Guild Wars 2

Aaroneous.6190:

(warriors as well, with all their mobility).

“Warrior mobility is ok because they don’t also have stealth.”

Yeah, but they do have a HUGE health pool, massive regen, and heavy armor, as well as moving evade attacks.

JonPeters.5630:

Dahkeus.8243:

Josh Davis.6015:

Way to go, Jon…making me look bad!

Aww, don’t be such a grouch! Oh wait…

As for the new heals, I’m sure this will be good for some classes, but on my thief, I feel like I already have some of the best heals in the game. It’s going to be tough to add something that will appeal to me more than Withdraw or Hide in Shadows.

P.s. I’d rather see more Elites added than either heals or utilities.

Oh the new thief heal is going to mix some things up for sure!!!

In before it’s now a trap that you have to lay and run through to get the heal.

Fizban.2913:

Behellagh.1468:

Fizban.2913:

Gillian.1859:

Fizban.2913:

Gillian.1859:

You can get your money back when the update the new Flamekissed skin and you decide not to keep it.

T3 Human Cultural armor should remain exclusive to the Human race. It’s highly insulting to see a Sylvari, a Norn, an Asura or a Charr with a skin that looks 95% as the original Human Cultural Armor. There is nothing else to say about that.

You can get gems. Not the real world money I spent. I don’t want/need gems nor the gold it can be turned into.

Well that’s like most refunds in any stores now. You get a credit. Buy something else.

I don’t want anything else. Everything else on there I wanted I have already bought. And no I don’t want to have wasted my money on black lion keys.. My bank and bag slots are maxed and I don’t want anymore characters. There is NOTHING

There were two transactions. Cash to Gems. Gems to Item. They can give you back your gems for the item but the first transaction is still valid. Doesn’t matter the motivation or the final results, you bought gems.

You don’t need to lecture about the basics of transactions. That is a devious way of handling business which is not likely to inspire consumer confidence. The mark of a bad company

Then hang tight my main dragonlance bro, because you are in for the ride of your life when they re-release the flamekissed armor, as the flamkissiest flamekissed armor you’ve ever seen, unique in every way to every other set of armor in the game! No lazy mod jobs.

If at that point you’re like “meh, I don’t like it as much.” well then, feel free to grab your torch and pitchfork, but at least give them a shot at redeeming themselves to both sides.

Dekk.3459:

liefbread.9513:

Dekk.3459:

liefbread.9513:

JonPeters.5630:

Uncatchable is a good trait, and it was considered for moving up, but ultimately passed on for reasons that escape me right now. We talked through this flanking strike vs trickster change again yesterday and are still up in the air on it. I’m only posting updates to the main thread of stuff that is 100% changing.

Jon

All thief players scream “uncatchable is an awful trait that people hate running and goes against several changes that Anet themselves have said they’re making to other classes for the better.” and give you in depth reasons why, and you come back with “uncatchable is a good trait.”

yeah… this is the state of the thief patch notes.

It gives away your location if you’re in stealth… Until the 10th though its pretty useful for s/d p/d or d/d condition, IMO. Great reasons for it being awful btw, i can only think of one. Is the fury, might, swiftness better, ehh, in groups.

The reasons were posted ad nauseum in the first few pages, and in many other posts :P

that said, as a S/D thief I HAAAAAAATE hard to catch.

The Dev was asking for feedback on Uncatchable… minicaltrops in trickery. But I agree HtC is worthless in its current state. And the two other leather classes get 2 traits focusing on disables, not some kitten with a bow.

My bad, I made the post while my eyes were glazed over at work.

fair and valid point, apologies all around.

Dekk.3459:

liefbread.9513:

JonPeters.5630:

Uncatchable is a good trait, and it was considered for moving up, but ultimately passed on for reasons that escape me right now. We talked through this flanking strike vs trickster change again yesterday and are still up in the air on it. I’m only posting updates to the main thread of stuff that is 100% changing.

Jon

All thief players scream “uncatchable is an awful trait that people hate running and goes against several changes that Anet themselves have said they’re making to other classes for the better.” and give you in depth reasons why, and you come back with “uncatchable is a good trait.”

yeah… this is the state of the thief patch notes.

It gives away your location if you’re in stealth… Until the 10th though its pretty useful for s/d p/d or d/d condition, IMO. Great reasons for it being awful btw, i can only think of one. Is the fury, might, swiftness better, ehh, in groups.

The reasons were posted ad nauseum in the first few pages, and in many other posts :P

that said, as a S/D thief I HAAAAAAATE hard to catch.

On a side note, I’ve read through everything else and do genuinely appreciate you taking the time to talk with us.

Something I’d like to give you as food for thought is the possibility of fixing the consistency of various weapon sets, currently the 3 skill on D/D and P/P when compared to the rest of the weapon sets lend themselves more to hybrid builds than anything else.

A thought that popped into my head last night was something to the effect of removing the bleeding (and perhaps the combo finisher) from Death Blossom, and instead adding the ability to transfer 1 condition (or 2?)… This would give thieves some (in my mind) much needed relief on conditions/survivability while also not detracting from the power aspects of this weapon set.

Perhaps unload could become similar to Sneak attack on stealthed mainhand pistol, and apply bleeds in exchange for a reduction in damage increasing the viability of that set as a condition set, I feel this would open up some more ranged options for a P/D | P/P build, making more use of body shot, and more melee survivability for a d/d thief.

JonPeters.5630:

Uncatchable is a good trait, and it was considered for moving up, but ultimately passed on for reasons that escape me right now. We talked through this flanking strike vs trickster change again yesterday and are still up in the air on it. I’m only posting updates to the main thread of stuff that is 100% changing.

Jon

All thief players scream “uncatchable is an awful trait that people hate running and goes against several changes that Anet themselves have said they’re making to other classes for the better.” and give you in depth reasons why, and you come back with “uncatchable is a good trait.”

yeah… this is the state of the thief patch notes.

I like how the Ranger forum gets “We’ll look into possible solutions to the problems you have with the class…” and the Thief forum gets “Let me tell you why your math and logic is wrong about the thing you said was one of the smaller issues you had with the notes.”

I believe in you Jon, I’ve seen you care in other topics.

(2/2)

My primary concern about these changes is that you’re addressing skills and traits which are currently used by the thief, attempting to make them less used/usable, to the same token you’re not addressing any concerns with inconsistent trait lines, the viability of poisons for the class, the lame duck that is the “defining class skill” steal, nor the ineffectiveness of traps for the class as a whole.

I feel as if those three concerns are the primary limiters behind viability of alternative specs for the class, and without addressing the fact that there are two entire subsets of utility skills that are… sub par on a base level, at best…. we won’t be able to make effective changes to the class without someone feeling slighted.

to continue on, I’d like to see what the internals team has come up with as far as builds that these changes aid/make better or more viable, because as far as I can tell it’s hamstringing the majority of popular builds right now without offering much to others.

Specifically,

P/P unload builds are no longer viable due to the heavy initiative cost to maintain them, there’s no way around it and it’s already a very sub par build.

Sword/Pistol builds are heavy initiative reliant, I think they might be OK given the slight buff to pistol whip making it useful again, but I suppose we will see on that one, however they are going to severely suffer as far as survivability is concerned, you’re supposed to get up close but now you can’t have an out if you get knocked down, due to the builds reliance on other utility skills. (that said, I never don’t run shadowstep in any wvw/pvp scenario).

Sword/Dagger
Same concerns with initiative costs here, if I’m fighting against a bunker and I open with flanking larc to strip whatever their top boon (used to be an effective opener) is, I’m gaining one boon, lets say might, I then do an auto attack chain reducing them to maybe 80% health if I’m lucky… They’re unloading on me at the same time, I have to build fairly glassy for my auto attacks to be effective and I’m at say 75% so I cloak and dagger to get a bit of space/positioning and gain some time in the fight, my initiative is now somewhere around 3 or 4, I save this for another flanking strike after I hopefully daze them for a second, and maybe strip one more boon. If they haven’t healed at this point maybe they’re at 60% and I’m still at 75%? I’m then out of initiative, 6 seconds until I stealth again, I can’t pull out with 2 if I get knocked down and in this 1v1 scenario maybe I’m at a disadvantage at this point in the fight. (I’m imagining this versus a d/d bunker ele personally… if it helps you visualize)… I’m not doing an effective job of removing their boons, they can just switch to water and dodge roll to heal up, I heal and the fight is prolonged until someone comes along and knocks me down and stomps me… I could see myself eventually losing that fight against a player like Bitcloud or someone who’s talented at Ele, and I consider myself a really good S/D thief. Now put a new player in my shoes… someone who hasn’t yet learned to maintain perfect initiative lines etc…

I think P/D Is fine with these changes but in sPvP that’s a sub par build that doesn’t bring much to the table. In PvE It’s effectively useless as a condi centric build. WvW being its home of course.

D/P is obviously hurt by the changes in that your security is removed, that’s fine with me… It’ll be scary for new players, but whatever. This build is once again, only really effective for the team in WvW to pick off people on the outskirts of zergs/roamers.

D/D is actually helped by these changes, that’s really great, it was a fun skill intensive build that really deserved a boost up and has fallen quite by the wayside, this might be where I go after the changes assuming I continue to be forced away from sword.

I think that addresses all my personal concerns, hopefully it gives you some insight and I’d love to talk to you some time about where you see thief going/what you see thief being as a class.

Oh also, I think it was a mistake, straight up to tell thieves that you’re making Hard to Catch available to aid in survivability especially after all the talk about how you wanted to reduce the dependence on randomization for other classes. It’s as randomized and inconsistent as any of the engineers abilities and shouldn’t even be a trait in my personal opinion as someone who has tried to effective utilize it.

- Aladdin of Fort Aspenwood.

(1/2)

Initiative changes
I understand where you’re coming from with this, but you’ve made so many skills on thieves so initiative intensive/draining that there are several builds that DEPEND on that initiative regen that they “min max” for, and I don’t feel as if this have been properly considered. My point being that, given current initiative costs using black powder and shadow shot or flanking strike instantly drains my initiative, to the same token, a flanking strike, followed by a larcenous strike, followed by a cloak and dagger drains my initiative to 0, assuming current regen that’s six seconds of downtime before I can use another skill, and that’s including if I swap to my other weapon set. This isn’t something that other classes are hindered by with their cooldowns, I never don’t have the capability to use a skill on my elementalist, and quite frankly the autoattack chain on my thief isn’t enough to make up for/maintain this downtime in an aggressive pvp/wvw scenario.

Infiltrator’s Return
My primary concerns with the changes to Infiltrator’s Return are that you’re reducing the survivability ability of a weapon set which is already looked down on as sub par outside of sPvP. I understand that you want to reduce weapon swapping capabilities, but between the larcenous strike nerf and now this, sword dagger will become even less commonly run, there’s no alternative being offered here either, it’s not a give and take like a balance.. It’s just a nerf.

The changes to S/P might make up for it a slight bit in that we may be able to more consistently use the evade frames as evasion, but even that is a huge initiative sink. You also need to factor the survivability of thieves, when we’re launched or knocked down if we can’t pull out of the heat with our sword 2 we’re usually dead in two to three hits with a knockdown heavy warrior, that doesn’t even give most people time TO break out of short of running multiple stunbreaks as utility skills. Yes, it does give us an advantage to be able to pull out of combat (if we set it up beforehand) however as one of the squishiest classes that is intended to be a melee centric class, we NEED that extra survivability.

If you were to put the casting time on the initial use of the ability I could see that being significantly more successful.

Infusion of Shadow
I agree with the infusion of shadow changes… Permastealth is an obnoxious thing and I don’t agree with it it any way shape or form. It’s a crutch for bad thief players, albeit one that takes skill to make use of.

Flanking Strikes
I agree that this is too much, this patch is killing the ability for thieves to maintain sustainable DPS, as well as severely nerfing out survivability, the one two punch without any concessions or positive changes (because the initiative change is a negative change) is really too much for the class as a whole.

Vigorous Recovery & Bountiful Theft
My other thoughts on this matter cover this pretty well, you’ve created a class that relies on careful consideration and good timing to survive, and now you’re starting to take away the padding that we had on that due to individuals in sPvP using that padding to bunker down on cap points… This is going to be really harsh for any new Thief players and removes a lot of the survivability from the class. I understand why you’re doing it, but I think this is the wrong way to go about it, or at least, doing this without any other fairly drastic changes to the class and its play style is a poor way to go about it.

Tyler Chapman.1832:

Oghier.7419:

D/D didn’t get nerfed. Increasing base initiative gain by 33% is a pretty big deal.

It’s more than a big deal. It’s a MASSSSSSSSSIVE buff to all thief specs.

All thief specs that don’t use initiative regen* (so… not S/P or P/P)

:)

Can I convince you to address poisons and traps instead of shaving thieves initiative (traits), damage, stealth, and ability to dodge on a class that is already regularly hurting on survive-ability?

Looks like this will possibly be a gem store item, it will most likely be released within the next couple weeks.

I’ve been having some really great duels the past few days running my s/d build.

I’ve also gotten to chase down a lot of really really glassy people. :}

The math in this topic made me smile and yeah I’ve been forced at this point to run sigil of nullification for the most part. We could have the mesmer doing the boon stripping I suppose, but the cleave damage + the boon stripping and constant “good” positioning ends up working out better than me just running d/d and slamming the mobs down as fast as I can.

Doomdesire.9365:

Crawford.4135:

Stop using a Dagger in Zergs
Learn to gear for Zergs
Stop using a Sbow in Zergs
Malice is your friend followed up with Dagger Storm on Zergs
Use teleporting abilities to go in and out of Zergs
Stop using Zerker gear for Zergs

Thieves are THE best AoE’er in the game. If you can’t see that then you should probably find another class to play.

It’s still, IMO, one of the worst class in zergs. You’re too squishy to be able to deal good damage and survive. You have practically no stabo outside daggerstorm, very slow condition cure. Horrible AoE damage compared to ELEs and NECROS. And don’t get me started about having to push through chokes with ACs…

The only thing I like when zerging with my thief are those glorious 8 seconds of daggerstorm. Then I’m dead/useless. It’s why the top guilds don’t run more than 1-2 thieves when they raid.

Don’t use sig of malice in zergs, bring a lyssa build w/ venom so you have a few seconds of stab every 40 seconds or so, stick to SB/SD and bring scorpion wire on your bar and viola, you’re useful in a zerg (use withdraw as your heal, it’s almost essential in zerg content if your access to stability is low)

rjnemer.7816:

Clumsy.6257:

rjnemer.7816:

Clumsy.6257:

dont listen to danh he doesnt actually play a thief, currently were #2 best dps and have a plentiful supply of support abilities, our only downside is we take squishy to the next level

edit: what moron told you eles suck? theyre #1 dps ingame with the best might stacking abilities, not to mention FGS which that skill alone is worth using a party slot on

I definitely agree with danh. I mained a thief for the first 6 months and i can tell you for fact that he is right. We are definitely not 2nd in dps. Thieves are maybe 3rd at best, more like 4th since being so dam squishy makes it extremely difficult to stay up 100% of the time (and when your dodging you loose out on dps as well).

Not only do we suck in pve we suck in wvw. If you were to put two equally skilled people up against each other with one as a thief and one as anything else, the other class will win 95% of the time (or the thief will just perma stealth troll and never die, but also not get anywhere near killing the other class).

Edit: I gave up on my thief for the time being. Back in march i rolled a guardian and havent looked back. They are 1000x more useful and have better dps. Also, i just rolled a warrior and geared her out a little over 2 weeks ago. Pretty sure running a lvl 5 warrior for the banner is better then a thief -.-

wow you must have sucked as thief, i can easily double my warriors damage with full zerkers, meta builds, scholars, same nourishment, same might+vuln, and if ele didnt have fgs, we’d be almost tied for #1

LOL, there is a reason speed clearing groups dont run thieves. They dont bring anything to the group that another class can do better. A wall from a guardian alone can out dps a thief in full berserkers.

Edit: They dont have any cleave with d/d as well.

Except most speed clearing groups have thieves. Lmao…

Thief stealth utility in dungeons is… near vital to most Arah speed runs, is vital in 40% of fractals… That’s not enough talking from a damage standpoint, but just a utility standpoint (if I let you skip 3 pulls of mobs, you’d better kitten ed well count it as me killing those mobs…)

Psycho Robot.7835:

Don’t be so hasty. The drop rate of halloween mats will increase over the course of the event. I suspect that when the dungeon is released, refined halloween mats will drop enough to bring the cost way way down.

Also, careful -.o don’t want them to think that one’s a personal attack, might meet a 2 week suspension :O

Homitu.7216:

The OP needs to be edited to knock a zero off that 1500g number. Each recipe only costs 10 HQ fangs/skulls/nougats. It’s still a lot, but 150g is nowhere near 1500g.

Not as much. still unmanageable.

Psycho Robot.7835:

The recipe which requires 40 wine, 10 cobs, 10 refined mats, and 10 dust will give you the recipe sheet “Recipe: Gift of X”.

When you consume that you will be able to craft the Gift of X using 1 gift of knowledge/ascalon/thorns, 250 ori ingots, 20 ecto, and 100 lodestones.

Using that Gift of X, you can craft the actual weapon using 1 Gift of X, 1 eldritch scroll, 100 mystic coins, and 20 sigils of the night.

Last year, the recipe sheet Recipe:Gift of X required much MUCH fewer pieces of candy corn and fangs/skulls/nougat. It was never a drop at all.

Thank you very much for the clarification, and boo to you Anet.

Thief isn’t a BAD partner for ranger, it also depends on the ranger build. Are we talking PVE or like WvW roaming partner?

Psycho Robot.7835:

liefbread.9513:

Can I get a confirmation on something? Is this 10k materials getting me the RECIPE to craft the gift? Or the gift itself?… (difference of 200g in the construction of the item at current market prices).

Also, are the current drop rates on these items intentional? Because I farmed the labyrinth for… literal hours yesterday (around 6 as it was a day off….) and got like… 10 pieces of nougat? (at 100something magic find after food buffs)

1. The recipe requiring 10k candy corn and 10k rare mats gets put into the mystic forge and out pops a recipe sheet where you can learn the recipe for the appropriate gift. After you consume the recipe sheet, you can then craft the actual gift, whose recipe is unchanged since last year.

2. The drop rate of halloween mats will go up over the course of the event. How much and in what ways is unclear though.

So in other words… Don’t bother trying.

Ok.

mojowalker.3798:

That is my understanding of it as well … so, for example, for the Crossing, first you have to craft the recipe for the Gift of Souls (40 bottles wine, 10 candy corn cob, 10 dust, 10 refined nougat), then you have to craft the actual gift itself (gift of knowledge, 250 ori ingots, 20 ectos and 100 crystal lodestones) and then you have to craft the weapon itself (gift of souls, eldritch scroll, 100 mystic coins, and 20 superior sigils of the night). So, to sum up:

• 40 bottles of Elonian wine (approx 10 gp)
• 10,000 candy corn (approx 69 gp)
• 10,000 nougat (approx 200 gp)
• 10 crystalline dust (approx 1.4 gp)
• 500 knowledge crystals
• 250 ori ingots (approx 25 gp)
• 20 ectos (approx 6.2 gp)
• 100 crystal lodestones (approx 59 gp)
• eldritch scroll
• 100 mystic coins
• 20 superior sigils/night (approx 32 gp)

So, all told, around 392 gp …

If I’m right, but based of the paper trail on wiki, this seems to be the means to obtain the Crossing via crafting …

Whereas last year the recipe was just a prolific random drop? The way they were phrasing it made this seem like an alternative crafting method or something.

1.) Horizontal Progression, skills, skins, etc…
2.) Availability of Living Story content/grindy game mechanics/unrealistic player expectations based on “average play hours” of the community.
3.) Artificial scarcity of digital resources/ridiculous means of item acquisition giving a feeling of necessitating cash payment to facilitate any “high level” play on a casual time budget.
4.) Closed communications on game mechanics (players will do the math to figure it out anyway, why hide it from everyone? Why not let people develop tools to play the game how they want?)
5.) RNG, what type of RNG is being used, is it pseudo RNG, what changes are being done besides “woo, more magic find.” to fix the seemingly broken system that has gotten complaints since launch.

magicweaver.2695:

The way I understand it is to get the recipe then you need more supplies to actually craft it (that is according to the wiki if I follow the paper trail properly, but I’m not 100% proof positive because some of that may be linking to last years data that they pulled back in September)

Yeah I keep running into the same confusion :/

Assuming I do endeavor to undertake the massive quest that it is to get something like 10k Nougat, assuming I get my guild to help and I end up spending the near 180g required to get all the materials for the 40 Elonian Wine, 10 Corn Cobs, 10 Dust, and 10 Nougat… Is this almost 200g getting me the Gift of Souls itself? Or is it just getting me the recipe to CRAFT the Gift of Souls (another >100g endeavor based on the current recipe.)

This is kind of the breaking point of whether I attempt it this Halloween or not and I think a lot of the communication and clarification on the subject has been… hazy at best. I’ve tried tweeting @anet I’ve tried posting in a few topics that already received red responses on the matter, but i’m not getting an answer.

I know they’re super busy, but… I’m 100% sure there are other people who are asking the same question as I know there were a lot of people that have told me “I’m actually not sure on that.”

Thanks

Wait, for clarification, I need 10k nougats, + all the candy corn + the elonian wine… Just to get the recipe for the gift? So that’s somewhere near 200g in materials… For, the recipe that I’ll need to gather materials for to craft the gift, which I will then need to gather more materials for to craft the staff?…

Why is this item not ascended?

Can I get a confirmation on something? Is this 10k materials getting me the RECIPE to craft the gift? Or the gift itself?… (difference of 200g in the construction of the item at current market prices).

Also, are the current drop rates on these items intentional? Because I farmed the labyrinth for… literal hours yesterday (around 6 as it was a day off….) and got like… 10 pieces of nougat? (at 100something magic find after food buffs)

As someone who missed last year, I was looking forward to working towards The Crossing and picking up a few of the “easier to obtain” skins.

Ended up working out that none of those were actually easy to obtain at all, Crossing seems like an astronomically difficult item to get, somewhere in line with a legendary in pricing (although apparently that was a typo on anets part? I’m still not sure if that new MF recipe just gets me the Recipe for the gift of the gift itself… it’s a difference of 200g in cost though.)

The content is mostly repetitive and boring and the current “goals” are so limited/astronomically difficult to obtain that there’s no excitement to working at it.

My mood was also soured by some of the “balancing” as a thief (as I got solid nerfs on both of my preferred weapon sets, s/p, s/d, while the one that everyone complains about, D/P, didn’t get hit at all… lol).

Halloween is one of my favorite holidays and I was really enamored by the lore in general, however once the patch hit… I felt mostly burned out on GW2 in general. I might just take a break for a bit, I spent the last couple days theory crafting some builds… I started leveling a second thief so I could leave one in PVE and one in WvW without too much gear swapping hassle, but all in all, nothing overly positive to report.

Oh also I had a ton of mystery tonics I was looking forward to chucking into the forge, for maybe some other skins, but they never reenabled the mad king chest recipe, and that felt kind of crappy… Definitely reinforced the “shoulda been here last year.” feeling, that generally makes me feel like I missed “the golden age” of GW2 when everything was new, event’s weren’t “over cautiously developed” etc… Makes me sorry I took a break, but also makes me feel like there’s nothing to look forward to as things just seem to be trending downwards.

edit: Final note, feels like Anet pushed the old method of “hey you get skins for the heck of it because it’s a holiday” because they realized how precious skins were and how much cash could be made from more gem store skins (the BLK ones). The lack of one and addition of the other continues the trend of “more things to come… for a price” (or artificial scarcity of resources/rewards) and makes it feel more like I’m not going to “get the most out of the game” without continually pumping money or MASSIVE HOURS into it (and honestly, I did try to give ~$15 a month in the gem store… I’ve been between jobs lately so no such luck lately, and now I’m considering taking a break from the game entirely… but yeah)

There are a few options, you can be a ninja nurse, you can be a ganker, you can be a tackler, and no matter what you choose, just remember, all you’re good for is your short bow spam :P

Zacchary.6183:

I adapted by making a warrior. :I My thief is now on the shelf.

After tooling with a few new builds tonight with the reasoning that “maybe I kind of exaggerated the nerfs… thieves could still be fun.” and hitting a few walls, I think I might just be going back to my ele. I hear those guys see buffs sometimes.

Exotics are cheap… you don’t need to “grind dungeons” to gear up… run cof1 every one in a while, it takes 10 minutes and earns you a gold, most of the COE paths take <15 minutes each, if you were to occasionally run SOME dungeons you’d have a full set of gear in less than a week (1g per path buys your weapons in 2 days, save your tokens for armor pieces)…

Alternatively, run with a zerg in WvW to farm badges and buy your gear with badges. Alternatively champ farm, all you need to do is tag the mobs to get a loot bag, you end up getting ~5g an hour…

There’s a bunch of ways to get what you need, just pick one of them and do it.

Unfortunately the game doesn’t give you your gear, but there’s so much exotic gear on the market right now that it might as well.

I was toying with a 30/30/10 build tonight utilizing devourer venom to hold targets still for a pistol whip, just curious if it could be done. While it’s far glassier than I’m anywhere near comfortable with, I don’t lose all my condi removal and it can be fun to glue people down, the sheer amount of tackle the build has is great, but it’s definitely a poor “all around” build for roaming and such.

Heizero.9183:

Incurafy.6329:

Heizero.9183:

What am i missing here? S/D is still very viable. Larcenous now just steals 1 boon less. It’s a direct nerf, sure, but it’s not as bad as a nerf as i thought it would get. Be grateful. you still have the decent init costs and the insane damage and mobility. In a week or 2 people will get over it and play it like they always did.

I agree with you that it is still viable, but what “insane damage” ars you talking about? The damage is good but it’s no where near high enough to call insane, lol.

Insane for the amount of repeatable burst on top of the utility it also wields on the same skill press. As far as utility, availability, mobility and sustainability, it’s damage is unmatched by any other skill that can do the same.

S/D… burst?

crouze.3078:

They could just preset this one viable build for thieves and dont let us change it… for traits, skills and armor.

Having only 1 viable build feels so stupid.

There might be a few more builds that are playable … but they are nothing compared to the d/p build.

I’ll test more later and might continue my “state of the thief” topic to talk about what should be changed.

Talk all you want, for all the “collaborative development” anet pushes, they didn’t listen to community feedback one bit with the initial statement for this patch.

Incurafy.6329:

The LS nerf didn’t kill S/D, it’s just as viable before, especially if you use a Sigil of Nullification. D/P is literally exact same, so that’s still viable. The only spec really hit hard was S/P, but I’m theorycrafting an S/P immobilize venom build atm and I think it could still be viable even if they don’t buff Pistol Whip.

Let me know if you find something good, with the name Aladdin I’d love to avoid retiring my thief if I can.

He’s the only one I buy skins for or dyes or pamper at all of my 7 level 80’s and I’d rather not walk away from him… But right now I’m kitten ed tempted.

DanH.5879:

Resouled.5614:

Indirect nerf to warriors made PW completely worthless. As a S/P thief I almost feel like P/P is even better. Buff this now Anet, don’t wait another 4 months.

what will you do, if they buff it in 4 months ?

I for one will already have stopped playing thief, until the fact that both sword sets have been nerfed beyond realistic usability has been addressed I’m stepping away from the class…. So if they buff it in 4 months? I’ll play my thief again, in the meantime… well, my thief was the only one I bought skins or dyes or chests for… So I guess I’m voting with my wallet?

crouze.3078:

Black Teagan.9215:

What is with the P/P venom-condition build, it very popular at the moment

like i said i dont had much time to test. will do it later.

But for me p/p venom build does not sound very promising.
It sounds more like it’s popular because it got changed and everyone tests it now.

@liefbread
yeah i think i forgot about the p/d.
And i wonder why they didnt touch the most annoying build in WvW (d/p perma stealth)

Because that’s how thieves are supposed to play obv.

Incurafy.6329:

liefbread.9513:

I have actually run something like this before, you can pick people up in a couple seconds, it’s the trolliest way to play and really drives some people up the wall. It’s more fun than it sounds.

I’ve never ran something like this but I’m excited to see how much fun it is to screw around with in hotjoin once I get home.

I mean you end up being effectively useless to your team.

but it sure is silly.

d/p seems about it, or p/d, I know some people have had reasonable success with that? Layla Blackbird has a bunch of videos on running it in WvW… But at the end of the day, that’s still a thief running condis (any other condi class will outdo it).

I don’t know, I’m retiring my thief for a bit, It really irks me to have ever sword set have at least one effectively useless skill on the bar.

I have actually run something like this before, you can pick people up in a couple seconds, it’s the trolliest way to play and really drives some people up the wall. It’s more fun than it sounds.

Josh Davis.6015:

Morning,

Just got into the office. I’ll follow-up on this today, and if I hear anything, I’ll let you folks know.

Thanks!

http://i887.photobucket.com/albums/ac76/zep285/jurassic-bark.gif

Maestria of Strat.2974:

wish.1027:

Maestria of Strat.2974:

wish.1027:

You have to play smart and make them burn their alternate forms and fears while you hide and kite, then you can get an easy kill.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgE5BJs0MQI

Good video. That thief looks like full zerk which makes even more interesting fighting necro.

I wasn’t aware that shadow return removed conditions.

Thanks for tip.

Its no where near full Berserker, lol. Im using a 10/30/30/0/0 setup with Soldiers Weapons, Hat, Body, Legs, Divinity runes, and everything else is Berserkers.

Interesting. I saw you did a couple of consecutive 4k hits. Must be coming from Divinity rune.

So you circumvent crowd control through shadow step…

Why toughness? If you are fighting a necro, what traits from toughness help there?

He’s not building to be a ghost buster…. He’s building for WvW in general.

nethykins.7986:

If Chris finds the forums quite contradictory/not helpful for a lot of elements in relation to feedback, perhaps a post those very forums was a bit of a backwards move?

Perhaps this could have been better focused as a blog post, stating that, due to the result of not getting enough “constructive feedback” from forums, and it being a select number of players that visit the forums, that they’ll put an in-game survey up.

I think you’d get a lot better/refined results from the playerbase as a whole (and not just forum posters) if you put a questionnaire up In Game(I can not emphasise those words more), with the questions that you specifically want feedback on, or you find are the hot-topics currently being discussed. One questionnaire per account, that would pop up once for everyone, and is mandatory before continuing to play.

There you go. Two birds. One stone….well more like multiple birds, and one stone
– It’s the wider response of players instead of just a select number in the forums.
– You get to pinpoint the topics of discussion that hold the most weight instead of trawling through feedback that isn’t helpful and pinpoint the area with the most disapproval.
– You completely avoid the unhelpful criticism, for hard data about what’s good/bad. (and if you give people a small text box to comment issues when they disagree then you funnel ideas into that. It keeps it cleaner)

If I could +1 this more than once I would.

Avatara.1042:

liefbread.9513:

tigirius.9014:

liefbread.9513:

and if “all pets get immunity to AOE” they will be broken in half in any pvp wvw scenario.

If I recall correctly, every single MLG team in the sPvP tourney was running a spirit ranger. “Mediocre at best.”

Come up with a better solution.

Nope they won’t because they are already weak. The last pet to be weakened were the Rangers.

This is exactly beside the point however, because this kind of thing has been done countless times in other games as the fixall for the heavy pet class system and it works! They know it’s a problem and you guys blew up the forums when they talked about nerfing AOEs well something has to be done and giving pets a 90% immunity to AOE damage across the board has been tested before.

But I predict mind you that instead of actually looking at the development history of these systems they’ll continue to delay this mechanism and continue to have cookie cutter non-pet heavy builds for at least another year before someone actually looks at it and says “hey you know what? why don’t we do this? it’s been done before” and poof it will be finally done but it will most likely be too late because people will have moved on to something else most likely having been tired of waiting on something so simple.

WoW has one of the most reputable/successful hunter/pet systems in MMO history, and to my knowledge, has never nerfed AOE for it.

WoW pets have like 90% AoE resistance, and some AI designed to avoid stuff. Your knowledge is lacking.

It’s been… a lot of years. Since I touched that game.

tigirius.9014:

liefbread.9513:

and if “all pets get immunity to AOE” they will be broken in half in any pvp wvw scenario.

If I recall correctly, every single MLG team in the sPvP tourney was running a spirit ranger. “Mediocre at best.”

Come up with a better solution.

Nope they won’t because they are already weak. The last pet to be weakened were the Rangers.

This is exactly beside the point however, because this kind of thing has been done countless times in other games as the fixall for the heavy pet class system and it works! They know it’s a problem and you guys blew up the forums when they talked about nerfing AOEs well something has to be done and giving pets a 90% immunity to AOE damage across the board has been tested before.

But I predict mind you that instead of actually looking at the development history of these systems they’ll continue to delay this mechanism and continue to have cookie cutter non-pet heavy builds for at least another year before someone actually looks at it and says “hey you know what? why don’t we do this? it’s been done before” and poof it will be finally done but it will most likely be too late because people will have moved on to something else most likely having been tired of waiting on something so simple.

WoW has one of the most reputable/successful hunter/pet systems in MMO history, and to my knowledge, has never nerfed AOE for it.

Atherakhia.4086:

liefbread.9513:

and if “all pets get immunity to AOE” they will be broken in half in any pvp wvw scenario.

If I recall correctly, every single MLG team in the sPvP tourney was running a spirit ranger. “Mediocre at best.”

Come up with a better solution.

F1 changed to a basic attack/recall script.
F2 abilities will fire instantly when pressed instead of trying to fit into the next openning.
F2 abilities will have a .5 second cast time. Aftercast doesn’t matter.
F3 abilities are now player controlled and fire instantly. They are set to auto cast at default.
F3 abilities will have a .5 second cast time.
Any time the Ranger dodges or uses a skill that can evade, the pet gains Aegis.
Spirits removed from the game.

Spirits now simply buff pets. The pet is given an aura for 30 seconds representing the current spirit. Spirit activated abilities attached to F2 abilities for pets. You can activate as many spirits at once as you want. F2 will simply gain all the abilities for as many spirits as you activate. Alternatively, spirit activated abilities work like they do now instead of attached to F2 and simply activated at the pet’s location.

This seems much more realistic, also reduces the clutter on the screen, I think that rangers should have significantly more finite control over their pets however, be able to send them places, make them stay, permanently shelf them etc… and I think there should be a trait tree that does focus on having a shelved pet.

and if “all pets get immunity to AOE” they will be broken in half in any pvp wvw scenario.

If I recall correctly, every single MLG team in the sPvP tourney was running a spirit ranger. “Mediocre at best.”

Come up with a better solution.

Thieves are fantastic PVE utility… I don’t know what you guys are talking about.

A good thief does more DPS than a warrior (assuming equal steroids), making a 2 warrior 1 thief 1 mesmer 1 X party ideal (offers all banners and maximizes DPS output). We offer the ability to skip through half of okitten fractals, and trivialize many portions of other dungeons (including allowing path 1 of Arah to actually be viable)… We boon strip better than any other class (great for COE golem and HotW) we burst better than any other class (Arah P2 final boss, CoF Controller). If you can’t find what thieves are good at, you aren’t looking.

KOK.2650:

Open world
Ranger> > > > thief
Champ fight , major event fight
Ranger > > > > > > > > >(not even funny) Thief
Dungeon
thief > Ranger
If you are lazy like me, you chose ranger over thief.
Just let the pet tank the mob/champ while you shoot from shortbow.
Dmg may not be higher than thief but you can drink a cup of coffee and play.

Basically a lazy ranger is better than a mediocre thief, but a good thief is light years better than a good/average “invested” ranger.