficult to apply it all again quickly. As such there have been mention of adding a way for thieves to apply burning, and I agree completely. An extra condition (which is dedicated to damage as opposed to poison which is multi faceted) would make it harder to cleanse out the thief’s conditions.

So what about giving the thief the torch?

While this might be slightly against what the thief stands for (going unnoticed is a bit more tricky while carrying a light source), it would in my opinion help the game mechanics (and could leave the thief without a weapon combo that results in stealth, simulating the lack of stealth). This could give the thief a weapon skill that gives burning, making it stackable, and provide more utility to thieves through some extra weapon and dual skills, while encouraging moving away from CnD and Black Powder which Anet seems to oppose due to constant stealth. This also means the utility skills don’t have to be reworked (making it difficult to keep builds alive because skills are only be added, old ones don’t need to be touched).

What are your thoughts?

Critical Strikes
Furious Retaliation – Gain fury for 10s when enemy reaches 50% health. cd of 45s
Trickery
Thrill of The Crime – you and nearby allies gain 10s of fury, might and swiftness when you steal

My question is where is the value of Furious Retaliation compared to that of Thrill of the Crime? seeing as steal initially has a 45 sec cd (-10% in order to get the TotC). Understanding that TotC requires you to use steal, but provides 2 additional buffs to both you and your allies with an equal or lesser cd. Other than the fact that spending points in Critical Strikes to get to higher traits these skills seem to be in direct opposition to one another with one being clearly stronger.

Any insight on to where Furious Retaliation gets its value comparatively?