Guild Wars 2

Amante.8109:

sinject.4607:

i cannot stress enough how much of this can be solved simply by removing celestial. this amulet alone has done more damage to pvp over the past year and half (or so) than anything else i can possibly think of. it’s usage is completely binary. it either enables ridiculously strong builds or doesn’t do anything for a profession.

seeing celestial just removed entirely (or nerfed considerably) would do a lot of good for the professions i’ve mentioned using them, as it would help reduce the amount of profession-specific mechanics that need to be nerfed for the sake of celestial builds not to be overpowered.

GOD YES. I don’t understand how Celestial is still in the game; it’s so absurdly binary! When you design an amulet that’s 130% of the normal stat budget, spread across all stats, there are really only two possible outcomes: either it’s useless for a build, or the linchpin that makes that build disgustingly powerful. Just remove it already.

If I remember correctly, celestial was the chance for eles to come back into meta. So it wasn´t doing only damage. I think eles weren´t OP before the patch in juni cause they got less might and damage overall —> great sustain, but less damage. Some people said that shoutbow would be superior cause of better supprt. Now support of shoutbow got nerfed (shouts heal less) and ele are stronger and deal more damage while blinding with burning. Celestial is a perfect amulet for eles, it souldn´t be removed but simply balanced, so ele are still viable.

Now to infiltrators Arrow. I was thinking about that idea and I´m not sure about it.
Like you said, Shortbow is a utility weapon, providing decent cleave when needed (AA and cluster), CC (from stealth, so you have to do something to get the immobilize), teamsupport with poison on downs/bunkers (#4), blastfinisher (#2), evade to get out of AOE or attacks (4ini, IMPORTANT: aftercast, with some practice easy to abuse that —> steal into the aftercast for secure steal) and gap-opener/gap-closer/mobility (#5).
If we look into all that stuff there are decent ways to useshortbow, but all of them have some aspects making them weaker --→ damage of AA on single targets, travel speed, high ini-cost, etc.
Infiltrators Arrow isn´t only used to go away and decap, but to get to the enemy, too. Or to get to better positions for engage. With a lower distance some spots will be very difficult to reach. We shouldn´t forget that shortbow is a range weapon with a very short range. We need gap-closers to get to the targets BEFORE reforcements arrive.

I don´t think shortbow need changes right now. Not even that faster travel speed on #2. Its not so great for targets far away, but great in close-quarter combat —> advantage/disadvantage, exactly ho it should be.
First provide the thief with better fight capability and if we have that, then look into infiltrators arrow if a change is needed.
If you can´t even teleport out of an AOE with 1 port I don´t think I would like it —> Meteor, wells or over some peoples fighting. If you first have to port almost out of it, but still are in middle of the fight you could get hit by to much randoms damage before porting again

kdaddy.5431:

That double mini form with mist form. Very impressive atm- nothing negative to say but talk about weird build.

And when you think about it, that they are exploiting the bug about being able to use F1 F2 F3 F4 F5 in mistform it becomes even better.

runeblade.7514:

Browrain.7346:

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

you forgot thief can perma blind with black powder.

quit complaining about stealth being under powered.

it is not.

Is this for real? Please explain how anyone can be perma blinded by black powder without standing still inside of it.

Okay. You step out of the blind field. Now, you are out of melee range and can’t hit him. Now the solution is to switch to a range weapon. The thief can simply just use heart seeker to be immune to your ranged projectiles. Then, he can go around and back stab you. Then you can’t do dps because he is behind you. Now, he dropped another blind field forcing you to get out of that.

You can even stay inside the blindfield and just press one, some attacks should go through because they changed pulses and interval times. Black powder gives blind on the first shot if it hits (you can dodge it) and the 3 times in a 2sec interval, it was on 1sec interval before it got nerfed. How many hits of hundred blades go through you think? Furthermore most weapons have some ways to reach the thief from far, stun him or evade through the field and make damage (warrior GS 3).

Immune? Not completly when we think about porjectiles hitting thieves sometimes even seconds after he stealthed ranger shortbow AA 1 time cause its quick to remove blind and daze then to interrupt combo or LB rapidfire/knockback, etc).
And overall stealth isn´t “immunity”, I thought we made that clear. I know players able to hit stealthed players by firing blindly into the air with LB (well, he´s a very good thief-main).

He´s behind you? Oh my god, you know what? You know the exact position where he is… O.O
Maybe turn around? block? Make something instead of standing still?

LordMazdamundi.2147:

Drennon.7190:

LordMazdamundi.2147:

Drennon.7190:

LordMazdamundi.2147:

I’m sorry but stealth is kitten strong and there needs to be options to fight it. it’s so frustrating to fight a thief or mesmer and have a really close fight just for them to invis away and me sit around picking my nose waiting to get one shot. it lets you get uninterrupted stomps and rezzes and is kitten strong. now that there are SOME reveals to counter play so you don’t auto win or escape every fight you’re getting upset? play around them and try to bait the reveals out maybe? you make it sound like the reveals are permanent.

You sound like you have no experience playing thief. One shot? Autowin? Yeah, you don’t play thief. But please, prove me wrong and screenshot your pvp stat screen including games played on thief.

I should’ve been clearer, but after a close fight the thief or mesmer can stealth away from any unfavourable situation and either run and EASILY escape or reset the fight often coming back in a far healthier state and finishing off the mess they started. I dont bring sic em on my ranger. and even with carrion runes i find myself burst down in seconds. I’m not saying I’m good at pvp. I’m very new to it. but i have no answers or ability to deal with that, my pets wont follow, i wont chase you into a shadow refuge to drop a trap as ill just die in that. so instead i wait, try to heal up then eat a 4 venom backstab and basically die. now you can (and probably will) say L2P!
But the fact remains that stealth is VERY powerful and a very small amount of abilities (one per class) deal with it, and taking those skills often means gimping yourself against non stealth players. so maybe you should learn to play around these reveals just as much as i need to learn how best to deal with stealth itself?

-The only venom that competitive thieves run is basilisk.
-If a thief is in Shadow Refuge, its because they’re trying to recover, don’t let them sit there and do it. Place your aoes on the ring, use your wolf’s fear, etc..

-Is there a debuff that stops your class from clearing condis, using your burst, or regenerating health? No? Welcome to reveal for thief.

That one minute cooldown SR that you dropped to rez a teammate? Don’t worry, engi can pop a 900 unit aoe reveal on a 30 second cooldown.

-with sb and axe/torch my only aoes are player based and running into the shadow refuge is usually a bad idea,

-i have MINIMAL control over my pets, how do i get my wolf in there ? i cant tell him where to move and the animation is like 2 seconds long, so hard to avoid.

- your shadow refuge has a 60 sec cd? ok pistol 5 and dagger 2? dagger 5? the stealth heal? shortbow 5 has a blink with 0 cd easy for escaping, the blind wall and dagger 2? steal has a stealth im pretty sure (working off the top of my head). that is all without actually opening up the game and reading through traits and all utilities. see an engi aoe reveal? retreat and come back just after?

First, you are newer player and stealth is still effective against those, because they lack experience about how to play with and against thieves. Generally playing thief can provide you a much easier time afterwards.
Now SB and axe/torch – torch has a good firefield on number 5 which covers the complete refuge and you can use that skill were you trow 5 axes (sry, can´t remember that name right now, splitblade?) and I assume you clapy carrion survival? Then you have entangle, too.
A very imprtant point that distinguish good rangers from bad ones imo is the control about the pet. With beastmaster-line and used correctly you can achieve high damage (crits up to 8k), control (blind, weakness, taunt and maybe fear from wolf), especially the taunt is very powerful, forcing the thief to reveal himself or to get high damage in.
Using you pet for maximum advantage is very important. I can´t count how often the pet, accidently or not, body-blocked my shadowshot
Sometimes thief cast refuge and have still to run inside it, use wolf F2, he will run the last position of the thief and fear him out of the refuge, taunt him for selfreveal, etc. All a matter of practice.

Pistol 5 and dagger 2? The same I decribed the sentence before and you know that you have a daze on you shortbow, which is instant? Interrupt the combo…
Btw if you use Geomancy you can hit the thief even if stealthed as long as you learned how a thief moves. Like is said, a matter of practice and attention.
The stealth heal? Hide in shadows? Its not used much, especially in higher competitive enviroment, because its even easier to interrupt than pistol 5 + dagger 2. Btw what I said about weakness? As a meta carrion survival you can deal out a lot of weakness ad we can´t clear it anymore with a condiremove “shadows embrace”, where we remove condis in stealth (and that still is our best condiremove).
Stealth on steal is another thing, especially because you don´t have to hit the enemy successful with steal, but he is usally near you then, so…

About the thief fighting you or on your assumption an engi which uses reveal and the thief should " retreat and come back just after". For such a retreat to get out of the reach of the engi, “Shadow-step” usually is the only possibility to do so. Mostly you only have initiative for 1 infiltrating arrow (shortbow 5). Normally you shouldn´t fight engis or rangers and definitly not when your shadow-step is on cooldown. Except the engi is low what he shouldn´t be in a 1vs1 against a thief.
50sekittenil thief can come back safely and reveal is ready again. So we stick to +1 fights.

Edit: With “shadow-step” I meant the utility.
I had no idea why “sec” and “until” got a kitten and then I realized it. I will leave it as it is, I like that weird things that appear then.

Now to that thing about shortbow 5 doesn´t has any cd… NEVER say that again. Initiative is another form of cooldown!
Lets say you have 15 initiative (cause of 3 through trickery) and use infiltrators arrow 2-times. You now have 3 Initative in theory. In reality of course you get initiative back while doing that. So around 4-5 initiative. You wait another second and use another infiltrators arrow. Now you have ZERO inititative and basically a cooldown on every weaponskill that use initiative. Pistol 5 + dagger 2? Nope, wait 63=9-1 (cause of ini-regen while casting pistol 5) =around 8sec. If you use initative its like a delayed cd on both weaponsets (cause we don´t have different initiative on weaponswap like new cd´s other classes have).
Thats another reason why we have to retreat, wait, hide, etc, to buy some time and generate new initiative. Its like waiting to get cd´s off.

If you have more questions you are welcome to go to the thief forum and ask them. Most thief- player are a bit sensible rigth now, but normally we try to help.

Zero Day.2594:

ronpierce.2760:

Zero Day.2594:

ronpierce.2760:

Zero Day.2594:

ronpierce.2760:

Well. I will say one thing on the weapon swap situation for thief. Because of how initiative works and no actual “cooldowns” -

You missed my point, so good job. It is, but it’s shared, thus swapping to a different offensive set provides no real incentive, where as swapping weapons on a class with ACTUAL “cooldowns” does. Don’t jump in here to post ignorant memes, please.

Sorry, can’t stand when someone says no cool downs. It’s almost like an automatic reaction.

Well, I meant what I said, given the proper context. I’m not suggesting thieves are endless spammers, I’m saying that the lack of cooldowns on a given weapon provides no direct incentive to require more than one offensive weapon set. For this reason, unless weapons started providing VASTLY unique perks, given trait restraints, you’ll probably see most people only ever need one weapon set that’s traited to be fully effective, and the shortbow for utility.

Which yeah, is pretty true.
I was also kind of wonder about staff replacing SB when it was first revealed – It seemed like a more offensive counter-part to the SB, but still providing that #5 mobility skill … But then it was tested in BWE…. and the feedback doesn’t seem so great…

And before someone gets the idea about nerfing SB. It definitly got nerfed dnough one EVERY SINGLE weaponskill. Even AA ^^

About initiative and being a different cooldown. There were/are people actually saying we wouldn’t have cooldowns on our weaponskills. The idea about there are different kinds of cooldowns just doesn’t get into their mind apparently.
So we thieves got a bit sensible in that point.

Kocoff.7582:

bliss.4305:

Yup… After playing Daredevil I concluded stealth would still be the mechanic that keeps Thieves competitive and finally made my “Quip”. Imagine my frustration after the Engineer Elite Specialization reveal…

Granting Reveal to all classes look nothing more than a VERY lazy attempt to help players deal with a class they don’t fully understand. Seeing as no Thief was given ANY help to counter other class mechanics, its just sad…

Reveal is just a very unfortunate, bad game design thrown around to avoid actual effort to address the real problems with the mechanic (not that it has many…).

A lot of truth this player just mentioned guys. Please read.

Reveal is badly thought out, and is lazy. I think the only countermeasure to this, is a serious surge in attack power, to the point where being reveal or not doesn’t complete negate your damage with Stealth Attacks.

What other counters to Reveal do you guys have in mind? PLease note: reveal wouldn’t be such an issue if our core traits were impeccable.

The nerf-hammer? Its quiet powerful I heard.
I just can’t understand why they implemented so many reveals as hardcounters, while they said some time ago that they “don’t want hardcounters”.
I’m not even interested anymore in trailers or “reveals” (conent-balance-wise)
Because it can turn out completely different at release. Don’t get me wrong, I know that changes happen and HAVE to happen all the time. But why we weren’t even told that the healbuff on withdraw got canceled? It got to a point where the class could be deleted tomorrow. Just that no one would be surprised :/

babazhook.6805:

bliss.4305:

Yup… After playing Daredevil I concluded stealth would still be the mechanic that keeps Thieves competitive and finally made my “Quip”. Imagine my frustration after the Engineer Elite Specialization reveal…

Granting Reveal to all classes look nothing more than a VERY lazy attempt to help players deal with a class they don’t fully understand. Seeing as no Thief was given ANY help to counter other class mechanics, its just sad…

Reveal is just a very unfortunate, bad game design thrown around to avoid actual effort to address the real problems with the mechanic (not that it has many…).

Thieves, the class described as experts at stealth have no counters to stealth .

We actually have them. We learned to play with and against it.
I know, its easy to forget because that counter is so rare to be seen.
:P

kolompi.1287:

style.6173:

ANET made a really bad decision by giving too many classes access to stealth. It should have remained with mesmer and thief only.

Elementalists still need access to stealth!

Then pray for underwatercombat-comeback in pvp. Elementalists have access to stealth underwater :P

choovanski.5462:

Browrain.7346:

choovanski.5462:

Browrain.7346:

choovanski.5462:

Browrain.7346:

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

you forgot thief can perma blind with black powder.

quit complaining about stealth being under powered.

it is not.

Is this for real? Please explain how anyone can be perma blinded by black powder without standing still inside of it.

there are actually a few ways you can do it.

ah, and like DIVA I support the removal of stealth from the game. it’s too strong tactically.

What other ways? Spamming shadow shot? There’s no way to constantly blind someone without completely wasting initiative.

http://youtu.be/PGNiXGX2nLU

Great rebuttal.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Whirl_finisher

Alright my friend, learn something about thieves. We have access to exactly 3 Different Whirl-finisher. Death-blossom, Daggerstorm and Whirling Axe.
When you talk about “perma-blind” and Whirlfinisher I think you mean the combo with Pistol #5 blackpowder and Whirling Axe. First, you have to Whirl in that combo-field and I ask you why the hell you are staying there? I fought good warris and they never stand there like braindead chicken to eat all the damage EXCEPT they have berserker stance or activate their healing signet to counter conidtions like blind. Interesting, isn´t it? Because a warrior can eat that damage, the thief doesn´t has enough health or armor to survive the warrior damage.
So to get the full combo work you need
1. to hit your steal succesful
2. Having the initiative and the right time to use blackpowder (usual when zerker stance is over/on cd)
3. Whirl inside the small blackpwder-field
4. Having the warri or anyone else staying there like braindead chicken

Btw whirling axe is horrible bugged since a long time ago, when we want do dodge ut of it to cancel it and evade an attack, we cancel it and >loose endurance< but it doesn´t count as dodge so we can get hit.
Long time ago Whirling Axe was also evading btw —> nerfed (for good reason in that case)

How does that sound now?

Kocoff.7582:

Wow…. wait up. the Stealth drone lasts 30 seconds and the CD is 30 seconds… The Stealth boon lasts 4 seconds and the interval of application is 3 seconds.

That means in WvW, the Scrapper will be rocking permanent stealth to them and 5 person.

That’s more stealth than a Thief could ever dream of. Permanent stealth roaming?
If you don’t see a flying little gyro miles away you are already dead.

Its like having invisible Apache-helicopters. Guild wars 2 attack of drones. The drone-wars. Was it CoD black ops 2 or 3?

Shiki.7148:

Cynz.9437:

Shiki.7148:

There are way more things that remove chill which Reaper is supposed to utilize to be sticky than there is to stealth, and stealth is a way more “broken” mechanic.

Also OP you got it wrong: getting bursted out of nowhere or guys pressing one button to disengage any fight is the problem, giving out reveals is the counterplay to THAT, and definitly needed. There isn’t nearly as much revealing as you make it out to be, and almost all of it is on situational skills not everybody might use. Heck, some forms are depending on which traitlines they take.

Plays an engi…. what a surprise. You don’t get bursted out of nowhere unless you never look at map or unable to use interrupts. One button to disengage? Okkkkk
Ok, let’s assume counterplay to stealth is needed, WHY CAN’T WE HAVE COUNTERPLAY TO ENGI SKILLS THEN? I am sure there should be just as much counterplay that locks out their entire trait line just to be fair. Why should thieves be only class being completely locked out of defensive (and offensive) abilities? I think it is time other classes get same threatment like thieves!

And you massively failed. I do not even have an Engi created, I play Necro and nothing else. Too bad you just wasted your credibility, huh?

Nope, you actually just lost ALL you credibility by saying you “play Necro and nothing else”… lmao
How can you think you can actually give any advice or your opinion being important, when you NOT EVEN PLAY ANOTHER CLASS. Not even created it. How can you say something about balance without enough background information and experience.
I just don’t get it, sry.

Does that elite thing give stealth in intervalls?

Demented Yak.6105:

For me, coming from WoW, the pvp gameplay in gw2 is a dream. I’m just happy that I’m not pressing keys in an extremely predictable order whilst standing still 99% of the time while others are jumping around pretending mobility matters.

I can definitely see where you’re coming from but you’ll never hear a complaint from me about PvP in this game. It’s all about perspective.

Yeah, same here. Played runescape long time ago (I know, shame one me, wished I would have played gw1), and it was so great to feel an active combat-gameplay. Had some trouble at the beginning though. In runescape dodging doesn´t existed and to heal I had to eat fish x)
Guild wars 2 is so much about knowing the game, if you do that you know what happends on the streams, if not, well, I tried to show it a friend —→ he had no idea what was going on. I love it that way, it feels rewarding to learn the mechanics.

Sometimes you don´t want to change weapons and has to use other possibilities. I actually use dancing dagger on S/D a lot more now after the speed-buff some time ago. Using it as rangecleave and projectile-finisher can be very rewarding.
Of course its a little bit different on D/D, but still, if its a bad situation to swap weapons in that moment, throw a knife ^^
I actually like the idea of giving CiS to C&D and remove CiS from SA, itd not needed for anything else.

Sabre.8627:

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to argue that thief is in an amazing place. I just think it’s weird seeing all these people wanting to play other boring simple classes when the class you have has so much depth and does so much that those other ones lack, plus it is tons of fun to play and contributes a lot to a team, Even if it’s more effort

I’m excited to see that thief is in need of some buffs/changes, it will make the effort now that much more rewarding when it happens.

Well, I´m playing thief since 3 years and that are the reasons why I still play it. So much to learn, so many smart moves and ways to play If they would just be viable :/ . I think Mesmer is a fantastic class, too. It has so much possibilities to outplay and outsmart people that its sad to have gotten so easy. So don´t get me wrong, too. Sometimes I play other classes because they have interesting mechanics and other playstyles that are worth it to try out. I really like how eles are designed, that its terrible to see them getting such a bad reputation

Even after 3 years I cant forgive anet to have given thief his name. I wanted him as an Assassin. :´<
And I always disliked pistols :P
I use the smallest skin avalable. ^^

A normal D/P thief has access to vigor through bountiful theft if steal hits successfully (while other classes have traits giving them vigor passivly). So not that much more dodges (endurance gain on dagger needs you to stay in melee —> vulnaerable). Evade comes mostly through Withdraw and SB 3, both nerfed already more or less and especially withdraw is the only really viable heal we have. Hide in Shadow has the problem with long cd and cast-time (I think you know that feeling when using Consume conditions on necro ). Of course we can cover it with stealth, but needing stealth to get the heal through? Not that great in praxis.
Blinds are less, too. Shadowshot is very strong though.
CCs we are not better than other classes. Engis, warris, mesmer, etc.

Securing stomps? You mean stealth-stomps or port stomps? First ones are risky in teamfights and last ones should ot be used unless extemely needed.

“stealth on steal”
Are you still talking about full DPS-builds? That trait is in SA…
And I don´t think relying on Hide in Shadows as a condi-remove is that great with that much condis flying around. (Shadow-step is to important as a stun breaker to use it every time for conditions).

“The mobility is insane, I can actually escape a fight if I need to; something I had absolutely no hope of before, I can decap and always get to where I need to be, I can actually chase people if needed, I can almost always res teammates, can actually secure stomps for once, I can down squishy builds in seconds, can shut down players with blinds and CC, have crazy amounts of evades, and I actually get to make use of fields and finishers.”

Ah, that famous 66666 spec again
On the serious side, its exactly thats why we play the class. There is so much potential.
You can´t have it all and some things, like killing squishy targets in seconds (a good player will always live longer then a few seconds, not matter how squishy he is, except Mesmer + thief stealth combo) and suvivability together. About crazy amounts of evades, its far from what it used to be, the nerf of acro crippled S/D a lot and you can´t dodge everything. Shutting down the enemy with blinds got nerfed, too, while still being powerfull through shadow-shot.
Rezzing team-mates for example got a good buff through the new minor in SA, before you used stealth like refuge or blinding powder and had to get away if enemys were cleaving, where you still have to be very cautious.
Thief isn´t really about rotations but much more about using the right combos and managing them at the right time, using you initiative (working like a global cooldown on you both weaponsets) wisely. If you just spam anything except shadowshot (which still has to actually hit :P ), you are dead. Had some lovely heartseeker and headshot-spamming thieves 1-2 month ago ^^

Just to make a small comparison in the feeling:
I wanted to play my warrior half a year ago again in wvw to roam a bit (I´m not really active in wvw anymore though), used some stuff I had around (GS/axe-shield) and encountered a P/D thief after 2min. Well, he got butchered. Managed to almost escape me 2 times, but just pressing the buttons wildly (I never was a good zerker-warri, because I was completely out of warri-gameplay (hadn´t played him for 1 year), I survived and killed him. He wasn´t the best thief of course, but I really had to laugh ^^

Well, it got “bug-fixed” some time ago and is now back after another bug on the rune got fixed.
I´m very very sure about it being a bug…

“4. Shadow Art Thief’s Merciful Ambush- This trait has 0 counter when it comes to thief + elementalist combination. Stealth the ele before they mist form away will guarentee the ress 100% without any mechanic requirements but just pressing interact key. This is a big game changer because of its short iCD that allows thieves be able to trigger this trait several time in one team fight. In conclusion this trait is easily to pull out with very tiny chance to counter once it comes to a team play.”

Hm, it actually has/gets like the most direct hardcounters ever with all that reveal-traits/utilities flying around ^^

lilz shorty.1879:

Lmao. All I see is noobs being noobs here and ignorance is a bliss.

Then enlighten us?
I mean it.
I can´t play since 1 month and 2 more weeks and try to stay up to date.

Daniel Handler.4816:

Kolly.9872:

Daniel Handler.4816:

The weird thing behind this is that one could rightly say Illusions are the mesmers mechanic, and the thief using stealth completely hard counters them. Would you compromise by making it so that all ai wasn’t fooled by stealth? One could parry your language, playing Devils advocate, and say that stealth itself counters the mesmers and ranger class mechanics.

What? Illusions and pets that keep track of the thief in stealth and start moving and attacking the thief 0.000001 seconds after he leaves stealth, even if the thief is moved far away or hiding behing a wall? Illutions and Pets have the best reaction time I have ever seen
Also I could argue that channeling skills like Rapid Fire, counter stealth even better than skills that apply reveal

I am referring to the fact all phantasm skills require targets. And some pets cannot be commanded to perform their command skill without a target. The thief class as a whole is being unfairly punished for the builds that never leave stealth.

“never leave stealth”
…
How do they kill or do anything in pvp then?
I know about that ghost something build, but thats not usable in PvP and even in WvW…I don´t know…
That “perma stealth” complaining always was the problem because how meaningless it was after the culling-fix years ago. Permastealth only existed because of that. Except, like I said, that “ghost-build”, but whatever.

You know the advantage of illusions btw? They keep attacking while the Mesmer is in stealth. I consider that a good compensation for only able to cast on visible targets…
Using iberserker doesn´t reveal you as Mesmer
And they can still use their distortion and invuln and whatever to be active. Sword 2 is such a great tool for Mesmers to bait attacks with evades after that or chaining them in different ways.

Taku.6352:

bloodpyrope.8630:

Gabriell.4856:

bloodpyrope.8630:

Turtle Dragon.9241:

Thief can now:
Steal a Ranger’s Pet, making them unable to use Pet commands/skills. You must use Steal on the Pet for this to happen.

Ok, but don’t forget, once you steal a pet, you lose 20-30% of your stats and your F skills get replaced by the pet f skills Also when you stealth, your new pet will follow you around and give away your position unless you command it to attack someone.

Pet stays with you until it dies, or someone else steals it!

Hi,

Can you tell me where your magical 20-30% stats went because…everyone get the same stats with the amulet system. Am I right?

Supposedly, rangers deal 20-30% less damage because those stats went to the pets. I don’t actually have any official proof from Anet (maybe someone else does) but it’s just one of those things everyone says is true.

Not stats directly but skill damages and coefficients are lower to compensate for the pet.

Well, pets can crit higher than my backstab while taunting, blinding and having difficult to see attack-moves (I see at you birds). I think they are actually great in rewarding player using them accordingly. Sadly the majority use them as meat-shields

LunarNacht.8913:

How about you request more options for none stealth builds instead? If you have to rely on stealth that much, you deserve to be punished against players that use counters. Learn to play without a mechanic that has no viable counterplay to this day.

We had them
S/P was meta long time ago
S/D was meta a year ago
You know what happened? Riiight…People complained, things got nerfed and now we have D/P SA in PvP… I was happy with S/D acro, D/P crit-strikes and D/P panic strike beacause I wasn´t forced to take SA. Now we are forced to take it because it has our only viable (still nerfed) condi-remove, support and survival. acro is just crap.
WE learned to play without it…But people were even to ignorant to learn that YOu can hit into the aftercast of flanking strike (S/D 3) or SB 3. As a thief I have to land my steal in that kind of secure aftercasts because you absolutly have to land your steal. If you fail one steal its very hard, if you fail 2 or more times you can run away because there isn´t any chance (on equal skill). Of course we normally souldn´t even fight another class head to head
Stealth always had counterplay, the most important one is >Attention<. If you look at your surroundings, how the thief moves, etc, you almost negate his moment of surprise, which is essential. When fighting a thief you can immediatly know if he´s a good or bad one. For example a D/P thief fighting 1vs1 against another D/P thief, it shows even on the ENGAGE if the thief knows his class or not.
Thief is a class were its especially important to have knowledge about another classes in order to fight them.
At the time when P/D condi (perplexity) in wvw was very usual there were so many complaints about P/D condi it crushed my mind. I know its annoying to fight, but dodging C&D and sneak attack is so freaking easy. Its all a matter or learing.

Ele for example are using mosly boons for survival and offense. If you lock them out of them they would be so weak. No might for attacks, not protection for damage, not regen (and condi-remove through it), no fury for more damage, no stab for CC, no speed for mobility. Right now stealth is more or less the same for us, while its not possible to fight as long as an ele. We are running around the map mostly.
Reveal-counters are a very lazy way to counter stealth in order to create an “easymode” for players lacking the intention to improve.
How do you think D/D thieves stealth on stealthed target with C&D? Pure experience.

Btw way in the thief forum hundreds of suggestions were made, even to convert SA into a more rewarding traitline going in and out of stealth, not sitting in it. We make more that the players complaining about stealth.

witcher.3197:

Spectral skills are fine.

Shoutbow needs a nerf imo, it’s a thing again on EU and it’s so cancer.. if ele gets nerfed they’ll just simly replace them.

I´m not sure about that, if burning get tuned down, it also effects shoutbow. I think its the only class using settlers-amulet right now? And it provides the warris 2 more or less viable builds. I don´t think there is a nerf needed right now, maybe in future.

What is the problem with thief-stealth-rezz? Apparently it has a ICD, it gives us thieves the possibility to support and allows great possibilities when used correctly. (if you want it to get nerfed beacause to strong, then you also have to nerf ele downstate-vaporform to go through portals. But then we lack awesome combos and game-moves like that in the go4cup. Thats moves make the game much more fun and entertaining

Xanctus The Dragonslayer.2318:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Xanctus The Dragonslayer.2318:

Cynz.9437:

Constant target dropping is the whole idea of stealth/clones…… let’s not make this game more braindead than it is already.

which i would be content with if it soley applied to just stealth and clones. But this goes father, pets, minons, other players, NPC’s. It’s ridiculous. I should lose my target cause i accidentaly grazed a kitten raptor in a wvw match.

Good thing that doesn’t happen then. The only time something akin to that happens is when you have auto-target on (turn it off, dummy) and your target stealths.

It does not happen when you are fighting someone and accidentally hit something else. You don’t change targets that way. Try not clicking on the guy that’s right in front of you. You really shouldn’t be left-clicking anything in combat unless you want that as your target.

turn of autotargeting? If did that, I’d be even more boned. Did you read the OP? In such fast paced game with multiple targets figthing without autotarget would be hell. I’m not clicking on anything else. It’s just the kitten auto target which forefully switches targets for me without my consent which really the best out of two worse things. I honestly don’t see why this is even defended? I’m not saying mesmers or thiefs should have a permenant lock on. I just don’t won’t have to use rocket science to cope with losing my own target. which shouldn’t kittening happen unless stealth or clones. Or a skill meant to confuse you. It’s ridiculous.

Autotargeting completely screws you ability of having control over yout actions. For example you want to get away in order to retreat or kite, using the heartseeker on theif, you definitily DON´T want to automatic target the enemy you want to get away from and heartseeker into him. I think I have everything turned off from the options where autotargeting is, except the last one (don´t demember exactly what it
is, something about locking ground-target indicators at max-range.).
Have you adjusted your keybinds? If not please do it. Its a must for gw2-pvp (for all kind of pvp).
Is it maybe a problem of reaction or being overstrained by everything flying around in pvp? Then its probably just a l2p issue and should resolve itself when playing the game more

Last thing… turn off autotargeting. Every guide on options and keybindings for pvp recomend it for reason…

Well, did diessa 2 times today. The first one I had 21 stacks and got disconnected 2min before ending. The second time I was able to collect 8 stacks when I got a dc again, This time I couldn´t log in back until like 3min before full hour and got into a map with 25min left!? Then got another dc and was on a normal map. Event already finished. Thats definitly not good for my health ^^
Btw its not my internet, everyone else was perfectly fine at home.

Varonth.5830:

Saiyan.1704:

Drakortha.6974:

Saiyan.1704:

No thank you. I don’t want the Devs to dumb down the game just because people don’t know how to use their mouse, Target key or Tab button.

okay ill just have to keep left clicking that thief over and over again about 10 times during a fight but they only had to target me one time at the start. that is really fair and balanced isnt it?

Use any 1-9 skills to automatically target a person.
Key bind your “Grab Nearest Enemy” key.
Use your Tab key.
Use Target key if that enemy is targeted.
Left click when needed.

It really isn’t difficult to do. Then again I come from a plethora of left clicking precision games so this stuff is cake. I have 0 issues with targeting a Thief in a Zerg.

He wrote that. You just didn’t read it. Nearest enemy and auto-targeting will most likely target a minion. Either a mesmer illusion or a necromancer minion… or a ranger pet.

And wth forces you to only use “Grab Nearest Enemy” key? Look what you need and use your possibilities for gods sake…
Fighting 1vs1 against a thief? Use nearest enemy, maybe the mesmer is far away and clones between? Use your mouse or tab. I use all three all the time depending on the situation. Why you think there isn´t a “I win” button? Its really not that difficult. If you fought enough thieves you should just know what the thief will do and act properly. You don´t even need a target to press 1 or a hell of other skills. Auto aim and other stuff like that is just bad for the gameplay if you put worth on control.
If quickly targeting an enemy with your mouse is a problem, how long does it take to call a target then? Maybe just needs some more practice to “aim” correctly.

zzBlurryzz.7492:

+99999999! I’m sick of taking this stupid traitline JUST for 3 initiative. It cripples any build I try to make.

You really take that traitline ONLY because of the 3 ini?!?
The traitline offers so much more.

Kleptomaniac: 2 ini on steal – was better when it gave 3 ini, but still…

Thrill of the Crime: fury/might/swiftness – great for raw boost (fury) or mobility (swiftness)…SUPPORT for your allies

Flanking Strike: Haste-access which can be traited as condiremove – higher burst

Uncatchable: Fun trait for condition-builds. In the right hands it can stack a lot of bleeds. NEVER put that one into a minor. In PvP it can be disastrous in revealing your position when you want to sneak away to cap a point!

Bountiful Theft: Steals 2 boons and gives Vigor on successful steal – one of the most important traits the thief has. Together with sleight of hand a stun because of stealing stability, allows some survivability when stealing boons like protection (ele!) or RIP to high might-stacks. Just a very good trait and strongly needed in some fights against certain classes/builds. I think they actually could reverse the boonsteal on larcenious (S/D 3) to steal 2 boons. Could finally punish again specs that produce boons like me drinking water on a hot day.

Trickster: A good trait , but imo far behind to bountiful theft in the utility. (maybe remove 2 condis?)

Lead Attacks: A very underrated minor imo. It can give up to 15% more RAW damage (CS now only adds crit-damage → not sure how much it is in raw damage at the end) so it works excellent with the +3 ini and Kleptomaniac.
And steal recharges faster. Well, was bound to the traitline before, now to that minor. You can steal more, enough said.

Sleight of Hand: Together with all the other traits that add to Steal it makes steal to our most important weapon fighting other classes, giving active defense or offense, mobility and counterplay (dazing important skills, ripping boons, both together, boons to yourself, more ini). At the most important thing… it has to hit the enemy to gain all the good stuff (except thrill of the crime and hidden thief). And yeah, it still bugs a lot of times – like that plant-things in the current event, I CAN´T steal it or my favourite… “To close to steal” lmao

But still, trickery is not only an important line cause of the +3 ini, it just gives so much more utility than CS or Acro.

T raw.4658:

uglydan.1638:

Ghost trap only works against the feebleminded. There’s also a reason why you rarely see p/d in pvp. It only finds its footing in WvW. As to the weaponless p/d video, again, I highly suspect that opponents weren’t exactly top shelf, or had sub-optimal builds with little to no condi clear.

We have a differing of opinion. You look down on p/d and on anyone that enjoys the playstyle. That’s fine. Arrogance isn’t really a virtue but again, to each their own. If your input swayed the devs in any way, I’d be concerned, but it’s your personal opinion and I’m fine with that.

I’m sure you’re a thief god while playing d/p, like 90% of everyone else.

Quote: “Either way its not happening and you are doing yourself a disservice by playing p/d condi.”

A disservice? What is this, the video olympics? Last I knew, I played this game for enjoyment. You’re making it sound like I’m training for some E-sport, and that by playing a spec you believe is inferior, I won’t even get the bronze medal. I haven’t stepped into the pvp lobby even once, all the way back to beta 3 years ago. I solely play WvW. Sorry, I’m not one of the “elite” that finds solace in excelling in pvp.

1. The people who died to the weaponless Dire+Perplex thief weren’t scrubs and they were running Meta Dueling builds. I believe Mango (I may be wrong) made the video to emphasize how broken Dire+Perplexity is. He succeeded in spades.

P/D condi doesn’t see play in tournaments due to stealth being horrible for conquest and the thief’s actual role. Anet has also kept certain stat combo’s and runes out of PvP so there is that as well too. Could you run p/d condi in a tournament? Absolutely! As long as you have SB as your OH and SA to assist your teammates it can be viable. You’ll miss out on group stealth tho.

Yes I’ll say it again. You do yourself a disservice by running on p/d condi. Yes I know its at the weakest it’s ever been, but it still carries bad play. I’m not looking down on you persay….its the simple truth. I play every weapon set a thief offers in all types of ways. I’ve even done off the wall things like front line a thief in a zerg busting group. I’ve tried D/P condi.

At the end of the day its your game you play how you want. You are entitled to your opinion and should voice it as you see fit. You do need to understand a few things though. You only play WvW and you only play a build that the majority of players deem skilless and OP. I in fact have been on record stating I don’t consider P/D Perplexity Thieves thieves at all. I’ve played the build extensively and can with 100% certainty say its Broken. It’s not that i’m looking down on you I just honestly don’t consider you a thief player.

Though if they’d change condi damage like i’ve outlined above I’d change my stance.

Well written, you get a +1 from me for this ^^

The only thing I´m disagreeing is to set burn back to only stack time. Some classes are depending on that damage-condition and an ele just overwriting all the time cause of so much burn inflicts is just unfair to builds like condi-guard. Not sure how much the scaling and numbers would have to change though.

laquito.5269:

I get that some people enjoy playing SA builds as it makes thief a lot more forgiveable to play and probably makes more sense from a WvW perspective, but you need to realize that this traitline is completly shutting down Critical Strikes and Acrobatics. Shadow Arts has just too much good passive stuff. You get free condi cleanses in stealth, you’re healed in stealth enabling to reset the fight at will, especially in combination with shadowrefuge and improvisation and your stealths last longer than a normal thief, making it hard to counterstealth. On top of that steal gets you another stealth, which doesnt even need to hit anything and you even take less damage in stealth.

There is NOTHING, literally nothing that could make me choose another 3rd traitline (besides DA and Trickery) than Shadow Arts. Even if they buffed CS or Acro, people will still use D/P SA, because its easy mode and dumbs down thief. The only thing that kept SA out of PVP was the fact that the old trait system forbid it as your damage would’ve been lacking. Now that stats aren’t tied to traitlines anymore and you’re able to max out another traitline, there is no reason to ever move away from Shadow Arts.

Therefore SA needs a nerf, the most obvious traits would’ve to be Shadow Rejuvenation and Hidden Killer. As long as these two skills aren’t changed or moved to the same tier, no one right in there mind will ever play something else than SA in tPvP. Not to mention the whine that SA causes by resetting fights at ease.

SA is not shutting down acro, acro is just bad ^^
Yes, SA makes D/P a lot easier, especially since the patch (giving us access to the old panic-strike-build + shadow rejuvination, longer stealth, rezzstealth and -25% damage). Btw you got some damage buff through SA cause of might, too (thanks god it got removed, was one of that stealthcamp-rewards). In generally I loved the old panicstrike-build. I was able to make damage and have utility and not forced to use the complete SA line. The only thing needed was Shadows Embrace which for me is the highest advantage the SA line has in front of crit-strikes and acro. I played D/D and S/D with SA a long time ago and never wanted to go back when I shrugged it off. And now I´m back on it cause of the changes :´<
If you want tp play competitive in pvp with your team you need D/P DA/SA/trickery what I never wanted to happen.
Crit strikes just grants damage (and healing, but sacrificing damage to get heal THROUGH damage? wtf?!) and acro got some nice things, but pain response is still crap and the grandmasters partly not good enough.
I don´t think SA need a direct nerf, more some changes.
-CiS back to master
-eliminate last refuge
-eliminate that smoke-screen signal for your enemies to spike there
- change shadow rejuvination to get heal when getting in and out of stealth (you know, rewarding getting in and out, not camping)
-changing something in the adepts, you just can´t take something over shadow embrace cause the condiremove is to important.
I think that would it be.
And of course improving crit-strikes and acro ^^

posthumecaver.6473:

Does this trait works ‘Impacting Distruption’?

I use sword/pistol for easy interrupts but I am not seeing any damage from interrupts?

Or there is not a written ICD on it?

If you succeeded in interrupting your enemy, you can see an icon under his health-bar. When that icon ends (after 2sec?!?) the damage gets in.

Just to make sure… You actually INTERRUPTED, yes? Because when you just >DAZE< with the pistol-whip without interrupting there wont be any pulmonary impact.

Dastion.3106:

Karl McLain.5604:

As always, things are open to change. If this playstyle is too strong, we’ll have to adjust it. There’s a possibility that it shouldn’t We’re looking forward to seeing how it works for you during the beta weekend.

How it will play is pretty simple to intuit. The Thief will spam headshot to lock down and deal impressive damage to his enemy. When his initiative is low he’ll use Palm Strike or the new daggers interrupt skill, or Basilisk Venom or stealth + Staff #1.

And because Thieves are virtually immune to interrupts you can’t punish that kind of button smashing play style. It’s like playing Mortal Kombat or Street fighter back in the day where someone could win by spamming a single button once they got you stuck.

If the thief is spamming headshot and you get killed by that you should probably look for another game. Headshot does very low damage and he has to INTERRUPT you. That is skillfull play actually… The new dagger-skill could be usefull, not sure if its better than blinding powder (with SA) of course. Using Pulmonary impact the thief probably gonna have zero condiremove outside of shadowstep (which is a very important stunbreak). Immun to interrupt und stuns?!? Wuat? A thief normally just doesn´t engages 1vs1 in pvp when stunbreakers are on cd, so he has an option to escape. Hell, you shouldn´t even engage another thief or mesmer when no stunbreak or blind powder is ready.
Have you ever played thief? If not please stay out of that conversation.
Spamming skills like headshot itself punish the thief. Its a >global< cd for our weaponskills. Swapping weaponset doesn´t give us new initiative when not traited (which no one does).

BobbyT.7192:

Kocoff.7582:

Auesis.7301:

Great, then it becomes a Minor and gets a hugely increased ICD to compensate, and we have more whining posts about how we’re back to needing SA to reliably remove conditions.

You are all so smart.

why do people keep mentioning an ICD… It doesn’t need any compensation whatsoever.

Come on man. People will revert back to SA because that’s true. If thieves can’t keep the status quo with DD, then the only logical step is to revert back to that Trait line that offered that condition soap.

It’s going to be as effective as a typical D/P pulling to combo, to gain stealth and clean himself. It’ won’t be OP, even with 3 dodges.

1 sec CD on a trait that clean condi on evade. what’s outrageous about turning this into a minor?

How long is Withdraw? 3/4 sec of a sec. you’ ll be cleaning +1 condition
RFI? 3/4 of a sec. same thing for this skill.

We need this to be a minor. It’s not even an advantage tbh and it’s FAR from OP.
It just a reliable condi clean trait that is erroneously placed. I vote either Adept or Minor.

It not about what we want, it’s about what Anet will do, I’ve known this company and the way they balance for 8 years, I know they will up the ICD if it becomes a minor.
That’s just a given,
Rangers have something similar with early beta, and it had a 10sec ICD, before they deciding to have it only remove stuff like blind and cripple, and that’s a major.
Eles have it too, removes only burning and chill, Major adept, 10 ICD
I’m surprise this doesn’t have a 10icd already.

I´m not.
Stop, Drop and Roll is on >dodge-rolling<, Escapist´s Absolution is on >evade<. What if the enemy stops attacking and just looking at you dodging all day without clearing condis? Thats what my concern is. Bad players will just brainless continue to attack, but good players (where it actually matters) will instantly know what to do. You never know how something turns out. Maybe its ok or maybe its to strong, lets see when it comes.

NapTooN.6283:

Remember guys that PI-Trait only triggers if you INTERRUPT something. Spamming Headshot 5 times does not mean that every single shot interrupted something. So it is not Daze = PI it is INTERRUPT = PI

Yep, its like the new Feline grace, you have to successful evade or interrupt to gain benefits (which a lot of classes haven´t as a condition for their traits…), i think feline grace should have been 25% endurance gain on successful dodge but whatever. Of course there has to be some changings on numbers etc, nothing is perfect from the beginning, but please without making something usefull completely useless (acrobatic “cough”).
Lets see how a PvP build could possibly look like (in conclusion to the current meta):
D/P Daredevil on interrupt

I think every average pvp-player knows what the problm is, right? condiremove…
You have to sacrifice impacting disruption for a condiremove where you have to hope getting attacked while evading, otherwise there isn´t any condiremove. You could take trickster and flanking strike instead of course, but I wouldn´t consider it enough and loosing bountiful theft is huge. Generally you loose a lot when going for daredevil.
Lyssa-rune could be an option, but is very lackluster as well (was such a nice rune once >_<).

Chaos Archangel.5071:

So.. I could never bring myself to be too interested in core thief or play it very often, but the Daredevil elite spec has me wetting myself in anticipation.

I’ve never created a thief build before, so I don’t have the best idea of trait/skill synergies. I have this idea in mind for a daredevil spec focused almost entirely on what the elite offers, but what traits would I take for a build that:

* Will focus on interrupts

• Uses staff
• Will use at least 3 physical skills ((including the elite)
• Will use the leap-finisher dodge.

Any ideas on what traits/runes/sigils and alternate weapon I should be considering? I assumed shortbow/staff.

Well, we will see what will be viabel or not, which traitlines work best or whats mandatory, but you want to try an martial arts build so we try ^^

Just some random ideas through. I think you either have to try dealing damage with interrupts OR dodging
Dodge
Interrupt
I´m very skeptical through, but trying out some stuff is always fun ^^
DA and trickery are mandatory in pvp, if you want to use daredevil its difficult to use acrobatic ithout loosing important stuff. And without SA you need the condiremove in daredevil, locking out the damage on interrupt and stuffmaster (lol, meant “staff master”, lets call daredevil STUFFMASTER instead ^^).
IF you use for example daredevil and acrobatic (loosing either DA or trickery) you could use the staff master or impacting disruption, but the condi cleanse with pain respons in acrobatic is really bad :/
I think S/D or S/P are better variants here together with S/B cause of cleansing with skill 2 on backport and cleansing with escapist´s absolution. Using staff you don´t need “don´t stop” in acro through = Maybe more ini or more healing (there are some healing traits, maybe schoolar rune could be interesting).

sigil of air/blood on staff… is that correct? I´m not able to play right now and I heard air/fire got nerfed and blood is the new to go.

Zenos Osgorma.2936:

it should , it really should they attack if it hits they get revealed.

its a problem a clear issue , ranger gs counter attack a stealthed person can melee hit this block and not get revealed.

anet don’t want too much revealing skills but blocks or counter attacks should be counters to melee attacks not letting stealthed melee hit you and get away scotch free.

Well, technically they dont get hit because the blocked it, right? :P
I dont know why it “should” be that way. In the first place it “should” be a matter of balance. Right now a class with a lot of stealth is the thief, a class with many blocks the guardian. Guardians are very good – hardcounter to thieves, so not needed?!
And you actually get “revealing” information. "Blocked"over you haed…melee or range?!? You can see ranged attacks easily and locate the enemy. Not ranged, so maybe melee? Beat the hell out of the enemy. Normally no thief would ever facetank a medi-guard or burn-guard. And a thief 1vs1 a bunker-guard? Please…
If the ranger gs 4 counter attack misses the enemy cause of good positioning its a player playing smart and not an issue imo.

That kind of theme got discussed sporadically the last month and people were mostly saying that its not needed at the moment and especially thieves would need some other suvivability then. But hey, lets discuss again ^^

Then I will leave it here ^^
Just going for 3 things from the previous post.
Mercifull ambush is way better than you rated it. Using it efficiently it allows some incredible moves. I dont think it needs a change.
With last refuge I actually never had that terrible experiences. Yes, it happened to activate at the wrong moment, but everyone KNOWS it was there. It was about playing with it, not against it. I think a lot of problems come up because of people having autotargeting and autoattack (yes, i even have to press each 1 manually, I like more control, but my whole keybindings are weird – 1 = C for example)
The proposed might-gaining sitting in stealth is a big no-go in my eyes. We want to get away from sitting in stealth stacking might and health and shift into gaining things via getting into and out of stealth (might-duration would need to be really short). That leads me to the last one: shadow protector. I like your proposed “gaining protection”. But protecton isvery strong and should not be that stackable. Gain and give like1-3 secof protection providing stealth to you or allies and gain it again when entering revealed (maybe activating when getting revealed through sic’em?!/not sureif alliesshould get it than when getting revealed, too). Not sure how that kind of things would turn out at the end. We already grt health and -25% damage in stealth (change that to gain health when entering stealth/revealed) and we dont needmore survival in SA but everywhere else… ^^

Umut.5471:

I completely agree. Also that daze spamming thieves are annoying on PvP.
Needs a nerf and an alternative build to compensate. Mesmers need damage nerf too.

Wait a sec…
Your problem are “daze spamming thieves” in PvP? lmao
I think your problem goes deeper. You can only “spam” headshot (4ini iwth a 1/4sec duration). Steal and basi-venom have cd´s from 20sec to 40sec. Pls don´t say you get killed by headshot alone (together with AA).

Kageseigi.2150:

Does Sigil of Blood do damage even when you are at full health? Or do you have to have damage before it procs so it can steal health?

Yes it does.

Sigill of blood can be usefull against tankier comps, but tbh I´m not changing from air/fire anymore. Mostly you either oneshot together with the mesmer, kill low health targets or pressure zerker.

Maugetarr.6823:

Jana.6831:

Vornollo.5182:

Skill cap wise? S/D > D/P > D/D.

Thanks for clarifying this as I was wondering why I’m always dying lately- thought it had something to do with the heavy nerfs my weaponset took while the answer is that I have no skill, I’m carried by my D/D weaponset.

I think he meant that no matter how good you are, there’s a limit to what that weaponset can do for you. D/D just doesn’t have the utility of the other 2 listed.

Thats right. Skill floor =/= skill cap. Low skill floor means it doesn´t need much skill to be somehow successful. Be it killing people or whatever. High skill cap means you can reach a higher point of skill and not getting limited cause of the weaponset. D/P has a low skill floor. Its “easy” to get into stealth, survive to a certain point and kill people. But you also need a kitten lot knowledge about your possibilities, other classes, key-skills, etc to get the full potential. Having usefull weapon-skills allows that. D/D is much more difficult to play in longer fights (come on, one-shotting people isn´t difficult) and the lack of equal useful weapon-skills as D/P hinder it.

Black powder + heartseeker is the problem? Why you talk about cloak and dagger then? Is it OP, too? (wtf)
“Problem is, in the forums, no-one has specifically pointed out where the issue of thief stealth lies.” —-> lmao
There were so many posts about changing SA to make it more rewarding to get in and out quickly instead of sitting in it, like giving an amount of health when getting revealed. You know what? It gets ignored. (and you guys come here, saying that, without even knowing what we are discussing here. Hilarious.
A step into the right direction was the removal of mightstack you get when it stealth. Going into stealth with a few heartseeker and you got like 6-8 might.

“Fact
All the thieves who use this are running remove conditions on stealth and regen in stealth.”

lol, where do you get that facts from? SA is meta right now, yes, but who you think you are to say that every D/P user uses SA all the time? To get that 16k on D/P you need crit-strikes and the target to be squishy.
“Fact
They use this skill to remove all condition damage and heal up to 100% while their opponent is sitting visible the entire time with no ability to heal more then a modest amount.”

You know what? In that time we still can be damaged, your cd´s are getting ready, too. We have to get into stealth btw to clear condis. Other classes just have to use a always ready skill or do it passively in their rotations. How about not letting the thief into stealth in the first place? (talking about black powder and heartseeker combo, but refuge can be countered easily, too. In wvw I have 12k life. Not that much, right? All that “ohhhh they heal full all the time QQ”. 12k is like nothing, so you notice it more. Ele do it all the time while having more health normally, especially on cele. Thats why most thieves run marauder in pvp right now. (less damage ^^).
And last but not least a “fact”. We can´t do damage when sitting in stealth. :P
“Fact
The balance is way off. I refuse to play this way just to win a fight.”

Yeah, it is. But thief isn´t the problem right now, neither is it stealth. If you don´t want to play this way you are welcome to leave.

“If you remove the blackpowder/heartseeker stealth you will see far far less people complaining about thief stealth in the forums. The only people who will complain will be those who abuse the god mode just because they are bottom dwellers who feed off of ruining other people’s game play.”
Hm, D/P is our only meta-build right now in PvP. Removing the combo would eliminate it and no one would play it because of being usless. Less complaints about stealth? Hahahaha, are you really that naive or clueless? You know what happened the last time someting else than D/P was somehow meta? There were so many complaining about “permadodgeevadespam”. Result? S/D nerfed and wiped out of the meta —-> more D/P. Thanks…
No, the ones complaining are people like you who seems to have no clue at all.

“I play dire thief. Full condi.” 2 weeks ago.
Were you playing zerker once? I heard a lot of people changing their mind after seeing it from the other side.
Btw, dire thief SA? Complaining about “easy way” and “high risk/high reward”? x)

Laraley.7695:

Shadow.1345:

Laraley.7695:

Shadow.1345:

Ross Biddle.2367:

Shadow.1345:

I know, the dude is like standing there like one of the training NPCs in HotM just waiting for you to set up the backstab.

Meanwhile in gudland,…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQglrsPBeF0

Player applies appropriate amount of damage to low health, high glass enemy (which he knew was there) to down him, and he’s “gud”? Surely this is just a basic math problem XD

Lol, compared to a guy that stands there while some baddie thief tries to backstab him through invulnerability and doesn’t turn around and cleave the thief down? Yes. xD

@StikerHappy my point with the video is that a person doesn’t just have to stand there and wait to eat 7k damage. Sure we aren’t all as good as these pros but sitting there while blockblockblockblockblockblockblockblockblockblockblockblockblockblockblockblockblockblockblockblockblockblockblockblockblockblockblockblockblockblock7kdamage is like hearing someone breaking into your house and doing a really bad job of being quiet and you sit there until after he finally gets in and takes all your stuff before calling the police just because you couldn’t see the burglar because it was dark and he was wearing dark clothes.

And in the other guy defense, Helseth didn’t eat the backstab because the thief didn’t even plan to do so, otherwise he wouldn’t be on his sb AAing him.

I think you missed the point.

You said your point is that you don’t have to stand there and eat 7k damage. That happens when you’re going to get backstabbed from stealth, it didn’t because the thief didn’t plan on using backstab. While your point is true, having this video as a proof is not correct since there was no need to avoid backstab. Don’t think I did.

Ok, let us change that situation a bit theoretically, having in mind that Helsith did not know if the thief would engage with backstab or surprise shot (what is a normal move to bait defenses). What if in that moment Helseth used his Sword 2 invulnerability the thief would have used steal + backstab (greedy greedy thief) and continud to cast backstab into blurred frenzy. You think that Helseth would just stand there and eat the backstab after that? Never…
Even if the steal + backstab would have landed, break stun and counterburst, invulnerability from F4, etc. Of course the thief could have been on full zerker DA, CS, trickery and oneshot Helseth. Well, in that case it can happen the other way around easily.
If I´m watching right, the thief tried to time his surprise shot for hitting after blurred frenzy finished. Dodged and reflected the second arrow back. Thats counterplay for its finest ^^
We don´t know exactly what happend in their minds in that situation, but that blurred frenzy and dodge + maybe decoy is a normal move to bait steal or an engage (backstab, shadow shot, surprise shot) from the thief.

BjornL.1937:

Thx for the reply. Those server rules seams reasonable.

I think the lesson here is that I should find my opponent on a server that already have a rules set. Instead of asking in chat for en opponent and then let him choose what ever rules he thinks is okay.
What about Elixir S!? (the one that make u small or invis)

I can´t see any reason why you shouldn´t using Elixir S. Curious who told you not to use that xD
Shadow rejuvination is currently not banned from Angz server. Maybe it returns to the list ^^
Angz 1vs1 rules
That rules are not “general” rules overall, but Angz is the most used 1vs1 server EU and the list provides interesting duelling. So pls never say to anyone that this are THE RULES. They are a very good guideline though.

CorrynnStarr.7942:

so let me recap for you… there I am wandering around looking for the thief. “poof” thief appears next to me, does 18k dmg in less than 1.5 seconds and “poof” back into stealth. I spam everything in gods creation to clear condi, heal and keep from being downed by it, placing 60% of all my utilitys and virtues on a 30+ second cooldown, then 5 seconds later, “poof” thief appears again, bursts another 18k damage and laughs as I lay there a burning/poisoned heap…. this is broken and needs fixed. no one should be able to do 40k burst damage in a total of less than 3 seconds visible time, and another 5 seconds stealthed…

So you went panic-mode and wasted everything you had, what makes you to be a bad player? As a guard you normally have TWO times invulnerability, good heal, good CC, passive damage through reteliation and a lot of blocks. At the end you are exaggerating and should look if you had armor on you, know what the thief did exactly, what your skills are doing and learn to read the combat log.

Nephrite.6954:

PU mesmers are farrrr more dangerous now compared to thieves. They’ve got bigger burst and better escape thanks to longer stealth duration. I’d worry about them more.

About what I saw here written I think they should be worried about every class/specc ^^
Thinking sentinel-amu gonna do the work is hilarious.
“Furthermore, I’ve seen 2 thieves duel, and even they couldn’t kill each other. Took a long long time! Any thoughts on this everybody?”
SA with a lot of (full) valkyrie or soldier? Yeah, that could take some time especially If they are both good or bad. If they are bad they wont be capable to do damage correctly to down the other one. If they are good they can stealth to full health every time. Blame Shadows rejuvination (what we need now with all that damage flying around).

Provost.6210:

lvis.3824:

1.) Backstab HAS a cooldown , its called Revealed !

2.) Anyone crying about getting hit that hard ( from whatever profession ) is running class themself, and therefore dishes out the same dmg.

3.) To cry about thiefs atm is really a l2p issue, compared to every other profession right now they got kitten !

I spot a thief.

I’ll have sympathy for you when you are revealed the second you touch that attack button, not the 47th time you’ve spammed it even though I’ve got a 5 second invulnerable up and you manage to land 7k damage.

There’s a particular blend of bullkitten that goes along with seeing:
InvulnerableInvulnerableInvulnerableInvulnerableInvulnerableInvulnerableInvulnerable
InvulnerableInvulnerableInvulnerableInvulnerableInvulnerableInvulnerableInvulnerable
InvulnerableInvulnerableInvulnerableInvulnerable8000

Oh, and don’t forget your proc sigil on top of that.

Were it up to me, you’d have cooldowns on everything, not just backstab. Be thankful ANet has their hate on for elementalists and your class is on the backburner for now.

What the hell?
Saw something like that in another thread some days ago. That Person wrote blockblockblockblockblockblockblockblockblockblockblockblockblockblock7000.
Looks like the same problem we have here. You let the thief backstab into your Invulnerability/block and you do NOTHING? Not maybe turning 180° and beat the hell out of him? Saying in ts (if you queued with someone) “thief on me”. ANYTHING?!? Not even sure what kind of a dumb thief would try to backstab on a 5sec invulnerability. Its the same system like mistform from vampire. You wait and kill him when he gets out. Not even have to look into the icon. Its in your mind.
And if its such DA,CS,trickery zerker you just “fart” into his direction and he dies. For me most damage comes from burning, bleeding, etc. Even retaliation is sometimes higher than direct damage.

Galandil.9641:

Zephyra.4709:

This. This. This.

I’ve been running this food since day 1 of ever playing S/D thief and it’s hilarious. Paired with Strength runes = might on dodge… might for dayzzzz… dodges for dayzzzzz.

Might on dodge? Dude, they scrapped out Power of Inertia from the traits, we do not have anymore access to might on dodge.

The acro traitline has been seriously nerfed, ESPECIALLY when using runes of strength (that, sadly, I have). Our overall access to might in an acro build has been reduced to only Thrill of Crime, which gives us 70% might uptime, so it’s a nerf not only to survavibility (less endurance overall), but even damage.

Ofc we could get might with Bountiful theft, but that steal starts exactly when Thrill starts, so there’s no way we could “fill in” that 30% of no might.

Oh, and now even less boon duration than before. And less HPs.

He meant Bowl of Orrian Truffle and Meat Stew...
Was playing around with it some month ago with S/D acro. Got the duration from the might from food to like 8sec. We have less boon-duration now though.
Haven´t played that much with the new acro, but I don´t like the feeling for now. The vigor from feline grace is barely noticeable and I have to l2p with hard to catch (when to eat CC, when not). Pain response or vigorous recovery is weird to decide on what to take.

Linnael.1069:

PistolWhip.2697:

Saiyan.1704:

Guards got an anti stealth trap.
Engi’s got an anti stealth trait.

Something tells me that Thieves Specialization is going to be disgusting.

Thief Elite Specialization: Vomit

Description: Disgusting.

VomitHunter

Engi gonna be Thiefhunter?

Zero Day.2594:

Kageseigi.2150:

…
By the way, if you want to know what to expect from the guild, just watch this…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1l7N-WLa3Q

That my friend, is pure gold.

Elite-specialisation Pirate? Or dear, gonna have to take some name like Teef Sparrow or Edward Teef. I´m praying everyday that it wont something like pirate or burglar. That horror O.O