Showing Posts For jcavlopes.1736:
it’s the rune of the THIEF, so how about:
1. +25 Precision
2. +35 Power
3. stolen skills deal +5% more damage, steal recharges 5% faster
4. + 75 Precision
5. strikeing a foe from stealth will drain one boon from him to you
6. move 25% faster ,When striking a foe from behind or the side, gain +5% damagethis would at least fit the generall thief playstyle: mobility, stealing and focused on single targets….
I would like to see this rune with a steal bonus. But i would just really be glad if they changed the condition dmg for power. And that’s not asking much. At least it would give the original 6th bonus coherence with thief power backstab builds. As it is this rune is a total insanity and i see no use for it.
I keep getting shadow shot blocked by players. Is this a know bug or am I not noticing any special circumstance where it becomes blockable?
Really, I would be satisfied if they attempted to do a redesign, or showed signs of awareness at this point.
Awareness OP at this point. It’d be best to ignore the herd of elephants in the office and keep the gem store releases on schedule.
It really makes sense that anet doesnt pay attention to really get it’s game classes a consistent, decently playable design. When most people care more about looks than gameplay, it really makes a very profitable idea to keep releasing dollar bought cosmetic stuff than to push your sleeves up and get some real work done.
Hey, at least we will look good at our coffins. Isn’t that what’s all about?
Yeah, backstab is the easiest skill to spam in the game.
First, you got to get into stealth, which eats around 50% of an thief initiative, if you are lucky. Second you got only 3 secs of stealth to position behind the target(so you get the full burst). Now, it wouldn’t be as bad, but most professions have access to speed boons, aegis, aoe stuns, cripples and many other ways which turns this into a really hard task. Third, even if you get lucky to land a BS, it it will not make a decent amount of damage if you aren’t running full zerker and have decent critical chance. Since going full zerker build is insanity, you get a crappy 2k backstab, which most opposing builds suck up like nothing’s happened. Fouth, of course, if you could land it, you got revealed debuff which prevents you from getting back on stealth again for at least 3 secs.
Yup… backstap is so spammable it makes me want to cry.
(edited by jcavlopes.1736)
The builds everyone is complaining about should be obvious. Generic 0/0/2/6/6 D/D & Staff Ele, Warrior Axe/Sword + Bow & Cele Rifle Eng. These might not be purely OP, but they’re at least overperforming in comparison to other classes that use a similar combo. Hell, Ele wouldn’t even be viable if it wasn’t for the ridiculous sustained heal/damage it gets through the Celestial amulet.
So you pretend to want to list the builds, but narrowly avoid it, bravo. Use this site
http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/
This way you can show us the traits. Now go ahead and give us a break down of how you stack the might and how you maintain it in a fight. Especially the rifle engineer. It has already been pointed out repeatedly that rifle/cele build doesn’t stack might, but if you claim it does, I am curious to hear your break down on it.
i run trickery thief meaning i can steal those might stacks every 20 sec and i just couldn’t do it because of boon prioriziation….i fought celestial might stacking dd ele, he had around 20 might stacks, no matter how many times i hit him with steal he kept those stacks because they would be always covered by regen, protection and what not… same goes for engis….
What game mode were you in? What build are they using? Why is it okay for thieves to stack it? Power of Inertia (might when dodging), Hidden Assassin (2 stacks might when going stealth), Signets of Power (5 stacks might for using a signet), Thrill of the Crime (might and other boons when stealing), Venomous Strength (multiple might stacks per venom used)………………………..Thief is one of the largest offenders of the ability to spam stealth, run full dire gear, being defensive while maintaining large stacks of might, stealth spam, survivability, and abuse the system worse then engineer or ele, and they can use gear that is much more survivable then celestial gear, yet do more damage. They really need to nerf the traits that allow thieves to mindlessly gain passive might with no effort.
Prove it. Make a build where a thief abuses the might stacking and video to the thread. Listing possible trait features doesn’t really makes a build up. Go learn how to use the gw2skill site. I want to see how can you get 25 stacks of might on a thief.
You know what?! This guy is just a hypocritical duchebag, and his choice for a name really tells it all. Get a taste of your own medicine, you ape.
Thief is fine design-wise, it’s the hardest profession to play at a high level, and there’s always a profession like that. It’s high risk, high reward. If you’re struggling with thief it’s because you’re not managing risk. Watch these thieves if you think the profession is not effective.
Sizer: http://www.twitch.tv/sizer2654/profile/past_broadcasts
Caed: http://www.twitch.tv/narcarsis/profile/past_broadcasts
Yes. Playing a thief is hard. Like you said, high risks, high rewards, and if it depended only on chance, you are mostly likely to be kissing the floor. All the same, people are able to master it and still be effective. I grant you all that.
However, just because you can show me a couple of cases where people manage to excel the profession, doesn’t automatically entitles you to say that everything is fine with it. Somethings are not just a L2P issue, no matter how much people like to insist in belittling others.
There are design flaws and they need to be issued. Just looking at something as basic as the thief steal ability gives us plenty of examples to think about:
I. If you successfully steal an item, you can’t see the cool-down timer for when steal will be up again. That information can be precious, yet this simple thing is not even possible with the current design unless i had used the item.
II. I can conceive a situation where i want to just dump the item i stole. If designers had really thought things through, they would have realized to create a option for you to do so. I may sound like I am making to much of a fuss out of nothing, but it really would make things a lot simpler. And its not like they ran out of keys to implement it.
So you see, I’m not even addressing actual steal bugs, but rather basic UI stuff that seem to just have passed the devs face unnoticed. And i don’t think any of those things are minor issues because at the end, they will affect playability.
He is not suggesting a nerf, he wants to redesign the thief.
And thieves stealth, if you haven’t traited in shadow arts is just a nice trick, at best a vantage giver. It’s definitely not about damage mitigation and a very unreliable form of damage avoidance.
Making stealth significantly more difficult to use? Getting rid of teleporting skills altogether? Yeah, those are nerfs and rather large ones at that. What’s more, his suggested redesigns would only make the thief capable of doing a mediocre job of mimicking other classes. Our current kit doesn’t come anywhere close to supporting the changes he suggests. At best, they’d make us a poor man’s warrior or ranger. At worst, it would make the class almost useless in comparison to other classes. The only way it could do anything positive for the class would be if Anet scrapped everything and started from scratch… And even then, we wouldn’t be the thief class most of us fell in love with now, would we?
As for the stealth comment, note that I didn’t say it was a perfect mechanic. There are many reasons why stealth is not adequate enough to act as one of our sole sources of defense (I’m looking at you Rapid Fire). But the answer isn’t to nerf it further, take away our only other defense mechanism (teleporting), or try to turn us into something we’re not. That helps no one.
Well, I’m not saying his design suggestions are good, or don’t end up somehow nerfing thiefs. That’s a collateral of him not being very thoughtful. He did state he wants to redesign it though. And i think at least there he is right on the point.
Thief class needs serious redesign, and if i where in the pvp balance team i would overhaul the entire thief mechanics. Not only that, but many other problems i see with the current pvp “balance” – this includes reworking other classes too.
I am trying to understand this thread.
Are speed-runners or “elitists” allowed to go to the bathroom if an impeding intestinal aggro should arise? If not, i would definitely rather to be on a casual run, because not everyone is a fat spoiled kid like Cartman to have his mom come with a portable toilet to crap on.
I wonder how elitists would perform under those circumstances…. I
I’m not sure what you’re trying to say. You gotta go when you gotta go. Even speed runners wouldn’t kitten on their chair.
Go watch south park, make love not warcraft. Then i guess you will get what i meant.
I find that most people hate thieves for one and only one reason. A thgeves ability to chain stealths and teleports around the map with no end in sight. This is incredibly frustrating for everyone. Even other thieves.
Given the above I would suggest that the stealth ability force players to either be a specific distance away from an enemy or simply make stealth exit always apply a 3 second cooldown.
I would get rid of all stealth revealing abilities because now its on every stealth exit.
I would get rid of the teleporting abilities all together.
I would fix the trait lines such that power/condi actually had some power related non-selectable traits…take a look they are: serpents touch, lotus posion and expose weakness. 2 of the 3 are condi. They need to do 2 things each one power side one condi side.
The critical strikes line actually deals with critical buff but no ferocity stuff. Again should be both things.
The shadow arts line goes away completely.
Acrobatics goes away too.
Also delete trickary.
Replace the three above lines with:
==
Melee specializationDisarms, parry, stuns, expose weakness
==
Range specializationDust cloud, dodging increase shortbow range, snares
==
TrapsTo save a bunch of coding I would re-use some of the casting classes abilities AOE abilities.
Then to replace the teleports etc simply by giving a sprint ability.
Just some ideas of what could be done…
And of course they are terribad etc….if that is all you are going to reply with save it.
I’m sorry, but I cannot disagree with you more.
While I will admit that the stealth and mobility that thieves have can be frustrating to encounter at times, you also have to understand that these things are inherently tied to the thief kit. It’s what sets them apart and allows them to still be viable, despite the current environment they are forced to play in. The teleporting and stealth that you were mentioning? EVERY thief needs these things to stay alive. They are our primary (and I’d even go as far as to say only) source of damage mitigation. You are basically suggesting that Anet nerf the only things that allow us to still be good at all into near nonexistence. You might as well just get rid of the class in that case, since you’d essentially be turning thieves into a squishier, less powerful warrior class with a gimmicky cloak ability. Btw, the teleporting thing? That’s not even strictly a thief ability. Sure we have the most access to those skills, but mesmers and elementalists can teleport too.
What’s more, I am completely against ANY form of nerf to the thief class at this point. We don’t need a nerf. If anything, we could use a slight buff, given the current state of the game. Since day one, people have been b****ing about thieves. “Thieves are OP because of…” or " OMG! THIEVES OP! ARENANET! FIX IT!" And Anet has responded to these complaints with repeated nerfs to the class. At first, some were reasonable (the “Revealed” status for example). But it’s now gotten to the point where we are barely able to hold our own against the other classes, most of which are somehow not deserving of direct nerfs like we were. The thief is not and has never been an easy class to play. We have neither the raw power nor the defensive capabilities of your standard warrior, even when they’re running zerkers. We don’t have the sustained condition damage that necromancers and engineers have, and the addition of more condition removal abilities in an attempt to balance those two classes have only succeeded in making condi-thieves even more mediocre in comparison. Our saving grace is our great burst damage potential. The fact that we can get in, take a target down and get out faster than anyone else. The fact that while we may be significantly squishier than most classes, we have STEALTH and MOBILITY to help us avoid damage altogether.
The last thing we need is yet another nerf…
He is not suggesting a nerf, he wants to redesign the thief.
And thieves stealth, if you haven’t traited in shadow arts is just a nice trick, at best a vantage giver. It’s definitely not about damage mitigation and a very unreliable form of damage avoidance.
“Stealth is supposed to be our damage mitigation… or at least that’s what the argument always is but I find this isn’t the case when channeled abilities will continue even if I go stealth.”
Stealth in this game is just a bad taste joke. It’s real far from good and consistent design. In the same way your remark went: you can’t contest a node while stealthed. So, to defend a node it’s like you are not even there if you are stealthed … but sure Rapid Fire shall hit you in stealth, AoE shall suck half your HP like nothing’s happened.
Come on… make your mind up, Anet. Stealth in situation A = you’re a ghost, stealth in situation B = it’s like you’re not stealth at all. I’m sure I’m not the only one aware of the huge contradiction here!
I’m a noob at the game as well as to the thief class
Thief is not for you my friend – try Warr or Guard
Best response of the thread…I actually laughed.
So true too.
I really wished people would try and discuss the matters that I raised. But maybe the nerf bat has left you guys with cynicism as the only resort to be used when talking about thief changes. I don’t blame you, Anet is the one to blame.
I am trying to understand this thread.
Are speed-runners or “elitists” allowed to go to the bathroom if an impeding intestinal aggro should arise? If not, i would definitely rather to be on a casual run, because not everyone is a fat spoiled kid like Cartman to have his mom come with a portable toilet to crap on.
I wonder how elitists would perform under those circumstances…. I
I’m going to suggest some changes to the thief’s steal ability now. It really bothers me that i can’t see steal cooldown when you got a stealed item. It also bothers me that i can’t just dump the ability if i want to. Why don’t the developers go and implement this: one separate ability to use the item (lets say, F2) while, steal would able you to see the cooldown and one other to dump it in case you don’t want to use it(F3)?
Wow just lol….
might aswell give the tiefs a skill which makes him invulnerable for 10 minutes and give him wings in wvw so he can just fly in every tower.Tbh i don’t know any class more tanky then the thief, you’ve got loads of shadowsteps, stuns, stealth and regen(if traited). You’re complaining about the fact that they lack surviveability, but the primary reason why they lack that surviveability is because you’re most likely going full beserker, what else do you expect then?
Also a permanent stealth button will cause nothing but trouble, since it will result in massive dungeonskipping and sneaking into enemy wvw keeps.
Probably my skill as a thief is very low as your skill at reading and giving an argument that isn’t just plain bad rethoric is. But let’s not focus on me, because as I said, I am a noob. However, having not mastered the thief yet, doesn’t stop me from seeing bad designs.
Instead of intelligently discuss the points I tried to make, you go on kittenbag mode and completely misrepresent what I was trying to say and suggest that thieves should have a ridiculous 10 min invulnerability. I never implied that in any way and you just made an kitten out of yourself.
You only got one thing right: I do have power builds on my mind more than anything, what you would called zerker. I do think that thieves need SOME survivability on that gameplay choice because it is inviable the way it is. They got none. I get quite perplexed with a game that says they will put an end to the holy trinity and you be able to play whatever way you want but later on, the game forces you to not play all the builds. And it can’t be denied that’s what it does. I can’t possibly imagine why anyone in their right mind would chose to play d/d power build at pvp. They would be a sitting duck waiting just to be slaughtered.
This game is full of inconsistencies (or just plain contradictions) of that kind, and that needs to be addressed ASAP. Either change the game slogan or start doing things to actually implement what it is said to be. On a side note on this point but totally unrelated topic: think on how thieves don’t count to protect a point while stealthed at pvp and then think how engineer’s turrets do, even if he isn’t even there. That’s just completely absurd. Again, bad design.
Now let me analyze what you implied. You’re saying that just because someone in a power build (and i’m not talking only about thieves now) chose to trait for the maximum dps output they shouldn’t be granted no way to protect themselves? Are you insane? I’m not asking for some dumb god mode invulnerability as you suggest, but something they can do to not lose half their HP in one blow before they can even land their damage. Every decently balanced mmo i’ve played wouldn’t allow that.
Just as about 99% of your reply, your remark on my “stealth button” was just blurted out without even thinking about it. Massive dungeonskipping? First of all, that button would only steath the thief himself, it’s not an AoE steath. The only way you could remotely do that was if the whole party was made of thieves and that’s mostly improbable, and if this happens, so what? About sneaking, that’s whats thieves should be able to do, so again you are just being silly or just plain ignorant.
Secondly, it seems to me that thieves lack damage mitigation or more generally speaking, avoidance of effects while in stealth. I don’t really have much of a quarrel with applying AoE effects in itself on a thief while he is stealthed, that seems fair enough. But some situations in the game when this happens are bordering absurdity. I’m ok, for instance, with a Ranger to drop Barrage and burning some of the thief’s health with its damage, but something bothers me for when he uses his sword ability and is still able to cleave damage if the thief is in range. If he cant see me, wouldn’t this attack miss a couple of times at least? It’s a complicated situation and i can see why he would still get his damage done. But the point i am trying to make is that, when you have no target, it should be harder to actually hit it. This wouldn’t bother me as much if you had more stealth time do doge the attack, keep a distance and re-position to do a backstab. But as it is 3 seconds is quite short time to move away and get back to land one of your main source of damage. Usually a way that other games enable a stealth class (actually to other melee classes as well) certain survivability against heavy AoE classes is to give them traits to mitigate AoE damage. This gets even worse if the ability he is using has some sort of effect like a stun or a knockback. And this brings me to a balance between class issue.
I’m under the impression that thieves lack solid CC abilities whilst other classes have many. Come on… Basilisk Venom for only 1 second, while other classes can knock you back, stun or whatever for much more than that? Having more time to deal your damage while you are required to flank your foes should be a way to compensate.
Well, i’m kind of tired of writing but I’d like continue on another time. I think many of you have thought about these questions and i’d like to hear your feedback.
Cheers
I’m a noob at the game as well as to the thief class, so excuse me if i say something ignorant. Perhaps you should take what i will develop here as a perspective that may bring some different(or not) insights on the class. Hopefully, developers of the game read this as well and work towards improving it.
I chose to play Thief as my first char on the game… guess I though it would be cool. And I got to say, really, I have been through a hard time coping with the class features, specially at pvp, because it’s really very differently designed from other games I’ve played a stealthed class so far – for better or worse. I have virtually no experience with other classes yet, but from what i’ve been reading and from the encounters i have experienced with them as a thief, it seems thieves are in a very undeserved spot. This kind of frustrates me quite a lot because to me the thief is a profession that has so much potential to shine just as much as any other but the current design makes it a very crippled class at best (well, at least from what i think what a thief as a stealth class should be featured with). So, I’m hoping to provide some analysis onto how the class game-play could be “fixed” in a general way, not so much as fixing a specific trait or build.
First of all, based on my previous experience with other games, i thought thief stealth mechanics was going work a lot differently. I guess you’ll probably know the type of stealth mechanics that i mean, but i’ll say how i expected it to work anyway.
I thought stealth would be a permanent feature of the class and by that I mean the player could switch on/off at will (only when out of combat, off course) through a special ‘go into stealth’ ability. Once in combat, he would be able to use another ability to stealth again to disengage combat but that would have a relative long cooldown(1 to 2 mins or so), something similar to what shadow refuge is currently, but you would gain indefinite stealth as long you don’t re-engage combat (also, this ability would give no indication as where the thief is stealthed, which is another bad taste feature developers of this game have opted to implement — I can see the point of indication for team mates but definitely not for the enemy team players). Usually, under these stealth mechanics, if you get by any chance hit with any type of damage or AoE action while in this indefinite stealth mode, you would enter combat and become visible.
Well, GW2 surprised me on this like a thief should: you can pop in and out of stealth whenever you like regardless if you are in combat or not. This sounds like a nice feature (and it is) and i really liked it at first. I think the in combat system is working fine where it is now, but having no ability that allows you to go into stealth mode/leave stealth mode out of combat permanently is a major disadvantage. That really is major loss, because, to me, any game that wants to really implement a stealth class to its full and efficiently, that class OUGHT to be able to get into stealth for an indefinite amount of time until it gets into a combat state.
I ask myself what is the main purpose of a stealth class? To surprise, to catch the enemy off-guard. Playing a thief should ALWAYS be about a head start when initiating a combat. Well, you wont surprise anyone if you are spotted far away even if you can briefly stealth before getting near your target. Your enemy will be aware that an attack is bound to happen and that’s enough to break the class game-play because now he is expecting you and can do something about it.
I know, i know. You are probably thinking: “Well, you can get some decent amount of stealth by using smoke field, shadow refuge, other utilities and work around that”. Sure you can, but usually, this is expensive to do (costs a lot of initiative, time to do it) and the thief will be left short handed if you fail to get to the place you want to go in time for setting an ambush.
Take an example: If you want to sneak attack the enemy team home node right from the start, think, for instance, of the time you would lose somewhere blasting a smoke screen with your short bow with smoke screen at the beginning of a sPvP match. You end up losing precious seconds doing that, not to mention that at the end of it you usually wouldn’t have enough initiative to use infiltrator’s arrow to compensate for the time lost. To sum up, it’s really not an effective way to do what real solid out of combat stealth would enable the class to do. The way it now is, it’s clumsy, expensive and unreliable.
sneak attack on p/p?
Geiir,
Did you pay attention to the build i made ?
I didn’t spend the points I did on SA to hide and heal. I didn’t even got it’s healing GM trait. I did find, however, the trait that gives you stack of power when you gain stealth quite interesting, since my objective with this trait is to increase burst damage and to be able to pop in and out of stealth quite a lot. That’s how i think this build is going to work. A lot of backstabs, blinds and stealth.
I don’t see very much how SA is a complete waste for sPvP, for it gives me no perma-stealth. I would be popping in and out of stealth a lot, but not indefinitely stealthed, so i guess i can still contest a point.
I am trying to increase my damage, since it is mostly lost (when you drop from the 6/6/0/0/2 burst direct damage) if you want to survive (either going acro or trick or w/e).
About the Short bow. I surely think SB is a good weapon to have on a second hand and i definitely see its uses even withing this build. But there are some questions concerning it as a choice:
1. Currently, i am concerned only with winning a simple 1v1 fight, which sometimes i just get face-rolled, depending on my foe class and build. How is short bow going to give me the boost i need then, if its main utility is AoE dmg?
2. If, as a thief, i see myself taking an interest in using a AoE dmg weapon, i begin to wonder if I am playing it right. Because in my conception of what a Thief should be, he shouldn’t be AoE damage downing a mob. He should be striving to go to places where enemy defense is at 1v1 level to take it down as quickly and as efficiently as he can. That’s why stealth mechanics are there for in the first place. You’re no thief on a mob, you are a thief on 1v1. Thiefs, conceptually, are to be ganked if they play a mob. I’m not saying that thiefs are worthless against a mob but if your main purpose is to take out numbers i guess there are other classes better suited for this job.
I am quite new to the game and i have chosen a thief as first char. I’ve been reading this forum a lot and researching to find a good way to make a decent build for PvP.
As many of you must have must experienced at first, i was quite in shock the first times i tried to pvp, mostly due do the hard nature of the profession current design. My first attempt, was, of course, D/D pve burst build and I was hoping to deliver some nice killing blows. Boy, was I naive! I was a glass-cannon and i was easily broken down to pieces at the first attempt to make a shot.
Since then I’ve been in a constant strive to understand the profession better, studying it, experimenting with its traits, weapons, utilities and gearing modes (runes, sigils, amulet etc). Obviously, i found myself cracking my head open trying to balance the tradeoffs i would have to make in order to get a functional thief that i felt comfortable with. I am impressed with the pains i had to go to find a way of making the most DPS as possible while maintaining a minimum of survivability.
Now i come to seek your opinion on the result of what i think might be a balanced set of choices, although it seems to me that a stealth class shouldn’t strive much to get their DPS going as it currently is. So I’m kind of thinking: “I know that I’m a noob. But am I really doing something real wrong that I’m not aware of?” I get the feeling that i should be doing a lot of damage, whereas I’m not.
So here it is my build: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZAQRAoa4al0Mp7plOx6J8PNBORxbL0B+FFaHAr2CC-TphFwAAOBADeAAGOIAMOCAw3fYaZAA