Guild Wars 2

Gwalchgwn.1659:

I’m also interested in signing up, but I might not have time. How does this all work?

Seren, this is the NA tournament.

A 50-50 chance, on average, makes for 25% damage reduction.

That’s crazy.

So let me get this straight- you spent 30 trait points and two sigils just so that you can utilize the after cast on Slice? The heck? I can tell you from my S/D experience that that’s easily achievable without that degree of overkill. And it’s not like you’re going to just stand there clueless after you hit the auto, anyhow. There’s this thing called “positioning”, too, ya know, that you could be spending time in getting rather than rolling in, practically speaking, some arbitrary direction.

And your combos:

Your first one is an elaborate scheme designed to save you a tenth of a second in exchange for the two tenths of a second it takes you to remember it.

Your second one… If you’re bragging about it doing significantly more damage than the auto, you should check the coefficients out on the skills. And taking out the evade time on FS, here, lacks any justification, and the same goes for evasion time on the dodge, assuming that we’re calculating DPS (which we suddenly seem to be doing). And, again, the positioning on this is somewhat suspect, although I’m getting the feeling that you don’t care about player-opponent positioning anyways. Your videos show it, too.

Your third combo is likely to only end up dealing the FS coefficient of .75 (as a good enemy will start attacking while you’re using FS), and you’ll probably end up missing LS anyways due to bad positioning from dodges. Unless, of course, you want to eat tons of damage while dealing your own.

And what happened to team fights? What happened to people using AoE and range to blast you to pieces? What happened to targeting and focus firing? You seem not to have considered these.

Not that it matters; none of this says anything in reply to previous points I’ve made. Seems just to be more of an advertisement for your alleged “skill”. You have no territory control, no solid defense, no good positioning, an inefficient method of dealing damage, no good utility of IS/SR, and no range, among a variety of other problems that plague you. Your build is both theoretically and practically inefficient, and your play style is suffering for it.

So what do I run? 10/0/0/30/30 with Mug, III, IX, and X in Acro, and traits V, VII, and XII in Trix. I run soldier’s amulet with zerker jewel, Lyssa runes, Withdraw, RfInit, InfSignet, SStep, and Basi venom. I also run two sigils of force (sword, SB) and a sigil of bloodlust on my dagger. I regenerate enough initiative to maintain a constant stream of damage output, amplified by the third minor in Trix. I can swap between melee and range, and sustain myself long enough to participate in team fights or 1v2 for long periods of time. I can manipulate Steal easily, position myself quickly, and have enough passive (or what I classify as type I active, essentially the “less dangerous” type) regeneration to focus on the details in a battle.

And you? Do you even understand the theory behind the game? It doesn’t seem like it; you were, after all, using base damage amounts as opposed to coefficients earlier. And your zerker amulet is mathematically inferior. Your calculations are extremely sketchy, and none of them take into account practical issues in battle. To me, this seems more like a build that went through tons of trial-and-error to its ultimately flawed state not based on facts, but biases on your behalf.

Do you even use damage amplifiers and dampeners in making your builds?

Travlane.5948:

stof.9341:

Travlane.5948:

worst note : 4 init on deathblossom!?!?!?!? wtf….was it so op? did like 1200 dmg max lol and 3 stacks of bleed which are basically no dmg if ur going berserker. so dumb really this breaks an entire build.

You are aware this skill costs 5 init currently right?

total brain fart lol. yeah i was always saying they need to do to this what they did to FS LS bc when you leap in the air it doesnt always aim right. seems a lil annoying . or atleast add some distance and 50% more direct dmg. but for 4 initiative thats a lil better. yeah i read it wrong :P bleh! thanks man

lmfao

I can also tell you that this almost certainly isn’t true.

Source?

/15charrs

Wolfheart.1938:

I don’t get if you are sarcastic or you agree with me in defining the skill “stupid”.

No, seriously. But everybody thinks underwater combat in general is highly unbalanced. So when I see this thread, all I see is a reminder of what I and many others already know.

Jumper.9482:

http://www.twitch.tv/loljumper/c/2452257
What you see: mindless 3 “spam” (?)
What I see: Counterplaying another good player’s counterplays(his trying to dodge my Larc Strike). Effective use of condi cleanse, well timed dodge-canceling of aftercast animation frames, combined with good dodge prediction (landed every hit but one slice I believe).

But by all means, Arganthium, if you want to show me how to “properly” play S/D, go ahead. I’m waiting.

Oh please.

As I’m currently using my phone (well, I do have extremely limited computer access), it is true that I cannot view your video (because a certain company decided that it would be a good idea not to have Adobe Flash Player…). So, instead, I’ll have to simply criticize you from my past experiences seeing your play style.

First of all, I’d like to start off by saying that the mathematics of your build are flawed; that I’ve shown this to you and that you have chosen to ignore my advice, likely without having considered thy I may have had a point. I’m saying this because I’m convinced that your fame has gone way over your head, to the point that you will not take build advice from someone as “lowly” as me. I’ve contributed a great deal to this community, and I’m disappointed that their newest idol has gone way over his head in that he chooses to follow some kind of overly aggressive dogma that greatly limits his options. Thus, the rest of my reply is a contribution to the welfare of the community, not (just) for you.

Now onto the real deal:
If a player really can’t avoid your LS, then that’s not a pro for you, it’s a con for them. Honestly, do you know the range of that thing? It’s not exactly better than CnD, that’s for sure. And it requires good timing if you’re planning on landing it. How can you afford good timing if evades are your only defense? Weapon swapping to save LS? What’s that going to do for you? It’ll just decrease your damage stream, inconvenience your initiative regeneration, inconvenience your endurance regeneration, and, again, causes you to lack any decent sort of range.

Your lack of utility of IS/SRet is frustrating. It basically gives off the impression that you’re good enough that you don’t need to worry about conditions all too often (even though I’ve seen them melt you). If anything, you lack utility of condi cleanse, in my experience watching you.

So you know how to dodge? Cool! But did I not put tips to countering dodges in the OP? And where’s your territory control? Why won’t you just melt when somebody drops a Chaos Storm on you, or a mark while you’re in your FS animation? Can you avoid either of those, or even afford to get hit by those? Not really, and I’ve seen them hurt you before as well.

So, in other words, your build causes you to focus on a huge number of things all at once, as opposed to focusing on the most important ones, lacks any good deal of defense (somebody looks at you funny and you’re dead), has to sacrifice range in order to work, doesn’t even utilize your weapon skills well, and causes you to die to territory control.

And that is why your build is flawed.

Wolfheart.1938:

That skill is outrageously stupid if not OP and there’s not much discussing it.

And nobody disagrees with you.

Excalibur.9748:

Ridiculous. S/D isn’t even overpowered. Buff our other weapons sets so thief isn’t so useless.

I’m not the one complaining about this. This thread was originally posted in the sPvP forum, where people actually believe that it’s OP.

bladie.5084:

Siva Mira.3546:

I am rather disappointed by people who disagreed with him while agreed that it is fine to waste your time ingame farming and buy your legendary.

This is prolly the most real comment ever on this topic. +1

This is true, which is why I didn’t go for a legendary.

fishergrip.4082:

S/D is broken right now and yes, spamming 3 is optimal because you get great, unblockable damage, crazy evasion and boon stealing.

Please read OP before replying. Repeating a point over and over does not make it true.

Enmity.3428:

Arganthium.5638:

Enmity.3428:

Arganthium.5638:

Enmity.3428:

Stealth.9324:

I go with the third which is Thief to be adjusted to some extend and people need to L2P, for both Thief User as well as Counter.

Yeah, it is a mixture of both, but I don’t think it’s an even mixture by any means.

As for Thief players learning more “skillful” play – that won’t happen without changes to the class as there’s little to no incentive to do so when mastering the basic, powerful and spammable attacks is so easy and so effective.

Actually, it’s inefficient, tactically and positionally inferior, and easily counterable.

My Thief disagrees with you.

So does my Warrior.

Cool. So where’s your credibility in the community?

Credibility? lmao.

1. The number of threads complaining about Thieves, (S/D in particular.) – Why do you think that is? No other class receives anywhere near as much negative attention as the Thief. This is not by coincidence.

If there wasn’t a problem, there wouldn’t be a deluge of threads complaining about them.

2. The validity of the criticisms made against this build – It’s almost universally recognised that it’s an overtly strong build, and one which takes comparatively little skill to be successful with. The complaints focus on the same skills.

If there wasn’t a problem, there wouldn’t be a consensus on which skills are problematic.

3. The popularity of this build – Players generally gravitate towards the most powerful and effective build. This explains why there are there so many [double] S/D Thieves. Builds which are “inefficient, tactically and positionally inferior, and easily counterable” are not used in as great a number as we see this one used.

If there wasn’t a problem, this build would not be so overly-represented in matches.

The Thief class receives the most criticism.
The complaints are all similar in nature.
The problematic build is extremely common.

You can question my credibility all you want but what you can’t do is refute any of the points I’ve made.

[Apologies to the OP for going off-topic.]

Your “points” are all opinion pieces. If I create thirty threads about how OP necros are, does that make them OP? If I play a build without condition removal, and get mauled by a necro, am I justified in claiming that necros are OP? Of course not. Similarly, I have done the analysis on dual S/D thieves multiple times, and in all honesty, I’ve made many posts explaining how to counter them (see “Why 3 spam is not good S/D” in the thief forum), and why the build is dreadful in theory. So what? Why should I believe that it is the build that is OP, and not that whomever is losing against it is a bad player?

CollegeDowntime.4187:

Enmity.3428:

Arganthium.5638:

Enmity.3428:

Arganthium.5638:

Enmity.3428:

Stealth.9324:

I go with the third which is Thief to be adjusted to some extend and people need to L2P, for both Thief User as well as Counter.

Yeah, it is a mixture of both, but I don’t think it’s an even mixture by any means.

As for Thief players learning more “skillful” play – that won’t happen without changes to the class as there’s little to no incentive to do so when mastering the basic, powerful and spammable attacks is so easy and so effective.

Actually, it’s inefficient, tactically and positionally inferior, and easily counterable.

My Thief disagrees with you.

So does my Warrior.

Cool. So where’s your credibility in the community?

Credibility? lmao.

1. The number of threads complaining about Thieves, (S/D in particular.) – Why do you think that is? No other class receives anywhere near as much negative attention as the Thief. This is not by coincidence.

If there wasn’t a problem, there wouldn’t be a deluge of threads complaining about them.

2. The validity of the criticisms made against this build – It’s almost universally recognised that it’s an overtly strong build, and one which takes comparatively little skill to be successful with. The complaints focus on the same skills.

If there wasn’t a problem, there wouldn’t be a consensus on which skills are problematic.

3. The popularity of this build – Players generally gravitate towards the most powerful and effective build. This explains why there are there so many [double] S/D Thieves. Builds which are “inefficient, tactically and positionally inferior, and easily counterable” are not used in as great a number as we see this one used.

If there wasn’t a problem, this build would not be so overly-represented in matches.

The Thief class receives the most criticism.
The complaints are all similar in nature.
The problematic build is extremely common.

You can question my credibility all you want but what you can’t do is refute any of the points I’ve made.

[Apologies to the OP for going off-topic.]

Yeah I’m going to side with you on this. Questioning someone’s credibility is an attack on the person instead of the subject and you made good points.

If the point is valid, I don’t care if you’ve never played the game before and if you have all the credibility in the world it doesn’t mean anything if your argument is hollow.

His claim (“my thief and warrior disagree with you”, related to something else I had written) was based on the premise of his own credibility, that his point was moot if he didn’t have some kind of authoritative source to justify that what he was saying was true and applicable. Thus, this is not so much a personal attack as it is a question of justification.

FinalPatriot.8034:

Arganthium.5638:

$3000. For weapon skins. In a godkittened video game.

Ya know, maybe I’m just really poor, but seriously, what kind of person can afford to just blow off $3000 for something like this?

$3000 is nothing… I sold my kidney so I can get some legendary gear in the hopes that there might be yet, another “NERF TEEFS” thread…

Lol

Romek.4201:

lol you cant say cause teldo can beat it its fine^^

teldo is a very skilled player and atm the best 1v1 player out there – he beat just everyone on stream 1v1 and he won this 1v1 tournier
he even win sometimes 1v2 in stream or 1v3 and you cant say cause HE (Teldo) do this ingi is OP cause nearly all ingis i saw till now with this teldo build failed hard.

So plz stay on earth

edit: but the other way most thiefs i saw till now with the jumper build could easly kill ppl just with spam 3

Jumper is rank 8 in NA.

$3000. For weapon skins. In a godkittened video game.

Ya know, maybe I’m just really poor, but seriously, what kind of person can afford to just blow off $3000 for something like this?

Enmity.3428:

Arganthium.5638:

Enmity.3428:

Stealth.9324:

I go with the third which is Thief to be adjusted to some extend and people need to L2P, for both Thief User as well as Counter.

Yeah, it is a mixture of both, but I don’t think it’s an even mixture by any means.

As for Thief players learning more “skillful” play – that won’t happen without changes to the class as there’s little to no incentive to do so when mastering the basic, powerful and spammable attacks is so easy and so effective.

Actually, it’s inefficient, tactically and positionally inferior, and easily counterable.

My Thief disagrees with you.

So does my Warrior.

Cool. So where’s your credibility in the community?

This thread is getting off-topic. If you’re going to discuss this, please continue the conversation in an alternate thread.

Pyriall.5027:

Zenith.7301:

Just play something other than thief/ele mesmer and tell me thieves have it rough. Please.

Play a necro or engineer for once. If you mess up, you die. On the thief, just shadow return/stealth.

To add some more context to this. You cannot run any other berserker/glass cannon professions because of thief and mesmer berserker/glass cannon. Ele, necro, guardian, engi, or ranger? All…nope. Warrior? Maybe.

And if you run GC at all, you’ll die after being beat in the head with a stick.

Is it really that difficult to kill a GC, guys? Is that the problem?

Zenith.7301:

Just play something other than thief/ele mesmer and tell me thieves have it rough. Please.

Play a necro or engineer for once. If you mess up, you die. On the thief, just shadow return/stealth.

My goodness.

Stealth is detrimental to team strategy, and is thus almost never used, making access to it limited.

SRet only allows for escaping if you use it so rarely that you become highly inefficient. And you think we can afford to mess up? Why don’t we see you say that when you get 3-hitted by any other profession because the majority of our builds simply can’t have defense, apparently. I’ve also played both of those classes, and they’re perfectly fine, jesus. What do you run, a power necro and a rifle burst engi?

Pyriall.5027:

Arganthium.5638:

Pyriall.5027:

Med.6150:

Anybody believing D/P is harder to play than S/D needs to get themselves hospitalized.

S/D is all about timing, positioning, constant pressuring and survival without stealth. I used to play D/P before D/P was even a consideration and it is, to date, the most complete weapon set for the thief class. There are less than 15 keys to press on pretty much any class in guild wars 2, so that having options like you do with D/P (on demand daze, stealth, blind and gap closers), results in having an advantage over builds that only use 10 keys but simply do not have access to anywhere close to these options).

Stealth is a huge crutch and you only notice it, when you don’t have deliberate access to it. D/P is what I would recommend to any beginning thief, because it is, bar none, the easiest and most effective weapon combination you could choose on a thief.

Anybody telling you differently has an agenda.

You cannot end your statement with, “anyone who disagrees with my opinion has an agenda” and expect to be taken seriously.

Anybody telling you differently, has an agenda…

…(^ he has an agenda!)

…(^ so does this guy!)

Agenda-ception!

Pyriall.5027:

Med.6150:

Anybody believing D/P is harder to play than S/D needs to get themselves hospitalized.

S/D is all about timing, positioning, constant pressuring and survival without stealth. I used to play D/P before D/P was even a consideration and it is, to date, the most complete weapon set for the thief class. There are less than 15 keys to press on pretty much any class in guild wars 2, so that having options like you do with D/P (on demand daze, stealth, blind and gap closers), results in having an advantage over builds that only use 10 keys but simply do not have access to anywhere close to these options).

Stealth is a huge crutch and you only notice it, when you don’t have deliberate access to it. D/P is what I would recommend to any beginning thief, because it is, bar none, the easiest and most effective weapon combination you could choose on a thief.

Anybody telling you differently has an agenda.

You cannot end your statement with, “anyone who disagrees with my opinion has an agenda” and expect to be taken seriously.

Anybody telling you differently, has an agenda…

…(^ he has an agenda!)

dovrak.4376:

Everything about S/D is spamming 3 and using dodge, you have nearly 70% dodge uptime, until you shadow return and reset the fight, hard as that.
And thieves are a spammy class because initiative system is terrible and you’re forced to spam the same op skill in different situations, like using HS as a gap closer, why not? It’s a joke to recover initiative anyways, between stealth, traits, utilities, dodges, etc.

1. Did you read my post? Furthermore, SRet almost never allows fight resets, and when it does, it’s usually because you were massively underutilizing it. Also, please read my reply to Ostrich.

2. Yes, the initiative system is the problem… Because every skill relies on one cool down that we have to dedicate tons of points to amplify just so that we can get some half-decent DPS out. Do you know why it’s extremely difficult to invest in DArts, for example? It’s because it gives no initiative regen. CS provides some limited regen, on the other hand. Furthermore, half our skills suck because they’ve been nerfed into oblivion, just look at Kinjax’s (Eonbon’s) recent post in the sPvP forum. On the other hand, there are some weapon sets, like D/P, where every skill is useful, and is used, and has good return per point of initiative used. Nobody complains about spamming there, except for some people that haven’t learned to counter HS spam yet.

Unlike other classes, we can’t swap weapons to reset cooldowns anyways, so please stop QQ’ing. Init regen is extremely difficult to acquire for the majority of our possible builds, and the things you mentioned (stealth, traits, utilities, dodges) for init regen, are, respectively:

1. Stupid because stealth is often a weakness in sPvP.

2. Stupid because we usually have to put in 20-30 points just to get one half-decent init-regen trait, and they often require disadvantageous “active” recovery skills, some of which I further classify as “Type II Active Regeneration” which can be extremely bad in limiting your utilities, weapons, etc, while diverting your focus from the things that matter.

3. Stupid because we only have two init-recovering utilities that both recover a whopping average of .1 initiative per second, which isn’t much compared to conventional cooldowns. Furthermore, of these two, one of them falls under the aforementioned “Type II Active” regeneration, as it sacrifices a utility skill only for the ability to recover initiative (the dodge roll is practically negligible) and furthermore requires manual activation in order to work. Any other utilities that recover initiative are going to only do so via traits, which, as I mentioned before, often require other large sacrifices.

4. Incredibly stupid because you can’t recover init by dodge-rolling.

Your argument is invalid.

Med.6150:

Anybody believing D/P is harder to play than S/D needs to get themselves hospitalized.

S/D is all about timing, positioning, constant pressuring and survival without stealth. I used to play D/P before D/P was even a consideration and it is, to date, the most complete weapon set for the thief class. There are less than 15 keys to press on pretty much any class in guild wars 2, so that having options like you do with D/P (on demand daze, stealth, blind and gap closers), results in having an advantage over builds that only use 10 keys but simply do not have access to anywhere close to these options).

Stealth is a huge crutch and you only notice it, when you don’t have deliberate access to it. D/P is what I would recommend to any beginning thief, because it is, bar none, the easiest and most effective weapon combination you could choose on a thief.

Anybody telling you differently has an agenda.

Quoted for truth, because it is true. In higher level play, unfortunately, stealth can be a major hamper to your team’s ability.

redslion.9675:

OP is right.

It’s not all about #3.

You are forgetting the auto attack.XD

Actually, as it turns out, you’re close. It’s the auto and positioning via IS/SR, all while balancing those out with FS/LS. Sadly, the other two skills (DD and CnD) are near useless.

Anyhow, given the way some people spam 3 on S/D, they would be better off just autoattacking…

Enmity.3428:

Stealth.9324:

I go with the third which is Thief to be adjusted to some extend and people need to L2P, for both Thief User as well as Counter.

Yeah, it is a mixture of both, but I don’t think it’s an even mixture by any means.

As for Thief players learning more “skillful” play – that won’t happen without changes to the class as there’s little to no incentive to do so when mastering the basic, powerful and spammable attacks is so easy and so effective.

Actually, it’s inefficient, tactically and positionally inferior, and easily counterable.

Ostricheggs.3742:

You appear to be forgetting shadow return and the very large number of dodges in jumpers build as well as the fact that LS can be saved. Hate to say it but your post is so far off base. I’ve played with jumper a LOT. He doesn’t die much at all, even in 2v1s, and can still gibs things like a beast.

You’re missing the point. First, his number of “pure” dodges turns out not to be much, if any different from other classes, save from Withdraw and the second Acro minor. Furthermore, SRet is a spell that even Jumper professes not to use often, likely because of his lack of range putting him at a tactical disadvantage if he did indeed use the skill more often. And, in either case, Jumper doesn’t deal damage while evading or SRet’ing, so the real issue is with enemy animations, really.

Finally, I realize he doesn’t die much. Partially because of things like a lack of focusing him, which is partially due to his lack of dedication to any particular fight or position in general. Either way, that doesn’t invalidate what I said in my self-quote.

Enmity.3428:

Thread after thread after thread complaining about one class – the Thief.

1. The class isn’t too strong and everyone else just needs to L2P.
2. The class is too strong and needs toned-down slightly.

I wonder which one is closer to the truth?

So if I create thirty threads about how OP necro is, that means necro needs to be nerfed?

Yes, we all know that spear 5 is unbalanced.

Yes, underwater combat is unbalanced.

No, I haven’t the slightest idea why you guys are QQ’ing over a problem that everybody knows needs work, as if we didn’t know it was an issue.

Arganthium.5638:

cottage.3274:

Med.6150:

cottage.3274:

the fs/ls spam build can do 7 in a row before using roll for initiative and can do it with little time for recovery before you can do it again.

Bold claim that has no factual basis. It’s mathematically impossible to do 7 FS/LS in a full cycle.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQRAsY8YlYmSOHcy7E/5Ex2jdKUe6VgsdP4qVrKA-TwAg0CnIKSVkrITRyisFNoYRx+j5HA

feel free do try it out.
it’s mathematically possible and have factual basis not so hard to test 1 min in the mists will show you.

So, let’s put it this way.

Jumper’s build has virtually 0 range. That means that he pretty much has to run up to enemies to bash them with his sword. That takes time, and given that you have some small degree of tactical and positional knowledge (I guess you don’t from your QQ’ing), that means that you can simply smack the build from a range for a few seconds, and then force Jumper to fight on your own terms. Of course, all of this assumes that he doesn’t start with iStrike, but all that does is cut down the running time; you still get the positional upper hand, should you choose to take it.

Furthermore, because of his limited range, spacing allies out in battles pretty much allows you to destroy him from a range. Because he has virtually no toughness, or for that matter, defensive stats in general, even a single hit on him can be devastating. Furthermore, channeled auto attacks that do damage over time (like an S/D ele’s lightning #1, or spatial surge) are pretty much guaranteed to hit Jumper, due to the nature of the attacks. Also, ranged AoE skills (marks, laid down during the LS animation, which also grant fantastic disabling effects; Chaos Storm, ele Fire Staff #2, Frozen Ground, etc) are also guaranteed hits against Jumper.

And of course, none of this is considering that FS has a low damage coefficient, that Jumper often has to waste LS into space because he’s too far away from enemies, and that LS has a long enough cast to be taken advantage of, horribly easily.

Summary
- FS has a low damage coefficient, making LS the main damage dealer with S/D’s number 3 skill
- FS/LS, alone, can maintain evade only 50% of the time. See above quote from myself to take advantage of this.
- LS must often be wasted into space in order to maintain #3 spam, which causes lowered damage, artificially increasing the benefit of offensive stats being taken, which furthermore cause more dependency on 3-spamming, and so on. Thus, 3-spam often becomes the only method of defense for these thieves. Even if the thief chooses not to take offensive stats, by spamming 3, the player by definition will have to waste LS multiple times just so that they can continue spamming the skill, and they can’t position well if they don’t give themselves time to target LS well.
- in order to allow 3-spamming, a player has to give up increasingly more and more, and, in the case of some builds, this can be extremely lethal to the 3-spammer.

Arctu, signing out.

Well, the thing is, as we saw earlier, FS does half the damage that LS does. In fact, you’d be better off simply auto-attacking and chasing your enemies than hitting for the amount of damage FS does ever half second. So, really, #3’s damage comes from LS, not FS. Why does this matter?

Let’s take the economic law of increasing costs: as you increase output, you have to pay increasingly more and more in order to maintain such a rate of output. Now, for builds like Jumper’s (which tend to be the most hated ones), people often argue that evasion is the only method of defense for the build; even Jumper admits to this. Now, given that he attempts to maximize output of evades from FS, as it turns out, he has to sacrifice a lot of other things. In fact, in the case of his build, some of the things he gives up to maintain evades are extreme. For example, he runs no range or AoE, just a single melee set. Furthermore, he has to dedicate 30 trait points directly to maintaining his initiative, and one of the methods of initiative maintenance, in his case, is something I refer to as “active initiative regeneration”, that is, initiative regeneration that requires the player to partake in certain procedures to ensure that it happens. This is opposed to passive regeneration, in which the player doesn’t have to do anything; the method of regeneration simply comes by itself. Obviously, passive regeneration is preferable to active (less to focus on; also, less sacrifices, in practical use). In practicality, the difference ends up being that active tends to recover more, and there are more active skills than passive. Because there simply are not enough passive skills for Jumper to rely on, he ends up also having to take some active regeneration (specifically via Acro XII), some of which I classify as “bad active regeneration” (for reasons unnecessary to explain here).

What else does Jumper give up? Well, due to the strict play style of his build, he lacks flexibility that can often be decisive in tPvP, where positional and tactical play are not given enough credit for how clearly powerful they have proven to be on the battlefield. But there’s one thing I haven’t mentioned yet, and that’s damage. In order to keep up evasion via FS, when he has LS up, he has to pop it as quickly as possible so that he can perform FS again. Because LS has no gap closing on it, a half-second cast, a short range, and a very specific AoE, this often means that Jumper has to sacrifice LS into space just so that he can use FS again, simply because intelligent enemies are always moving and can get out of the way of LS, which, as previously mentioned, is #3’s main source of damage on S/D.

This ends up causing a damage deficiency for Jumper, which has had the unfortunate effect of causing him to boost up his offensive stats greatly. In doing so, he sacrifices defensive stats, forcing him to jump back onto using evasion as his main defense, and ultimately causing a self-reinforcing cycle. And all of this is really because Jumper has a bad #3-spamming habit that is often overlooked by shout casters, thieves, and the common QQ’er. He sacrifices damage, which forces him to give up some defense for damage, which causes him to rely on evade even more, which causes him to spam FS more and reinforce the problem. This doesn’t make Jumper a bad player, but it does explain why #3 spamming is inefficient.

Also, to borrow something else I’ve said (explaining how to hit an evading target using LS/FS, discussing previously mentioned things, etc.):

Hey all, Arctu here. I’d just like to share a little misconception that’s been going around recently…

… And that would be the idea that good S/D play is a #3 spam. For the purposes of this thread, I’m going to discuss Jumper’s now-popular S/D build (0/30/0/30/10, both S/D).

So, let’s get started on how not to play the weapon set, as that’s the major point of this post:

How not to play S/D, and why

As the title of this post suggests, spamming #3, FS, is a suboptimal way of playing S/D. Why is that?

Well, for one thing, there are damage coefficients relative to initiative cost. FS has a coefficient of .75, which is fairly low (in comparison, the first and second in the auto-attack chain have coefs of .8). However, FS does maintain evade for its entire duration. However, LS takes half a second to cast and has no evade on it. LS does, however, have a fairly high coefficient of 1.5.

Now, people often maintain that the sword thief has “perma-evade”. However, given that FS had a half second cast, alongside LS, this clearly isn’t true. As a matter of fact, assuming an infinite amount of #3 spam, consecutively, a player will only be evading 50% of the time.

“Only?”

I’ll be interested in seeing how this compares to my upcoming all-thief professional tPvP team, Team Akatsuki.

“Wait, I have something really important that I want to say!”

“Please, everybody… Come and listen in on what I have to say!”

Arheundel.6451:

….Thief players playing victim once again….

“… Thank you for hearing me speak! Now go… Keep doing whatever you were doing beforehand.”

cottage.3274:

Med.6150:

cottage.3274:

the fs/ls spam build can do 7 in a row before using roll for initiative and can do it with little time for recovery before you can do it again.

Bold claim that has no factual basis. It’s mathematically impossible to do 7 FS/LS in a full cycle.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQRAsY8YlYmSOHcy7E/5Ex2jdKUe6VgsdP4qVrKA-TwAg0CnIKSVkrITRyisFNoYRx+j5HA

feel free do try it out.
it’s mathematically possible and have factual basis not so hard to test 1 min in the mists will show you.

So, let’s put it this way.

Jumper’s build has virtually 0 range. That means that he pretty much has to run up to enemies to bash them with his sword. That takes time, and given that you have some small degree of tactical and positional knowledge (I guess you don’t from your QQ’ing), that means that you can simply smack the build from a range for a few seconds, and then force Jumper to fight on your own terms. Of course, all of this assumes that he doesn’t start with iStrike, but all that does is cut down the running time; you still get the positional upper hand, should you choose to take it.

Furthermore, because of his limited range, spacing allies out in battles pretty much allows you to destroy him from a range. Because he has virtually no toughness, or for that matter, defensive stats in general, even a single hit on him can be devastating. Furthermore, channeled auto attacks that do damage over time (like an S/D ele’s lightning #1, or spatial surge) are pretty much guaranteed to hit Jumper, due to the nature of the attacks. Also, ranged AoE skills (marks, laid down during the LS animation, which also grant fantastic disabling effects; Chaos Storm, ele Fire Staff #2, Frozen Ground, etc) are also guaranteed hits against Jumper.

And of course, none of this is considering that FS has a low damage coefficient, that Jumper often has to waste LS into space because he’s too far away from enemies, and that LS has a long enough cast to be taken advantage of, horribly easily.

KINJAX!!! DUUUUDDDDEEEEE…!

Nice post, liked it. It’ll unfortunately bring some random QQ’ers, but hey… Y’know how it rolls.

Anyways, I’d like to add:

ANet: rather than nerfing stuff because people are crying “OP”, let the metagame work itself out. If +50% of people are playing thief, and you have some real mathematics backing the idea that thief is “OP”, then nerfs may be justified (although even then, I would rather see buffs to other classes). But nerfing everything into the ground makes for a stale game.

A 25/30/0/0/15 D/P thief? In tPvP? Uh…

… Alright then. I’m not sure I trust that spec at all, for anything any more. Just sayin’.

^ Calculator is nice, but… It’s lacking.

Avatara.1042:

vluhd.7562:

tolunart.2095:

So your solution to prices rising is to print more money? Seems like this has done very well in the real world, I’m sure the same thing that happens there would happen in the game, too.

Post WWI Germany anyone?

More like the current US.

Please don’t get me started…

“/laugh OP, plz nerf”

On vacation w/o my laptop, but...

As it turns out, enemy offensive stats don’t matter in this calculation. In other words, ignoring power is the right way to go. Unless you’re measuring the benefit of an additional point of power against an additional point of toughness, of course.

Also: yes, +400 toughness is less effective at, say, 3000 defense than at 2000. Actually, that’s a simplification, but... Whatever. As it turns out, damage reduction also varies with vitality. For example, if you have 10000 health and 50% damage reduction, you can absorb 20000 damage relative to base. On the other hand, if you have 30k health and 50% damage reduction, then you’ll be able to absorb 60k damage relative to base.

Anyhow, I try to keep my specific equations secret to most, but if there’s anything in specific you want me to compute, I can probably pull it off in my head.

Cheers,

~Arctu

1. Every class has self-heals

2. Stealth healing requires 30 SA, which is dreadful in sPvP. The heal isn’t even that good anyways.

3. Init healing is only achievable via AReward, which often means giving up a lot of other good stuff. Also, the trade off that comes by nature from this trait is… Particularly dangerous.

4. Mug heals for very little with a long recharge.

5. Condi cleansing again requires the much-hated SA trait line, which is near useless. It is true that it is a good counter to condis in specific builds, however.

If you guys really can’t catch a stealthed thief in WvW, after all these months…

… I usually try to avoid saying this, but really, L2P.

No, thieves do not have to be that squishy without stealth. The people that say they do tend to also be the people that run 25/30/0/0/15 in tPvP with full zerker. I, for one, specialize in what people might call more “defensive” builds, even though that isn’t quite accurate as a descriptor.

Rukh.9287:

One point: Plenty of money is introduced in to the economy through quests and vendoring items. The economy is so stifled by trade taxes and costs on every thing though that vendoring items is actually more profitable then taxed trade on many items.

This causes an issue because low and medium income people are constantly pinched.

I have to admit that this is something WoW did right. They were able to make a fun economy. What they did is have a similar way money was introduced in to the economy— through quests and vendoring stuff, so players on all levels could have some sort of income.

However, their expenses for the normal player are low enough people aren’t pinched, and they feel like through working they can save up money for bigger things.

What they did instead was to have very big vendor purchases, so at medium income levels, you’re making more than you need to spend easily, but when you have a lot of money, there’s a very desirable thing to remove a big portion of it for. Unlike in real life where this is recirculated, this money is removed completely.

Unlike GW2 where money is sucked out at all levels, in WoW money is mostly sucked out of the economy at the top, where people spend half their income and still have hundreds of thousands of gold to easily do whatever they want. Their economic policy makes a strong and healthy middle class, and for the majority of the players, this is where they fall, so the game is more fun.

So in other words, you’re suggesting a way to tax people with higher incomes more than those with lower incomes?

Hard to implement, but good idea IMO.

You simply can’t.

The people who think that stealth = unlimited survivability simply need to learn the mechanic and how to counter it, event if that just implies spamming your auto (which is actually extremely effective).

They’re just kitten that they lost against a noob who easily could’ve been beaten with or without stealth. Personally, I’m at the point where I almost always consider stealth, as a matter of fact, a weakness.

Kwll.1468:

The reason people respond before reading your full post is because we have all seen these types of arguments made 1,000 times before. The buff don’t nerf argument has existed since the beginning of MMORPGs.

Funny you say this, because this is the first post I’ve ever seen arguing that nerfs in general across all classes should be limited, contrary to what other people think I’m saying- specifically, that I’m trying to say “pleez dunt nerf meh theef”.

@Enmity: come up with a single objective argument that doesn’t simply say “that’s BS and you know it” (especially when _you_dont know it whatsoever), and maybe then I’ll consider replying to you. Right now, all I see is the angry reply of somebody that refuses to provide evidence for his claims, an would prefer that all thieves are just generally ignored. That’s why nobody is going to believe you.

Furthermore, your biases towards me (“ohz noz, he gunna buff his claz unfarely!”) are completely nonsensical and unjustified. Assuming my class has always been overly strong, how does that imply that that would cause me to imbalance thieves in favor of us? Ridiculous, really. But the ignorance of one need not affect the ideals of the majority.

Poxxia.1547:

@OP:
“As we nerf everything into balance, professions by nature become increasingly more similar and stale.”
You assume it to be so, and conclude i to be so. Interesting way to argue.

Varonth puts it pretty nice. It is a strange assumption (and pretty narrow-minded, since it only involves your own class) that nerfing results in staleness and less trait-options.

The balancing act does usually include overshooting and undershooting aka buffing and nerfing. Would you rather have all other variable buffed to your level all the time? That includes even more work. Granted .. could be nice with bug-fixing before even starting to balance, but I am not even sure how many of the old bugs that remain anymore. To repeat myself: You take an extremely narrow-minded view, since you don’t take into account how your build-oppotunities influences other classes build-oppotunities.

I’ve already stated that this is about the game in general, so instead I’ll address your issue of my “assumption” being incorrect.

I base my argument on the premise that each class contains a set of two types of functions: basic functions shared among classes (ie ability to move, deal damage, take damage, etc), and advanced functions that each class specifically has control over (ie special mobility abilities, methods of damage dealing, how much damage you deal/take, etc). In order to maintain game stability, ANet must nerf the second class of abilities, as they cannot alter the “skeleton” of one class without changing the skeleton in the same way for all classes (for example, one class can’t be able to not take damage at all, or not not move, etc, unless implemented in such a way as to not affect PvP). Therefore, as these alternate functions that are unique to each class are weakened (by the definition of nerfing), then they play continuously less and less of a role in gameplay and, eventually, after infinitely many nerfs decreasing the secondary abilities of classes occurs, then all the game will be left with is 8 classes each with those same base functions.

That’s my argument.