Guild Wars 2

If someone can kill you with one button it is not the button thet is the big problem it is you. Especially if the button is heartseeker.

I could understand if you complained about CnD or Assasin’s Signet or even Mug, but heartseekerof all things…

6k HS 3x which kind of player takes 3 obvious attacks like that to the face?

Here is the obvious answer: Someone who should die…

Did yo get outspammed on your AoE spam zerker ele? Cry me a river, then run back to your zerg, where you belong.

Once HS hits up to 5 targets in a 800 dianeter circle 12x from 1200 range for 5k+ without targeting anyone we can talk about OP. Once clusterbomb 1shots arrowcarts and the guys useing them we can talk about OP. Once thieves can provide their mightstacking to their group aswell we can talk about OP.

Offair.2563:

I have seen the future too, massive bearbow blobs.

No, that is the present, you need to ajust your scrying device, kid.

The future is life AoE life.drain/condition damage, Healing power + conditions with a focus on life- drain.

You will see Necro-stacking soon, mark my words.

Weakness is the condition version of protection, AoE weakness is the group support version of AoE protection, usually it is given to proffesions which have no access to protection (thieves for example).

This thread smells of warrior and guardian tears, I like that smell, it is the smell of people eating some of their own medicine.

Karolis.4261:

Master of Timespace.2548:

Short bow is for sissies, run both. Use d/p to gain almost permanent stealth, and then switch to d/d to deliver the usual mug combo.

Scholar runes, traits 30/30/0/0/10 or 30/30/0/10/0 depending on what you prefer. Utilities are assassins signet, shadow step, shadow refuge and basilisk venom.

It’s a cheap setup but you are a thief, right?

Emm, let me correct you. Shortbow AND D/P is for sissies.

Better a living Sissy indulging in the spoils of the trade than a dead hero. Hero is just a euphemism for idiot.

Amazing map design and incredible artwork, as always the game gets carried by the artwork.

The problem is that part of the map is usually empty because people are to scared to go there in small numbers and the zerg is more intrested in pvd.

This problem is not just confined to the ruins part of the map, most of the northern parts of the borderlands maps are usually empty, skrittcamp and centaur camp etc.

To fix that those parts of the map need to be changed to have a vital role.

I suggest:

Skritt and centaur patroles on the map 5-8 strong serving the team controlling the camp, the npcs need a power level comparable to the EoTM npcs, the patrols should be moving between camps and sentinels, every 15min the patrols mesmer npc portals the patrol to a random sentinel or camp to make the route less predictable.

Every ruin should get a supply generator like the EoTm ones (1 per ruin so a 3rd of a EoTM camp per ruin in supplies generated) those should generate supplies in the “spawn area”of the team controlling it. Every suppliy generator should get a guardian like the EoTM npcs.
The generator and the npc should give evnet credits and rewards like 1/2 of a regular supply camp when you successfully build your generator not when you defeat the npc and destroy the enemy generator.

And on a side note mesmer shatter burst is 3 buttons (less if you do not count the dodges)…

^ Told you they want you to stand there and take their 1 spam to the face, if you do not they get “frustrated”.

Calling PU cheese with the current state of warriors and to a lesser extend guardians makes people look stupid, not just a little stupid but really stupid.

Stealth and invisibility is the only way to deal with focus fire and PU is the only reliable way for a mesmer to get not AoE spammed to bits even while invisible because of the really “cheesy” stuff.

They hate it because it makes mesmers have a chance, the mighty warriors and guardians expect everyone to bend over and bow to their supremacy.

Oh, wvw, I thought you where talking spvp, ignore my 1st post then.

In wvw basically everything works, due to more possible ways of combining stats and due to consumables.

In wvw SB is mandatory atleast you need one to switch in as a offset.

For anything involving daggers get about 3 k attack then focus on crit chance.

To land a CnD on ranged proffesions simply press 5 then steal or inf signet, the teleport will make it land.

Remove aegis with dancing dagger or sb 1 on guardians before you attack, instantly remove the long burn, to land the mace crack use a teleport or HS AFTER he dodges, the stolen items are the key to easy wins make sure to use them, trait blind on stealth in shadow arts, this will blind on cnd and will make you able to counter his hard hitters with stealth (cnd).

Use a sb to start against the mm necro, poison and clusterbomb on the zoo then use cnd on the zoo when they get to low hp, keep chaining cnd on the zoo and take your time, throw in some attacks on the necro BS if possible.
This will take a while do not overextend, especially before DS just chain cnd and keep some pressure up, Throw i some BS on the necro now and then and wait for an opportunity,the stolen fear is the key if you time that well and make sure the minions are hit aswell you have a good oportunity to get him, repeat over and over…

Against warriors blind on cnd is the key, do not get hit by his burst ever, but against warriors with a decent build you will not win if they do not make serious mistakes, you will get a stalemte at best.

On topic: I do not think S/x works good with CS and 30 Trickery seems pretty mandatory especially with swords.

AA will beyour main damage anyway and since you will go into melee range poison on steal and weakness on poison in DA will drastically reduce the damage you take which will give youmore uptime for AA and a decent way to get healing reduction via poison.

You will probably need the extra healing and extra damage on mug, Steal daze cnd TS daze switch weapon PW will be your “nuke”, while you evande and AA the rest of the time.
S/P interupts to “peel” enemies off your teammates…

This is my “experimental” build, condition/support-point-fight thief (FUQ the meta).

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAoYVlUm6OXey9E+JFBXBn694rj1s6HoZ/hoC-ToAgyEMpYyxkhJJTWmGLsAZKC

D/D power/crit fails in spvp, you can not get the stat combinations it would need to work (you will either be to squish or do marginal damage), P/D power/crit is also very bad (P/x basically gets hardcountered by retaliation).

You either need sb avoidance or x/P control or S/D avoidance without any of those you are dead meat.

Thieves can not go toe to toe with any other “melee” class, you need the avoidance your problem is basically summed up in dropping sb for P/D.

If the heartseeker lands (you see this since you take damage when he enters stealth) dodge at 90° to where he came at you from then jump turn to face your old position and back off slowly, he then has the choice to “facestab” you and do less damage or drop out of stealth.

If the heartseeker does not land (you see this since you not take damage when he enters stealth) back of slowly while counting to 2 on 3 either use block or dodge at 90° and turn to face the old position, he should come out of stealth at that point.

If in either case he stays in stealth he has either used utlities or is wasting initiative on more BP-HScombos, either way keep moving and turning.

If at any time you know for sure he is close drop the bubble and onleash aoe, you can hit him even if you do not see him, thieves have no reliable access to stability other than daggerstorm, he will eat all your aoe damage inside the bubble, stealth will not help one bit.

My 2c

30 trickery is way better that 30 crit strikes, trait steal at mastery and grand mastery, bountyful theft and slight of hand it makes for strong boon removal and a guaranteed and next to uncounerable ranged interrupt.

The daze will also let you land PW more often. With those 2 traits you will always steal stability and get the daze.

Passive initiative regeneration has been increased you can skip all initiative regeneration traits now if you are not a spammer and understand how to pool your initiative.

Generally the crit-trait line is not really good for swords, the crit chance and crit damage from the gear is enough, you should do better with the increased utility gained in other trait lines.

1st point get a decent stunbreaker on your utility bar either roll for initiative or shadowstep.

2nd trait condition removal in stealth (you really need that)

3rd drop P/P get a bow

4th trait Mug (you want the extra healing on steal)

5th use carrion gear and focusing crystals, ignore crit chance

6th trait blind on stealth for cnd

7th either use runes of speed or lyssa runes or a pure condition rune set

8th put caltrops on your utility bar

Your main source of damage needs to be conditions with a build like that use direct damage only to finish low hp targets, you will need to play the “attrition game” you win if you survive and annoy your enemy.

All in all that kind ofbuild is sub par since other proffessions are way better at that kind of playstyle, that should not deter you however if you like that kind of playstyle, just be aware that you are in for some uphill battles.

(edit) I am talking wvw here…

(2nd edit) drop the might on kill sigils, get gain condition damage stacks on kill sigils instead.

Do not bother with 1v1 against warriors. You will never kill a warrior who does not screw up big time and uses a decent build 1v1 as a thief, it will end in a stalemate at best.

Same goes for engineers.

There is nothing you can do about it move along.

Pirlipat.2479:

Bazzoong.7145:

Evon eats babies, it is an established fact…

Lies , why didn’t he eat Taimi then. -.-

He tried, I barely stopped him in time, ever since then the poor lass is hiding from the monster in the mists to affraid to tell anyone what happened…

Stealth as a Boon would make mesmers hard counter stealth with nullfield and force even more S/P in spvp, and thanks to the copying of Boons mesmers have a thief mesmer team could get insane uptimes of stealth, have fun finding the tief mesmer team in sm castle….
I do not think you want that.

Reveald being a cleansable condition is not a good idea because of chainable stealth combos you would get even more of open from stealth and repeat combos than now.

Black Powder>HS>BS>cleanse>repeat or CnD>BS>cleanse>repeat (imagine a guardian doing the cleanse for you…)

^Yes, Mug will be at the approx. same numbers as uperior Sigil of Air that is my intention with Mug damage.

Yes, there is already vunerabilty in the same trait line as mug, that is why I put it on mug aswell also vunerability profits heavily from the increased condition duration in thet trait line , my intention is to make the traits more consistent and profit from investing in the trait line. You would be able to get more vunerability for longer periods by investing further in the line, with my mug 5 points 10 points and 15 points would work together and synergise more. You could get nice stacks of vunerability even without crit, but the option for even more with crit woukd still exist.

The point is if you evade (dodge, Death Blossom…) you are not doing damage you are losing uptime, since thieves are so squish now we have no choice but to eveade which basically removes us from the fight. In group fights (especially spvp) we still will take loads of “trash damage” even if we spam evades to avoid the hard hitting stuff since everything is concantrated on a small area. We will die by pure accident from aoe even if we avoid all the hard hits. Protection would allow D/D to stay in the fight for a bit same goes for S/D. Just look at the S/D playstyle now you port and hit once or twice then port out again if you do not you will die. Mindless AoEspam is enough to drive you away, often the thief is not even targeted, some reliable protection uptime would surely help here. Especially D/D since you can not port out as easily as with S/D.

Paulo.8459:

I don’t know where you get your numbers from, but in full ascended berserker gear and 30 in critical strikes, my average backstabs are ~4k.

D/D signet build is a one trick pony, i really don’t care for it. You see nice numbers once, and that was it.

If you see a thief CnD, simply dodge, even if the thief is <900 away. It requires a little practice, but it is possible if you pay attention. Mug+CnD+backstab is often coupled with basilisk venom to make it even more obvious.

Weather the frontloaded damage is fine or not may be a matter of opinion. I think it is fine.
Also you should consider that mug is not only used in a backstab build. Sword builds will have almost no benefit from that short vulnerability, and even if used in a backstab build, you’d be required to use mug only in combination with backstab, otherwise it may be wasted.

4K BS with ascended zerker and 30 crit strikes? My BS hits 6k average with half zerker and 0 crit strikes.

Swords will profit the most from vunerabilty…

CnD can be used from range with teleports in combination with mug this offers to much frontloaded damage from range if CnD crits especially since this sets up BS for D/D, contrary to the most D/D players I think that it does not take much effort to land the 1st and 2nd CnD, basically with Mug CnD you can get 8-10k damage from range with the threat of a backstab following for 9k+. I do belive that BS should do that kind of damage it should be the most feared attack in the game a stealthed thief should be a threat to anyone, however the initiate combo hits to hard for the effort it takes, my argument is to increase the setup time for the burst, but cover part of that time with damage reduction.
The combo ofMug CnD BS will still hit for 15k+ on signet builds, Mug CnD with my suggestion will still hit 5k+ and you will beable to follow up on that due tot he protection.

And just as a sidenote I buffed Mug due to the vunerability on it, this makes up for the reduced BASE DAMAGE and makes it desirable for more builds.

Evon eats babies, it is an established fact, he will just use the attack to revel in this bad habbit…

Scarlet does not know what she is doing, I trust the mother tree on that, Scarlet did not see what she thinks she saw when she was inside that box.

Everything she does she does for the wrong reasons…

^I really do not understand why you are so worried about P/D condi bunker thieves, other classes can have that, if someone wants it on a thief why the hell not?

S/D main damage source is AA cleave hits, most S/D builds will not provide enough crit chance to make CnD crits a reliable way of damage dealing, protection will get you more AA because it gives you more uptime, 2345 are used mainly for the utility on S/D anyway.

Please refrain from derailing the thread I really would like to discuss this, please leave offhand pistol discussion for other theads aswell as traits you consider bad or broken.

Thanks, and keep the posts comming. I apprechiate the overall civil tone of the posts, only 2 got deleted by the mods…

^I put the protection on offhand dagger to increase the defensive options for that weapon choice. Basically offhand dagger lacks defense in my opinion, offhand pistol has blinds and an interrupt, shortbow has cheap evades and weakness combo.

I want to make offhand dagger better without playing the “do even more damage card”.
I aim at S/D and P/D here aswell not just D/D, protection would help a lot, S/D would get some defense and time before you have to use infiltrators return, P/D can use the boost aswell to make “bunkering” an option (other proffesions can do it why not thieves?).
And if it comes to D/D protection might actually make this weaponset usable in spvp since you will no longer get “accidentally killed by AoE” even if you down someone on the point.

FLiP.7680:

Protection on CnD? Yeah, that would be awesome for P/D condi thieves

But no, seriously, this will break D/D builds.

One point is to make CnD useful for non-power/crit builds not just P/D also S/D would profit.

D/D would not be broken the damage will just be moved a bit, even the one-shot signet build will still work as it does now since that one is overkill anyway, if you eat the full Mug CnD BS combo with my suggestion in wvw you`d still be KITTENED (yeah I typed that out).

evilapprentice.6379:

Your suggestion isn’t taking PvP into account – I can tell you’re basing this suggestion on your WvW experience because you claim CnD can hit for 3.5k non-crit.

CnD does 33% less damage in sPvP – removing it’s ability to crit (which limits more than just damage, mind you – think of all the traits/runes that rely on crits) and having it still cost 6 init would be insane – 3s of protection would be nice, but not really worth it, since it’s insanely easy to guess where a D/D thief who just used CnD might be moving to.

Very good point (forgot about that), the simple answer is to remove the spvp “special rule”, this would make everything more consistent. That is the stated design goal anyway…

Cyricus.2981:

CnD is already easy to counter with a dodge or block ability, as it has a cast time, even when using mug. In fact, the bursty nature of this is about the only reason to use D/D over D/P, which is superior in almost every way.

You would not lose the “bursty” nature of D/D, since a succesful backstab would (almost) make up for the loss on Mug CnD due to the vunerability stacks.

I addition you would gain some sustain by successful CnD.

The amount crit damage will be reduced has next to no impact on my suggestion. Even with lower crit damage Mug + CnD hits to hard if CnD crits on a few builds while it offers nothing to the majority of builds.
(especially CnD crits to hard, 3.5k non crits on CnD happen a lot this still hurts and with my suggestion to mug those will hurt even more only the insane spike would be removed while you get protection to follow up with more damage)

Proposed Changes:

Mug: Base damage reduced by 50%, the skill now applies 10 stacks of vunerability for 5 sec.

Cloak and Dagger: This wapon skill can no longer be a critical hit. CnD applies 3 sec protection on the thief if it hits.

Reasoning:

The combination of both skills provides to much frontloaded damage on certain power/crit builds since this is paired with the teleport on steal the combo is way to powerful on those builds as it is now. At the same time both skills offer next to nothing outside that burst combo and promote a “one trick pony playstile” (especially on D/D).
I belive the changes I suggested would give more sustain in open combat without totally changing the playstyle, the focus would still be on rather short burst sequences, but the burst would be spread out over a few seconds which would be covered by the protection instead of being on a 2 button combo.
The protection would also promote not to “camp in stealth” but to quickly re-engage more often.

Please comment…

I would use this…

Every now and then…

I see to posibilities why this happened:

1) Terrain bugs, on uneven terrain leap and teleport skills can miss due to pathing issues, this is especially problematic on stairs.

2) Lag issues, lag can cause “displacement” effects where yourclient and the server use different information as to where the players are, since it is neccesary that the server will overrule the client this can make yor skills miss. (This also opens ways for exploits like the “lag switch”.)

I would like to suggest the implementation of a F2 skill for thieves that would allow us to drop the stolen item in the F1 slot without useing it, this should not influece the recharge of steal.

I suggest this for quality of life reasons mainly.

For example if you carry a stolen item that is not useable in under water combat your steal will be locked until you leave the water and use the item, you can not clear the F1 slot so your class mechanic is completly locked in that case.

Often you carry a stolen item with you from the last combat but at the start of the next fight the use of that item would be not helpful yet being able to steal would help, here being able to drop the item would be really nice.

Also in the open world where the item you get has a certain “randomness” getting rid of the ones that you do not want to use would make life better.

“Stolen items are useless in group play.”

HAHAHA!

Idiots! (dear mods this is an observation not an insult)

Bring aistrikes, kodan hamer and light sprite transformation from EoTM to the regular maps…

Anything you suggest is a buff to the zerg and manmoding. I am against any of it, if at all siege weapons need to be buffed, to upgrade and siege up a tower people spend a lot of gold and time, it should take an atleast equal amount of time and gold to take that tower, it is unfair that the dedicated efforts of one group over 30 min or so to upgrade and prepare a tower should be negated in 3-5 min by a ram and a couple of people stacking on the ram to split incoming damage.

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

I’ve gotta agree with some of the comments here. Not only thieves can stealth-spike and stability negates interrupting your opponents finisher as well.
Still… Stealth spiking is pretty B.S.

And although I’m sure I’ll get sandblasted for my QQing about it… I’m going to anyway.
I don’t care if you’re squishy… I’m a Ranger and I win fights unstealthed and without blind spams all the time. If I can do it you can too. On top of that, it’s not even the stealth that irritates me… It’s that when a thief stealths you know they’re going to be visible again with just about full health <__<.

You are wining fights on a ranger? Against equally geared opponents? In which alternate reality are you lining good sir? Honestly if you win more than you lose as a ranger I am VERY impressed. Blind “spam” is the thief version of protection or aegis “spam” and the thief version of stability, the difference being it works only for one target. Usually the reason why thieves come back from stealth with full health is not the in stealth regeneration but the thief useing her healingskill in stealth, many of us “protect” the use of healing with stealth. This is done for two reasons: It is harder to interruptthe healing and your opponent does not know you used your healing skill, which makes you look stronger than you actually are.

Stealth or invisibility does not prevent interrupts, not even the ones used by the downed player.

I wonder why this causes so much grief and why mesmer or engineer stealth stomps are not even mentioned.

Besides there are lots of those kind of mechanics in the game, mistform stomp, deathshroud stomp, mistform ressurection….

I really do not understand why of all things thieves can do this is supposed to be a problem.

I can understand if people complain about the damage (especially on sword 1), though. But even there people usually complain about the wrong skills (like backstab while the real problem is mug and CnD).

The best post with suggestions to thief changes to date, the OP hits spot on, I hope the developers take a look at this.

A VERY good overall approach. Especially remakable for not being a disguised S/x spvp buff wish list.

I really like the idea of thieves becoming the “anti-boon” class by controlling stability!

Taimi is after Scarlet’s tech, she wants the her knowlege about fusing living organisms with magitech devices. Why? Because the the kid wants run with the other kids.

Time for Brahm to do something really heroic…

You got it all wrong. The other maps need to be “buffed” to the level of EoTM, this map is awesome, finally a dangerous enviroment, finally NPC who are not just fodder for easy “buff stacks”, finally ASYMETRIC combat, finally buffs and special abilities that have an impact on the gameplay and are not just boring stat boni.
Finally death means something since it is way harder to run back from your spawn point.
As to the “zerg” once people realise that the towers on this map can be held by few against many due to their layout the whole thing will change, siege up a tower and hold it with about 10 vs 30 try it due to their architecture this is possible, try it.

The only bad thing about this map is that you can not enter the same overflow as a group.

Also an option to join the previos map if you dc would be nice.

RoyalPredator.9163:

It is easy to be a big boy when being OP
Will laugh mad and long when Stealth gets a nerf,

What’s going to happen then is the same as what happened everytime they changed the class: I will walk away laughing from your corpse….

Battle without honor and humanity!

The marionette was built by steam creatures in the “steam universe” behind the “steam portals”, Scarlett reprogrammed them useing a “steam-watchwork virus” and now they serve her.

4 parts to the arc: 4 secret hideouts 3 at the order’s bases one in LA, Scarlett is going to try and kill something big, probably Primordius who is probably in the region known as Deldrimor Front, she is combining different schools of magic and engineering to do it (remember her synergetics thesis was not accepted) meaning unlimitid access to magic for mortals (some guy way back had a quite similar idea…) that`s what she was going for in the fractal.

She is the “next Traherene” I`d guess, just her mind got a tiny bit addled along the way.

I really should not post, but hell….

I start wondering why people even post in the stack more hammer train hero threads….

(insert radom paragraph about how good I am here and how clueless everyone else is)

The hammer/melee trains effectively cancel eachother out, usually the 1st deaths occur at the periphery (you definetly should know that) the most decisive factor is positioning and the ability to create a “local imbalance” you will never do that in the center if the other guys do not make a serious mistake. Just think about where you usually are when you die. (yes I am talking to you)

But you know it all I guess…

Some stuff in this game is way under rated, just because the “hammer and guardian train” is the easiest way to win does not mean everything in the game needs to serve that “cheese” there definately are other options just takes some imagination.

@BlackDevil, you can build mesmers for support aswell especially for guild zergs (which is what I guess you are aiming at).

Check out the GvG build this guy shows in this vid (I know it needs to be done a bit different now but the basics are the same). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDXWRSKlQec

Mesmers offer a lot of different play styles way more then most other classes and are probably the most balanced of all proffesions in that you have very good builds for a lot of different “roles”.

On your other statement AoE skills are not suppoesd to be used for focus fire, period, they will allways “spread unreliably” if they would not there would be no point in single target attacks.

And on the forum warrior part: I will make a point in answering BS in kind.

Won a 2v5 with mesmer and thief in an enemy controled garrison to day after the blob left, the incoming reinforcements then got kited for abot 3 min until the buff timed out then the mesmer ported our zerg in.

Mesmers like thieves are TOOTAAALLY usless in wvw and need serious buffs.

And to the genius who asked for aoe damage on GS 1, it already does aoe damage everyone who stands in the purple beam gets hit so if you target someone in row three the guys in row one and two also get hit, clueless is clueless, use your brain even while spamming 1 it helps a lot.

^Because Shadow Refuge is the best group utility thieves have and slow thieves are dead thieves.

I agree regarding pre-nerf Shadow Trap had to be on your utility bar but that basically was your 2nd stunbreaker/get out of jail for free card.

P.S:: There are not fair fights, fighting is the essence of unfairness, someone who asks you to fight fair is just trying to get an unfair advantage over you by limiting your options.

Can we have one game that does not copy WoW, please just this one game…

Thanks A-net if it does not lag your game is pretty awesome as it is.