Guild Wars 2

Ohoni,
Only thing mesmers did to even get close to quitting in a pve standpoint was rerolling to another high performance class. PvP, like it or not, has a larger impact on the players who heavily invest into it. PvE doesn’t REQUIRE you to be optimal to perform well, it’s part of the reason many players like it is because you can be at least semi effective on any build for any class. You may not be optimal but you don’t have to be in order to complete PvE content. PvP requires you to be optimal as you are facing other players all running the most optimal thing available for their class. If your class not being optimal shuts you out of the content and it’s the only class you want to play then you quit. Sad truth is that more players have quit the game due to PvP imbalance than PvE.

There is a huge potential for the game to be an esport but it is losing it slowly losing it due to lack of PvP balance. If Anet can achieve good balance in pvp then the playerbase as a whole will be happier than if they just balance to PvE.

It has nothing to do with self importance, the fact of the matter is that the developers are marketing the game as a pvp focused game on social media and that is what many players come to the game expecting to focus their experience on. If every pvp player leaves the game and pvp dies their marketing goes down the drain and they will financially suffer as it will grow extremely difficult to acquire new players for the game and they will have no additional income sources from outside deals with ESL and other high end pvp streaming companies.

Many times in the past GW2 has shown potential for esports and PvP focused marketing (I.E. the first WTS). Again, it’s the lack of pvp balance that has been messing up their possibility for a highly successful PvP game leaving them to only expand on PvE until they can get their balance team on track with what needs to be done for PvP. Atm, your statement is somewhat correct due to the state of PvP balance. The second that improves, your statement flips and you will find that the game is PvP centered with a highly expanded PvE system to complement the game’s design and combat system (which btw, draws more people to PvP).

Now that your heavy PvE bias has been addressed, let’s jump back on topic with our discussion over the current state of Executioner, not how this game should be marketed.

See Deceiver, I play S/D SB and I find executioner helpful there. Especially because S/D is all about sustaining damage after your initial burst until you have enough cd’s to go in again for another burst. The extra damage allows me to keep bunkers low in 1v1 if necessary and provides a much larger amount of burst when I’m ganking lower hp players. S/D has the mobility to stick on a target so my pressure never really drops enough to allow them to get back above 50% once I’ve gotten them there. With the amount of healing in this game you can never assume someone will just die so there needs to be some sort of insurance that they will die and executioner is part of that imo.

Midi, you probably don’t need bounding dodger but if you want more dps sure you can go with it. The big thing is to make sure you pump out as much damage as you can during the lockdown and then refuse to drop the pressure after you have them below 50% to prevent them from healing. Yes it is hard when they have as many heals and invulns as they do but with help from an ally you can easily take them out if the 2 of the people on your team are dedicated to dropping damage onto the tempest.

Yeah if it wasn’t for mug in DA I’d be going crit strikes all the time. I just can’t play without the damage and healing anymore cause I’m so used to it. If the healing and damage was ever made baseline I’d drop DA instantly and go into crit strikes.

I haven’t experimented much with skills as I run S/D with shadowstep, roll for initiative, and prec signet. I find my Damage is high enough in ganks but I don’t know what you run so I have no idea how your dps compares to mine.

Our resources regenerate quickly enough to maintain our mobility advantage. Again it’s not as big a margin as it was pre HoT but it’s still there. We are the fastest and overall most mobile class in the game. Unfortunately it’s not enough anymore. We do need buffs and others need mobility nerfs cause the margin of our mobility advantage needs to be a ton bigger if that’s how they are going to justify us being “viable”.

WvW is the imbalance in pvp on steroids. And it will continue to be that way until they split balance and do some serious damage reductions for that kind of nonsense.

Sorry but we most definitely still the most mobile class in game. Dash with sb5 allows us to out run any class. Yes, even rev. Is it a small margin that we outmaneuver? Yes, it is quite a small margin. Regardless, it is still there if we build into it. The only reason we seem like we aren’t the most mobile is because we can’t always build into it and have the most optimal build for what we want to accomplish.

Is it actually dodgeable? I didn’t look into it a ton yet as I don’t run SR anymore cause S/D works fine without it but I didn’t think the gyro reveal could be dodged. If it can, that’s really nice to know.

Executioner, from my experience, is not a noob trait at all and is more important in ganking than you would think. Take the classic thief gank for example, generally will will pop a basilisk venom in order to get a stun when you open. This stun when timed correctly will stop an enemy from healing or activating defensive cooldowns. The time in which the enemy is locked down is enough time for you to bring their hp low and then executioner helps you to put in that final damage.

Why is this little push in damage relevant in such a tanky meta? Because if you can take the enemy down before they can pop their heal back to full hp button then you have successfully stopped what could have been a 10+ min fight in a matter of seconds.

It’s easily understandable that you may find the trait redundant as you would think those below 50% hp would die anyway but lets be real how many profs nowadays have a ton of heals? That’s right all of them. The reason executioner is the perfect choice is because it either puts enough extra pressure to make them panic and screw up a heal rotation or it’ll finish them off and allow you to move on to sway another fight.

Is it a noob trait? Short answer is no. Why? Because while with this tanky of a meta it’s not often people fall below 50% hp it is highly effective when a thief player plays their gank and burst around that trait. Even tampests will generally fall below 50% hp if a thief times a burst so that the tempest eats the whole thing. Once that is done if you are good enough to save the right cd’s you can keep them below 50% and pound them with the cd’s you have saved and do as I said above many times.

That’s just how I feel about it in terms of where it stands, it has a job and it does it extremely well and is one of the most skill requiring traits in the meta due to how much it revolves around the thief using the right skills to get the enemy to a point where the bonus kicks in and keeping them there using the right methods after the bonus damage is active.

Alternatives:
Improvisation- The extra use of steal skills can be very strong and in some cases may be the sole reason why you can win a fight or get a successful gank off. (I.E. double stun on a guard preventing a heal, extended slow on rev preventing bursts or heals (note: slow stops rev sword 3 from hitting so that’s where that came from) and Mesmer boons allowing you to stay in the fight longer or recover from a fight better). The random skill recharge can be highly influential as you may gain an extra stunbreak (or 2 if you run shadowstep and get a lucky recharge) or a double heal, etc. It’s more of a utility and defensive buff as opposed to executioner as a damage buff. Just kinda depends on what you feel you need to focus more on in your gameplay (I run executioner cause I like having higher spike damage in fights, but if I notice I need to buff my defensive abilities before a match I’ll swap to improv)

CS- It provides a ton of extra critical damage which can also be highly influential in taking down foes. However, I find sacrificing mug’s damage and sustain from healing is not worth it when I can buff my damage high enough using deadly arts as critical strikes does not provide a good enough sustain option imo to take it over DA. Will it work? Yes it most definitely will. Imo it is not OPTIMAL. Viable, but not optimal.

Hope I was able to contribute positively to the discussion. If you have any more questions about why I feel the way I do I’d love to answer them.

Not the BEST, definitely top tier but not the best under any circumstances. D/D ele was the dueling king at that time and most builds with heavy condi would eventually take it out. Considering most builds are condi based I don’t see why you thought S/D thief was the best. It was the best THIEF build for skirmishing in pvp as it didn’t use stealth but other classes designed for 1v1 still did it better, but thief at least could do well when played by a skilled player.

@herzeleid yes it could… but then you have even more powercreep and higher potential for thief nerfs cause of complaints that thief has too many stunbreaks etc. Happened to sword 2, don’t want it happening to steal as well. What really needs to happen is the amount of cc flying around needs to be reduced heavily as perma cc is bad for the game.

The way I see it if we get preparedness baseline and then 6 ini when swapping to a weapon different from the set you are currently wielding then we wouldn’t really have many initiative problems and then we wouldn’t be required to take trickery for the initiative.

Cloaked in shadow should only be a baseline on CnD, if it goes past that then other sets will still outperform d/d and really the extra blind spam is unnecessary for the game. Fleet shadow is just out of place in that line, combining it into another ability may work but there’s no reason to make it baseline as then d/p would be way too powerful in pvp due to having bigger mobility than s/d. (assuming I am correct in my memory that fleet shadow is +50% movement speed in stealth)

With my previous swap idea, upper hand is not necessary and would actually be plain broken if combined with initiative on swap.

BT baseline would be too much. Yes in this boon heavy meta it feels necessary but it’s not needed for basic functionality of steal. The only thing I could comfortably back would be heal from mug and/or sleight of hand as a baseline (and even that is pushing it). Boon rip on steal as baseline would just kill trickery line as there would be no more reason to invest into it. Remember, the goal is to balance the professions, not cause more power creep as that will just kill the game over time. Trickster is a good competitor with BT and it should remain that way. If more boon hate is to be implemented they need to put 2 boons stolen for full stacks and duration on larcenous strike.

Depending on how much you are willing to change your setup you could run carrion condi. Use intel sigs to still gain benefits from incendiary powder because im pretty sure the cds line up. Then the rest is kinda up to your discretion as to what you want to equip and play with.

Edit: I would put in an example but it looks like gw2skills is down and I cant find another updated site atm.

Edit: It’s back up so I put this together. Not sure how it would actually do in a match but theoretically it’s looking pretty awesome and you don’t need scrapper for it
Build:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vdAQJAqalUUhatYJXwdLQ7FLsFF4HWiBQYKeRvmYHNFPBA-TJBHwACOBAn3fAwDAIZZAA

Scavenging capitalizes on carrions added hp and provides some direct damage to take ds eles down below 90% hp. Plus the leech sustain is a nice added benefit to any condi build running high hp. Let me know if this is as helpful or if you have questions.

I haven’t gotten as much flame as most others seem to get but I do get quite a few people who seem to believe they can play thief better than me (until I carry them that is). Have had a bit of flame but nothing too serious. I’d say stick with your prof and show those kittens what a good thief can do!

Almost up to ruby with pure solo q… I thought I was cool

But Grats on legend man! You earned it if you were able to solo your way there.

It’s okay Zero, I got what you meant

The first thing I’ve noticed behind the power creep in especs is the fact that rather than modifying and adding new types of play to the class mechanic, all they did was straight up buff them with no regard to the vanilla classes. Take guard to dh convertion for example. You listed all the changed virtues but when you think about it, there is no new role opened up by these virtues and if you compare them to the guardian, they are more useful under any situation making the dh a guard on steroids, not a new type of subprof. Same with Ranger to Druid, Druid is ranger with perma cc, ridiculously strong pets (full bunker druid can still kill things in good time due to the pets having big af damage for no skill or setup on the ranger’s part) and a super saiyan heal form. Right now, there’s no reason to not go into especs as just picking the line will improve your build under any circumstance.

Next change that needs to happen is REMOVAL of ALL passive invulns and counter cc’s. There is nothing interesting to watch or play with about a no skill, 0 counterplay cc that interrupt’s everything you’re doing and a majority of the time ends up screwing you rather than just equilizing the playing field. And why should people get free passes on death when you set up a really strong combo to down them? If you have to take the time to set up bursts and such through their heals and evades why should they get a free invuln? They didn’t do anything but get their kittens kicked.

Third is split pvp and pve balance. There are too many differences between the game modes for that stuff to be the same. You either screw the pver’s because the damage is so low they can’t kill things in good time or you destroy pvp because everyone has 1 shot builds. Splitting the balance will allow for better number changes and more efficient changes rather than a bunch of band aid fixes to try to keep the game intact.

4) Balance ideals need to change. What I mean is sacrifice needs to be part of creating builds. Thief is a very good example of this, they can never have the perfect build as they always have to sacrifice something in order to get something else for the build. As it is right now, so much power creep has happened because the devs focused so much on synergy that now everyone (except warrior and thief) has some sort of god mode be all end all build. Yes synergy is good but atm there is too much of it and it’s ruining the game.

5) Base everything needs to be reduced across the board (except warrior and thief, they are suffering enough) and scaling needs to be increased. People should have to invest in healing power if they want huge heals, should have to spec into crit and power heavily for insane bursts, etc. Right now people can run cele with 0 might and still get 4k crits on some skills because the base damage is so high and then zerkers are only getting 5-6k on the same stuff because it doesn’t scale well so why run anything but bunker in this meta if you still deal damage anyway?

6) Changes to vanilla classes need to be addressed. Thief needs a few buffs to some sets, warrior needs some love, base Mesmer could use a look, guardian needs some changes. Balancing the base classes will make balancing especs easier as it will be much easier to determine if an issue on the class is within the elite spec or the core specs.

7) Remove the mandatory nature of many traitlines by adding baselines where they are needed and spreading the remaining effects throughout the class. Take trickery on the thief for example, things like preparedness and slight of hand are needed for the class to have a basic function, blind for the d/d set, etc. Certain baselines being added could reduce dependencies on trailines and possibly lead to more diversity after compensating balance occurs.

8) Remove the idea of evade/invuln and damage simultaneously. It’s a bad mechanic to have people be practically invulnerable but still doing high damage. Things like flanking strike are ok because the damae is after the evade and is therefore counterable via cc, things like unrelenting assault are too strong considering there’s 0 risk attached to the skill and 0 ways to stop the damage without blowing through all your dodges and blocks.

9) Reaper perma chill either needs to go or have its damage reduced significantly. 600+ damage per sec permanently is not fun especially when it also lowers cd’s on skills that may be able to remove it. If lowering the damage isn’t gonna happen then the perma stack needs to leave, it should be in short durations but then keep it’s heavy damage so it acts like terrormancer and does burst condi when the wielder chooses to unleash it.

10) Hard counters need to be looked at. It’s not healthy for a game when someone can’t win a matchup no matter how good they are just because someone had a certain build. Soft counters are good because it allows counterpicking and adaptive gameplay as people have to constantly be thinking how to shift the advantage to their team. Hard counters are silly. Take DH vs. Thief, thief in order to do damage needs to be up close and do the damage quick. Guard can just block and do even bigger damage to said thief and then outheal any damage the thief did while doing more damage. Not saying guards should have blocks but maybe the whole block and do damage at the same time thing needs to be looked at too. At least amking attempts to reduce hard counters will take great strides towards achieving game balance.

These are just general suggestions. I have specifics but that’s not for this thread.

Edit: Perma cc= bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad bad. Needs to go.

So if people pvp competitively you’re saying they should have absolutely no chance to get exclusive items under a time gate because they have to worry about also progressing through leagues? Why should we have to either 24/7 grind activities that get boring in 30 minutes for gifts or break out the credit card in order to even have a chance to get something? Farming mindlessly and buying your way through a game is not dedication, that’s just a front put out by gaming companies and ill informed players to justify absurd requirements that effectively shut out a large portion of the playerbase due to the fact that they play a certain type of game mode or don’t have the time to grind that much. Dedication would be locking said things behind challenging content and forcing players to tough it through in order to get the reward in the end (i.e raid type content). Farming and hard work are 2 completely different terms, too many people like yourself use them interchangeably which creates these types of misunderstandings.

Summary, this is silly and the requirement needs to be easier to fill (whether that be increasing the drop rate of drinks and the ways you can acquire mass amounts of presents so it isn’t a 24/7 grind or making the amount of drinks smaller) and people need to realize farming is not hard work.

Never used action camera and it wasn’t activated for those who were wondering. Thanks for the responses, I’ve narrowed it down to terrain bugs which means it’s the same fixes as ports need. Great news, anet can kill 2 birds with one stone if they fix it. Thanks all for the enlightenment.

Lately I"ve been experiencing a strange occurrence where on certain terrain the auto attack on the shortbow wont hit anything. They will be standing still and there isn’t any sort of obstructed or out of range message so I was wondering if anyone else has had this experience recently. Thanks in advance for your replies, if this turns ot to be a bug then I’ll repost on bug forums.

I do have to side with basz this time, it is tanky sure but scrapper with tk over bombs will offer a ton more defense, cc, and burst damage. Not that your build doesn’t work but it could be more effective with scrapper and inventions over explosives and firearms. And it’d still play very similar to your build so you wouldn’t have to do insane adjustments to be effective.

10% reminder for wintersday pls

The “logic” my friend, is the result of the balancing goals found o the staff at anet. Nothing against them with that statement, just the balance ideals.

What I mean:
If you look at the way the team has been balancing, their big focus is on making parts of the class synergize well with one another (save karl but I’ll explain that after this). This is good… up to a point. Eventually things synergize TOO well and then you see things like the builds we have now. Unkillable builds with insane damage, not necessarily complete ignorance on the side of the balance team, just a result of over synergizing due to abandoning the idea of sacrifice within builds.

Now to address what I said about Karl,
His balancing style is frowned on by a great deal of the playerbase when it is compared to the other team members because he balances towards everything being good but not always accessible. He pushes (not always successfully but it’s the thought that counts) towards a system where people can never have their ideal build. They always have to make sacrifices (I.E. damage increases turned down for the option of more condi removal or vice versa) in their build which stops the insane power creep we have witnessed from occurring.

In short, the ideals they have used to balance have caused massive power creep and unless they change their balance goals then we will be stuck with this for awhile.

I don’t see why not. You on NA? Cause I’ll hit you up in game for a few fights sometime if you are, could be fun.

For agility signet, I think it’s listen somewhere in the tooltip that it only refills 100 endurance but I may be wrong on that.

Santa then pulls off his fake beard and hat to reveal Karl’s face…

I believe it never needed less boon steal, should’ve always been 2 and should’ve always been able to precast.

It’d also be nice if our return was instant again (not stunbreak, just instant) and removed 2 condis again so we would have a chance against the condi spam builds without requiring them to attack us or without being reuired to have daredevil for consistent clears. Or the best yet, if using our steal to burst an enemy didn’t get us cc’ed by a passive trait that has 0 counterplay and actually has better cc than our steal.

But all that requires anet to put effort into this class which atm I truly do not believe they are thinking of doing seeing as how they have treated us since release.

Alright basz, lets say we settle this with a friendly duel. You beat me I’ll own up to my wrongness and if I beat you then I’ll sit here with a smile on my face knowing I was right all along. Plus let’s be real engi duels are life. At least it’s somewhat interesting to watch unlike the trap and well spam we see so much of nowadays.

Rifle does more damage and the cc imo is better in every way on the rifle. In a mode where point capture is key and you have every build being played as a bunker build it’s not likely that you will kill anyone quickly, being able to knock them off point and gain decaps and full caps throughout the course of a fight is unparalleled in it’s value. Not saying hammer isn’t wonderful because it is definitely a solid weapon and is an exceptionally close second to rife but I don’t think it is good enough to replace rifle completely. Unless you are basing the statement on teamfights where hammers aoe access would prove much more helpful, then I disagree with you. The only thing hammer can offer that my build doesn’t is a small projectile reflection but seeing as how you don’t need it, it’s irrelevant.

Another part of it is situational usage (i.e what matchups each weapons fare better in which matchup) Rifle is better against necro, rev, etc. where the hard cc exploits their lack of stability giving you a capping edge and more combo opportunity (overcharged has a smaller cd than thunderclap). Builds that do not have many unblockable skills or require you to stand and trade damage are probably best fought with hammer (i.e warrior and guardian). More often than not you will see more uses for rifle in pvp with your matchups as most builds you encounter can easily be countered by the rifle’s constant knockbacks and high aoe burst damage.

So please insult me all you want, doesn’t make me any less right.

Daily reminder to fix withdraw

Or instead of hp with swiftness make it hp regen from vigor. We have lots of that in acro and that could synergize fairly well for thief. I have a thread on proposed thief changes, maybe you all should check it out and put some support for it if you agree so it can get more attention.

Nearlight, it was bad pre HoT. But now scrapper has given it the might stacking it needs to do significant damage as well as a ton of extra sustain to carry its hp throughout teamfights and 1v1s in practically any situation.

Rifle is definitely more methodical than hammer, you’re right in that respect but rifle also has a better ability to combo people’s hp down and cap over a sustained fight. It does require a great deal of button pushing for maximum results but it pays off.

Titan, here’s the build, similar to meta setup but has some traits swapped around for what serves the build better. Also made to have rifle swappable with hammer depending on your matchup, just gotta know which wep is better for which scenario. http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vdAQFAUlUUh2tYJXw6KQ7FLTGF9cn37d42lMhl4zcABAA-TJBHwAAuAAGeAAl2fAZZAA
And ignore the narrow minded meta followers who say hammer is the only viable thing, they are wrong and their narrow mindedness will screw them over eventually. If you’d like me to explain choices let me know and I’ll give you a full run down.

Basz, I’d like to see your silly meta hammer take me down. Never lost to a hammer engi while playing my build, in fact I love fighting hammer engis because they think the same way as you and then they get destroyed and wonder why they didn’t win only to realize that hammer is NOT the only viable pvp weapon for engineer.

Hammer vs rifle in usefulness depends on matchup. Vs rev and necro rifle is better without a doubt. Sometimes hammer is more helpful but it’s really not all it’s hyped up to be. Rifle builds can deal with hammer builds fairly easily as well in my experience. Rifle doesn’t need nades, egun and toolkit compliment it perfectly as it gains a ton of hard cc for decaps and damage combos (way more than hammer could give). Combined with mortar and your cleave is insane, I’d argue in most cases better than that of hammer. Cele rifle built right has insane damage, and better sustain than the meta hammer build plus in a point fight it will win every time provided the player knows how to combo and doesn’t waste skills.

IF my changes were to occur (and you’re absolutely right they won’t but it never hurts to at least throw the idea out there and if they eventually decide that they need to get their poop in a group then maybe they’ll think about things like this) then DD+ Acro wouldn’t be a thing as DD wouldn’t exist. Unfortunately at this point one of the lines has to be thrown out the window and remade if they want lines to serve different purposes which is why I thought of this in the first place.

I’m glad we both want an evasion thief to be a thing but I agree we do have to make sure we don’t do a revitalized acro and leave dd in without taking into account what could happen but that’s the whole idea behind remaking a line. To prevent such a thing from happening. (though given anet’s history they’d probably overbuff and then re-nerf it so it’d be worse than it is now).

I agree skill is a large part in winning fights but as it is with the large amount of power creep from ESpecs thief is suffering. Now adding more power creep is not a good thing at all, but I don’t see any of my proposed changes as being on the level of causing power creep. Even outplaying someone significantly at this point is just gambling that they won’t have some silly passive or broken power coefficient srew you over because you don’t get to have invulns as a thief. (not asking for invulns just saying why power creep affects thief more than any other class). Balance in addition to what you said in that small section should also be uniform across the game. What I mean by that is there shouldn’t be different balancing styles from the devs. (I.E. Robert gee focuses on building synergy while Karl attempts to create sacrifice in choices) Uniformity in balancing will also help in the future for all classes.

Do I think anet will make changes like this soon or ever? No. Will I make suggestions anyway in case they change how they’re operating? Of course I will. If he isn’t motivated enough to make changes that are good for the game then he’s not a good choice for an employee in that position. (Nothing against him personally, the philosophy applies everywhere in life and the business world)

I don’t really expect to gain any traction by posting anything as anet really has no reason to listen to me or anyone else. The goal is to get ideas out there so maybe it’ll catch on and something good will happen for a change. I think undoing nerfs that were unnecessary in the first place is a great place to start as most of the buffs that would make certain things on thief viable again are just nerf reverts. That doesn’t have to nor should it be the only thing that happens, but imo it’s a great place to start because it doesn’t require a ton of programming and design and to be frank, it is the least likely thing to cause power creep. If it becomes broken they can hotfix it because they already have the coding required to do so. There’s not much risk in starting there and it helps to allow them to figure out what traits actually need changes because maybe the extra escapes from instant infiltrator’s return and the extra boon hate from 2 boon steal on sword 3 will influence the game enough to where things are viable without huge trait changes.

I will totally participate in the raid btw if I’m on at the time! Sounds like it’ll be fun as hell.

I enjoy s/d more but in a matchup d/p is likely to perform better. But if you are willing to have to work a bit harder and would rather use positioning and mobility over stealth and blinds then maybe s/d is for you.

DecieverX, The issue is that Daredevil is fine. Because it is fine it makes acro completely 100% obsolete. This post was specifically pertaining to those two lines and I may update the OP as I have more discussions with fellow guild members which is why nothing has been extreme outside of renewing acro and deleting daredevil. The hope I was having by starting with this kind of idea was in order to start balancing so that thief should not have to be required to take a line just to be effective.

Right now to function properly we need trickery and da, which leaves room for only 1 more line and with all the reveal out now people are just migrating to dd. This lack of diversity and effectiveness is just silly considering how many other profs can have higher damage, sustain, cc, team support, aoe, res utility, etc. all at the same time. If these changes go through we will see an increase in build diversity as well as a new option for a role opened because of the making of a new elite spec. Additionally builds won’t be limited to d/p and vault spam because options like s/d will synergize well with these changes and more builds will be available to the class.

Like yolo said, I think a large part will be just reverting some nerfs in the past and then the other parts will be larger buffs like making thief have a health pool equal to engineer (the change would apply to guard and ele as well) or equalizing revealed in this game across all modes (3 sec or 4 sec doesn’t matter, just needs to be the same). If anet starts taking these kinds of steps we will see thief become viable in high level pvp without allowing for huge powercreep because as you said deceiver, none of the changes are too extreme so far.

Not sure if this falls under the whole meta thingy but I’ve been enjoying and s/d spec with shadowstep and signets.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQNAsYVl0MhSnYhTwyJw/EHwElPNij2oXYJRiqTgAIDA-TpRBQBR4IAEvyAGc/BNcIAewJAAAPAAA

Just enjoying the good ole’ s/d acro playstyle mostly because it makes mer remember sd’s glory days… those were good times.

Only issue I see with DH is true shot’s damage for its low cd and complete lack of setup needed and the unblockable dazes from traps and such. Make the dazes blockable, nerf true shots damage by 15-20% and fix the invis wall bug and DH will be probably the most balanced elite spec.

My experience?
Win a couple, get 4 pips, get a streak of matches thrown by less than competent players on my team or good players making bad decisions and proceed to lose them all, repeat.

Was discussing with some guildies how we could rework the thief cause we all agreed it needed it and this is some of the stuff we came up with

Proposed Rework ideas:
Delete Daredevil and give us a real elite specialization, not a resold acro line. (keep it staff wielding but more of a brawler like scrapper or a support like spec like druid)
The line as it is right now just obsoletes acro, there’s no point to take acro anymore because daredevil is just better in every way shape and form. The modified dodges will be deleted as they just promote skill less spam which is not healthy and should not be encouraged. The new reworked acro line would look a bit like this:

1st minor- Swiftness on dodge increased by 3 sec to give 7 sec of swiftness on dodge.
2nd minor- Vigor on successful evade and gain 15 endurance back whenever you dodge (Rewards evading intelligently rather than spamming while still giving extra dodges immediately for specs like s/d)
3rd minor- Effects of vigor on you are enhanced and heal on a successful evade

Adept- (only ones listed are ones I’d edit)
Pain Response- keep it’s current effect and add escapist’s absolution (Probably a cd increase added to the condi removal for balance reasons)
Fleet shadow- removed and replaced with Weakening strikes

Master- (same thing as above, anything left out will remain unchanged except for maybe some number tweaks but I’m not addressing that right now)
Guarded Initiation- removed and replaced with power of inertia. Grants 10 seconds of might on dodge and combined with havoc mastery for a 5% damage increase within the range threshold rather than 7%.
Swindler’s Equilibrium- Removed and replaced with Assasin’s reward. Buff assassin’s reward to 90 hp per initative spent.

Grandmaster- (Same thing as the others)
Assasin’s reward- Moved to master tier and replaced with invigorating senses. Regenerate health while you have vigor (150-200 hps).
Upper hand- keep the initiative regen but add gain 25 endurance when you steal from an enemy.

Daredevil would then be replaced accordingly and we would have a line that did something different for the class like it should’ve done before. There are many other changes that we think need to occur though:

Sword 2 return needs to be instant, not a stunbreak but it is not fulfilling it’s role in this state
Flanking strike needs to flip to larcenous even if it’s blocked. Should not cycle for evades and blinds but blocks yes. Larcenous strike needs to steal 2 boons. Thief needs to bring something unique to a party, and extreme boon hate could be a big part of it fulfilling a new role as well as giving it a better chance in 1v1’s against many of the new specs.
CnD needs blind baseline
Preparedness needs to be baseline. Thief is too dependent on too many traitlines to be effective and it’s killing the diversity of the entire class. The baseline would help reduce the dependency on trickery.

That’s a majority of the changes that were proposed (The actual trait changes were my own thinking so I will be held responsible for any hate messages coming from that). Let us know if you agree, disagree, or are indifferent in regards to the proposed changes and please elaborate on it so we can grow a healthy discussion despite any trolls that respond here. Yes we do recognize there are other issues on thief that need to be changed but this was all that was discussed today before we got distracted.

Edit #1: I still stand by the idea that stealth needs to be thief specific so it can be balanced according to how it influences thief gameplay. Other effects can be added to other classes skills to compensate for the loss of stealth and too give each class a more distinctive feel to them.

Power scrapper can fairly easily deal with a condi reaper assuming you know how to approach the fight and know what to dodge.

Things that I’ve noticed while fighting the many condi reapers I’ve encountered in pvp:
Rifle’s hard cc makes things very difficult for reaper because outside of RS they have no stab and overcharged shot allows you to combo some great damage and force them onto the defensive.

Mortar kit’s blind and water field help to tank reaper’s damage and stop their cc’s from hitting. Plus the elixir removing a condi helps to shave off their damage.

Remembering not to shy away from using heal turret as a condi clear in that specific matchup as if you run hgh, egun, mortar, and elixir b you should be able to consistenly rotate through condi clears which will allow you to sustain through their condis while giving you time to drop your own damage on them.

Hoelbrak runes combined w/ adaptive armor trait provides solid condi resistance straight off which makes it really hard them to plow through your 21k hp (assuming cele ammy)

Save blocks for their RS as they will almost always unblockable marks and you don’t want to waste cds from them fearing you out of the block.

Don’t be too eager to go all in on a condi necro, remember your healing is much higher than theirs and by following the other things I’ve listed they won’t be able to take you down quickly unless you get kitteny or go all in on them so try to keep the fight sustained out while you tear them down slowly, burst when you can but be conservative. If you’re on a point try to keep forcing them off the point with overcharged shot so you can get cap progress while also winning the fight.

Best of luck with your endeavors! Hope I was helpful to you.

Edit: This is the build I use just in case you were looking for what kind of a build my posts advice was pertaining to
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vdAQFAUlUUh2tYJXw6KQ7FLTGF9cn37d42lMhl4zcABAA-TJBHwAAuAAGeAAl2fAZZAA

Please? It was a great trait and there was no reason for it to be removed. Just combine all the vigor buffs in acro together and give us power of inertia as a minor trait so acro can at least have a chance to compete with things like dd. (or you could just take dd back as it’s a stupid spam spec just like everything else in HoT, give us back the original acro tree and make us a specialization that’s actually creative)

God my salt is gonna get me banned someday lol

What would’ve been better would be at least a small attempt of a balance patch before this season came out. You know what’s out here now? Perma cc chronomancers, no skill condi spam revenants with more passives to save their life than the number of good traits on a thief, Dragonhunters 1 shotting squishies with a skill on a 4 sec cd, condi spam reapers that somehow manage to be dishing out as much condi damage as a burn engi and being so tanky you need 2 people to kill them in a time that isn’t completely detrimental to the team, and perma prot tempests that lierally get carried by passive bs and invulns. There is 0 skill required to play anything in this meta right now and to add the poor matchmaking on top of that, you have destroyed any respect people could’ve had for this game’s pvp. This is nothing but spam wars 2.

Then to make things even better, rather than looking at all this broken crap you stealth nerf steal? Really? The 1 functioning source of long swiftness outside of dd and you go and nerf it when rev pulses the exact same thing? If this is what your decisions are gonna be like I’m not sure a balance patch will EVER be a good idea.

Normally I try to be optimistic about these things but enough is enough. These major balance patches better be MAJOR. If noobs continue to get rewarded for playing an op spam build then you can kiss your esports dream goodbye. Nobody enjoys watching the esl’s anymore because aside from a few great teams it’s the same scrubs getting carried by stupid mechanics and broken specs.

Except CntrlAltDefeat (which btw is an awesome name, thought I’d mention that) the skill ceiling ideology is not an illusion when you look at it from the right perspective. The classes with the most potential (highest skill ceiling) are the ones that can adapt the best into any situation, have the most free way to play with the skills, and have the highest ability to allow you to outplay your opponent while in the fight (meaning not running away to get out of combat then running back in to re- engage your foe). Warrior just doesn’t have that potential anymore because of the reasons you just stated. Anet has nerfed them and pushed them into a very narrow style of play and that kills their ability to adapt to situations without having to do a build change (which is why I claimed they are not high skill ceiling).

The claim for Mesmer and thief being the impactful ones was the fact that they are the burst characters. The way Gw2 PvP works is people focus their burst together in order to sway the fight quickly in their favor. Mesmer and thief provide that damage (even if nerfs make them a bit unreliable they still do their jobs at least somewhat effectively) which is why they are in charge of picking out a target to take out. If you doubt it then you must not have played with a decent thief who knows how to burst. It takes knowledge of the class and timing so it is definitely not easy but when pulled off, yeah it’ll sway a situation better than almost any other class in the game. A majority of the complaints on Mesmer are the glassyness of their clones keeping them out of PvE groups because someone else can do the long term damage better with more support. PvP is a completely different story as Mesmer and thief can still have high single target damage burst while locking down their target. Just takes a good player to survive the rest of the fight and learn where they need to be.

So on the subject of warrior’s current state: Would you like to see things like shouts rebuffed then? Cause from what I’ve heard from others it seems like you guys just need some defensive buffs. Do you think it’s something different?

Hey Shiiroi, glad to hear you’re working to improve rather than complain. Thank you for being a constructive member of the pvp community

Now for your question:
When dealing with Daredevil, the big thing to remember is the fact that Daredevil is a naturally spammy spec. It takes getting used to fighting the spam but once you’re accustomed to fighting it you will smash most who try to fight you. Like many others said the biggest thing is timing. Make sure you take some time to familiarize yourself with the animations of each of their skills and what the effect is. Depending on your trait selections and such, you can take advantage of their selected dodge once you identify the dodge being used.

Dodges and how to counter them:
Unhindered Combatant- this one is the dash that removes inhibiting condis from the thief and grants them a damage reduction. When they run this dodge you may not want to waste your time trying to immob or cripple them as they can instantly remove it. Instead take advantage of the fact that their dodge doesn’t do damage and just keep high pressure on them to either force them out of the fight or waste their dodges and then kill them off once they run out of defenses.

Bounding Dodger- This one deals damage and grants a 10% damage boost. Often combined with daredevil runes for constant crits, this is the most common dodge found in the normal daredevil spam builds. It hits hard but it sacrifices a full dodge to do the damage. There’s a small window towards the end of the dodge that you can cc them in. Do that enough to force them to blow all their stunbreaks and you will be able to damage them down while they are stunned or knocked back. If you run the druid line use ancient seeds to immob them after you cc them in order to force them to condi clear or eat a ton of damage.

The other condi one is rarely used and is pretty much the same solution as the ones mentioned above.

Now unfortunately that’s just the first part of fighting daredevil, next part is identifying their weapon set and countering it accordingly. The three most common build defining weapon sets in pvp are D/p S/d and staff. Learning to counter each one will get you some great results very quickly.

Staff- dodge vaults to make them waste initiative, like bound there’s a small window at the end you can interrupt them in which will over time yield the same results as bounding dodger. Other attacks are highly telegraphed and easily countered but still try to keep some distance between you two in order to shut down their damage and force them to play defensively.

D/p- lots of blinds so make sure you remember to clear them before blowing larger skills. Avoid standing in their black powder field to avoid being blinded. Dodging skills like shadow shot will help you avoid blinds and force them to blow cd’s and initiative as shadow shot costs a good bit of initiative to activate and they can run out very quickly. Often they will take bounding dodger as a combo with their black powder field to get stealth without losing initiative, try to interrupt it at the very end of the dodge to stop them from getting stealth and if you don’t have an interrupt don’t stand near them. Aoe’s around their circles and around you will help you to prevent the thief from doing damage to you and force them to take a lot of damage if they try to burst.

S/d- Completely focused on evades to survive. Often combined with unhindered combatant to avoid getting rooted and grant them the best mobility possible. Their skills do more sustained damage then burst so if you can outsustain them you should be able to win the fight. Use hard cc’s (stun, daze, knockdown, etc.) to force them to use stunbreaks and when they run out, burst them to hell and back. If they prove to be a more difficult opponent who is more familiar with their matchups then they will be hard to force onto the defensive. Try to wear out their sustain by dodging flanking strike whenever they use it if you can. Without flanking strike making contact, they will be unable to burst you with larcenous strike and you will be able to out dps them, forcing them to either leave the fight or die. Counter pressure throughout the fight is key, don’t give them room to recover and save you damage immunity for when you fail to dodge a flanking strike and they try to burst.

Hope most of this was helpful to you. If you have any more questions feel free to ask and I will do what I can to help you out. Now none of this is easy and will require lots of practice so you can always head into a duel server and fight daredevils to get used to it 1v1. And you’re on NA you can always pm me and I’ll practice a bit with you if you’d like. Good luck with your quest to fight daredevil

Love this idea! Would love to see this implemented into the game. Great work bringing this all together Diku, hope anet at least considers this.

It sounded like this was sarcasm but I can’t be sure. If it was, well done and I appreciate it. If it’s not, then dude your build has some issues we need to talk through cause that’s not even the most mobile spec out there.

If you’re just looking to have fun, Thief is definitely worth playing. If you want to take part in group content without being harassed by everyone there asking you to play something different then you should probably consider making a secondary class to play along with the thief. Imo, at least playing the thief helps you in many parts of the game and it makes you a better player so even if it isn’t your main or your big content character, I’d still play it for the skill benefits and just the enjoyment of playing it.

Then I’ll try to do it in a way that won’t get infracted:
Based on the many balance decisions of Arenanet towards the thief class that have been questionable, people believe that anet devs do not play the class which would lead to misinformed balance decisions. The “finding of a unicorn” is meant to portray the fact that it’s already hard to find developers in game, but playing the one class everyone has claimed they do not is practically unheard of. Just like finding a real life unicorn.

Bwadark, yeah you NA or EU?

To clarify what I meant so there’s no misunderstandings:
In duels it will stalemate with the meta as the meta can’t kill it but the meta has a great deal of defenses which would cause the fight to take years before a winner was decided. Where it stands out is that it handles other matchups better imo because of it’s versatility. But yes if you would like me to “back it up” yeah I’m for it. I’m on NA, hit me up in game and we can test it to see if you side with me or the meta.

Guess I don’t need a vid cause these guys hit it pretty well on the head

My advice for your “OH CRAP!!!” moments would be if you have heal turret up use that then follow with blind and water field from mortar to provide some strong regen and damage mitigation. Depending on your build (which all depends on your game mode ofc) if you run tk and/or egun follow with the second regen field and a block to help with health recovery and defend against any other hard hits that may follow to take you out.

When going into a situation where you know you will take a great deal of hits make sure you have some damage mitigation off cd. Blind from mortar, nades, bombs, and ft, small heals from mortar and egun, blocks from tk, etc. Learning to cycle through those properly can help you to sustain through almost anything. If in PvP use los as well to mitigate when you’re low. In PvE try to get some support from allies and see if they can help heal you up.

I didn’t see whether you were asking for PvP or PvE so I answered for both as well as I could without going into extreme detail. I may have read wrong but if you could specify then I can hopefully change my advice to fit your desired game mode