If they removed the massive amount of Braindead Aoe cc then they could tone back on the Massive amounts of Stability and pvp would be a lot better for it.
Backstab is considered ineffective/wasteful for the sole purpose that too much power creep has been put into the game to the point where thief’s AA chains weren’t good enough to justify it as a DPS class in raids, despite even before HoT having the best single-target DPS in the game (aside from eles/exploiting the targeting bug on Ice bow/FGS/MS), and despite the thief’s high damage, it couldn’t kill the new professions even if using all of its initiative running full glass. So they fixed two problems with one “solution.”
This is why I fundamentally disagree with giving the thief strictly better options than it has now and claim that the place to start is by nerfing other professions, because power creep has invalidated most of the thief’s balance state to begin with, and we’ve always been behind this curve because there are blatant balance concerns with buffing various aspects of the thief.
I do agree with you there, I just doubt Anet Devs will remove the power creep from other classes, so that’s why I proposed the ideas I have, if they did dial back all the elite specs then yes with a few tweaks Thieves would be at a good point mainly the only thing I would ask for is having a more reliable stealth access either by as you suggested toning back some of the reveal spam and , block/invulns being thrown around.
The problem is that thieves have to waste a lot more resources than any other class to get into stealth, which will majority of the time not even work.
That’s kind of the point though and why I think an initiative cost would be needed on a stealth ability that was part of the class mechanics.
To enter stealth without spending initative, you have to invest in Shadow Arts to get stealth on steal or choose specific utility slots.
Entering stealth on demand with D/P consumes initiative and means you have less of an initative pool to use in a burst unless you are willing to wait to replenish the lost initiative.
So with that in mind, with the new ability and Shadow Arts for steal, you can use steal to enter stealth, have a full bar of initiative and all utility slots to devote to executing a burst combo, then use the new ability to retreat back into stealth defensively.
It would make D/P even stronger, because it still has on demand stealth access a thief can use to stealth abuse while waiting for steal and the new ability to cycle. Of course, they can use this same currently with cycling steal and blinding powder, but the key difference is you have to take blinding powder over a signet or physical skill that would increase the damage of your burst.
A stealth class mechanic that costs initative would just make the other weapon sets stronger, because it would be giving access to the biggest tactical advantage that D/P has.
But it’s ok for another class to have access to on demand stealth that provides damage as well as a shorter Cd than the closest equivalent Thief skill Blinding powder?
That class being one that is limited to cooldowns, doesn’t pool a resource it can use to do heavy burst and doesn’t have an alternative set of abilities that is enabled by entering stealth?
Then, yeah.
Not saying that mesmers don’t have balance issues or there isn’t some degree of offensive cheese associated with their stealth like building up clones without breaking stealth, but it’s primarily a defensive tool for them, not an offensive one like it is for us.
You can’t just say “Well, they have X, so therefore, it’s totally fine for us to have X, because we’re thieves and we should have it based on this idea of what thieves should or should not have”
Giving us an additional ability, seperate from weapon skills, utilities and traits that gave on demand stealth with no initative cost has a lot of impact on us.
One thing I find wrong with this currently is that Thieves get 1 skill per weapon set that is available in stealth, not a whole new set of skills, and currently the best skill in stealth BA is weaker than the Thieves AA so there is almost no point in using it with the effort needed to set it up, through positioning. Granted if they fixed the issues with thief stealth and provided a reliable access to it say like your suggestion an f3 that requires ini use then yes it would be fine but as of currently it’s counterproductive to enter stealth as a thief in combat to use it offensively since most time you will inflict self reveal while attempting to enter stealth.
Then shortbow becomes useless and the thief gets access to a ton of extra mobility.
In essence, it’s just straight power creep for the profession as a whole.
If stealth is given on F3, then it invalidates the use of smoke fields/CnD/many utility skills with again what is unnecessary power creep.
Just because the class description mentions something doesn’t mean that the entire class should be based around it. By sheer desriptions alone, eles should have the highest damage per hit in the game, warriors should be the most mobile (not thieves), guardians should be pure tank and support only, and rangers should feature archer-only gameplay with extensive adaptation (not featured in the class).
Not to mention the thief description doesn’t even mention initiative or not having cooldowns, which is one of the most significant aspects of the profession.
The problem is that thieves have to waste a lot more resources than any other class to get into stealth, which will majority of the time not even work. If opponent positions in Thieves Combo field, CnD needs to hit for it to stealth you, which is negated by all of the blocks, invulns and evades in game.
Yet Mesmer has the Prestige which gives 3 sec stealth, burning and blind on 30 sekittenraited CD doesn’t require the Mesmer to hit the target to enter stealth, compared to Blinding Powder which gives 3 sec stealth, blind and is on 40 sec. Cd and takes up a utility slot.
It’s not power creep it would be normalizing gameplay, again every other class with stealth access doesn’t have a full trait line alley depended on stealth they have 1 -2 traits max that use it and even then those traits are better than the equivalent Thief traits. I.e. Prismatic Understanding 50% longer duration and random Boon vs Meld with Shadows 1 sec duration increase.
and if you are worried about invalidating CnD then suggest remove the on hit part for CnD to provide stealth.
Just some food for thought. And recap
When a class is supposed to utilize stealth more than others yet is penalized more so than others to even try to enter stealth i.e.
Have to waste more resources, to include Initiative(effectively putting other skills on Cd),
Relying solely on combo fields which will more often than not cause self inflicted reveal if in combat even if you aren’t trying to attack opponent due enemy Ai, destroy able environmental ,
self inflicted reveal if you even step outside of SR, not even counting when knocked out of the small Aoe stealth field, or from the reveal spam brought on by other classes
having to rely on a skill actually hitting target to enter stealth,
there in lies the problem.
That doesn’t mean the mesmer has better stealthing abilities. More reliable maybe, but better? That’s not arguable, considering all of them have casting times and very long cooldowns with the same base duration. To gain a lot of stealth uptime on a mesmer, you need to run two trait lines, one specific weapon set, a full bar of utilities oriented explicitly for stealth, and an elite explicitly for stealth. Frankly, if a stealth-based mesmer gets hit by reveal, they’re worse off than any typical thief. I’m not justifying the amount of reveal other professions are capable of putting out, or the amount of blocks and invulns (I think both of these are way overdone at the moment), but your claims are strictly inaccurate and are a poor basis for comparison.
The mesmer has strictly less access to stealth. The thief can maintain it permanently, meaning that overall the thief’s access is objectively better, even if “harder” to gain access to.
The thief is a “master” of stealth because of the rate at which it can regain it, because with DD, now every single weapon set the thief has possesses the ability to acquire stealth, and can do so for an extended period of time. You’re comparing weapon skills with cast times to utilities which don’t have any. Your basis for comparison is relatively poor and is examining these abilities in a Vacuum.
The main Weapon skill I mentioned that had any cast times were the Thief skills Bp 1/2 sec., HS 3/4 sec., now vault is near instant but not quiet and does Aoe damage, both of which will fail horribly if you cause damage to anything nearby while attempting, and since you know The Prestige is instant cast and has a much lower CD than the only equivalent skill thieves have without damage attached to it, I don’t know how that statement was going to help you.
Maintaining stealth outside of combat indefinitely is great and all but that doesn’t help or do anything in sPvP since you have to dump every resource and Cd you have to do so.
Being the masters of stealth means they should reliably be able to enter stealth which they cannot really do in combat when it actually matters, since all but 2 ways have a huge chance to cause self inflicted reveal in the act of trying to enter stealth.
The problem is that thieves have to waste a lot more resources than any other class to get into stealth, which will majority of the time not even work.
That’s kind of the point though and why I think an initiative cost would be needed on a stealth ability that was part of the class mechanics.
To enter stealth without spending initative, you have to invest in Shadow Arts to get stealth on steal or choose specific utility slots.
Entering stealth on demand with D/P consumes initiative and means you have less of an initative pool to use in a burst unless you are willing to wait to replenish the lost initiative.
So with that in mind, with the new ability and Shadow Arts for steal, you can use steal to enter stealth, have a full bar of initiative and all utility slots to devote to executing a burst combo, then use the new ability to retreat back into stealth defensively.
It would make D/P even stronger, because it still has on demand stealth access a thief can use to stealth abuse while waiting for steal and the new ability to cycle. Of course, they can use this same currently with cycling steal and blinding powder, but the key difference is you have to take blinding powder over a signet or physical skill that would increase the damage of your burst.
A stealth class mechanic that costs initative would just make the other weapon sets stronger, because it would be giving access to the biggest tactical advantage that D/P has.
But it’s ok for another class to have access to on demand stealth that provides damage as well as a shorter Cd than the closest equivalent Thief skill Blinding powder? Which is inherently better than Thieves access from weapon skills, CnD needs to land in order to grant stealth, BP+HS both have after casts and animations that lock Thief in frames for it to grant stealth, not completely on demand, need to ensure there are no Ai or Destroyable environment nearby so you do not cause Self Reveal.
Now having an ini cost would be fine. but to enter stealth as a Thief with a high possibility of it failing, you need to waste 9 ini, which is either 75% or 60% of your ini pool. Which also makes the majority of your skills unusable, especially if trying to disengage you will not be able to swap and IA away in stealth.
Hidden Thief does help but even then you are taking a lack luster trait line due to the unreliable stealth access for thieves. Just for that one trait.
Infiltrators arrow needs LOS otherwise it won’t work yes you can ground target ledges and bridges to port not but LoS is needed can’t go through walls.
That’s not correct. You can teleport through walls (0:37) and roof (0:42) in Khylo.
I knew about the roof since it’s similar construction as bridges and such but never knew about that wall. But again that’s a ground targeted ability. Unlike Phase retreat, steal, JI and such, so with that being the case any Mesmer, Ele, Thief, and possibly Necro( will test it out with the wurm to see if it will) can port into that wall, but most walls don’t allow that since they are not Destroyable terrain like Khylo is. So physics don’t work as intended on that one map.
you said 30 sec, didnt you? So as far as the filter is concerned you said the c-word. ^^ I love it. Recently got a kittenorted kittened. Its a little oversensitive.
Yeah I said 30 Sec. Bahaha this censor really does make some laughs.
Sorry, I gotta ask: what was ‘sekittenraited’ supposed to be?
I looked at it in editor it said 30 second un-traited, idk why they censored it.
(edited by BlaqueFyre.5678)
Then shortbow becomes useless and the thief gets access to a ton of extra mobility.
In essence, it’s just straight power creep for the profession as a whole.
If stealth is given on F3, then it invalidates the use of smoke fields/CnD/many utility skills with again what is unnecessary power creep.
Just because the class description mentions something doesn’t mean that the entire class should be based around it. By sheer desriptions alone, eles should have the highest damage per hit in the game, warriors should be the most mobile (not thieves), guardians should be pure tank and support only, and rangers should feature archer-only gameplay with extensive adaptation (not featured in the class).
Not to mention the thief description doesn’t even mention initiative or not having cooldowns, which is one of the most significant aspects of the profession.
The problem is that thieves have to waste a lot more resources than any other class to get into stealth, which will majority of the time not even work. If opponent positions in Thieves Combo field, CnD needs to hit for it to stealth you, which is negated by all of the blocks, invulns and evades in game.
Yet Mesmer has the Prestige which gives 3 sec stealth, burning and blind on 30 sekittenraited CD doesn’t require the Mesmer to hit the target to enter stealth, compared to Blinding Powder which gives 3 sec stealth, blind and is on 40 sec. Cd and takes up a utility slot.
It’s not power creep it would be normalizing gameplay, again every other class with stealth access doesn’t have a full trait line alley depended on stealth they have 1 -2 traits max that use it and even then those traits are better than the equivalent Thief traits. I.e. Prismatic Understanding 50% longer duration and random Boon vs Meld with Shadows 1 sec duration increase.
and if you are worried about invalidating CnD then suggest remove the on hit part for CnD to provide stealth.
Just some food for thought. And recap
When a class is supposed to utilize stealth more than others yet is penalized more so than others to even try to enter stealth i.e.
Have to waste more resources, to include Initiative(effectively putting other skills on Cd),
Relying solely on combo fields which will more often than not cause self inflicted reveal if in combat even if you aren’t trying to attack opponent due enemy Ai, destroy able environmental ,
self inflicted reveal if you even step outside of SR, not even counting when knocked out of the small Aoe stealth field, or from the reveal spam brought on by other classes
having to rely on a skill actually hitting target to enter stealth,
there in lies the problem.
(edited by BlaqueFyre.5678)
Even with shadowstep etc you need to physically SEE where you’re going, not just target someone and hit the key.
That’s not true. Steal works through walls with only a target. Infiltrator’s Arrow works through walls and doesn’t need a target.
Many other teleport skills (Judge’s Intervention, Lightning Flash, Phase Retreat … ) work through walls, some even don’t need a target.
Infiltrators arrow needs LOS otherwise it won’t work yes you can ground target ledges and bridges to port not but LoS is needed can’t go through walls.
Thieves are not masters of stealth, they’re masters of stealing.
Anet begs to differ direct quote of Thief profession description. Seeing how they are experts of Stealth and Suprise not stealing .
“Experts at stealth and surprise, thieves can move through the shadows, vanish into thin air, or steal items from their opponents and use them as weapons. Thieves practice an agile, acrobatic fighting style, which can make them very hard to hit.”
If all it gives is stealth it should be on lower Cd, around 25 secs. Since there are skills that provide stealth damage and blind on 30 Sec CD tied to a weapon aka The Prestige
I made it easy. In detail it is more difficult over all the classes. Revenant is one of many many problems at the moment. When it comes to condition classes there are more classes that can perform extrem well until one point. they meet a Necro/Reaper. Thanks to all the Condi Transfer Necro is not only a good condi build, he keeps alot of condi builds out of the meta or in other words. they are not viable because necro is maybe the most played class. Burn Guard, Condi Warri or even a Condi Engi cant be played to a high lvl thanks to Necro. Mesmer is a Condi Build and can be played extrem well at the moment. But he has to take defensiv traitlines with high condi cleanse to be viable. As Warrior you can have alot of resistance. But, yeah, Boonstripping is a thing.
Like i said. Im not one of these guys that say Rev is fine. It isnt. But he has one strong Point on the Power Build. He is able to kill other Power Builds but not Condi Builds. If we bring him to a Point were he is weak against Condis and only “ok” against power, he will turn out to be useless.
Thats why i only say we have to be extrem carefull with this class or we will have Warrior 2.0.
Ok I can see the point you were making, but if they brought all Elite specs down in terms of power. That does not excuse the fact that currently Revs have all the benefits of classes like Thieves in terms of Mobility with burst similar to DH and with high sustain, if they removed the sustain they would be fine and share the same roles as thieves if they nerfed the mobility they would share same role as DH and Scrapper. But with them allowing them to do extremely well in all 3 departments is where they have a problem. Hopefully they tone Down all Elites this “balance” patch which is highly unlikely, they would be able to bring the Rev in line.
And about the Presicion Strike it has a lot of issues that need addressing I.e. Find stealthed targets, exceeding skill supposed range limit and ignoring LoS, on top of the amount of damage it has with such a short CD and resource cost.
I would love to see a PvP an d PvE split. That is what i pray for since i started playing this game.
Look at Revenant. In special here the Power Build. This build cant do kitten against conditions and has all tools he need to beat other Power Specs. Warrior can pull out some nice CC chains, Revenant can easy get away thx to Shiro. No class was able to chase a Thief. Revenant got a Port on 5 Sec CD. At the start there was no CD.
Dragonhunter can burst you down. Revenant has a Heal (Glint) that negates that. Power Shatter Mesmer can burst you down. Revenant has Retribution Trait Line so when he drops to 50% he negates most of the damage. Also Revenant got Staff to Block and Evade even more attacks. But if a Rev gets hit from a Condi Spec he will die and cant do anything against it.
On the Other Hand a Condi Rev has great tools against other condi Specs. Not as strong then it was before the nerfs. but still solid. And a condi Rev can be spiked down.
The design is strange in many points. But this is what a Rev is. Hammer Range etc…
I would like to see some adjustments to Revenants. But this has to be done extremly carefull. Revenant could become useless with the wrong adjustments in an instant.
Tbh. ANet has alot to do. So many classes are garbage or totaly op.
From what you are claiming says that revs need to be toned down/nerfed if they are shutting down all power based builds, and dominating the roles of 3 separate classes, they have higher damage than thieves with equivalent mobility, they have high sustain more so than Guardian/DH, and they have high CC uptime while providing group support on top of all of that. Yes power revs are weak to Condi but that means only 2 classes actually have a chance to beat them without having to be at a higher skill level being Reaper and Condi Mesmer. And then they have the choice to spec Condi which covers their Condi weakness but still makes them viable with the current meta.
Hmm. You do have a point…sort of.
But thieves are not per se the ‘masters of stealth’
If you wish to play stealth you should have access, and you do. Using initiative for it seems much healthier than any cooldown.
Stealth itself should be more viable for us. Stealth access is ok.
Yes and no, here is the profession description.
“Experts at stealth and surprise, thieves can move through the shadows, vanish into thin air”
The Devs say we are supposedly experts at stealth, have a trait line dedicated to stealth, yet have the worst skills for applying stealth, and one of the main ones virtually roots is in a tiny area and applies self reveal if you step out of it. All the while 2 other classes have easier access to stealth and better stealth skills, due to majority of ways Thieves access stealth they will most likely end up causing reveal on themselves due to having to use combo fields to gain stealth.
Stealth is not a Thief only mechanic true, but with so many resources that are dedicated to it we have the hardest time accessing it reliably if in fights which the shadow arts line would want to make use of reliable stealth access, outside of combat yes thieves have access to stealth if you blow all resources to keep it up which doesn’t help anyone in the long run. I would say having a 3 or 4 sec stealth on an f3 with a 25 sec CD would not hurt the game in any sense and help the thief feel less clunky.
The counter is any competent Player that can time Interrupts and keep up Pressure, they do negligible Damage and CC, so you won’t have to worry about them killing you unless they are better players than you are, pretty much anyone can counter them even Thieves played properly, you just won’t be able to burst them down in 2-4 secs
But really they are a class that don’t have a hard counter, all they are able to do is heal themselves and allies while doing almost no damage. All you have to do is pressure through their sustain and they break.
Ok, thank you all for the clarification.
Does Unranked affect MMR? I believe it doesn’t but not sure.
To add on to Cyninja’s post, if you ever acquire ascended and they release new stats like they have been it becomes a lot cheaper to acquire those stats with ascended gear by converting stats, yes the initial investments are high. Also it allows people to min max even more especially if they have the outrageous amount of gold to make Omni infusions, but as he stated outside of this there is no huge advantage, for the armor, now for weapons and trinkets there’s a decent amount of gain for stats
Yeah dude I run fractals allot and bring in people with no ar for quite a few 50s and 60s they do just fine.
I’ve been doing fractals since they’ve released and I was a level 34 player.
I do fractals high levels on my Alts who have no ar and 1-2 pieces of ascended gear. No armor. In fact my Mesmer runs rare gear.
If you really think fractals are a mess now you have no idea what you are saying.
I think that you need to look over your prioritys of being a fractal runner and how you can contribute to the group.
Survival is all that matters
You reading comprehension could use some work, I don’t think you understand anything I have posted so far, regardless of how ranty any of it was. But thank you for whatever your comments mean.
However, on the above comment, for my playtimes which are usually weekdays 8-10:30ish est and weekends mostly early during the day
For the weekend I don’t know but on prime time in the evening from 8-10:30 there are many groups for champ chests.
If you have meant morning, then wow dude. It’s a game played by kids who are going to school, students that are either sleeping or going to college, university and the majority of older people is going to work in the early morning. Are you really surprised then that there are only few groups. In EU there are guaranteed groups for the higher daily fractals from noon till midnight.
It’s getting more and more hilarious!Could you translate that for me, you know, into really dumbed down terms because frankly, I have no idea what you are talking about. Also you do realized that YOUR timezone is only one of many, right? That’s why when I specify a certain time, I also provide the timezone with which it is associated. That way, those who read my posts can understand when I am refering to. But I certainly take your point, whatever times you are able to play this game, it is much better for you than for me in terms of finding groups for over 50 lvl fracts. I salute your ability to choose the best playing times, of course I am unable to do so, as I have a job, and a wife and a real life outside this game.
Currently, right now 2pm Est there are absolutely no over 50 fractal groups listed and I have been checking periodically over the last couple of hours. It is indeed hilarious that you are unable to comprehend that not everyone has the same experience that you do. Please continue to educate me. I need it so.
Question, if you don’t see an LFG why don’t you make one I bet you can get a group together pretty fast that way, instead of relying on other people to form the group
You do not need to craft agony infusions in FOTM there is a vendor that exchanges them for an upgraded version if you have the fractal mastery for it, you can also buy higher agony infusions from the tp
Compilation of classes dps fully in raids just an FYI for everyone
https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/44dli8/actual_dps_comparison_between_classesguard_ele/
Yeah, ok, I got the OP now. He is complaining about everything around fractals. So here is my advice:
Stop playing them!
At first you are complaining about the asc droprate, then about all rewards together calling them nerfed while it is the opposite around in terms of gold. You gain much more out of fractals since ever. The amount of gold is almost ridiculous and just capped by the 3 dailies or everybody would run fractals to farm gold and silver wastes would be empty.
And in the end you are whining about AR which is posT-HoT not a real problem and can be achieved easier than ever before.
I really really recommend you to let fractals go. You should be happy because fractals are so much more casual-friendly nowadays and there are several veterans that are not content with this issue. Fractals are the new dungeons.No, you have pretty much everything wrong. I may not be expressing myself perfectly so here in a nutshell:
Ascended armor is now for all intents and purposes going to be required for raids which is the only real endgame content we have (until WvW gets really fixed which I am not hopeful about). Yes, you can have one or two people in your party with exotics, and at least one elite group have done exotic only runs to prove it can be done, but even they don’t recommend it. And for the record, until such time as new fractals are added to the game, I personally don’t consider them endgame content, they are loot farming.
The cost of making ascended armor whether before or after the patch means that for a very large percentage of the playerbase, only one ascended set is going to be practically attainable in a reasonable timeframe. This means that no matter what, most players are locked into a specific armor class and specific armor stats. Many of us have at least 2 sets of exotic armor per toon with different runes and stats to allow for some situational build diversity. Reduced build diversity is not good for anyone.
The new raid changed ascended from an option, to a requirement as stated by the main raid dev, Ruby. The only real change made to acquiring ascended was increasing some mat requirements for certain types, and reducing the silk cost by 1/3. So, an increase in cost overall.
I do agree that fractals are a lot easier to manage now that you can pick and choose, many of my guildies disagree that the drop rates are the same as before, but the points made here are reasonable to suggest that drop rates are similar to before, I can accept that. And yes, the gold is not bad to very good. If you find a group to run the over 50s, which based on the in-game LFG system is very hit or miss. But that aspect of this conversation has NEVER been a point of contention or complaint by me. There are lots of ways to obtain gold in this game, many for far less effort… although perhaps at the cost of brain cells…
AR is a ridiculous system. It serves absolutely NO PURPOSE other than to allow players to rerun the same fractals but get more ascended drops. SO it’s magic find pure and simple. Explain to me why it’s bound to individual pieces of equipment? How exactly does that make sense? Well, prior to HoT AR drove the desire to attain more ascended armor, we all know we aren’t after it for the looks, right? AR has no other function, NONE. It is 100% magic find for grinding the same fractals over and over. Which is fine, but why isn’t it account wide, like magic find?
I’m not a big fan of hamster wheel game mechanics, which is why I have always prefered WvW. I’ll think about crafting a legendary if a precursor drops, I am not going grind out a thousand this and thats and dump hundreds of gold to get one. I think it’s wrong that after spending the time and or gold to craft or acquire ascended armor that it should be a limitation on how I would like to play GW2. You are fine with it, ok. You probably already have a lot of ascended gear, so this conversation is largely irrelevant for you, except you might my idea would devalue your multiple sets of ascended armors…. it’s tough to be the 1%.
How is Ascended armor a requirement from raids when every boss has been beaten in exotics minus trinkets which are virtually given to everyone for logging in?
You are stating things that are just false, FoTM is the only content ascended gear is required after FoTM 10.
All of your statements are based on your biased opinion and not on any actual facts, especially since ascended items don’t provide a huge advantage over those that don’t have it. And since they haven’t released any tier higher than ascended/ legendary there is no hamster wheel like in MMOs like WoW.
once you have the gear you can transfer to other characters and even change the stats for a negligible price of gold compared to crafting the gear, seaming how you can get ascended items from every game mode through Rng and crafting, as well as purchasing it outright in raids.
And how are ascended items limiting your playstyle? You can get them in any game mode and you can craft them or buy them. And they are not required for anything other than FOTM so not having them is not hating you from any content besides high level FOTM, which you can get max AR without having any ascended Armor and only having the trinkets. Hell you can reach max AR with 3 ascended trinkets if you really wanted.
Every video showing dps with thieves compared to other classes does not show anywhere close to a 50% dps increase over other classes they show roughly the same dps numbers minus Chronomancer since they bring the lowest personal dps to raids and only have a spot for buffing the entire raids dps when played right . Thieves have never brought group utility besides stealth and trying to shoe horn group utility is a horrible design.
Thieves don’t even come close to winning every pvp encounter. And it’s not going that way the AA increase is negligible in pvp and in WvW the sustain every other class brings more sustain to outlast any " burst" thieves have.
Thieves are viable in raids yes because now it’s not beneficial to stack multiple Revs for their AA damage on top of their group support. Thieves have always been a selfish class when it comes to group play, but that is normally how every thief/rogue/assassin archetype in every game is they provide great single target dps at loss of survivability and group utility.
In pvp if thieves offered their team 5% damage increase just by being nearby the thief would be nerfed almost instantly due to all the QQ.
You never said that in your op, so maybe you should lead with that concern instead of scores. But here you go what you said nothing about misbalanced teams, you only mention score not imbalance of players
“balance [bal-uh ns] – noun
1. a state of equilibrium or equipoise; equal distribution of weight, amount, etc.
2. something used to produce equilibrium; counterpoise.
Just in case you didn’t know.
Fix the dragonball arena. The 500:40 scores are getting annoying.”
That’s an issue of people that don’t know how to play
Except thieves don’t bring utility like rev does, yes it was a lazy fix but it’s not the same as rev as everyone thinks
Staff can be used and situational more damage, a big drawback is most skills are movement skills and don’t benefit from quickness as much as D/D.
The problem is they are starting to rely on imitative for avoiding attacks after the dodge for thief which is its primary defense mechanism.
There are very few invulnerable / blocks on a thief outside the sword set (which is lower dps)
Any other attack than using autos will work heavily into its initiative pool quickly.For ANET to make thief more plausible (which has a low health pool compared to Necro) would require increasing the invulnerable/active defenses (stealth still makes you take dmg).
The d/d will still hit harder with rotating in the back stabs – so it’s still not a case of auto only.
Thief has no invulns or blocks on the sword, they have no invulns anywhere for that matter, they have one block which is a utility that comes with Daredevil.
Also when the target reaches 50% health HS is used due to it producing higher damage and more so at 25% hp
Looks interesting, will try it.
Well, hope you are happy now: rev is out of the raid meta now. And I am sorry but rev was not a “just aa class”.
Revs are still Raid meta they are still Boon bots. They just don’t get the best of both worlds.
As stated multiple times, Raids do not require Ascended gear it just makes it easier, a 10 man team has cleared in exotics which is roughly 10% difference than ascended, a 5 man team has cleared in full ascended. These have been proven and they a re relevant to show that not everyone needs to be in ascended, is it ideal? Yes. But not required, the only content that actually requires ascended is FOTM. And even in that instance you only need one set.
Yeah that build takes a bit of skill and timing an punishes Bads that spam their abilities, I am impressed
Unless you are Chronotanking then Commanders is good.
It’s a nice arena I was there when it was ulocked, have yet to play in it.
Ascended is only required for Fractals, it is not required for any other content. If you were semi serious as you state gearing for ascended is relatively easy the hardest part of going for cheapest route is the time gate, the other option is to save gold and by excess mats off tp outisde of you daily crafted materials, this speeds up the process, or you can buy everything off the TP which is the most expensive way but also the fastest.
Myself using a combo of crafting mats and buying completed have completely geared 2 characters within the last month and a half an that was with a very casual time allotment of 1-2 hrs every other night. A little more during weekends. RNGsus smiled upon me twice giving me two pieces of ascended that I could actually use after stat swap.
Zerker stats or marauder stats are the preferred for all Fotm levels due to the bosses being HP sponges, you can do other but the bosses hit like a wet noodle so toughness and Vitality is not needed. All that’s required is The appropriate AR.
I have never had an issue with running Full berserker back before the changes so the low Health pool is not too much of an issue for me. I have never tried a P/x build would Pistol Main hand provide Bleeds/Condi increase, over Dagger MH?
Yeah, a small over sight, I was using my phone and I have to double tap for it to select and missed that one, but does anyone have any experience with a similar build or maybe just some insight?
A dps tool will function the same no matter what, it shows your personal Dps while the encounter is active, it will go off of the actual damage you are performing while in combat, in real situations your dps will be more accurate than standing still doing nothing besides attacking, a golem in Hotm, real encounters require postitioning and situational awareness, there will be fluctuation in dps depending on how well you are able to upkeep your damage while positioning, some fights will show players doing less depending on the situation. If you aren’t attacking your dps will drop be this from repositioning downing and so on. Some classes don’t rely on personal dos like Chronomancer, they rely on providing group wide dps increase. It will still show their personal dps, people understand that. I think you want a meter that shows everyone’s different contribution which is something too complex that need not be utilized. A simple dps meter showcasing how much dps each player can keep up is all that is needed.
So after playing a bit with JaxnX I’m quite sure that we won’t see any official dps meter for long in the game.
The first reason for this is that there is no proper test environment in-game (Bloomhunger 2 is maybe the most real case but just to run a test..).
My second conclusion is that buffs and debuffs in the game are so huge that running a test of any sort would need a “tunable” zone where you can add might, vuln on the target, make it move or do some action to test torment and confusion.
As a new user of the tool, I directly went to HotM with a guildmate. Both of us Rev in raid. We got 25 might quite easily but couldn’t go higher than 5 to 7 k DPS on the indestructible golem. The day after, just for fun, I tried a condi build (without might) and got the same DPS. I could then have said that condi rev does as much dps as Glint/Shiro herald. Moreover, VG has a DPS req of something like 7k (8 damage dealers over 6 minutes for 22M HP), so I could also have conclude that I didn’t reach the DPS check…. and well it’s not like Rev rotation is hard.
But then I went on VG and measured the DPS. As herald I was doing about 13k DPS on P1 (ended the fight at 9). Then I changed to Air sigil and it increased of about 1k5. Now I have yet to try my brand new ascended sword.
So for me the biggest problem for Anet to implement a DPS meter is to do it right and in a manner that can reflect what you actually do in real fights. I think the design of such a tool is kinda ressource consuming.
That said, if they simply add a window at the end of an encounter where you see at least the amount of damage of the entire team it would be really helpful to see if someone has a problem.
A few points to hit on Janx is accurate but not as accurate as a dos meter that reads actual server information, instead of trying to recognize numbers in a screenshot of the game. In a raid your dps should be a lot higher than your dos in Hotm in Hotm you don’t have the same stats, food buffs utilities and you said you and another rev tested the dps, might isn’t the only contributing damage increasing boon, in a raid you should have perma quickness, as well as vulnerability on the target which all increase your damage more. It would be very simple for Anet to implement a personal dps meter, they have the resources and should know the coding of their own game to implement a small QoL feature such as this.
Would a hybrid Viper’s build work for WvW roaming?
Maybe something similar to this, just tossing the idea around.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQNAoYVl0MhSnY5TwpJw/ELtEmWAIEtA4GC3ggw8IcFODB-TFSAQBXSJYIVGItTBgA3fAbK9Co+gIq+BAeCAAA-w
They can’t ban you for Janx since it uses screenshots of combat log to get dps. And doesn’t access game files.
They can because technically it’s botting.
It’s not boring but ok, on this premise you can be banned for using twitch. It is a program that does not interact with anything with the game files, client or server. All it does is take screenshots and run a number recognition on the area for the chatlog, while noting programs interact with the game.
@ Jana those are not passives. Passives are effects that happen even when you are not happening, like Don’t Stop’s cripple/chill effectiveness decrease and immobilize conversion. The DrD dodges are not since all they do is replace the original dodge which requires action on the player’s part.
And next time kinda read the rest of the post. Hard to Catch was one of those traits that all thieves kittened about. It was still a passive proc trait but it killed more than it saved. This version is a complete 180 from that and it really needed it.
In fact alot of the changes they made were asked for, as babashook stated, that were made during a time when thieves only had one role. It was a time before they got pushed out of the meta entirely. If you need someone to blame about these decisions, blame the ones who asked for them years ago. Because all anet did was listen to them.
They are passives as you don’t chose “I want to evade” but the skill does this for you.
Hard to catch was a bad trait, yes, it’s a better trait now – still it’s a passive and that was my point. Thief survivability now lies in passively evading 50% of the attacks – not what I want in this game.
What anet should do: Stop listening to players and learn how their own game works – problem: Most are D/P so “everything” suits D/P – what should I do? Quit the game as I have no voice?That was one of my points. To think about what you want vs. what it means for the profession.
I did, did you?
Ps: You do realize that we only have 2 sets left, out of formerly 4 when staff wasn’t even around?!
ETA: I mean weaponskills that evade, btw.
If you are talking about the DD GM traits those are not Passives they are replacement/additional affects. You have to actively decide to dodge to use them. Which makes them not passive. Passive is where there is no user input what so ever.
D/D and Staff are arguably the best staff is better in more situations.
I agree, I think staff and dagger AA buff was not called for. Mainly I view it as a bandaid for Raid content and not as they stated for the pvp balance.
They can’t ban you for Janx since it uses screenshots of combat log to get dps. And doesn’t access game files.
I have one question. Who test this patche before release ?
Revenant with full berserker gear and full DPS build vs Thief with same armor/traits.
Thief
Dagger AA DPS – 6k!!!!!
Sword AA DPS – 4.6k
Staff AA DPS 4.7kRevenant
Sword AA DPS 3.2k !!!
I didnt bother reading more comments because it is an absolute joke to aruge with a class that can generate up to 10 secs quickness and has a kittenton of other skills which makes it completely useless to compare AAs with each other.
Apparently it’s not ridiculous or completely useless because a Thief, literally just pressing 1, will do the same or more damage as Revenant in the same gear that maximizes his damage via actual rotations and has a full set of Boons (I.E. max damage). Realistic? Well, no one was standing still on any auto-attacks, but they still saw it fit to nerf Revenant’s and dramatically buff the Thief’s and the Thief will still out-damage the Revenant with them in any semi-equal setting.
There are few reasons why they buffed Thiefs auto I may not agree with them but, here they are, they wanted thief to be extremely dangerous and mobile, also Rev AA was nerfed due to them having more support and sustain than Thieves, yes Thieves have higher mobility but they were not able to sit on points and keep fully engaged in the fight as Rev was, which a lot of people seem to misunderstand survivability /= sustain yes thieves can run away to survive but that’s most times in favor of the opponent.
And mug?
Is your combat log showing the 4K?