Guild Wars 2

http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#mckMzc9cMFCLoMFMLof0xfaVmcVMc

I just read your post and made that Build up in literally 1 minute, so don’t expect it to be fleshed out, i rather did it to give you a raw idea of what you could do.

My thoughts behind it:

Deadly Arts:
Main reason i went into Dealy Arts is Lotus Poison.
The reason for that is your Shortbow Poison field, which allows you to apply Weakness permanently to groups of foe’s with this Trait.

Shadow Arts:
Shadow Arts provides you with a sustained Con removal, constant Regen buff (and Regen for your teammates with Shadow Refugee for group support), Initiative gain and a good ressource of Might stacks, while also pushing your Toughness and Healing Power.

Acrobatics:
Acrobatics provides you with further Might stacks, while also giving you access to Feline Grace, which will let you dodge much more, plus providing great Synergy with Traits in the Trickery and Acrobatics line.

Trickery:
For the Caltrops on Dodge.

As Gear you might go for Con dmg/Toughness/Healing Power with some Vitality here and there.

What you could do with this build would be constant CnD + Pistol stealth attack for bleed stacking on singletargets (+weakness from Steal) and Caltrops/Poison field spam for massive AoE bleed/cripple/poison/weakness for larger Groups.

But as much as you try, pure mechanical good survive ability can’t be achieved as Thief due to extremely low base HP, mid range armor and bad access to buffs.
You can’t get much more defensive than with this build if you still want to do anything besides surviving (and that still worse than most other classes could).
Your best bet as Thief is to not get hit, if you are pure glass or pure defensive doesn’t really matter as Thief.
The main difference between a glass and a non glass Thief is the damage they deal.

But if your party hasn’t more than 1 other Condition damager, you should be good with a build like this (since P/D Con Thief is pretty OP compared to other Thief builds like BS imo).

Short buff range.
Bugged Vemon traits.
Relying on a group that does the job mostly without you, after u gave them the Vemons.
No Utility slots left for escapes.
No Stun breaks.

It’s easy math, but has many variables i don’t know about, which means i can’t answer your question directly..

So for example, if you already have enough Crit Chance (at least 47%) to make use of the Crit Damage, then you don’t need to increase your Precision further, which would make the Critdmg stat the more effective choice.

If you use a Hidden Killer build for example, there isn’t really a point in getting Ruby Orbs as well, since you rely on the trait to crit, instead on precision.

If you don’t manage to engange over, i would say 80% of your enemies with over 90% health, Scholars aren’t a very good choice for you on the other hand.

If you lack precision and Crit damage, but already got high power, Ruby Orbs are a way better choice than Scholars.

…

Generally i would say if you run a rather gimicky once in a while 100-0 burst spec (probably with hidden killer, because of the precision lack), you should run Scholars.

If you want more reliable, very high damage over the course of a fight, while still being very glassy, go for the Orbs.

The next step would be sacrificing a little bit more damage (if you have more power and prec than you “need” to do your job) to gain a balanced set of defenses, by going for Divinities.

As you see there is no X > Y.
What’s better for you depends on what you want to do, how you want to do it and what you can sacrifice to achieve that.

GW 1 hard mode was simply amazing.

Due to the not instanced general PvE in GW2 I’m not sure how to implement that awesome feature here tho (clearing zones in a hard mode).

Just running around killing some a bit stonger mobs for a bit more loot sounds rather boring, and would make the “normal” mode rather obsolete.

It’s the culling.

Without it, the game would be pretty much unplayable because of laggs/framedrops. Until ANet comes up with a better idea we have to live with either a emty and boring world + invisible armies in WvW, or not being really able to play at all (Karka LA event comes to my mind).

But besides that, i totally agree with you.

It’s one of the things that make me want to play MMO’s.

To see players everywhere doing random stuff is just cool and makes the world feel alive.
GW2 absolutely lacks that feeling, since you only see players a few meters around of you.

Needs a soon fix.

So that all the little kids who need attention spam that crap everywhere to show off again like in GW1? No thanks.

I agree, it’s very odd indeed.

It’s counterintuitive to get hit by single target abilities, even after you use a “force target drop” ability.

Not even talking about that it doesn’t makes any sense. How the feck do they know were you are when you are invisible, to fallow you with their shots.

It also feels stupid as player using the ability since you just sit there and fallow nothing with your shoots. Easymode.
Enemy uses an ability to counter my channeled attack? What do i care!?

What does stealth do?

It forces a target drop.
It makes the enemy not knowing where you are.
Protects you from single target abilities.

What do these channeled attacks do?

Don’t drop when the enemy stealthes.
Makes you know where the enemy stealthed player is.
Continues to do damage on stealthed enemies.

Why do i carry a stealth ability again?

Fook.3914:

its not an exploit its a mistake by the developers

Exploiting a mistake by the developer is the very notion of a exploit.

If not by mistake of the developer, there wouldnt be anything to exploit.

It’s your (and the most other people’s) mindest which is to be blamed.

Playing in a really good WvW Squad, or rocking high tournament play with a coordinated group would probably blow your mind (off the trinity).

Thats actually not true.

Just today in the reset opening night we killed a 80 man Zerg with around 10 people.

We were all manning arrow cards, and just nuked the whole Zerg away as they where rushing on the bay lord.

I guess thats one of the reasons we are Nr. 1 in Europe.

Skill, coordination and planning > Zerg.

If you are a group of 50 random uncoordinated people with no clue about WvW, then you can’t expect to win against organized guilds with 500 man power, and you will drop in the ladder, facing a server that fits your numbers soon.

gimmethegepgun.1284:

Asum.4960:

gimmethegepgun.1284:

Daecollo.9578:

I’d like to see you kill anything spamming head shot.

HS = Heartseeker.

I like to see you killing anything spamming heartseeker.

I mean, the enemy could, accidently of course, everything else would be skill, press the dodge button, and you did absolutely nothing other than wasting your whole initiative to be a free kill.

If you die to a spam Thief, then why the hell do you play PvP in the first place?
And even more so, how do you dare to complain about something that killed you, when the reason you died was clearly that you suck.

Wow you take so much based on a simple correction.
Where in that post did I say ANYTHING about the validity of the statements involved?
The only thing I said was that HS means Heartseeker, since it seemed like the person thought that everyone was whining about Headshot, not Heartseeker.

It was aimed at the statement, not your person.

gimmethegepgun.1284:

Daecollo.9578:

I’d like to see you kill anything spamming head shot.

HS = Heartseeker.

I like to see you killing anything spamming heartseeker.

I mean, the enemy could, accidently of course, everything else would be skill, press the dodge button, and you did absolutely nothing other than wasting your whole initiative to be a free kill.

If you die to a spam Thief, then why the hell do you play PvP in the first place?
And even more so, how do you dare to complain about something that killed you, when the reason you died was clearly that you suck.

urdriel.8496:

Laika.8795:

urdriel.8496:

yesterday a bunch of thieves (4-5) in WvWvW, casting all time Shadow Refuge (oh yes, 4-5 shadows refuges…) and killing people pressing 2 all time , was “fun” and sad, soo much power in a kitten broken mechanic and a single skill without cooldown, you dont need skill, you need a focking finger………

Sounds to me like someone doesn’t understand how thieves work… Or is making stuff up entirely.

i leveled a thief to 80, only to try thief class, actually im playing with a ranger (main pj), because thief is really op, is too easy to kill with him, you can literally spam any skill (Hb,discharge,etc)to kill people, if you have any problem, stealth and backstab, +1 kill….

We must wait til Anet fix Culling to nerf or not stealth ( mesmer use stealth culling bug ofc).

You are playing the easiest class to play, because Thief (the class with the highest skill cap, together with elementalists) was to easy for you?

Wups..

Also you realise that Rangers can kill just as quick as Thieves?
The only difference is that the Thief sits in melee range, and the ranger at 1200 range.

Tulisin.6945:

Foss.4830:

EDIT: Obviously not talking about THIS build…but thieves in general probably have the highest hitting single attack in the game.

For a single hit warriors hold that honor with Kill Shot. For damage done via a single ability against a single target that honor would be held by warriors with Hundred Blades. For total damage output by a single skill? Probably some kind of longterm pulsing AE hitting 5 targets every second. Maybe it is thieves, Caltrops could theoretically do something like 65,000 damage over 18~ seconds and 5 targets if they all rolled around in them for the whole duration.

I have a guildie who runs a shatterer Mesmer build.
We wait until all (4-5) people group on on the middle point to cap it, and instead of teamfighting, he just instakills the whole group, giving us pretty much the edge we need to win every single tournament, since we then just put a bunker bomb Engeneer on the side point next to our spawn point, and me as Support Necro with a DPS CC Guardian on the main point, while having 2 roamers for buffs and objectives.

People complaining about Thieves make me laugh every time i see 5 people getting nuked from 100 to zero in one second by that mesmer.

//

For the Thief build i focus on Toughness, Con dmg and Healing.

Tulisin.6945:

Asum.4960:

Shadow Refuge is a noob trap (for both sides), not a super uber utility skill.

Shadow Refuge is a super uber utility skill, truly the thief’s sonic screwdriver … but using it in plain sight in an attempt to escape is like using your sonic screwdriver to hammer in nails.

I disagree, due to how many counters Shadow Refuge has.

The first one is obvious, it’s just AoE bombing the area.

But if you have a Guardian, you can just push the Thief out of his cute little circle, making him destealth, and getting revealed.
A Mesmer can just pull some one out.
A Necro will simply fear you out…
..and so on.

This skill is only good if you are fighting people who don’t know their class, and neither the Thief profession.

All this skill can be used for in high PvP play, is to prevent stomps on allies for a few seconds (while pretty much every other class has better ways doing so, on shorter CD’s).

I have yet to see any Thief in a tournament match pulling off even one Shadow Refuge against my sPvP team.

In WvW, yes, you can walk behind a bush and stealth with Shadow Refuge for 10 seconds, running rather safely away. That is if nobody reaches you before Refuge ends (which means you probably could have run away just like that anyway).
Not a super uber skill imo.

The Thieves “sonic screwdriver”, as you call it, is cleary Shadowstep (the utility skill), since it doesn’t depend on the enemy being terrible at his class, while granting you 2 stun breaks, a condition removal and mobility on top of confusing the enemy.

Foss.4830:

Gusmaozin.4076:

Dude, theres “Assasin’s Reward” trait, that everytime he uses a skill that costs initiative he heals, there’s Signet of Malice, that everytime he hits he gets healed, then picture this: He stealths gaining health, then he gets out of stealth shooting you 4 times with the 1st skill healing again, plus the traits that heals thieves in stealth, plus food or boosters that grants regeneration. Here’s a simple explanation. I’ve done that before, I can make a build for you sometime.

I guess I can see this adding up. Along with very well timed dodges. Still seemed like alot more. Idk. Ill probably setup a heal build on my thief and play around with it to see if i get similar results.

Thanks for the feedback everyone.

http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#mckMzc9coMFrooMFvo9MxGGcmVMack

One of my (weaker) sPvP builds.

With healing, toughness, con damage gear it leaves you with 12k HP, which you are able to refill constantly with the regeneration buff from entering stealth, the healing on use of CnD by spending Initiative, and the signet healing from the pistol stealth attack (which is even greater if stealth attacking out of Shadow Refuge, since it’s a Dark combo field, granting you Life Steal).

It’s basically half the healing, half the HP, half the toughness and half the damage of my Necro build, without any group support and healing, which is why I’m not using it often, but it’s the best you can do as Thief.

Probably close to the spec you were fighting.

How that guy could beat your group alone still makes me curious, but i guess it’s just a case of bad play.

(This is the easiest to play Thief spec in existens, while still being stupid good, if you mind the effort you have to put down to play it (absolutely none), and i hope Anet will focus their nerfs on ridiculous builds like this, instead of nerfing great builds like Backstab Thieves, which actually require skill due to being extremely dangerous to play, requireing high reaction times, positioning and careful target picking)

urdriel.8496:

yesterday a bunch of thieves (4-5) in WvWvW, casting all time Shadow Refuge (oh yes, 4-5 shadows refuges…) and killing people pressing 2 all time , was “fun” and sad, soo much power in a kitten broken mechanic and a single skill without cooldown, you dont need skill, you need a focking finger………

Shadow Refuge has a 1 Minute cool down.

It’s a stupid tiny circle in which you have to stay for the full duration if you want to leave it with stealth.

If i see a other Thief using Shadow Refuge in WvW i scream free kill into my mic, switch to my Shortbow, Shadowstep to the Refuge, and Clusterbomb the kitten out of it.

You say they were 4-5 Thieves?

Awesome, thats about 6-8 Badges for me, without any effort whatsoever.

Shadow Refuge is a noob trap (for both sides), not a super uber utility skill.
And if i see a guy just sitting next to me and going brain afk when i use Shadow Refuge instead of using the opportunity to kill me, then i gonna kill him.
Because he deserved it for being a terrible player.

You would think theres a limit of ignorance and stupidity a human mind can achieve.
But there really isn’t.

How can you complain about something if you don’t even know how it works. And why would you complain about something, instead of just fixing it, or at least trying so.

Mimi, i don’t like it, i can’t see him anymore, how OP is that, i can’t do anything to counter it.

Mind blown.
Every day in this forum section.

ShaunZ.1098:

So the answer to beating a thief is partying up? How many people should it take to be able to beat 1? Isn’t that the definition of over powered?

So all bunker builds (mainly Guardians, Elementalists and Necros) are suddenly Over Powered?

It takes one half decent player to beat any kind of Thief.

But 20 complete idiots have pretty much no chance against a very good Thief, since a Thief lives of idiots, actually helping him with opportunities to restealth etc., which makes him the perfect pub stomper.

TL:DR

If you are a good player: Thieves are a mediocre profession, and easy to kill in any situation.
If you are a bad player: Thieves will kill you. Why? Because you are bad, and actually helping them to kill you.
Don’t make stupid forum threads, make a Thief and learn to play.

Pope.1469:

As for my “impatience,” yes, I feel that waiting 10 seconds for a thief who may or may not be downed to appear in a PvP (whether it be WvW or sPvP) environment is completely unjustifiable. If you walk away, the thief lives, and he may be back for round two, or just walk away without any consequences for a lost fight.

How did the Thief lost in that scenario? He used a Utility skill (Shadow Refuge) to fool you into believing he got away, allowing him to rally. He choosed that utility skill to escape if the fight isn’t going well for him, or to come back for round two.
If you are not to be fooled, he just wasted 10 seconds of your, and his time, except if you have AoE’s to just kill him while he is downed is stealth, which i do multiple times a day, it works perfectly fine.

Pope.1469:

If you wait out the 10 seconds, that’s 10 seconds of time not spent capping a point, or working towards an objective in WvW. In short, the thief would have successfully locked you down and forced you to be useless to your team for those few seconds.

And what was the Thief doing in that time? Capping a point? Working towards an objective in WvW?
No, he’s bloody lying on the ground, trying to get up/buying time for his team with legitimate game mechanics.
Best case scenario it’s a even, not a plus for the Thief.

Pope.1469:

What makes this thought process even more difficult to reason out is the uncertainty of the thief’s status: sometimes you don’t even know for sure if the thief is downed or not. As I mentioned before, ranger traps and necro marks don’t even work against a downed opponent, so if you play those classes, you don’t have any way of figuring it out.

I don’t know what your point is with mentioning Necro and Ranger over and over again.
No ground target trap spell works on any downed profession. Whats your point?
Also have you ever thought about auto attacking the area around the point where the Thief got most likely downed, while watching your combat log or autoattack chain?

You very clearly never played a Thief since you make it look like a Thief can do all those things without perfectly timing them, without planning them, without giving up utility slots just to do that, without wasting time himself and so on.

It’s just about you, and that you don’t like to have trouble while playing, and every mechanic that actually needs skill, and not numbers to counter them is “completely unjustifiable”.

Ignorance is for fools. Don’t be a fool.

StugLyfe.2134:

Devs how many more posts do you need to see? Nerf this op class before you loose more people!

I would love to lock you up into a room until you’ve done the math, drawn graphs, and making spread sheets on the subjekt of strengths and weaknesses of a Thief, and then coming up with possible solutions and solid fixes for problems you may find.

Why?

Because you couldn’t do it, since you don’t have the slightest clue of balance.

And since you would be locked up, the GW2 community could be a better place.

Foss.4830:

There is no class in the game (obviously besides thieves) that can match that amount of healing in such a short period of time. SUSTAINED healing.

Thats really weird, since i run a Necromancer tournament spec in which i heal for around 3-5k health per second, which i can keep up without any downtime, forever. Additionally to the heals i constantly freeze, blind, bleed, remove boons from enemies, remove conditions from me and my allies and highly damage enemies, actually allowing me to win 1 vs 4 fights with ease, or at least hold points until my guildies arrive.

I have not once lost a point in sPvP with my Necro in over 30 tournaments with this build, and then people come along, telling me Thieves are OP, while I don’t even have to do anything when a Thief jumps on me, since i need around a half second to outheal the Mug/CnD/Backstab combo (which they can’t even pull of 90% of the time since i put down a AoE blind when a Thief approches me) of a full glass cannon Thief, just to kill him passively by AoE’s in 3 seconds, actually ment for some one else.

People just jump on this stupid Thieves are OP bandwagon, everytime they get pwned by a Thief, while it was actually their fault they lost, because they have absolutely no clue how Thieves work.

Thieves are nothing more than mediocre.

Their defense is bullkitten, their mobility is good, their damage is good, their healing mediocre and their support is bullkitten.
And you can’t actually get “all” the good things in together in one build.
You either have good mobility and damage, but crappy defense and healing and support, or you have good mobility and mediocre healing, but crappy damage, defense (besides healing) and support in one build.
That doesn’t sound OP to me.

To claim that no other class can achieve such high healing is just a joke, when i personally play a healing/toughness well Necromancer for sPvP, which does outperform every healing a Thief could possibly pull off, even tho I main a Thief outside of sPvP.
Why i don’t play my Thief in sPvP?
Because Thieves are a weak profession, and i would have to do twice the work, and have twice the skill to play my Thief just half as effective as i am with other classes versus skillfull players.

Thieves damage is OP?

I have a build for every single class in the game which has more damage than a Thief can pull off (while having more surviveability).

Thief heal is OP now too?

Well to bad, i also have better healing specs for nearly all professions than a Thief could ever dream of, while having at least the same damage and twice the control and support of a healing Thief spec.

Just start playing a Thief for sanitys sake.
Try out builds in high, skillfull play.
Test out what works and what doesn’t works.
Test out HOW it works.

Go back to your profession, and enjoy the easy mode.

If you loose a fight with multiple allies against one Thief, the worst multi target class in the game, then you really, really need it.

Foss.4830:

I know about the trait but literally. Full health every time he came out. 50% up to full in what? how long does CND last? 3? 4 seconds? That seems like an outrageous amount of healing.

Pretty much every class can pull that off, most of them are even way more effective (dps and control) wise doing so as a Thief.

Good luck fighting a leeching Wellomancer or a Bunker Guardian if you already have problems with a Thief.

Kerishan.8460:

Not at all, with thieves guild you can solo all map, just learn to use stealth ability (CnD over all).

Can’t argue with that, since i had never any problems playing my Thief, but i know a lot of people having trouble with their Elementalists and Thieves.

Dee Jay.2460:

Backstab builds aren’t strong in 1v1 situations, especially not when you’re expecting the Thief.

A lot of the apparent OPness of the Backstab combo comes with the Steal Shadowstep that allows a Thief to pounce a target quite unexpectedly. It allows them to catch people off guard quite a lot.

Getting cought off guard is a L2P issue.

If someone gets killed by a backstab Thief, not the Thief was the issue, but the killed player being unaware of his environment was.

Therefore, yes.

CriSPeH.8512:

As far as sPvP yes ppl need to L2P, and in the OPs situation its the same as telling ppl to L2P the holiday jumping puzzles where if you miss time your Jump(dodge) once, you are done.

My clocktower record was finishing it 53 times in a row (at which point i was nearly asleep after doing it for so long that i failed).
The people complaining about it being WAY to difficult and ridiculous, not being able to complete it, definately had a L2P issue.

If your reaction time is over 2 seconds, you may have problems fighting Thieves, yes.
As well as doing jumping puzzles, dungeons, fighting any other profession, driving a car, or even crossing a street.

Auesis.7301:

I have a universal build and armorset that works in normal PvE, all dungeons and WvW, and I almost always stay on my feet for the longest while dishing out high DPS and keeping packs under blind control. I don’t know where you’re getting the constant respeccing malarky from. Regardless of that, having to respec doesn’t make a profession “bad”.

While that is most certainly possible, whit such a universal Thief spec (might send me a link to it in a builder) you probably are way less effective in both things (dungeons and everything else) than you would be with a dungeon spec, or a everything else spec, more so than any other profession.

If you could respec on the fly for free, i would tend to agree with you more, but as it is now, it’s definately a handi cap if you have to respec for different activities, to be even close to the effectiveness of the average universal builds of other professions.

With the extremely squishy professions (basic Ele and Thief) some parts are rather difficult, since we can’t handle very tough and/or many mobs very well.

So yes, generally you can solo the whole map, but as these professions you might consider getting some help here and there.

Maybe ask in your guild for some Mesmer/Warrior/Ranger/Engeneer/Necro/Guardian to clear the path for you.

Auesis.7301:

Disagree with dungeons. With a bad player, Thieves are nothing but carry weight. With a good player, they have excellent DPS and rarely go down. The only difference between a Thief and other professions in dungeons is that Thieves have a higher skill minimum. Plus, Shadow Refuge is THE best support skill in the game, without exception.

It’s not about good or bad Thieves in dungeons.

It’s about Thieves with enough money for at least 2 armor sets (one for dungeons, and one for everything else), and the ones without it. Combined with resetting traits every single time they want to do a dungeon (and again when they want to do anything else).

Therefor, Thieves are pretty bad in dungeons. They are the only class i can come up with that needs to do something completely different in dungeons, than in SPvP, WvW and open world PvE.
Just for this part of the game, they need different weapons, different skills, different stats from armor and different traits than they need for everything else (or they would be average in dungeons, but suck at everything else).

Thats not what makes me think of Thieves as a good dungeon profession.
And while i came up with great dungeon builds (which means average compared to other professions, using standart setups), I don’t want to rebuild my character everytime i enter and leave a dungeon.

@OP:

Thanks for trying stuff out for yourself, and your honest opinion after that.
You got a good grasp of what we Thieves struggle with (which is a lot), and at what we excel (which is very, very little), instead of flaming us with QQ after you got pwned by some random Thief in a SPvP pug match or a uncoordinated WvW run.

Zac.2890:

What is the point of playing a human in a fantasy game? You already play a human in real life.

Last time i checked, my human player character in real life can’t Shadowstep, walk tru unspoiled countrysides and kill dragons.

My human player character in GW 2 can.

The point is, some people are happy with who they are, and they kind of want to play themself, just in a better world, where modern humans haven’t destroyed everything already with capitalism and religion.
Thats why they play humans in fantasy games.

Others want to flee from themselves, as well as the world, so they play whatever the game in question offers.

None of that is better than the other, or more or less boring.

@OP:

It’s really up to you, but if you tend to stick to humans to play yourself in a fantasy world, and not some fantasy creature, you wont be happy with a Sylvari over the long run.
It’s fun for some time (got a 68 Sylvari since 3 weeks after release on ice), but then you actually want to play your adventure, and not the adventure of that Sylvari.

Just depends on what kind of person you are.

Loki.4139:

but out of those three, which would be best for WvW?

There is no “best” in GW2. It’s simply personal preference and choices you have to make.

Ruby Orbs give you 60 more power and 40 more Precision than Divinity Runes, but 60 less Vitality, Thoughness, Healing, and so on.

So if you simply want damage, and nothing but damage and have a small budget, choose the Orbs.

If you have tons of money, and want very good damage, but also some of everything else (defesive stats), go for the divinity Runes.

Most other stuff is gimicky, or doesn’t really fit the Thief playstyle you described you want to go for (ASP already mentioned the choices, and explained them very well).

Go for what fits you the most.
If some one says “Thats the best”, all he is actually saying is “thats the best for me”.

What will be the best for you, is up to you.
The valid choices were, as mentioned, already listed by ASP.

Loki.4139:

Gold isn’t an issue.

But i only WvW on my Thief, since he is my main. So that might narrow it down in between those three. I was thinking of the Orbs. But I’m not sure.

I don’t necessarily want to go “glass cannon” i want to atleast have 15k health. Unless i can take someone down really fast.

I like what you typed down, if you could tell me which one will be the best for WvW. It would be great!

Thanks for your help!

If gold isn’t a issue and you want to play WvW (being not 100% glass, which is mandatory if you don’t run a one in 45 seconds burst from 100 to 0 gimmick build) i would recommend using Divinity’s.

I also use them on my berserker backstab build, and I’m very happy with them.

Price point for a full set (6 Runes) should be around 40-50 Gold.

Majik.8521:

as much as i hate fighting thieves because of the culling i don’t think this would be a good idea. yes it does suck when they are only revealed for like .5 to 1 sec in between stealth however this means they would never get to stealth.

how about a compromise with them, maybe change a few skills to reveal thieves and put like a 4 sec debuff that keeps them from stealthing.

could put this on one of my rangers traps, on one of the necros marks or maybe one of their wells so they wouldn’t be forced to use a staff. also maybe add to one of the engis turrets.

Which would make room for huge exploitations, basically removing stealth from the game by giving groups the option to permanently denying stealth.

This isn’t like, let’s say permanently denying Protection or some other “minor” buff, but more in a line of a debuff on skills affecting heavy armor classes, reducing their armor by 80 %, a debuff preventing the use of clones on Mesmer for a long duration, or the switching of Attunements for Elementalists..

It’s a mandatory (defense) mechanic of Thieves, and therefore should stay under their control (even their own traits, like stealthing on x% health atomatically gets Thieves killed by causing them getting the revealed debuff rather random).

Shini.7542:

Glektor.2934:

Like other people mentioned, we just need to see damage numbers pop up when we hit a stealthed target. But, I don’t think damage should break stealth.

Fighting other thiefs as thief myself I dont even need that. I got 3 signs if I hit my enemy or not.
1: my signet heal will show me a green number if hit
2: my buff food will heal me in ~50% of my hits
3: my 2nd/3rd autohit wil be activated

Almost every class got a way to see if his/her attack was successfull or not, so its simply not important to see the dmg but still I wouldn’t care if it would be visible.

What you are telling them is that they need skill to counter Stealth, not easymode mechanics, or getting it nerfed to the ground by forum QQ.

If they were interested in actually getting better at the game to overcome challenges instead of everything else getting dumbed down so they dont’ have to deal with them at all anymore, then they wouldn’t even be making threads like this (like the Pro player base), but actually improve themselves ingame, or asking for help and tipps in the forum instead of complaining.

//E:

I still appreciate your effort, but sooner or later you will learn that it doesn’t matter what you say, no matter how much it is true or backed up by facts, you can’t argue with trolls and QQ’ers.

They don’t want to hear “The thing you think is to strong actually isn’t, and you could have countered it all the time if you just would have been smart or good enough to do so.”, but only “Yes. Yes, you are right. It is to strong (while it actually isnt), and it will be ruined with nerfes so you don’t have to deal with it anymore at all. Hail you and your wisdom.”

Daecollo.9578:

Why is a master major trait so terrible and why does it work with 1 skill, there are almost no other traits in the game that work with 1 skill, nobody is going to trait for this deeply unless they have some kind of weird build.

So you want to turn this into

“Why is Backstab so terrible and why doesn’t it work with this trait, there are almost no other traits in the game that work with Backstab. Nobody is going to use it for this deeply unless low damage, except if they have some kind of weird build completely focusing on it.”

Excluding skills because they are not your personal preference, or popular in the short living current meta game (popular, not actually more powerful/useful i might add) is never a good idea, and the reason why game companies never get the balance down, and always run after the latest, already nearly gone meta to adjust things they messed up/missed in the past, since they reacted to slow, and/or over punished something.

Don’t over punish Backstab, just because it is, or better, already, was very popular.
It’s already only useful if you focus your whole build on it, which limits what you can do extremely.

If you do the math, and count in regular builds, Backstab on it’s own is actually pretty crappy.

But a crappy single target melee if in stealth damage ability (Backstab) with 50 – 100% Crit chance, with 256 % crit damage, with + 40(+)% damage is a very good single target damage brust ability.

Like every other freaking ability too if you put so much effort down (and make so much sacrifices) to boost it.
Excluding this specific ability from future multiplier options (nobody can take all this traits at once, which means more build options, which is actually what you want), is the start of making it crappy in the future by over punishing it for being popular now or in the past.

Daecollo.9578:

Well, I didn’t really wanna give backstab 5% “more” damage.

And you don’t even do that. The most powerful Backstab has already all + % damage traits there are for the Thief (using a Dagger) included, which means all Trait points are already spent.
All you would do by changing this Trait (and also making it accesable for backstabbers) would be creating options (take this multiplier in this trait line, getting this minor traits and this minor stat boosts, or that other trait line..).

Worst idea ever.

Just the very thought of it shows that you haven’t a single clue how stealth was intented in GW2, and how it actually works as intented.

“Hey, let’s make 3 second in combat stealth break on hit!”
What the..?

Next idea: make Stability break on hard CC, because… hey why not.
And when we are already on it, I’m kind of annoyed by people taking less damage when they are under the protection buff, so let’s make that break on damage too.

/E:
If i get flagged for trolling for this, i gonna ask myself why the OP isn’s banned for it already.

Daecollo.9578:

Combined Training – Dual-Wielding two weapons improves damage by 5%.
(This does not work for stealth skills.)

Daecollo.9578:

Wait, what do you mean, you have me confused, “When using X in your offhand”, not while dual wielding.

Well, now you got me confused, too.

Daecollo.9578:

I was excluding stealth from the dual wield traits, because stealth traits have so much already, they don’t need anymore help.

So what exactly do you mean with “stealth skills” then?

Backstab and co.?

If yes, why exclude these skills from traited damage bonis given to a whole weapon set?

That they already got other trait options (which they actually dont.. not a single one) is no reason to artificially exclude them from new ones.

I wouldn’t start with a trend of excluding stealth skills out of everything, since this would result in them getting underpowered over long or short.

Also excluding things artificially from traits isn’t exactly improving the build vareity you claim to want to accomplish.

If you want a Trait that increases Dagger damage by 5 % when dual wielding Daggers, ok, thats a nice idea since the traits you mentioned we have right now are pretty much trash for the most part.

But saying “inreases Dagger damage while dueal wielding them, except for this and this skills” seems to be rather odd.

PowerCat.5738:

There should be a subscription based GW2 package where they strip off the DR and let you play the game freely.

Buy gems worth a sub every month and convert them into gold. There you go, less grind.

GW 2 adding a sub would be absolutely killing the game.

It would husch away 90 % of the fanbase and rightfully so.
It would shoo away all the sub model haters.
And also all casual players, who jump in and out, since they don’t have to pay monthly to get the full experience when they decide to play.
____________

Besides that utterly terrible suggestion, i nearly fully agree with the OP and most of the other people describing their experiences with the game so far.

While ANet already removed all farming options in GW 1, even before they had a shop in it, in which you couldn’t get ingame cash anyway, so they don’t do it to force you into Gem buying, but it’s their design philosophy, they need to change something for GW 2, since it’s a way different game than GW 1 and therefore it needs to be treated differently.

For the most players reducing teleportation costs by 90 % would already be amazing.
Right now it’s just terrible expensive to play PvE.
While you can play hours of WvW without spending a dime, and earning some silver for your effort (not alot, but you have fun, and you gain a little over time), you are paying your kitten off in PvE.
If i slay a dragon minion in a 30 minute effort with a few players, just to get 5 blues, worth 4-5 silver, and having to pay 8 silver to teleport to the dragon and back where i came from, then something is fundamentally wrong with the pricing OR the drop pools of the game.

Traveling costs need to be reduced drastically, drop pools need to be improved.
Throw the utterly aweful idea of magic find out of the window and give everybody equal chanced.
It’s poisoning the community and gives better rewards for greedy people who are doing doing less, while if every body would be greedy, you couldn’t manage to do the hard content in a good manner anymore. So the people doing the work, are the prople getting screwed over by GW 2.

When was this EVER a good idea to put in with the design philosophy of GW 2?

Dungeon armors shouldn’t take 3 or 4 runs for one part, but one run for one part (one token system).
It’s hideous to run a dungeon 20 + times to get a armor set and a absolutely unneccesary grind.

There is much more that needs to be done, but you get the idea of how I think Anet has to handle it.

And if they want to promote F2P grinding, what they atm absolutely do, then at least let me do it alone.
Grinding is a boring task i at leats want to do for myself, crying in TS with my guildies about it while they do the same somewhere else.
I don’t wanna rush around in freaking zerg fests all day long.

It option one, the guild memory is, that we kept our mood up as guild while grinding alone which makes the guild a nice thing.
In the current zerg scenario, we can’t see each other anymore after all that zerging. And all what is left as guild memory, is that we zerged together all day long, not talking a word in TS but “argh, this is kitten”.

Also Anet, remove high value RNG’s. Gamers hate RNG’s, and customers hate RNG’s.
(a game needs RNG’s, but not ones that boost you up in months of work if you get lucky – but also ones that can leave you out getting nothing after grinding for months. Same with spending cash on lotto boxes. I know they bring money, thats why kittenty F2P asia grinder pump them out like crap – but is that what you want to be?)

TsukasaHiiragi.9730:

Seriously?

If you combined all the HP of those Griffs…. /mind blown

Well there we go. You are a Thief.
Pretty much the only class that can’t handle more than 1 “strong” mob at a time, except maybe if you play a “i have no skills so i spam D/D 3 all day long” build.

Better get used to being weak and not being able to handle content except with 1 or 2 no brainer builds, since.. well, let’s say Anet and the peeps don’t like Thieves.

Krathalos.3461:

…Dancing Dagger, for example, is just about entirely useless to use after the nerf…

…Arenanet won’t nerf the class into uselessness entirely. They’re better than that at balancing….

While your first statement is absolutely true, I’m so far not convinced about the second one, partially because statements like the first one are true.

Besides that, at OP, if you like the class and it’s gameplay, go for it.
If you don’t have as much fun playing other classes, then whats the point in doing so anyway.

It’s the same for me when i play most other professions, but mostly Mesmer and Warrior.

I do nearly the same damage i do with my Thief, just that I’m basically immortal and have to care about nothing.
It’s absolutely rediculous, and after playing those professions for quite some time (which is terrible, terrible boring since there is absolutely no challenge on anything with them) i ask myself how you can even die playing a Mesmer, or to a lesser extent Warrior, too.

Then i go back to my Thief and at first i simply die to everything, since i completely degenerated in skill from playing other classes, since you don’t have to care about positioning, timing skills, decision making, escape plans, picking targets, managing a ressource… nothing.
Just sitting around and pressing what’s off CD and remotely useful.
It’s a joke to play.

But at least i recognize that i would completely suck at playing these other classes in high level PvP.

Fazit: Everybody can pick up certain different classes and absolutely wreck with them in the lowest of the low PvP bracket.
And if you (can “effectively”) play Thief with 3 buttons, you definetly belong to the lowest of the low.

Alex Behemoth.4952:

The thief inflicts a lot of damage due probably because of his gear and is invisible 80% of the time. How do you kill him?

I’m locking him down in the 20 % when he’s is visible.
If the Thief does much dmg, it means he has around 12k HP and 2k Armor, which means he dies in around 4 seconds under direct attacks.

If i can’t do that, i will avoid/take away his access to stealth, therefore i will dodge obvious attacks like cloak and dagger, resulting in killing the exposed Thief.

Further, while the Thief is stealthed, i try to predict his actions, attacking him with non target skills (most common, even AoE’s which are basically guranteed to hit the Thief if you got half a brain to locate his general position).

Zgroza Czarnych.6190:

Asum.4960:

urdriel.8496:

Asum.4960:

In GW2 stealth is balanced around the very idea of FREQUENT combat stealth.

Yep, frequent, but now is something like 75% stealth 25% no…..

And your argument is..?

argument is ? Is not balanced ?

Thats a assertion. Not a argument.

/E:

I’ll give you a fundamental advice for intellectual discussions:

“Because of…”

You can’t honestly believe that if you say “this is OP”, i just say “OK, if you say so, it must be”.

urdriel.8496:

Asum.4960:

In GW2 stealth is balanced around the very idea of FREQUENT combat stealth.

Yep, frequent, but now is something like 75% stealth 25% no…..

And your argument is..?

KirinDave.6451:

Asum.4960:

KirinDave.6451:

Asum.4960:

You chased a roamer.
Problem detected.

Why?

Maybe they were siege-ing?

By chasing one guy for 6 minutes?

If that keeps them off the siege operators that are knocking down a wall, it’s a good use of time.

Still, this idea that it is a thief’s deity-given-right to be able to never be killed is sort of tedious for every other class to endure. Even supertank guardians and engineers (the ONE not broken wvw/pvp spec for engineer) are not as durable as a stealth thief because they have to endure hits, whereas the skilled thief really doesn’t.

They are not “durable” in any way. They just run away. And if you hit them, they are dead. If you can’t, then i guess the joke’s on you.

Now turn it around and try to build a Thief as tank, sitting on a PvP note, and then compare them to Guardians, Warriors, Elementalists, Engeneers, Necros and so on.

Who is suddenly OP now? And who is weak? (Exactly, that’s not how it works)

The only broken class in GW 2 is mesmer, where one skill can bypass for example the defensive of a whole keep, the walking time of a golem, the travel time between two notes, or making instant attacks of hundreds of players in one spot possible.

What does the Thief do again?
Running away well alone?

Ok.

//E:

Once i was defending a supply camp together with a guardian.
5 People ran up to us, and we prepared for battle.

I picked the most squishy target, and made myself ready to burst him down first with a backstab combo, therefore i stealthed.

What happened next is that i got bursted down instantly by random AoE (meant for the guardian).

After that i watched the guardian taking out 3 poeple in under 30 seconds while taking close to no damage (and if, it was healed up in about a second), leaving the other 2 running away in fear (actual fear, not the CC).

I wish i could trade my stealth for that actual survive ability (AND damage).

In GW2 stealth is balanced around the very idea of frequent in combat stealth.

..there’s nothing left to say, theres no argument, no nothing. It’s a simple fact.
How stealth works in WoW, Crysis, or some random IOS toilet game is completely irrelevant to stealth in GW2.

I will leave this discussion here, since i already got warned by a Moderator for trolling.
I guess ArenaNet wants to promote a different behavior in GW 2 than they did for 7 years in GW, which is reasonable from the point of view of actual trolls being a larger customer base than engaged theory crafters.

Well, good luck with that community then, and good luck with rivaling League of Legends in the category of worst game community on earth.

(And still, that WoW has a out of combat stealth mechanic isn’t a argument in any way that in combat stealth in GW2 is over powered. They still aren’t related in any way besides being both called stealth)

KirinDave.6451:

Asum.4960:

You chased a roamer.
Problem detected.

Why?

Maybe they were siege-ing?

By chasing one guy for 6 minutes?

You chased a roamer.
Problem detected.

Why?

What the hell does it matter how the stealth mechanics work in other games?
How does that even contribute to the discussion of stealth (actually not) interrupting abilities in GW 2?

Thats like stating a Spinfuser shot in Tribals does more damage than a MG shot in CoD, there fore Spinfusers are OP in Tribals, since they are both guns, right?

Mind. Blown.

So your skills have over 3 seconds cast time, so the Thief is stealthed again before they finish?

What needs a fix is that skills in fact get interrupted properly when a Thief stealthes.

It’s so annying to use pretty much my only defense as Thief, while Rangers just keep shooting at me, Elementalists still shock me, and Mesmers, well, still pink me to death.
Even more annoying, it even gives away my position, besides killing me on it’s own.

I’m stealthed, how do they still know where to shoot/beam at with their channeled attack while im invisible?
It doesn’t make sense, and since stealth doesn’t reduce dmg or anything, it takes away the whole effect of stealth, besides getting targetet by new attacks which need a target for 3 seconds.
You are still getting hit by skills casted at you before stealth, they still can see where you at (just fallow the beam/arrows, it’s pretty easy to see where a beam etc stops), and you still get hit by all non target skills.

So if anybody is around with a channeled attack, whats the point of even going into stealth?

Stealth needs to properly drop target and cancel abilities!

A Thief permanently stealthed isn’t doing anything, and a Thief getting revealed can be locked down.

Kaizer.7135:

Daggers with Sup Sig of Fire & Sup Sig of Bloodlust.

You realise that Sigils share CDs?