Some traits are severely underpowered. I’m not going to mention the Traits that are just mildly awkward, or narrow in scope. Every class has those and its not a big deal. I’m going to focus only on the traits that are so bad as to be unusable under any circumstances.
Improvisation (Deadly Arts, VII) – the random nature of this trait makes it effectively a blank. Nobody is willing to blow a trait slot on something that might simply fail to do anything. Why not change this to have a similar functionality (stealing reduces cooldown of utility skills) without being uncontrollable?
Ankle Shots (Critical Strikes, VII) – This trait is randomly triggered and unreliable but the effect it applies is a control effect. These two things are at odds. Its ok if bonus damage is randomly triggered, but control effects really need to be on demand. This trait needs all kinds of reworking. Pistol should have a means of crippling on demand based on the 1-3 (mainhand) skills and this trait should be redesigned in general.
Slowed Pulse (Shadow Arts, II) – why doesn’t this clear the bleeding? its on an internal cooldown. its not like it would make you immune to bleeding. just a little help. As it is now it is dysfunctional in that it is a survivability trait that doesn’t really help you survive.
Hard to Catch (Acrobatics, XI) – being unable to control where you will get Shadowstepped to makes this basically unusable. The idea is to evade enemies, but this trait can accidentally teleport you right towards another enemy. That leads to this trait often being self-defeating. Clearing disable conditions and granting swiftness is really nice though, but shackling it with a random chance to get screwed ruins this trait.
Ricochet (Trickery, X) – 5% chance to trigger is absurdly low. this skill does almost nothing.
There are several utility skills that, in my opinion, are difficult to find a good context for use. Some of these could use some love.
Spider Venom – this seems like it is most valuable as a source of poison charges for Leeching Venoms and is not very appealing for the skill itself. This has alot to do with how Poison stacks (duration) and how relatively common Poison conditions are, leading to situations where the duration stacking from this Venom doesn’t do anything useful. It would be nice if this Venom had an additional effect (such as a small upfront damage or short duration cripple).
Skale Venom – vulnerability duration is too short. 5 seconds does not provide a long enough window to take advantage of the increased DPS from vulnerability.
Ice Drake Venom – chill duration is too short. this competes with Devourer Venom and usually just looks worse. 4 seconds of immobilized is alot better than 3 seconds of Chilled.
Traps, in general – Traps should trigger in a small area rather than a single target, as they become close to useless when being attacked by 2 attackers. Traps should also not be removed with no effect when someone dodges through their trigger area. They should not fire off when dodged through, but should also not be consumed with zero effect. An untriggered trap should remain active even when dodged through. It should only disappear when it triggers.
Shadow Trap – maybe I need to learn to play, but this trap seems to be INCREDIBLY hard to put to good use. I haven’t seen any Thieves make effective use of this skill. Its basically an ignored skill.
Smoke Screen – seems under utilized. Its a bit awkward and doesn’t seem to last long enough. Its just a projectile blocker but most ranged attacks are not actually projectiles., its not really effective at providing cover for the Thief or his team. In practice this seems to mildly frustrate rangers and do almost nothing else of consequence to any other class.
The weakness of Pistol+Pistol has been covered in good detail here and I hope that feedback gets taken seriously. Its such a cool aesthetic for a weapon set but in practice its just not that good. I’ll add one additional piece to that feedback which is that P+P has not even a single skill that can damage more than one target. Clearly Shortbow is designed as the AoE ranged weapon, but Pistol should be able to do at least a small amount of AoE even if it is not at the level of Shortbow.
i think your suggestions are bad. making venoms work like applied poisons from World of Warcraft Rogue is not a good idea.
i think its basically just spam of this forum to post a thread like this. this isn’t really a topic for discussion. this is you stroking your ego and hoping people praise you for posting your idea.
there’s an easy way to test this kind of thing.
go to Heart of Mists and get a Steady Shortbow from the weapon supply NPC. steady weapons have a constant damage range (100-100 or something) so you can see how your traits and gear will affect your base damage. so equip a steady Shortbow and go attack some of the target dummies for a bit.
and what if I don’t want to slot Signet of Shadows? having easy access to a little swiftness is very helpful in that case.
In the most recent update there is a slightly different “feel” to the duration of the Revealed condition. it kinda feels like it is a fraction of a second longer. many players report this anecdotally, but it is hard to test empirically since we’re talking about fractions of a second.
can a developer confirm whether or not this was an undocumented change (feature), a new bug (unintended), or whether we are imagining things (no issue, or issue caused by something unrelated like server latency)?
Wierd I thought P/D was the best for cond builds.
i enjoy it quite a bit. this weapon set produces the most consistent survivability and single-target fighting ability for Condition Damage based builds. its got some notable weakness in group fights though, where I find it necessary to switch to Shortbow.
you show your dissapointment too frequently and too loudly though. your tone reeks of entitlement and expectation that developers both share your opinion and your priorities.
when you say things like “to me it seems like they want us…” it really damages your argument. you’re now assuming and projecting, rather then providing useful feedback.
also going to speculate, based on limited anecdotal experience, that the Revealed condition was tweaked and feels like it lasts fractionally longer than it did previously.
not sure if this is true of course.
Devourer Venom (causes immoblize) is extremely strong for PvP even if you have no traits at all enhancing venoms. Its one of the core skills in the Sword+Pistol build and is a reasonable substitute for Basilisk Venom in the Backstab build.
All of the venoms become incredibly potent in Venomous Aura builds as well, obviously. When properly traited each venom activated will grant your entire party 2 stacks of Might and cause their next few strikes to Drain Life, in addition to whatever else the venom provides. In PvE situations a Venomous Aura Skale Venom will quickly stack 20+ Vulnerability on a target and is one of the best ways to cause damage spikes against a boss. In PvP sharing Ice Drake Venom will let your team dominate an enemy team pretty quickly. Chilled is an extremely powerful debuff.
So I guess the only legit complaint about these skills is that they are not very good in solo PvE, and they require traits to take maximum advantage of. I don’t see why that makes them “a joke”, as the OP has said. There are multiple good use cases for Venoms and several builds that take full advantage of Venoms in both PvP and PvE. This looks like a big success in my opinion.
look, i’m not trying to say that this is about to make up for the broken movement pathing problems with Flanking Strike. i was just trying to contextualize the motivation of the change. it was part of a set of similar changes and i’m sure it was done for consistency, rather than as an attempt to independently fix whatever issues exist with Flanking Strike.
what’s your point? i just got out of an sPvP game where 7 out of 10 players in the combined group were Warriors. weird stuff happens with a random matching system. only large sample sizes actually make any convincing claims.
0/10 for trolling.
i’ll have to test it, but this sounds like a bugfix.
previously, it was possible to exit your own shadow refuge before the last pulse, and gain the “revealed” condition, so you would not restealth if you entered your refuge again. it sounds to me like they’re trying to correct the issue of becoming incorrectly revealed if you exit before the last pulse. at least i hope thats what it is.
read people. READ THE NOTES.
Previous: +50% for 1 Strike
New: +15% for 5 Strikes
i’m guessing that you didn’t understand the context of the change then.
There were several changes, across a few classes, to make the Aegis buff counterable. It was previously uncounterable because abilities that were capable of removing buffs were just being Blocked by the Aegis.
Flanking Strike has a boon stripping effect. Making the first strike Unblockable allows it to strip off an Aegis boon. that was the purpose of this change.
Steal>CnD>Backstab>Cnd>Backstab
you know that doesn’t work right? there’s a 3 second long “revealed” period after attacking from stealth where you can’t enter stealth again.
this seems like a positive to me. its less burst damage but higher sustained damage. thats, in general, a good change for balance reasons. its also a good way of making the signet a bit more versatile and elegant for a greater number of builds.
this signet was previously only useful for using just before a Backstab. it had no other uses at all. now its entirely reasonable to include this signet in alot of different builds. activating it will give you a period of noticeably increased damage that should make it alot easier to down somebody. it no longer matters if you’ve set up a Backstab or not. you can use it any time, with any weapon, from stealth or not, and still get a benefit.
and yes, this should reduce the amount of whining about 20K Backstab crits that we sometimes see around here.
0/10 poorly executed troll. no points awarded.
not my first MMO by a longshot. and you’re right, this is absolutely typical of MMO forums. i had hoped for better.
In my mind, the purpose of this forum was for Thief players to discuss amongst themselves aspects of playing the Thief class. it was supposed to be a place where Thief players could work on strategy, figure out how to best play the class in PvP and PvE, and in general socialize with other Thief players.
What we have instead is a bulletin board for dissatisfied PvP players to come and air their grievances. This is not really doing anybody any good. This has ruined what should have been a resource for Thief players.
Moderators should have been locking these grievance posts. They have not been. Instead this forum has become a wasteland.
Sebrent,
you are posting in the wrong thread. this is not the place for balance discussion. this is for bug reports. please take it elsewhere.
Botter reporting - any way to find out the result?
in Account & Technical Support
Posted by: metaphorm.6904
im very glad to hear this. i hope you can accelerate your measures against botting/hacking and also make the game client more secure as this is becoming quite rampant.
are you sure it was Pistol+Pistol? this sounds alot more like the playstyle of Pistol+Dagger. thats a build that actually does stack condition damage and go into stealth as often as possible.
Heartseeker spam is useless. it does terrible damage until target is low on health. i can’t believe people are still talking about this as if it was a real thing. spamming HS to finish off a weak player is a real thing. spamming it for the whole fight isn’t.
of course you can run a different swap set. D/P provides pretty good support of a different sort. rather than ranged damage support and combo finishers, it provides some extra battlefield control (as you point out). is that a more valuable form of support? not sure. it depends on what you’re trying to do.
I think the more you start to tinker with this kinda thing though the more you eventually realize that the cookie cutter specs exist for a reason. OH Pistol is great and really worth having. The best weapon set for it Sword+Pistol though so it becomes natural to build around using that as your melee set (instead of D/D backstab) so you get to keep the utility of the Shortbow.
so you can, for example, adapt the build you linked and instead play something like this|
and use Sword+Pistol instead of Dagger+Dagger, and just keep Shortbow on your swap set.
yeah, agree that Trickery is of limited use for farming DE’s. the condition damage it provides will be mostly wasted as its hard to guarantee that your own bleed stacks will actually stay on the mobs (the 25 cap is a big issue for DE’s where there will be many players stacking bleed).
for damage dealing in DE’s raw Power is the best stat. Precision and +crit damage supports that well of course, but definitely favor stacking Power above everything else if you want to max your contribution to get those gold medals.
i find Vitality to be a better defensive stat than Toughness for the Thief, and particularly in Orr which has so many mobs with Poison and Bleed AoEs. toughness doesn’t mitigate those conditions at all so you have to just have enough raw Health to tank it.
dungeon setup is an entirely different topic and i could recommend several different builds, some of which would also work well for DE farming, and others of which you wouldn’t ever want to DE farm with.
Orr is difficult to navigate solo because there are no safe spots. i usually equip Signet of Shadows (for +25% run speed) and Blinding Powder (instant stealth) for roaming around just to make sure I can run through areas without getting too bogged down with the constant enemies.
in general i’d recommend patrolling around looking for DE’s at the various temples. those are fun and exciting and usually attract alot of players. they’re also very lucrative in terms of karma and drops. each of those temple DE’s is different so i can’t really recommend an all purpose build. i will say always keep a Shortbow equipped on your weapon swap and melee weapons (daggers or sword+pistol) on your other one. there are alot of situations where you just HAVE to stand back and AoE support.
as far as i know it hasn’t been updated in any recent patches.
its always worked well in PvE, where the opponents more or less stand still. the broken issues with the skill are related to uneven terrain (which is an issue in both PvE and PvP) and moving targets (mostly a PvP issue).
my suggestion is to play your Thief more and reconsider your opinions.
My response:
http://www.twitch.tv/defektive/b/333898008troll.
he does not use a backstab build, he did not backstabbed you at all and he did not even used quickness in the video you posted.
you do know that Backstab builds don’t use Haste, right? its Sword+Pistol that uses Haste combined with Devourer Venom (immoblize) and Pistol Whip (high damage channeled melee attack).
Backstab Thieves use Assassin’s Signet (next attack deals 150% damage), Cloak and Dagger + Steal (to shadowstep to you and then immediately stealth), and traits to support this combo (Mug, to make steal deal damage, Hidden Killer, to make backstab and Mug automatically crit).
you should learn the actual builds before you comment. ignorance is not a very strong position to argue from.
i agree with the sentiment. quickness is the most out of balance mechanic in the game right now and just about every complaint about unfairness of burst damage is really a complaint about quickness.
i know right? NERF ALL THE THINGS.
i’m so sick of getting moa morphed by stealthed guardians. this kitten is so broken.
really…you don’t say…there’s some continuity between “rogue” archetype classes in fantasy RPG’s. never would have figured.
ShneakySquirrel nailed it. that is what is consistent with reality. You can get numbers like that (ranging between 1.5k and 6k, depending on opponent’s defense and your +crit damage).
also a very good summary of what is actually powerful about the ability. it is functionally a spammable PBAoE, which is pretty fierce and probably not really the design intent.
yeah, this doen’t actually happen. they are always called Thief. no idea what you’re talking about.
please continue calling for nerfs. it was getting very tedious reading complaints about Thief. good that you all have found something else to complain about this week. What’s up for next week? I think Guardians is next week, and then maybe we’ll do Thief again a week after that.
There is a readily available (non-exploit, non-hack) technqiue for a Thief to summon 2 Thieves without using Thieves Guild.
1. Ambush Trap
2. Merciful Ambush
Thief goes to start reviving downed ally, automatically places a trap. Thief immediately places another Ambush Trap on top of it. Enemy then runs into the traps (trying to melee him, for example), and triggers 2 summoned Thieves at once, same effect as Thieves Guild.
so please please please can you verify that the player is not using a legitimate tactic? calling “hack” on something without proof is pretty terrible.
How are engis the lowest tier? They have the most stuns/knockdowns in the game.
i don’t play an engi, so i’m not trying to create any kind of “official” ranking. you’ll note that i labeled the tiers “Perceived”. this is my perception, based on what it looks like to me from the perspective of a Thief that plays in alot of sPvP battles. when I talk to other people in game about this stuff they tell me similar things.
I play a Thief. i can say with 100% certainty that frequent weapon swapping between your Melee set (daggers or sword/pistol) and your Shortbow is crucially important and one of the main things that separates bad thieves from good ones.
I’d swap Engineer and Ele on your list. Engineer is tricky and much like Necro, largely hampered by a mile long bug list. Ele has some fundamental issues though. All 3 are fairly uncommon in spvp. With Necros probably being the rarest class in spvp.
Whilst any given match will have 3-5 Thieves, Mesmers and/or Warriors.
maybe its just my anecdotal experience, but i seem to see Elementalists played very commonly. the 3 classes i basically ALWAYS see in any given 8v8 are Warrior, Thief, Ele. definitely different in 5v5 though. tournament teams are more picky about their classes and i definitely see fewer Eles and way more Mesmers their.
Why does it matter? So everyone can feel better about themselves by picking the “cool underused hipster class?” PS i play my engi a bit more then my mesmer does this mean I’m a cool hipster?
in the long run it doesn’t matter, though I was curious and wanted to see how other people saw things.
in the short run it can help the community get a more holistic view of how people feel about the classes. everybody has a biased perspective based on what they play as a main. getting people to share their perspectives might overcome some of these biases and help us all get a more clear perspective of how things really stand.
Stopped reading here honestly.
when you include this sentence in one of your posts this is what you are really telling other people:
“i’m close minded and ignore people who have opinions different then my own. i am an irrational personal who is not worth talking to.”
whats a Unicorn spec?
i’d agree that its easy to learn how to play a Burst Damage build and go around killing people 1on1.
learning how to be effective under more diverse circumstances takes alot more time though. playing a support role with a Thief is often important but hard to do. Learning the best ways to maintain control over map points is a big challenge. Thief is a squishy class, but very slippery, so defending a point as a Thief requires intimate knowledge of how to use the defensive abilities that are based around stealth and evasion. this isn’t easy.
so yeah, easy to learn how to get 1on1 kills. hard to learn how to achieve group support and map control.
its not like there’s just this one weak trait. every class has many many weak traits. the weak ones just act as contrast to the strong ones. if everything was strong nothing would feel strong.
my impression is that theres a huge amount of L2P issues happening right BUT there are also legitimate balance problems and figuring out which is which is not easy and causing alot of confusion and frustration.
for example: the Quickness buff probably needs rebalancing. My opinion is that it interacts much too strongly with a narrow subset of skills (channeled burst damage attacks like Hundred Blades and Pistol Whip). This is probably a game balance issue that needs a revision of how Quickness works.
counter-example: Thief Stealth is actually very well balanced and people having trouble playing against it are having L2P issues.
disclaimer: my main is a Thief.
i’m curious as to what everyone’s impressions of the classes are for sPvP (both 8v8 and 5vt5 tourney). my own impressions are based off of what it feels like to me, playing with and against these classes, and also just my observation of the popularity level of these classes.
Ranked by Perceived Power Level
Top Tier: Thief, Guardian, Mesmer
Mid Tier: Warrior, Ranger, Elementalist
Lowest Tier: Necromancer, Engineer
Ranked by Perceived Popularity Level
Top Tier: Thief, Warrior, Elementalist
Mid Tier: Guardian, Ranger, Mesmer
Lowest Tier: Necromancer, Engineer
thats how I see things. just my impressions.
I’m no expert on Necro or Engi but it seems to me that these classes need some love. They seem unpopular, and alot of that unpopularity is probably due to some balance problems. These are both pretty complicated and subtle classes so I’m sure there’s alot of L2P issues going on too, but it can’t only be that. Players are finding it hard to be successful as these classes and are not playing them as much.
I see Thief, Warrior and Elementalist played very heavily and I can understand why as these 3 classes are the closest fit to your classic RPG archetypes (rogue, fighter, mage). These are the 3 classes I also see people having the most trouble with in terms of simply playing badly. The popular thing for alot of people seems to be to build a very one-dimensional burst damage version of the class (Sword+Pistol Thief, Greatsword Warrior, Dagger+Dagger Elementalist) and run around trying to kill people in 1on1. This isn’t playing well of course but those burst damage kills can be frustrating when the majority of your opponents are specced that way.
My own perception (as a Thief player) is that Guardians and Mesmers are the most potent PvP classes in the game and are the real driving force behind winning a map (as opposed to just racking up kills with your burst damage spec).