Guild Wars 2

Slim.3024:

Arganthium.5638:

Slim.3024:

Distortion – up to 4 second immunity to condi, power and CC, which you can even have back to back for up to 8 seconds with a trait in a line that you invest 30 in anyway. This is the equivalent of a warrior using Berserker Stance, Balanced Stance and Endure pain by the way.

But continuing…

No need to continue, as you were dead wrong and are trying to distract from it. For that all you need to read is the last sentence of what you quoted and by doing so you might realize that this was stated in the context of condition, CC and power attack application, rather than lingering conditions already on the mesmer:

This is the equivalent of a warrior using Berserker Stance, Balanced Stance and Endure pain by the way.

There you go. No more, no less.

Perhaps if you considered what each of the skills do individually, and then look at that in the context of what Distortion does, you’ll see that this comparison is a mere exaggeration of the power of a single skill when a skill like Endure Pain alone does the same thing with the addition of a stunbreak. You equate Distortion with using all three at once, although that’s no different than if I equated doing 30k damage as being equal to doing 100k damage because “they both kill the opposing player”- you’re simply adding unnecessary factors. If you wanted to, you could say that it’s the equivalent of a warrior using all three stances, dodging, invuln stomping, and healing for 5.5k- it’s just that all of those additional details are superfluous and can either be done by the opposing player at the same time, are expected to be done, were not needed, or are simply manageable by using a single skill for the same effect anyways.

Adding redundant details does not make your argument any more accurate.

We <3 you mighty meak! My wife and I named our newborn son after you!

TGH.7630:

A correction: Healing signet does have risk. You sacrifice burst healing, and if you do use the signet out of desperation, you lose the passive regen for the next 16-20 seconds.

Also, you don’t get the 25% speed increase with bow, and as most warriors spend a lot of time with bow, it’s really not that great a talent.

I personally use the Arms II trait which gives me infinite swiftness when combined with signet.

That risk tends to be very small when the various stances are taken into account (all of them- excluding the healing one, since we’re talking about using HS here- are good against burst in some form or another). You can simply pop invlun and then not have to worry for much more of the fight. Furthermore, with your very high base health (8k more than thieves, guards, etc) and heavy armor (14% damage reduction over light, 7% over medium), the supposed “risk” is fairly negligible. Also, remember that burst builds, should they want to heal, will generally need to use a cast time in order to do so, which is an extremely dangerous thing to have to do in the middle of a fight when you’re so squishy.

clint.5681:

No one said distortion cleared conditions, just like zerker stance doesnt clear conditions.

Nor did I say anything about clearing condis. What I was referring to was

Slim.3024:

…Distortion – up to 4 second immunity to condi, power and CC, which you can even have back to back for up to 8 seconds with a trait in a line that you invest 30 in anyway. This is the equivalent of a warrior using Berserker Stance, Balanced Stance and Endure pain by the way.

Slim.3024:

Arganthium.5638:

Also, I just checked out distortion in-game, and, as expected, it doesn’t go through condi damage; any condis on me during Distortion continued to do damage, although I’m not quite so sure about the fear shenanigans you mentioned.

No invul has stopped condition damage until the introduction of the new heals, neither will Berserker Stance. How can you not know this?

Hmm. I knew this, but I had to be sure, especially after seeing

Slim.3024:

Distortion – up to 4 second immunity to condi, power and CC, which you can even have back to back for up to 8 seconds with a trait in a line that you invest 30 in anyway. This is the equivalent of a warrior using Berserker Stance, Balanced Stance and Endure pain by the way.

But continuing…

Slim.3024:

As for Illusionary Invigoration… don’t know that I’ve ever seen a build that used the trait. Undoubtedly, there are more effective ways to survive at <50% health (if nothing else, with Desperate Decoy) that don’t require you to sacrifice all of your clones, which tend to be your main offensive and defensive tools anyways (which, by the way, is another reason why Distortion isn’t as great as you make it out to be- you sacrifice damage output in the form of phantasms, dying illusions, and illusion crits for a few seconds of invuln). Taking IllVig also keeps you from taking some other very good options which tend to be preferable.

You don’t seem to be too familiar with the Mesmer. Having all of your shatter skills up and ready on a 60s ICD is quite powerful. It’s between Elasticity and Invigoration now and even in a GS/Staff setup both are pretty much equal when considering how much Mesmers complain about S/D thieves. Any other weapon setup and, Invigoration is the only choice.

Actually, Mesmer is my second most played class, behind- ironically- S/D thief. While I don’t doubt that having all of your shatters up is useful, that doesn’t mean that every mesmer gets 8 seconds invuln back-to-back (which, by the way, is something I don’t think I’ve ever seen happen). There are other trait choices as well, by the way- specifically, I, II, and the III traits are each very good in their own ways. And, of course, all of this is neglecting the aforementioned sacrifice of defensive and offensive abilities granted by illusions. There’s a reason why Phanta mesmers don’t shatter their clones unless absolutely necessary, and, to some extent, that type of mindset is necessary to play any sort of mesmer, as all shatter skills require a sacrifice.

EDIT: also, it’s been… At least 4 months since I’ve heard any complaints from respectable mesmers about S/D being too powerful.

Slim.3024:

Um… What? BF roots you, just get out of the way, honestly. The once the animation ends, the mesmer has a small period of time where he/she is still rooted in place, and you can take advantage of that.

So you disagree that a 2.5s evade on a 10s CD qualifies as high reward for almost no risk, because it roots you in place and you can get hit after it ended on top of it dealing a good amount of damage?

As for Distortion… Last time I checked, it doesn’t give condi immunity

It’s usually a bad idea to rely on wiki when you are trying to make an argument. Distortion grants invulnerability, it’s not an evade. Way back when Blurred Frenzy would give distortion and also make you invulnerable, which later on was first changed from “distortion” to “blur”, which still granted invulnerability and subsequently was changed from an invulnerability to an evade, thus the confusion and mess you see on wiki.

As a side node, distortion even saves you from terror damage ticks, if you activate it while being feared.

, and I’m pretty sure that you can’t get 8s of it in one go, either (even with Illusionary Persona).

Illusionary Invigoration. Look it up on wiki!

You only deal a “good amount of damage” if you stand in place… It’s no different than Hundred Blades in that regard. The rooting in place also allows you more time to set up combinations, which I think you’re disregarding here.

Also, I just checked out distortion in-game, and, as expected, it doesn’t go through condi damage; any condis on me during Distortion continued to do damage, although I’m not quite so sure about the fear shenanigans you mentioned.

As for Illusionary Invigoration… don’t know that I’ve ever seen a build that used the trait. Undoubtedly, there are more effective ways to survive at <50% health (if nothing else, with Desperate Decoy) that don’t require you to sacrifice all of your clones, which tend to be your main offensive and defensive tools anyways (which, by the way, is another reason why Distortion isn’t as great as you make it out to be- you sacrifice damage output in the form of phantasms, dying illusions, and illusion crits for a few seconds of invuln). Taking IllVig also keeps you from taking some other very good options which tend to be preferable.

Interceptor.2653:

Arganthium.5638:

And how, precisely, does that make up for all of the bad results?

Maybe ask someone who said that it did? Acknowledging the good parts of HtC does not imply that the skill is in a good place, or that the negatives don’t matter.

But that’s precisely the point. If the number of times that HtC comes up with bad results for thieves is far greater than the number of times it has good results, then are we really being “so breathless and hyperbolic about it”?

Interceptor.2653:

Arganthium.5638:

why don’t you mention the positive aspects of HtC

It’s positive when it has a good result, sort of like how Improvisation is good when it recharges something that you needed.

And how, precisely, does that make up for all of the bad results? Furthermore, with what frequency do good results appear with HtC?

Slim.3024:

…Blurred Frenzy – super high reward for almost no risk. 2.5s evade on a 10s CD

Distortion – up to 4 second immunity to condi, power and CC, which you can even have back to back for up to 8 seconds with a trait in a line that you invest 30 in anyway. This is the equivalent of a warrior using Berserker Stance, Balanced Stance and Endure pain by the way…

Um… What? BF roots you, just get out of the way, honestly. The once the animation ends, the mesmer has a small period of time where he/she is still rooted in place, and you can take advantage of that.

As for Distortion… Last time I checked, it doesn’t give condi immunity, and I’m pretty sure that you can’t get 8s of it in one go, either (even with Illusionary Persona). Furthermore, only Shatter Builds really get anything out of going 30 into Illusions anyways, and a lot of the time, the damage output lost from using Distortion is extremely significant. Also, like any Invuln, it has to be used very selectively, especially while on point.

I wouldn’t nerf HS into oblivion yet, but rather to nerf it in a series of small steps until it’s at about the right level. Instead of nerfing HS to 300 HPS, I think starting off somewhere between 350 and 370 HPS would be a reasonably small nerf, and then we can continue from there.

SB is actually the most balanced weaponset in the thief armory right now (although it still needs 1200 range on CB again, at the very least, if not on the auto as well).

That being said, P/P still needs a MASSSSIVE buff, like was promised, and we still need an actual 1200 range option.

Here’s how I think it can be fixed:

Pixels.6532:

I would like to propose the following change:

Hard to Catch

Renamed to Hard to Understand. Updated trait description to read as follows: We aren’t quite sure what this does, gl & hf!!!!!1!!!

SerratedOcean.7398:

1. Withdraw is our best heal I agree, but I’m not arguing which heals is better…you obviously use it for the up time every 15 seconds compliment Lyssa #4.

2. Still 5 seconds doesn’t make it insignificant.

3. Don’t forget to mention the rest the boon.

4. Agreed

5. Your statement here contradicts, “which tends not to happen” in other words it does happen, i.e a block Backstab/Eviscerate, could turn the tide.

6. See number one.

7. Basi is awesome, I never use it as an opener, I use it as my Ace card for that clutch win. With Lyssa I use it for Conditions removal if I’m stacked.

8. Removing all conditions makes it all better.

9. +10% condition duration is great, for Serpents Touch and Lotus Poison. Precision isn’t great but its there and the powerful stats of 4 and 6 more than makes up for it. I’d use Lyssa Runes over Orgre Runes any day.

Removing this rune wouldn’t necessary be nerfing Thieves, perhaps nerfing all classes. Here is proof I main Thief.

2. No, but that does need to be put into consideration.

3. Well, there are also boons like swiftness… Yeah…

5. Eh… Maybe I’m just tired, but I think you get the point of what I mean. In my experience, the probability of getting Aegis and subsequently being able to block a “tie-turning” skill at the same time are very, very small, and that’s assuming you don’t dodge/blind/etc the skill, either, which is very possible.

7. Although Basi is good for ending a fight, its cast time is nearly as long as its stun, and generally speaking, it’s used with BS to end a fight quickly. TBH, though, unless a person will go into downed state very quickly (<3k health after BS) after using BS, I don’t know that it’s that useful to use, especially since it’s the only stun in our kitten nal. Not to say that it’s useless, but it can be stunbroken, especially by players who have developed a twitch reaction to the combination (like me- had to learn the hard way).

8. Was mostly looking at the boons there (for whatever reason- guess I am tired), though I will say that while one all-condi cleanse is useful specifically against SoSpite (assuming you’re not dead or about to die by the time that insanely long cast time ends), due to the rate of overall condi application in the meta.

9. Ehhhhhhhh… It’s an extra second of poison (assuming it isn’t condi cleansed), and the additional .4 seconds of weakness- as good a condi as it is- probably isn’t going to mean much, ultimately. I’m not going to deny that having a small mix of condi buffs into many builds that focus on power is a good thing, because it is (hell, my 10/0/0/30/30 S/D has 300 condi damage added to it by its very nature), but the primary focus of the vast majority of thief builds and especially D/X builds is power/crits, in which case condis aren’t going to mean much. The 4 and 6 buffs mostly make up for the precision “debuffs”, but whether that’s greater than the critical damage, Rock Dog, 18% damage from power and 4% damage from the final Ogre Runes trait is highly debatable.

Soilder.3607:

Mate, you are insane. Every 45/60 full condition clear + full boon gain is incredibly op. I mean there is just no other way to put it. Basilik venom may suck in your opinion, precision may suck in your opinion, and even a random boon while healing may suck in your opinion, but these runes are way too powerful. No elite skill should be able to double function so often as a full cd cleanse and boon gain. It needs a 90 second icd.

Maybe if you stop using “should” and just continuing to express the things you’ve already stated, your argument would be a bit more convincing.

Dragonax.6487:

400 per sec means 12 k per 30 sec, which is slightly more than healing surge (10k ). But if you fight against bursty enemy without being super tanky, the fight will very likely not last 30 sec so u will not get much out of healing signet. More over, healing signet is susceptible to poison in its entire duration (which healing surge can avoid by waiting for it to cool off ). With those disadvantages, I don’t see how healing signet being OP unless u want to claim healing surge is equally OP as well. So logically, healing signet is far from OP, anyone who claim that are just unreasonably looking for a cheap way to beat warrior.

1. Healing Surge only heals for 10k if you have 3 bars of adrenaline, which isn’t always/can’t always be the case.

2. If you wait for poison the cool off, then you’re spending more time in between heals. As a result, that 10k figure you mentioned earlier would not in fact be the case. You’re also still healing for ~270 (very rough estimate I just did in my head) HPS with HealSig. Furthermore, you fail to take into consideration the cast time for Healing Surge (during which you can be poisoned), as well as the fact that only very few classes have any half decent access to poison (namely, thief and necro, and, in part, ranger).

3. The poison argument doesn’t take into consideration either the rate of application for poison or condi clear, two variables which easily could change the effectiveness of “waiting out” on using Healing Surge.

That should be enough, I think, although I can always provide more mathematical evidence later.

I like seeing player names so that I have the joy of knowing the name of what noob I’m stomping.

Here’s my current build/playstyle, just in accordance with the current state of the thief.

Got onto my guard today, saw that SoS was nerfed.

Swiftness is apparently too OP, needed a nerf. Was allowing people to use their legs more efficiently.

evilapprentice.6379:

…mathematically insignificant.

Thus the emphasis on small. you’re right though, it might as well not exist, especially considering how worthless HealPow is.

Lopez.7369:

Condition necromancers don’t show up in tournaments anymore.

All of my experience in tPvP says otherwise.

Fortus.6175:

Arganthium.5638:

It’s okay, thief is about to finally meet ele in the tier where profs go to die as well.

Sadly this will never happen, because thieves have a lot of uses, and they can still be pretty good, and to make it even worse; eles are thieves’ favorite prey..

Thieves have literally two useable builds right now, given that Sword has been killed, weaponsets like P/P or P/D are weak or extremely gimmicky, and SB is only good for utility.

Basically, thieves have fewer useable builds than eles have useable weaponsets. That should tell you just how bad the situation has gotten.

As a result, rather than having “lots of uses”, thieves are stuck to basically just stealth and single-target damage, both of which in this meta are either easily counterable or just weak (since AoE, cleave, and condis seem to be the main dishes for the current meta). And while staff eles may be thieves’ favorite prey (only because they’re weak at short distance), S/X builds are on equal footing because they have a large capacity to absorb burst damage, and they do some pretty great AoE damage too in spite of all of their weaknesses.

Just because thieves pick out eles doesn’t mean that thieves are great compared to eles… It means that eles are the only class we are on equal ground with. I cannot think of any other class (outside of ele, possibly) that is weaker than thief in this regard.

1. Withdraw (which is, technically speaking, our best heal) heals for +100 less health per second than warr’s Healing Signet does. In fact, compared to the healing abilities of many other classes, the thief’s healing abilities are absolutely horrid.

2. Protection and Retal, two of the most powerful boons, only last 5 seconds each as opposed to 10.

3. You’re just as likely to get something like vigor as you are likely to get something like a single stack of might.

4. Not sure I’ve ever seen stability pop up as a result of this rune.

5. If you think that getting Aegis after using Withdraw is going to change the tide of the battle (assuming that the other player isn’t unlucky enough to use some really powerful, long CD skill on you just at that moment, which tends not to happen), you probably have never used the rune or even used Aegis before.

6. Your suggestion implies that we should only use Withdraw for the rune, not for the, y’know, healing.

7. Basi Venom is an absolutely terrible elite that gives a relatively short stun on a relatively long CD (compare with the warr’s mace, for example). The only reason to run it is for Lyssa, really, or if you’re some kind of D/X BS gimmick build where you’re running Basi Venom anyways, in which case you probably won’t really want Lyssa runes for a myriad of other reasons anyhow.

8. Lyssa Rune’s #6 ability is definitely not better than Consume Plasma, and Consume Plasma is okay at best, particularly given its cast time (BTW Basi Venom has a painfully long cast as well).

9. If you’re still not convinced of how wrong you are, I would finish by stating that the +165 precision and +10% condition duration, compared to other runes/stats, is awful. We don’t need that additional condi duration, and given that 165 precision is less than a 4% damage bonus at base levels (compared to Ogre Runes’ 18.1% damage bonus just from the power increase), we can pretty much surmise that, apart from the 4 and 6 abilities, Lyssa Runes are terrible.

If none of this is convincing enough to you, then I’m not sure that any amount of reason will sway you.

It’s okay, thief is about to finally meet ele in the tier where profs go to die as well.

nicknamenick.2437:

Topic #4032 about healing signet complains? no need to make another one.

Gonna Report these topics because if you READ the others, you see the healing issnt OP.

I disagree; there are many people (like myself) that have made arguments against HS, and the only counterargument seems to be something to the effect of “l2p baddie”.

Julie Yann.5379:

ATM the passive is just about right, any lower and it wouldn’t be worth using.

Actually, given that the signet heals currently for (for example) +100 more HPS than the highest thief heal gives (unless you can hit a ton of times consistently per second, which is extremely unlikely), and that, outside of that, the Signet heals for significantly more than every other heal in the game, even a “large” nerf to HS would still be unlikely to completely render the signet useless.

Not too mention that there are some builds (particularly on Ranger) where it’s literally better to just stand and spam 1 than try to do anything else.

Here’s what I want to see in the next few patches:

Elementalist: buff a lot of the weapon skills, reduce cast times, etc. Heals are kinda crappy too IMO, especially for staff ele (given that almost all of the staff ele’s weapon skills have a long casting time). Also, some working into actually giving eles viable options for condi removal outside of speccing 30 points into water, and seeing some past nerfs (especially the nerf to RTL) getting reworked. ANet still needs to give eles a reason to spec heavily into other trees.

Engineers: make them less spammy? Idk, but I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen an engi with Bomb/Grenade kit that didn’t just faceroll his or her keyboard.

Guardians: eh… I’m not so sure about this one. Some of the power guard builds are starting to become really powerful. Too early to say on this one though.

Mesmer: I’m actually okay with mesmer right now; I’d like to see all of the classes have the same degree of strengths and weaknesses that mesmers have ATM. The signet heals for too little on a fairly long interval too be very reliable. Some builds are starting to become much more powerful now, however… Again, difficult to say.

Necromancer: condi damage needs to be reduced, Signet of Spite needs a longer CD (unless you have really good condi clear off CD, it almost always results in an instantaneous death- at least, in my experience), and/or necros have to stop being the worst faceroll class in the game. I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen a necro wait to use any of his skills before. I know that when I play a necro, I use all of my skills as soon as they come off CD.

Ranger: too many passive effects combined with tons of AI, screen clutter, and the incentive to stand in place while spamming 1 are all problems with this class.

Thief: I’m not even going to bother with these guys. They’re dead now. They have ceased to exist. I can beat them with any class, and with virtually any build. They are the most inflexible class in the game ATM, and the options that they do have (P/D and D/D / D/P) are so bad in the current meta for one reason or another that there is absolutely no reason to run thief. ANet really needs to rework this entire class, and actually start playing it, since they seem to think we use Hard to Catch as our main defensive skill/trait or something…

Warrior: still have 400 HPS, thousands of more health than every other class in the game excluding necro, inexhaustible amounts of CC, heavy armor, and the ability to completely faceroll the keyboard… And ANet seems perfectly fine with all of this.

Well, P/D isn’t really that usable. If anything, it’s only usable because it’s not unusable- i.e. weaponsets like S/D are unusable because they have only two decent skills, one of which has almost been nerfed into oblivion anyways. Either way, P/D builds have always kinda sucked IMO (at least, compared to other options), but right now it’s looking to be a better weaponset than most of the others.

D/D (as well as D/P) are still both viable sets, but with the amount of conditions in the current meta and the fact that dagger has no cleaving ability (meaning that you’re going purely single-target in a meta where AoE wins), Dagger builds have been suffering recently.

As for SB… I mean, it’s still usable… It’s just that SB has always been more of a utility weapon than anything else; it’s a filler for when you’re at range or have run out of initiative.

Anyways, as a result, I’d stay away from devoting too much time/money into thief, and I especially wouldn’t suggest getting a legendary for thief right now. Hopefully we’ll be able to ride out the storm.

I wish that the entire last patch was undone completely.

10/0/0/30/30 was still fine before the patch.

After Sword 2 was absolutely demolished, though, I’m not sure any sword build is good, whether it’s S/D or S/P.

Rickster.8752:

Losing to a ranger who just spams 1 button is a regular occurrence – even at the top level of pvp. All auto attacks should be way way worse. Passive procs should be removed or dodgeable. It is so unsatifying to die to someone just spamming 1 the whole time. It flaws the whole game. There is no cd management because you can always fall back to extremely powerful auto attacks.

It’s funny you mentioned the ranger. I was playing against a Spirit Ranger today on my mesmer, and all he did was spam 1- he didn’t even bother to use any of his other buttons. Still took me a minute or two just to take down. Ridiculous.

Geiir.7603:

Arganthium, Travlane and Jumper are some of the best thieves / theorycrafters we have! ANet should really start to listen to you guys, since you clearly know what you’re talking about – which ANet on the other hand does not…

i would love for ANet to actually listen to their community, or I fear that the thief will lose all of it’s good players and completely vanish from the meta..

Haha thanks though I don’t think that the problem is necessarily that they don’t listen to us, sadly, but rather that they just don’t know what they’re talking about.

Mostly a decent build. Not a huge fan of the secondary S/P, but that’s just a personal recommendation. It’s still playable.

I would definitely consider taking out Signet of Shadows though (if you really need that extra movement speed, you can just swap to the signet when you’re OOC), and you should definitely swap out Cavalier’s and Valk’s. Because of the amount of critical damage you’re taking, unless you’re planning on almost solely using BS, precision will be an extremely useful stat for you to have. As such, replacing your Cavalier’s gear with Zerker gear will result in an 18.3% decrease in damage reduction, but will grant you a 28.7% increase in damage dealt (which is actually a lot more than it looks like, given that you were already dealing 331% base damage w/ Cavalier’s). After that, replacing your Valk weapons with Sentinel or Soldier’s should also be good for you, although probably not as effective as replacing the Cavalier’s gear.

Butbutbut… Aren’t evasion builds OPz? Isn’t that why teef got nerfed into oblivion?

Maugetarr.6823:

Well considering you can’t use IR when CC’d anymore and fear is definitely a disable ability, you wouldn’t be able to clear it whether it counts as a condition or not. When it was instant cast I don’t think sword cleared it. I believe stability stops it too (but necros are probably using corrupt boon on you when you pop your elite anyway). Shadow return is also a stunbreak which cancels out control effects.

As if thieves needed a harder time with necros

The sad part is that many necros said before the patch that S/D thieves had caused them to be a practically inviable class.

Yeah, I know what you’re thinking.

Junkpile.7439:

Incurafy.6329:

google.3709:

4 signet thief!! no perma stealth or perma evade bs!

This. ^

One of the hardest builds in the game, imo.

What is hard? Take short bow, jump backward whole time and dodge around and you can’t die.

Because there’s nothing like hitting as though you were throwing pebbles at the enemy (it does less damage than the auto attack does, and the auto attack is already pretty weak) while having a relatively short evade time for a relatively long cast (far more than .25 seconds- more like upwards of 1 to 1.5 seconds), and being able to dodge very little while doing absolutely no damage and being vulnerable at the end of every dodge cast.

KarsaiB.9475:

backstab steal does about 10k damage if backstab crits. You’re left with 4k, in range for a single lethal heartseeker. Also, The backstab steal combo will daze you and even remove stability if you have one on. At this point, the thief hasn’t used a single initiative. At this point he can do whatever he wants. Run away stealth and open you with basi, daze and Ice shard stab you, auto attack you, heartseeker you, shadowshot you, doesn’t matter. You’re dead.

Yeah, I can BS for 10k while dazing and removing your stability and being automatically in stealth at the beginning of the fight and use my insta-cast basi venom to stun you for 3 seconds and blind you while doing damage and not exiting stealth and all the while I’m hitting for thousands and thousands of damage.

Now if only BS could hit for 10k while still going 30 into Trix and if only it was so easy to get into stealth without using stealth and if only it was so easy to use Basi Venom with its 1-1.5 second casting time and if only it was so easy to do 4k with Shadow Shot or to make it effective whatsoever at close range and if only I could actually hit for thousands and thousands of damage every second without dying from an auto attack.

Reikou.7068:

FeelsAlright.5860:

You can’t post a video of sizer and say it represents most of the population. He is literally on the BEST sPvP team EU atm. And is probably one of the best S/D thieves atm as well (since I haven’t seen anything from Jumper in a long time). Sizer is an outlier in the statistic.

actually it means that every other thief that can’t do what Sizer does simply needs to L2P. Sizer proves the build still has the potential to be good.

Balance should only be tweaked for players at the highest-level of play, because at any other level of play, it is simply a L2P issue. And while it is nice to have a semblance of balance while you are learning to play, it shouldn’t be a priority for balancing the game.

Actually, if you look at his games, many of his opponents seem to have that “flight” idea programmed into their minds mixed with a half-hearted attempt to fight back. Many of them also seem to ignore targeting him completely, and their combat skills are relatively lackluster. Furthermore, his build seems extremely suspect, which, presumably, means that he’s even luckier with his opponents than was implied before.

While it’s probably not a very good build overall due to the current state of the elementalist, I’ve found that area denial elementalists are tons of fun to play, and have a very high skill cap. While it may look initially like a zerker staff build (what with Zerker amulet and all), it certainly doesn’t feel like one, nor should it be played like one. Instead, you want to use AoE skills and CC skills to block off areas and to hold points.

I ain’t gonna lie, I think that Hard to Catch is one of the worst trait choices for thieves that there is.

What: Skelk Venom
Why: it’s a venom, and venoms are OP because thief can use them.

However bad people may say it is, just remember, it’s definitely not worse than Skelk Venom.

Quite possibly the absolute worst heal in the game.

Coulter.2315:

I don’t understand what you’re saying, I’m saying Thief SBow allows them to escape and evade whatever they choose at will. You seem to have an issue with a 2sec root with a 9.5-12sec recharge. If you have a problem with skills which allow the other player to avoid too much then Thief SBow and Feline Grace should be at the top of your list – but instead at the start you say they are fine O_o

There’s a reason why thief’s SB 3 is only used very, very rarely. But you quite obviously have yet to use the skill.

Jumper.9482:

Next thing you know, they’re going to remove the daze on headshot because “we didn’t like players using it to deal 400dmg from a distance. Don’t worry though, the way you use it will not change”.

….What?

This has essentially been ANet’s logic over the past few months. For example:

JonPeters.5630:

Infiltrator’s Return
The thing I have heard the second most discussion regarding. This is a big change to this skill, but we beleive it is a necessary one. In many cases this is not going to matter. There are only 2 situations where this is a truly impactful change.
1) It stops you from using this skill while stunned, which puts more burden on Sword/Dagger thieves saving their stun breakers. This is the kind of gameplay we want to encourage because it puts more risk in using a rewarding skill like Infiltrator’s Strike.
2) Mostly in PvP, this skill can no longer be used by S/D thieves to teleport stomp someone. This is actually the more impactful moment as it occurs more often, but I think it puts the burden on these players to run a second weapon set that can help them in these situations (OH pistol for instance.)

Which is absolutely absurd; either way, it was just as able to be countered as any other teleport stomp.

Of course, that’s not to say that their first statement about IR being a “LOLstunbreakerz” is any more valid.

1) It stops you from using this skill while stunned, which puts more burden on Sword/Dagger thieves saving their stun breakers. This is the kind of gameplay we want to encourage because it puts more risk in using a rewarding skill like Infiltrator’s Strike style of play, like melee.

Because, honestly, the only reason that warrs hated the skill was because they couldn’t burst thieves for 5-10k damage at 300 range- at least, not quite as often. On the other hand, though, Mesmer lockdown builds could still function the same way they were designed to do so, and Hambow builds (which didn’t seem to have much of a burst anyways- they just seek to do lots of damage while simultaneously keeping you locked down) still were able to easily crush thief. Just to quote one more thing I’ve written about the subject,

Arganthium.5638:

Stunbreaker- not really. Usually it wasn’t far enough away to count as a stun breaker, and even if it was, you’d usually have to spend 5 initiative total to get back into the battle. The point of stuns, however, is to lock down the opponent, keeping him/her from doing anything. This has a variety of uses, but the one that has been most (ab?)used by ANet and, in particular, Warriors, is using stuns to keep an opponent from reacting to a high-damage attack, or high-damage attacks. Since basically every warrior skill is high-damage (well, many, many of them are), this has tended towards being the strategy for most warrs. The process simply becomes

1. Stun
2. Burst
3. Clean (ie use utilities, cleansing ire, etc)
4. Repeat

Which, unlike similar patterns in the game, deals far more damage overall and/or allows the player using the pattern to absorb massive amounts of damage at the same time.

However, the necessary idea is that, in order for this cycle to work, one must be able to use his or her melee attacks while the opponent is stunned (melee tends to do the most damage). By being able to use infi return, we were able to break this cycle, which did not in fact “completely destroy the warrior” or anything they’ll tell you, but rather countered that particular method of play, forcing warriors to find a different and less comfortable way to play their builds.

On the other hand, look at Lockdown mesmers. Their goal is not necessarily to burst you into the ground while attacking you, but rather to negate some of your damage by keeping you unable to react. Against these, Infi Return was near useless, except in situations where the shadowstep would take you farther away than the 1200 range on a mes’ weapons would allow, but even then, that was a fairly minor nuance.

As such, I would not, in fact, call infi return a stunbreaker, but rather a counter to a particular, cyclical pattern that must be itself countered by a different method of play.

tac.2167:

What: Nerf Death – When a thief dies he should explode doing massive AOE damage to his own team

Why: Thief death is OP. Every time a thief dies, he resets the fight.

+1

While these tests aren’t extremely inaccurate or anything, there’s a much more direct way to calculate how much DPS total any class can do relative to other classes. It just requires a lot of math. And time.

Neither of which I’m in the mood to do.

ens.9854:

We ran 5 against a team of 6 necro and they all uninstalled and decided to go back to school, get respectable well paying jobs and start happy families

Edit: inb4 delete

Looks like ANet is finally making people do the right thing.

ahuba.6430:

Hype.8032:

Dee Jay.2460:

And S/D…to be honest….I’m not noticing the changes.

If you didn’t notice changes to IR then you haven’t played s/d yet. Just try messing around with the npc warrior in the mists… that kittener will chain stun you 4 times in a row. You don’t notice a difference? Not a good troll dude….

zomg you mean s/d now actually has to dodge stuns like every other class in the game? WHAT?!!

You mean that every class can dodge every Earthshaker/Skull Crack/Shield Bash/Staggering Blow/Backbreaker/Rifle Butt/Pommel Bash/Tremor/(Insert physical utility skill or immobilize here)? Well, I guess that as long as I evade any Kill Shots/Eviscerates/Whirling Axes/Volleys/Final Thrusts/Hundred Blades/Arcing Slices/Fierce Blows or any other skills that do relatively high amounts of damage or, in Arcing Slice’s case, give tons of fury, I should be fine.

But hey, either way, it should be okay, since thieves have tons of stability and protection and vigor, as well as a healing of 400 HPS and an automatic ~7-14% damage reduction over every other class in the game. It should also be easy for my mesmer to soak up a warrior’s heal with poison, and for my Necromancer to deal damage through Berserker Stance.

On another note… ZOMG WARR CAN’T JUST SPAM STUN AND THEN USE HIGH DMG MELEE SKILLS THEY ACTUALLY HAVE TO RUN 600 RANGE EVERY ONCE IN A WHILE TO DO DAMAGE TO A LOCKED DOWN TEEF ZOMG PL0X NERF CUZ WE DONT HAVE ANYTING DAT DOS DMG @ OVR 300 RANGE. Man, I wonder how Lockdown mesmers must work…

Asomal.6453:

Viking Jorun.5413:

Asomal.6453:

Arganthium.5638:

Asomal.6453:

They are indeed teleporting more, but not because of buffs. Since SR was nerfed, you can’t stay on the fight for so long until you are CCed. So it’s easier to just jump in -> hit you -> jump out. Hence, teleporting more (and the init buffs helps a bit).

This is some seriously crappy logic. For one thing, initiative wasn’t entirely buffed; in fact, the vast majority of commonly used initiative-gaining traits were nerfed. As a user of Quick Recovery, for example, 40% of the gain from the increase in base initiative regeneration has been nullified, and the Kleptomaniac nerf has reduced that gain by another ~12.4%. Across all traits, there has been a great deal of initiative nerfing that people do not seem to account for very much.

Either way, you fail to realize that Infi Return now has a pretty long cast time on it (about 4x longer than what the patch says), and it’s also queued into your weapon skills. Furthermore, it can’t be used as a “stun breaker” (which it never really was, but still was useful against stuns), and, given that it’s pretty much our sole source of condi removal for S/D builds (with very few exceptions), the nerf that’s been done to Infi Return was absolutely massive.

Wth are you talking buddy? I know sword 2 in general was nerfed (I mentioned it). Also, the new initiative system does help. Since you are jumping out of the fight more often (not reseting combat, just standing at a safe distance), you are not getting anything from Opportunist. With Quick Recovery nerfed, I don’t pick it anymore, but something else

As someone who’s played a sword thief for a while, spamming 2 will never win you a fight. IS doesn’t do near enough damage and is often blocked due to it now being just an initiator and emergency small Condi clear when the pressure isn’t high. Teleporting more actually decreases the pressure, something sword thief needs to upkeep in order to have a chance at winning a fight. You must be in yoloQ and n00bjoin with terrible thieves, and I doubt you’ve lost a fight to any who are actively using their IS and IR (sword 2), because you just can’t keep enough damage going to kill anything. IR is also no longer a reliable active dodge, due to its 1/4 second cast time plus reaction time.

Geez, is like you people can’t read at all. Where did I say to spam 2? Jumping in and out means you are not staying near your opponent for so long, waiting for him to hit you (you can’t risk, once IR has a casting time). Example mesmers: You jump on him and he uses Decoy. You know he is going to either summon a Phantasm, use Magic Bullet or Illusionary Leap. There’s no point on staying there, so you jump out. Once he reappears, you jump in again.

So what you’re saying is that I should spend somewhere from 33.3%-41.3% of my initiative each time I’m worried that my opponent might do something?

That’s like trying to pop Aegis every time a warrior uses Eviscerate.

Relentless.7023:

Why do the worst thieves end up being the ones puking bullcrap about the state of their class on the forums?

I guess they need to be carried by Sword 2 to get carried by their teammates. Pathetic

It’s funny that people like you say this, because there have been many “top” thieves- such as Jumper and Caed- that have complained about the balance of the thief or the balance of the game in general.

It’s also amusing because your stereotype means that thieves should never, ever be buffed, i.e. the ones asking for buffs are just “bad thieves” and should be ignored.

Asomal.6453:

They are indeed teleporting more, but not because of buffs. Since SR was nerfed, you can’t stay on the fight for so long until you are CCed. So it’s easier to just jump in -> hit you -> jump out. Hence, teleporting more (and the init buffs helps a bit).

This is some seriously crappy logic. For one thing, initiative wasn’t entirely buffed; in fact, the vast majority of commonly used initiative-gaining traits were nerfed. As a user of Quick Recovery, for example, 40% of the gain from the increase in base initiative regeneration has been nullified, and the Kleptomaniac nerf has reduced that gain by another ~12.4%. Across all traits, there has been a great deal of initiative nerfing that people do not seem to account for very much.

Either way, you fail to realize that Infi Return now has a pretty long cast time on it (about 4x longer than what the patch says), and it’s also queued into your weapon skills. Furthermore, it can’t be used as a “stun breaker” (which it never really was, but still was useful against stuns), and, given that it’s pretty much our sole source of condi removal for S/D builds (with very few exceptions), the nerf that’s been done to Infi Return was absolutely massive.