Guild Wars 2

Don’t know, but I’d be very surprised if it did.

Perhaps the person meant that you can’t raise your crit damage over 80-100%, from a purely statistical standpoint. Like, the gear you get can’t raise your crit damage higher than that.

I need to learn how to solo cap towers as well as you guys duo cap them…

… People really need to learn how to sweep better. If they did, I can guarantee you that at least 95% of these kinds of caps wouldn’t happen.

Nilgoow.1037:

I charge a small fee (~30g/hour) for pvp lessons. PvE players have plenty of gold and are willing to spend it on stuff like this.

Not sure that this is entirely related to the topic… Looks interesting though.

I’m not interested in it, personally, but I must ask: do you do profession-specific lessons, perhaps as a guild? Or is it just a “one size fits all” kind of deal?

Also… Maybe I’m just really poor, but 30g seems like a lot to me. :/

EoNxBoNx.9213:

This thread got derailed so hard because of you two.

Last Refuge is not something I really depend on, if I am 25% or lower I use Shadow Refuge.

Lol, my apologies.

LR frustrates me, personally, because it often comes so easily without warning and then /bam four-second Reveal. One of the worst things to have happen to you.

Thank you for finally showing me the limit of your logic. You’ve decided to stop resorting to arguments that make even the slightest bit of sense, and instead just take everything for a given. You assume that D/D ele must be OP, even though they’re easily killed with correct play. You assume buffing other weapons makes the profession as a whole more powerful. You assume that I think that we should make weapons “OP”, even though I not once stated that. You assume that I think warr shouldn’t be buffed, which is completely contrary to what I believe in and makes no sense whatsoever; I have no idea where you got that one.

Then you finish with a senseless insult and stereotype. At least I don’t need to insult others to show that my profession is, if nothing else, decent.

TheMightyAltroll.3485:

Arganthium.5638:

TheMightyAltroll.3485:

Essentially if I could regenerate and passively cleanse while in Deathshroud (and my Deathshroud regenerated itself passively while not in use) I might be able to compete with such a capability, despite still being targetable.

Oh please. Deathshroud is a second lifebar for necros that automatically regenerates without having to go through an intense string of tricks left and right to maintain it. Our stealth lasts for a very short time. We don’t get an additional lifebar. We don’t have nearly as much health as you do. Our direct defense is awful. We have very limited ways to get into stealth, and many of them involve attacks that can either be countered or evaded. Thief movement in stealth is predictable. Don’t whine to me when you’re the most/second most survivable profession in the game.

That post tells me you know nothing of Necromancer.

Try keeping a constant 50% Lifeforce up in a tournament. I would trade Deathshroud in a heartbeat(seeker) for Stealth access. Deathshroud is awful, purely, simply. It acts as a second lifebar about as much as an Snickers bar counts as an 3 course meal.

Here’s how to use Deathshroud properly:

• 1: Spend 5 minutes building it up at the start because you start with 0%.
• 2: See a Thief
• 3: Use your Deathshroud to eat 1 Thief backstab
• 4: Fight Thief with no Deathshroud remaining for the rest of the fight unless you successfully manage to hit him with 5 of the slowest moving projectiles in the game (Just for a tiny 2 second Deathshroud) or waste a slot skill for a 7 second protection that grants lifeforce when you take damage. On a 90 second cooldown.
• 5: Win or lose against the Thief
• 6: Spend 5 more minutes building it up again

We can’t just walk around Deathshrouded soaking up damage, the only effective way to use it is to flash in and out of it for the Fear, or perhaps 1 hit. Or the AoE if you’re outnumbered. That’s it. Period.

I’m not going to argue with you about viability of Necro, but you obviously don’t know anything beyond Thief, so… yeah.

I have played every single class in the game over and over and over again. I’ve played against hundreds of different builds, with many different self-designed builds. I’ve found myself frustrated with the thief, going off to play another profession, and then coming back to the thief with newfound knowledge that makes me better able to counter other professions, and have fun with my thief. I’ve played necros that could easily build up their lifeforce to the max in, I’d say, at least a fifth of the time that you just stated that it took. You’re making a choice to play the build that you’re playing, and that doesn’t justify nerfing other professions. Play another build that fixes your complaints, or stop complaining.

TheMightyAltroll.3485:

So essentially you want the current meta to continue. Heartseeker x20. Generic backstab meta builds that barely succeed in killing any good player. You want Thieves to be only brought into high level tournies specifically for Shadow Refuge, as usual?

Alright, fine. Let’s keep D/D Elementalist too, since they Eles are quite fine with their single overly-viable build it seems.

HS 20x is easily counterable, and if you can’t defeat it yourself, that’s too bad for you. This method of play is literally one of the few things I see agreed upon by many people across all of the professions; we all agree that it’s worthless and easily defeated.

This isn’t a problem about the thief, this is about the thief community. The thief community metas a BS burst thief right now. I’m in the works of getting them to slowly but surely change their mind about that. Anyhow, it’s their choice to choose such a kittening bad thief build, I don’t know why you should have the right to change that.

Again, not a problem with the thief, that’s a problem with peoples’ subjective points of view. Like you, apparently.

I think that they should be kept. They are easily counterable, and I’m surprised you haven’t learned how to play against them yet. I played a S/D ele for a while, and although it isn’t quite the same as a D/D ele, I’ve learned the rhythm of the ele enough to be able to counter D/D eles. All they are are annoying pests that try to play aggressively against you, and the way to counter that is to play aggressively against them in return. Against the best D/D eles, I’d say a good battle against them might be a split 50/50, but eles have a high learning curve cap. I fully support keeping the D/D ele. That doesn’t mean we can’t buff their other weaponsets, like staves.

TheMightyAltroll.3485:

Essentially if I could regenerate and passively cleanse while in Deathshroud (and my Deathshroud regenerated itself passively while not in use) I might be able to compete with such a capability, despite still being targetable.

Oh please. Deathshroud is a second lifebar for necros that automatically regenerates without having to go through an intense string of tricks left and right to maintain it. Our stealth lasts for a very short time. We don’t get an additional lifebar. We don’t have nearly as much health as you do. Our direct defense is awful. We have very limited ways to get into stealth, and many of them involve attacks that can either be countered or evaded. Thief movement in stealth is predictable. Don’t whine to me when you’re the most/second most survivable profession in the game.

TheMightyAltroll.3485:

The only reason why any such Thief build is viable, is specifically because of their godlike regeneration/cleansing properties while stealthed (A poorly thought out mechanic). Although I am intrigued, I am also not surprised.

See, this is why all of your arguments are terrible. You’re telling us that you want more thief builds to be viable, stating that we need to have more of our abilities buffed. And yet, here you are telling me that we need to get our best form of defense nerfed so that bunker thieves are no longer a thing. And they aren’t the meta, I’ll tell you; we’re more of an unknown group in the thief community still, compared with, say, burst thieves.

You’re told me that you want to see HS, SR, and DB (whatever that stands for; not going to look it up right now) all nerfed, but the only forthcoming reason that you give for this is that you want to “boost our viability”. Nerfing these abilities is basically your way of saying “I don’t like the thief community, I don’t like the way they play, they should change to the way I want them to play”. I can tell you that we love SR, HS, and all that other nonsense, and that the thief community, as a whole, thinks that after a few bug fixes and a few buffs to some weapon sets- specifically, P/P- that we’ll be totally fine. You come here and say that we need to have our whole class rolled over into dust, and then we have to go restructure it all by ourselves. We’ve spent countless hours researching and testing, and now you’re basically telling us to go kitten ourselves.

You don’t want more viability, you want to be able to play against a profession the way that you think you should play against them. And that makes me very angry.

TheMightyAltroll.3485:

I’d fight you in a duel, but I feel the same. You’d probably just run off to reset every 5 seconds. Not that it matters.

Please. I run a bunker. I regenerate, I blind, I deal heavy damage, and best of all- I designed it all by myself.

TheMightyAltroll.3485:

You do realize. That I easily, and unrelentingly dominate Thieves?

Lol. I’d challenge you to a duel, but I get the feeling that it’d be a waste of my time.

TheMightyAltroll.3485:

I want Thieves to be buffed in ways that allow them to be more viable. I want them to be nerfed on the things that every thief on the planet relies on.

1. You haven’t played a thief that much, apparently. We burst, bunker, support, apply conditions, slay groups of enemies, heal like crazy- whatever.

2. “Oh, thieves should be buffed so that they can be more viable, so that’s why we should nerf all of their good abilities”. That’s honestly what you sound like.

Smaller zergs.
More opportunities for unbalanced fights, i.e. 10v20.
More roaming opportunity.
Less overall balance.

Lol. There were a lot of hits and misses here. I thought that you used your Shadow Returns very well, and your diversion was excellent. That being said, there were a lot of chances for you to stunbreak via Shadow Return that you missed out on. :P also, can’t believe the warrior decided to try and revive the mes during the battle, lol.

I have a few issues here:

-Your traits and utilities do not sync with one another well. Not at all.
-Condi thieves are very bad on damage; personally, I disagree with their use (at least, with the current state of the thief) because, sure, they can stack on a few conditions, but they’re quickly and easily cleansed. You can’t burst conditions onto enemies either, like you can with a Necro.
-Very low init regen, consider swapping Acro X for Quick Recovery.
-You rely a lot on Cals. In higher-level play, cals are an easily avoidable one-time trick that can be dealt with in a lot of different ways. Good for bunkering on a point? Perhaps, but ranged enemies will still kill you easily. And stepping on Cals isn’t even, necessarily, an auto-win for you, either. As a thief, I would likely find myself bursting you over cals, stealth, cleanse conditions, and then attack you from a range for the rest of the duration of your cals.

TheMightyAltroll.3485:

Arganthium.5638:

Except that SoU is a… Signet. What did you expect, that you’d get both the passive as well as a superior active? Also, SR doesn’t get an insta-res. In fact, you’re often lucky to pull off one res in SR. AoE and CC make SR ridiculously difficult to rez in. It’s crazy.

Also, SR is our only real direct defense ally support.

The cooldown still makes this a very difficult skill to time properly.

The heal really isn’t that much. I’m pretty sure eles heal for more just by switching to their Water attunement for three seconds.

Signet of Undeath is a crappy signet, with virtually no point in it having a passive. The LF gain is virtually nonexistent to justify it being a signet. I understand that SR is your only real defensive support option, that doesn’t mean it needs to be strong as sin. No, I’m not QQing because I can’t defeat it, I’m irritated because too much reliance is put on that. I can’t go 30 seconds in a game with a Thief without seeing either Heartseeker, Deathblossom, or Shadow Refuge. What I want to see is more diversity in Thief, so they don’t have to rely on such gimmicky and rather annoying things.

So, you’re suggesting we nerf thief to make its skills crappy as well? Why not give SoU a boost, then?

SpitFire.4690:

Primordus Virtus [RISE] The underdog guild of T6 to T2 chronicles of Kaineng has come to an end.

On Monday April 22 2013. I, Prince Jarvan Leader of Primordus Virtus, announced that [RISE] will stay on Kaineng. Unfortunately the promise didnt turn out as good as it was. The guild lost strong core members including core officers due to staying. I thought of it over-night, if the guild stays it will slowly die with frustration, also of my inactivity or transfer start new and redeem the guild of quality > quantity guild. So i have decided we will farm for gold and have our designated server will be confirm on Monday-tuesday of April 29-30th.

Im deeply grateful to the people of kaineng for none-stop support and full respect of RISE. I apologize for all the promises that I made for the server. RISE gave its full potential in WvW and for the people of kaineng. The memories will live on but it will RISE again.

-Commander Prince Jarvan
94,653 Kills
3,467 WvW hours
For the people that plays with me.

I don’t know your guild, but from how legendary Kaineng is for its rising (or should that be [RISE]ing?), I’m sure you were important to them. I would also agree with your decision. Kaineng’s glory days as an underdog are over; it’s time for another server to take its throne.

My advice would be not to specify where you’re moving, that’ll just become the next bandwagon server very quickly. Rather, tell your guildies, try to keep it behind curtains, and move when you decide to do so. If you’re really looking for another underdog, that would probably be your best option.

MrKnieves.4162:

Zergs are fine. If you dont like them more to a lower tier.

… Where you don’t find Zerg v Zerg, you have to kill zergs by yourself.

Iove.3902:

They run GC because they think you have to be full glass to deal damage.

^ this, essentially.

Glass builds are not optimal at all, in any gameplay style, except for going against newbies.

They are weak, and adding an extra, say, 5 damage to a hit that does 5K damage doesn’t mean as much as adding that same amount of damage to an attack that does 1K damage, but glass cannons act like that isn’t the case. GC builds are an arrogant way of saying that everybody is too weak to counter you, which is true in lower levels, but eventually people learn your tricks and will just stun break→evade→heal and then proceed to absolutely annihilate you, because you chose to add 5 more damage to 5K damage over adding 5 more armor to 2K armor.

Thieves are not supposed to be a “hit or miss” kind of thing- not if you really want to be good, anyways. It works in lower tiers, but these aren’t tricks that can work forever. If you make your build focus around the first five seconds of combat, eventually people will learn to counter you and run you over.

Possibly a bad reference, but I’m a chess player. Still not rated very high, probably around 1450 in the USCF. That’s partially because I haven’t played enough tournaments to reach what I would call my “real rating”; I’m guessing that, on a good day, I could easily play around 1600 or more. I don’t know, but that’s not the point. When I began my chess career, I played extremely aggressively, and, for a while, it worked. I would play very aggressive Gambit openings, openings that sacrifice a pawn for, typically, an advantage like a very strong attack, space, etc.

What turned me away from this aggression was the realization that you always have to give something up when you want to be extremely aggressive. In gambits, you typically sacrificed a pawn (or, in some very nasty and dangerous ones, you could sacrifice two pawns) for some advantage. What I found was that, as long as the enemy could hold onto that pawn and effectively neutralize your attack, you were done. Over. Finished. It’s really not any different here. Bursters and GCs like to be aggressive, and aggressive is good. But if you decide to be too aggressive, you have to give something up- some small advantage for your opponent. You can become mighty ferocious, and make a real display of fighting strength for your opponent, but opponents learn, after a while, how to counter these attacks, and once that happens, you just give your opponent a small advantage at the beginning of the game for nothing in return. A good opponent turns a small advantage into a large one.

My point is that GCs want to play like Gambiters. Good for them. However, realize that eventually opponents will learn how to turn a small advantage that you give up (you lack any defense, practically the equivalent of leaving your king wide open for enemy attack in chess) into a very large one, and you’ll lose more often than not. That’s why I don’t believe in GC builds, at all.

That’s nice, but there are a few flaws I’m noticing here. For one thing, if you rely on a single skill that is blockable, evadable, blind-able, etc. to do “35%” of your burst- and, oh, by the way, this skill has a 45-second cool down- then may the Flying Spaghetti Monster have mercy on those who dare use it as such.

Next, you seem to dismiss Steal as “useless” without Mug. That’s just not true. I use it very, very often for multiple reasons at once. For example, I will often Stealth→Steal as a gap closer, simply because steal is a very good one, and it doesn’t put Revealed on you. In the process of doing so, I pick up 3 initiative from Kleptomaniac. Then I can backstab or whatnot quickly and easily. The skills you get aren’t bad either, whether they be from warrior or from another profession. Either they give you decent control/debuff options (Necro, Guard, Ele), boons and/or conditions (Engi- HS or CB for Chaos Armor finisher, Mesmer, Ranger), direct damage (Warr), or the equivalent of a Blinding Powder (Thief). They’re all good, and I specifically steal from certain professions in order to achieve one of the skills. It’s a tactical boon.

You also compare Steal with other professions’ skills to point out its “worthlessness”. Realize that steal is just one of many unique things that our profession gets. We also get initiative, tons of stealth, dual skills, tons of teleports, and tons of mobility. As a whole, the thief profession is very well-off.

Thieves aren’t just viable in WvW, I think that a case can be made for them for being the best class for WvW. For one thing, we have all-around good healing that makes up for our lack of general toughness. We can escape easily. We can use the terrain to our advantage more than any other profession, because of our mobility and stealth. We can serve on the front lines, the midfield, or behind enemy ranks. We can scout, solo, join a small team, or zerg. We can pop in and out of different areas on a battlefield to help an ally finish off an enemy, then pop up in another area to finish off another enemy. We can get right in the heart of an enemy zerg and, if we know what we’re doing, become a real thorn in the side. Our flexibility is just… Endless.

I’m just going to say that most of your paragraph showed why burst builds are dumb and shouldn’t be used.

Mobility is great for control, damage, ally support, range, flexibility, survivability, and aggressive ability.

TheMightyAltroll.3485:

At the moment, Shadow Refuge is an overpowered skill. It’s more effective than my Signet of Undeath, as it has a shorter cooldown, stealths, and heals. I’m fine with buffing some other Thief skills, as long as that one is toned down. Alot.

It’s essentially an “All in one” skill. Which is dumb.

Except that SoU is a… Signet. What did you expect, that you’d get both the passive as well as a superior active? Also, SR doesn’t get an insta-res. In fact, you’re often lucky to pull off one res in SR. AoE and CC make SR ridiculously difficult to rez in. It’s crazy.

Also, SR is our only real direct defense ally support.

The cooldown still makes this a very difficult skill to time properly.

The heal really isn’t that much. I’m pretty sure eles heal for more just by switching to their Water attunement for three seconds.

Croark.3402:

I’ve got a Guardian to 80 and have trouble breaking 10g.

Join the club, m8.

Aw, kitten.

Sadly, these past few weeks I’ve had a completely loaded schedule, with school and all. Thursdays happen to be one of my busiest days, unfortunately.

If you ever hold more of these events, Bas, I’d be very interested in hearing about them. Sounds like a great idea, really, and I’d love to be able to show off my “bunker” thief.

Personally, if we get Mug nerfed for enhanced mobility, then I support this patch with every ounce of my un-soul.

SanityAssassin.8795:

I don’t know about you, but I just love the steal skill. I use it all the time whether it is spvp, WvW or PvE. I am wondering what are your most satisfying stealing moments?

I think mine has got to be when I steal the whirling axe from a warrior and then return the 100blades favor to them and they do not realize that they can dodge it. I just love the irony of it.

I also use a trickery build in PvE and it is quite nice to see you buff your whole party with all those buffs.

Oh my bejeezus, I love all of them. Whirling axes does a ton of damage in a short period of death. Thief steal is a free blinding powder, and thus a free shadow step too. Stun on guard is wonderful. Slowing down eles like crazy is fun, and even more fun as you watch them try to “run” away. Engi steal is epic, with a ton of conditions and chaos armors everywhere. Ranger steal makes an absolutely amazing healing field, that can be used for health regeneration via HS and CB, or just the base regeneration you already get. Necro is a bit weak, but when you land it, it does the same as a warrior utility that usually has a one and a half minute cooldown (or whatever it is). Mes steals mean a lot of boons.

They’re just… All so good.

rarebo.1073:

I’ve played all thief builds and have around 800 games played. Last week i would have said thief was still good. However after playing a mesmer this past week , i did not realise how easy there damage is to avoid.

Caltrops thief is hilarous, to watch him lay down his red rings of death, while i stand away from him rofling. The only people i see them kill are lower skill players who will happily stand in there damage.

Anyway dont have time to go into detail.

IMO bunkers should be looked at and tuned down a fair bit. Then lets look at the thief.

Lol.

I can promise you that you haven’t “played every thief build”.

I run a bunker thief myself. They’re crazy. And they’re wonderful. I cannot think of a single build in any class that better mixes control, damage, survivability, tactics, and strategy… They’re brilliant, once you’ve learnt how to play them.

EDIT: Also… Ew, who plays a Cal thief? Sad, really, to base most of your damage on one utility. Easy to avoid the Cals, and then it’s just gg.

Kline.9561:

JonathanSharp.7094:

Warriors only. Map-wide perma-Cripple.

Go.

WIN^

free for all deathmatch with backstab only thief’s

who ganks who first

Lol.

I say FFA deathmatch with nothing but 0/10/30/30/0 bunker guards. Also, only scepters are allowed. in other words, FFA tennis, Guard style.

I thought this was going to be a post about how thieves should never do dungeons or something. /shivers

Anyhow, agreed. Zerker D/D burst builds are near worthless in these environments.

Grimwolf.7163:

I’m not overreacting, I was being honest.
That was a fair sized post, and I don’t think one thing in it was accurate.
That was surprise, if anything.

That entire post is made of the most intense concentration of misinformation I have ever seen.
Infusion of Shadow applies every time you apply Stealth. Not every time you enter Stealth.
This means that standing in Shadow Refuge grants 10 Initiative, and you gain 2 Initiative every last time that you Heartseeker through a Blackpowder even without leaving Stealth.
I don’t even know what logic you used to claim Patience gives more Initiative on Cloak and Dagger than Infusion of Shadow, so I can’t really comment on that beyond just saying it does not.

If you thought that I was intentionally lying, I might understand. But clearly that wasn’t the case. There was something that I didn’t realize about IoS, and you decided to blow up because of it. That’s how I interpreted it, anyways.

Let’s keep the conversation civil, ok?

styx.7294:

Arganthium.5638:

Merlin.4058:

Ungood.3054:

I am about to have a permanent shelf to hold the soap if FC continues to keep kicking ET’s butt like this.

Not sure what that means, but yeah we tend to get beat up. I think it’s due to numbers. Every time we get outnumbered. FC tends to be 4-5 to one. And GoM is Legion.

^ No kidding. 0.o

I can’t remember a single battle in the past week where we had equal or more forces than our opponents have had. It’s like everybody suddenly just disappeared from our WvW. Typically, I’ll find small roaming groups around the battlegrounds, which is nice, but they aren’t scouting or doing anything particularly useful except increasing the size of FC’s and GoM’s wallets. In commander-led groups, I typically find about 15 or so. On the other hand, GoM and FC… Wish I could post some pictures from my scouting right now. “Legion” and “4-5 to one” are both understatements.

Eredon Terrace and Ferguson’s Crossing had a pretty wild showing for all of Friday evening. Even when we had a queue on our borderland we couldn’t hold anything on the map.

This is one of the closest 3 matches. Don’t sell anyone short in this match up.

Perhaps my memory is failing me. :P

Fair enough. This week, though, from all I’ve been around to see, we’ve had some really pathetic forces and command (if any) at our disposal.

Grimwolf.7163:

Arganthium.5638:

Patience is a bit weak, but it does have some pluses. Assuming we have the 15 SA minor…

For example, a full SR stealth, I believe, gives more initiative with Patience than having Infusion of Shadow does. On the other hand, both HiS and BP, if you stay in them for, say, all four seconds, will give you 1 more initiative with Infusion. However… Patience also gives you extra initiative with the Powder+HS combo, as well as with CnD. IoS doesn’t do that. So… It depends on how much you’re going to utilize your weapon set-granted stealths, I think.

That entire post is made of the most intense concentration of misinformation I have ever seen.
Infusion of Shadow applies every time you apply Stealth. Not every time you enter Stealth.
This means that standing in Shadow Refuge grants 10 Initiative, and you gain 2 Initiative every last time that you Heartseeker through a Blackpowder even without leaving Stealth.
I don’t even know what logic you used to claim Patience gives more Initiative on Cloak and Dagger than Infusion of Shadow, so I can’t really comment on that beyond just saying it does not.

Hey, calm down.

Perhaps you’re right; however, in my experience, I have never seen any initiative regeneration come from, say, a CnD or a BP+HS combo. The skill itself reads

Gain 2 initiative when using a skill that stealths you.

Not

Gain 2 initiative when you apply stealth.

The way I’ve always read the description was that any skill that caused stealth gave two initiative, not the 10 initiative regeneration from SR or whatnot. Now, it’s been a while since I tried IoS with CnD or BP+HS, so maybe I just need to try it out again. I’m sorry if I really kitten you off so much that that was your response.

MunkeeBreath.9165:

But i still need a new build. any ideas?

Don’t run D/D. /thread

Merlin.4058:

Ungood.3054:

I am about to have a permanent shelf to hold the soap if FC continues to keep kicking ET’s butt like this.

Not sure what that means, but yeah we tend to get beat up. I think it’s due to numbers. Every time we get outnumbered. FC tends to be 4-5 to one. And GoM is Legion.

^ No kidding. 0.o

I can’t remember a single battle in the past week where we had equal or more forces than our opponents have had. It’s like everybody suddenly just disappeared from our WvW. Typically, I’ll find small roaming groups around the battlegrounds, which is nice, but they aren’t scouting or doing anything particularly useful except increasing the size of FC’s and GoM’s wallets. In commander-led groups, I typically find about 15 or so. On the other hand, GoM and FC… Wish I could post some pictures from my scouting right now. “Legion” and “4-5 to one” are both understatements.

Patience is a bit weak, but it does have some pluses. Assuming we have the 15 SA minor…

For example, a full SR stealth, I believe, gives more initiative with Patience than having Infusion of Shadow does. On the other hand, both HiS and BP, if you stay in them for, say, all four seconds, will give you 1 more initiative with Infusion. However… Patience also gives you extra initiative with the Powder+HS combo, as well as with CnD. IoS doesn’t do that. So… It depends on how much you’re going to utilize your weapon set-granted stealths, I think.

Authority.6145:

Arganthium.5638:

Authority.6145:

Can they please nerf thieves? This is getting out of hand.

Wait wot.

Sarcasm wot.

/sigh of relief

Authority.6145:

Can they please nerf thieves? This is getting out of hand.

Wait wot.

Pretty much. +1

I think that condition builds and burster builds (the latter being most common in the thief meta right now) are going to die out, and eventually be replaced by bunker and balanced builds. The reason is simply that these two types of builds simply do great damage still, but have some absolutely amazing survivability. The burster thieves have had their time to shine, but I’m beginning to see many more survivable builds that appear to be working great, so I can’t say that I see any other way that the future meta will progress, given this.

Lolll…

About time the target switched from us thieves to someone else.
(I kid, I kid; I don’t think the target on thieves as being “OP” was ever removed…)

Anyways, for eles… I don’t think they’re OP at all. I find them annoying, and that’s about it. A solo staff ele, sadly, tends to be a free kill. D/D is an ele’s way of saying “I’m gonna get up in your face and pressure you until you snap”, but I’ve found that the best way to counter that is to simply do the same thing to the ele. It’s a matter of knowing when to run away, and when not to. When it comes to me and eles, it’s typically a giant headbutting battle that only ends when one person makes a slight mistake.

Anyways, I don’t think they’re OP. Just annoying. Like “LOL I have 2K health left? Here, let me regenerate it all back in the next 5 seconds”.

I’m split on this one… However, the answer I’m leaning towards is a bit of both a yes and a no. Yes, you need to be a little tanky, mostly so that your allies don’t scatter when you die. So that means no GC thieves. That being said, as long as you have, at the very least, average survivability, you should be fine. Just don’t die.

Finally got around to completing some much-needed edits.

John Smith.4610:

Preferably you use a bundle of goods all tied together, that haven’t been modified by design and found equilibrium pricing quickly.

Is there any link/data/whatnot that we can have access to that gives us the rate at which price level has changed over time? (relative to some base point in time, maybe 1-2 months after the game was released)

Thank you, ray, for helping spread awareness of what a bad idea this is!

Darek.1836:

Arganthium.5638:

timidobserver.7925:

Arganthium.5638:

timidobserver.7925:

Pooka.3420:

Culling Fixed = Less Thieves. Respect to the ones who still make it work.

This won’t really get any sympathy. I could live with no thieves at all until the profession is balanced. Instakilling and perma stealth is something I could live without entirely.

If only thieves had either of those (or didn’t suffer insane disadvantages for taking one or the other).

Yes, there should be insane disadvantages for being able to insta kill people or in combat stealth over and over with little to no real cooldown. The profession is completely broken right now, so yeh I am fine with no one playing them.

1. We can’t “instakill” anybody. As a thief that primarily plays “bunker” or “balanced” thieves, I’ve run up against glass cannon noobs plenty of times before. Simply stun break, stealth, heal, and mince them up if you’re like me, because GC thieves have such little defense. Of course, not everybody can stealth, but they also tend to have more healing and defense than thieves do anyways, so as long as they can stunbreak and roll away quickly from an initial attack by a GC/“instakill” thief, then you’re golden. You should have no issues slicing the thief to pieces.

2. Revealed. We can’t attack from stealth without getting it, and it lasts long enough to get in a lot of attacks on a thief; often times, more than half of their health or more can be depleted while a thief is revealed. We don’t have a lot of ways to access stealth; our only utilities for getting it are HiS, BP, and SR. All have long cooldowns on them, or long enough that they can’t really be abused. BP, also, really only comes with a blind and a stealth, and that’s it, so even that isn’t that great. As for attacks, it’s very difficult to maintain stealth simply via our attacks and combos. CnD is easily avoidable, has only a very short stealth, does little damage, and very little else outside of that. It also uses up 50% of our base initiative (40% if you have Trickery 15). The combo with D/P is also very costly, and somewhat inefficient.

The point is that the first of these two “problems” comes with virtually no defense, and the second with virtually no offense.

I play a near bunker guard
That said:
HS>c&d>bs>flame blast > stomp

literally instantly dead if I didn’t have aegis up, has happened multiple times now

Frankly, I don’t believe you. Not without evidence, anyways.

The issue, however, with this kind of thing tends to be avoiding the CnD, or not responding correctly to the stealth. The HS, with such high health and toughness, does hardly any damage to you. It’s really just a gap closer. When a thief is nearby (and you suspect GC or BS build), however, you have to take precautions to avoid the CnD. This can come in a variety of ways. For example, as a guard, you can lay down a symbol or use CC to punish the thief for coming so close to you. If/when they do land the CnD, remember that CnD only has a very short stealth on it; thieves are going to be looking to get the BS asap. Simply AoE, pull- whatever. The GS is great for this; #2 and #5 are particularly great moves for them. You also want to spam 1 as much as possible while the thief is stealthed, and constantly be changing directions. A good combo would be to lay down SoR on GS and start spamming 1 within that circle, punishing thieves for coming close to you, and, if they do land the hit, at least you’ll do some counter damage.

Also, what classifies a build as being “near bunker”? For example, I’m a thief that runs- almost exclusively- “bunker” builds, but in the thief world, that doesn’t necessarily mean x/x/30/30/x. It just means “substantially more survivability” than other builds. Even then, though, my thief, due to his aggressive, controlling “chop ’em up” nature still has somewhat average survivability, when comparing to other classes. Anyhow, the point is- what makes a “near bunker guard”?

Sunflowers.1729:

Mindtrick.5190:

When you see a thief use black powder stand in the circle that is dropped. Have fun killing what you thought was op. Shame on you if you don’t know what black powder is or how it works. If you don’t know how a thief works how do you expect to defeat one! Most of you want easy kills just by the tone of your posts.

Summary : stand in circle stop thief from stacking stealth. Watch thief get mad his cheesy d/p failed. (I use death blossom, it stacks bleed and let’s me evade)

Well, it’s not as simple as that:

If the thief is just trying to stack stealth for whatever reason without escaping, it will make them come out – this is true.

If the thief is trying to run away by stacking stealth and they see you standing inside the circle, they aren’t going to use heartseeker any more – they will just pick a random direction and run that way. You’re practically rooting yourself by standing there while I make my speedy getaway.

If the thief is trying to kill you doing so is a really bad idea. You blind yourself and make it so easy for me to backstab you.

^ It’s not even necessarily that you’ll be backstabbed that is the issue. Simply the fact that you’re allowing an opponent to do whatever they want with you for four seconds while you can’t do anything back is an issue. I can guarantee you that if a warrior was allowed to simply stand next to you and attack you/whatever for four seconds straight, while you did nothing (by choice), that you wouldn’t be calling warrs “OP”.

Hod.6751:

So good news I guess, based on the fact that T8 scoring still doesn’t seem right, we’re still losing more points solidifying our place within T8……

Honestly, though I know that we’re not winning by the huge margins that SF was, we’re solidly winning again this week, and losing more points, again. So short of SF completely kicking the poo out of HoD before they go up a bracket, we’re not going anywhere

/hearty laugh

Silly GoM! Didn’t you know- once you go into T8, you never go back.

Waiting for somebody to talk about how you “can’t kill thieves”, so they’re 0 WvW exp too.

/grabs popcorn

Lol, I read this to be general HP at first, too.

“Necros only have 30K health?! What?! 90K FTW”

Got a request for a build today, decided it would be good for all the newbies for me to bump this up again.