In 1v1 I usually start in shiro with staff. I bait out the opening bursts and port to after they blow a few skills. Thieves I start in glint since the reveal makes me tingle with joy when they drop a SR and end up revealed in it.
Valid point. The heal increase mainly hurt core engi rather than just scrapper. I corrected myself on the hammer not being nerfed, it lost one leap finisher on rocket charge (lol such nerf, very wow), but that I think is one of the things that makes scrapper so annoyingly strong: hammer. The rest I believe goes to how much damage output they can do with it while still being very durable with very few weaknesses. Shiro/Glint rev is extremely powerful, but has a very blatant weakness to condi, scrapper doesn’t have this issue. IMO, they could revert the heal nerf, that wasn’t the issue.
I’ve been taking staff over hammer in smaller fights, usually around 8 people or so. Staff is much more reliable and useful in most situations aside from the obvious one where you -need- range, like ZvZ. Really wish hammer had more purpose than its 2 skill.
WvW is unplayable for me now. The lag has become horrendous to the point I can’t do anything but sit back and pray I don’t get bursted down. Nothing but huge blobs everywhere. It’s no fun. I didn’t stay on crystal desert for t1 kind of gameplay. I don’t like zerging in mindless blobs of range spamming idiots with the worst lag I’ve had than ever before. I could care less about the wait time and I did want more population in my tier area, but this is just way too far. Now I’m stuck with blob vs blob gameplay, which I hate, and lag that makes the game mode unplayable. Awesome, thanks for pushing me out of the game mode.
The added survivability was mainly to acro, nothing done to SA, if I remember correctly. I still don’t see any reason to use acro over DD.
Thief dies if you look at it hard enough, and most of their ability to cleanse is centered around evading unless they take acro, which is still worse than DD. Very weak argument
Please stop being such a crybaby. I see scrappers all the time that are just as much of a pain to kill as before. You have plenty of behind saving passives, plenty of behind saving utility, hammer does two dazing strikes inside of thunderclap which is a stun itself and a lighting field, stab on evading an attack (there you go. Evade then drop healing turret for clean use), reflects on a 6 sec CD, rocket charge is 12 with evade frames, a block that does damage and a lot more. If you’re having trouble surviving as a scrapper then the problem is YOU, my friend.
Okay, yes, I forgot about that part. But omg one less leap finisher… awesome, it should only have one finisher to begin with, and correct me if I’m wrong but didn’t the AA get buffed? So the loss of that one finisher doesn’t really concern me when hammer is still way out of line.
Necro’s consume conditions would like to have a word with you. Seriously, the crying going on is ridiculous. Hammer wasn’t touched at all with the nerf bat and you seriously think that a heal with a 3/4 sec cast time has suddenly become terrible and now scrapper is dead? Last I checked, scrappers have a thing called stability that they have access to, make use of it if you have -that- much trouble getting your heal off.
Hitting for 3k on all 3 hits if they all hit you is nowhere near what it’s meant to?
Nerfing necro Wells this way would completely ruin most of their use. Wells and staff are the only thing a Nec has for decent group ranged pressure that doesn’t make you a huge target; ie lich form. Base necro has life blast, but running without reaper is a very dangerous thing to do with no stab access. And Wells only see majority use in WvW because no one is dumb enough to stand in one in a small fight. Yes, large AoEs are a problem in WvW, but this isn’t the fix.
And CoR doesn’t need a nerf, it needs a rework along with the rest of rev hammer. There is 0 defending that skill that serves no purpose other than to spam in the background with massive damage on a 4 sec CD. I played rev back liner and spammed CoR for a while, many dead bodies that never knew what happened
Lol I never said it wasn’t due for a nerf. I know reaper is too strong in the condi department and that, to me is more so, but not entirely, due to the state of condi in general atm. Chill damage is fine, it’s the upkeep and application of it that’s unbelievably out of hand. I was against all the added corruption because it doesn’t solve the boon spamming problem properly and it just makes condi stronger and pushed towards more. The answer to all the free boons tossed around is to tone them down, not buff corruption/stripping options. Power Nec is not a bad option as a build, but in the current meta it is, and that’s an issue. Condi reaper, super tank scrapper, hyper support tempest, rev as a whole (the class is a mess on both ends of the OP and worthless scale) are all in dire need of addressing and toning down.
Yes, well known issue.
The feelz. I try to never use shadowstep for the condi removal because if I’m that desperate for a cleanse then I probably need to be running, not putting myself back into a fight. Typically, I don’t need cleanse that badly unless I get hit with some random mesmer condi burst and can use other cleanses to take care of it.
Nice job with the ‘Nerf it nouww!!!’ post. Care to offer some explanation as to why and how they should be nerfed?
No, no more boon hate. The amount of boons being tossed around is what needs to be addressed. You don’t fix power creep with more power creep.
Starving in the sense that do NOT keep smacking the Nec whe spectral armor/walk is up. Avoid dagger AA chain and especially if they have warhorn. YsiM makes it much harder to keep LF off of them, but that also means they don’t have consume conditions and are more susceptible to condi, even just annoying condi like cripple. Scepter is slow to get going so keep the pressure up and disengage when shroud comes up. When it drops you have, at the very least, seven seconds where he’s locked out of shroud unless he’s running Unholy Sanctuary, but that isn’t used much as far as I know. CC when shroud drops because little stab access, and you have a dead necro.
I laughed do hard at the OP thinking evades are sustain and pointing a finger at thief, of all classes, at having too much sustain. Thief is dead the moment he stops moving, so complaining that he evades too much is just saying ‘I shouldn’t have to be conscious about when I use my skills and everyone should get hit by them.’
Stab is not the counter to this unless you have a lot of it, and invulns like endure pain are still stopped dead by this. And what about classes that don’t have access to a lot of stab or ports, like base necro? Guess they’re just boned out of luck.
These kind of skills shouldn’t be in the game to begin with and if you really want to compare, Chilled to the Bone has a base 90 sec CD, 2 seconds of stun, chill and it’s AoE, a long wind-up animation that makes it easily evaded and it’s an elite. It can be stun broken like any other cc and the chill can be cleansed by normal means, both things every class has viable access to for any situation. So hush about long CD and cast time making it ‘fair’ and trying to justify a clearly not well thought out skill adding to more problems in the game.
And FYI, I’m a necro main and I do not approve of CttB either.
Those reasons, and more, are why I refuse to play sPvP, Deceiver. The way you’re restricted on build variety and the clear imbalances between classes makes it no fun, it’s why I dropped reaper in sPvP and started thief in WvW; it’s more fun and I have more options to play how I want, rather than being forced into a complete set of stat amulet choices that may not even be available in that game mode. Yes, some things in WvW are broken, but the option to set up your class how you like is more available to you. I still see d/d cele ele and have a blast fighting them, as well as a cele rev (odd, but he made it work), funflame warriors and the infamous ghost trapper. A shame the game mode is in the state that it’s in.
Doesn’t the ghost trapper go without Trickery?
That necro bump (lol) but in all seriousness, I think the blatant push to condi is the problem. Conditions are too strong in general, IMO, right now and since necro excells at dealing with condi, they’re seen as OP. The solution has, and always has been, range. Scepter has very weak startup condi application and it’s only 900 range, everyone but thief has access to 1200 range and thief deals with Nec in other ways. Giving a Nec a lot of free, easy to kill targets, like clones, is just helping him and that’s just something a mesmer has to work around. More targets to shout and pull effects from as well as reducing the CD of the shouts is something you need to think about when you have 3 clones staring at a Nec that haven’t been shattered. Starve him of LF and interupt his heal, kite the shroud and pressure him when not in shroud.
I also disagree that thief can’t 1v1. While I play WvW and not sPvP, the only classes I have trouble with are trapper DH and scrapper, a good rev running retribution is a very serious pain, but they’re beatable. DH being the obvious counter to thief and traps melting you the moment you get caught, and scrapper can laugh at my burst and heal it off, or go mini sized twice to buy enough time for his cd’s to finish. Power rev is no issue without retribution; all the free stab means you can’t properly interupt and when you do you just get taunted from Eye for an Eye, weakness seems to be always on you and all the endurance just means more missed bursts and more stab. Druids are interupt bait as well as eles, warriors melt when the endure pains end and mesmers are doable, albeit annoying. Necro is thief bait, pure and simple. Not saying all is well in the thief world, but we aren’t worthless.
So you think a small circle that you cannot move at all in for 6 sec is fair? A large circle would be much more reasonable since you can actually defend yourself and not get pushed back every time you move. Freely dodging around would give the counter play it needs like how stun breaking is for any other cc.
Or just make it become a knockdown because that’s all it does when it actually connects, never actually pulling to you.
Noticed recently that revenant sword 2, precision strike, tracks stealth even if the attack was executed after the target was already stealthed. So a revenant can use s2 and hit someone without ever having to know they were there. Is this intended?
I could care less about the damage, it’s the insane cc aspect of it that I think is stupid. Reduce the cages to affect only once or cut the duration in half, then you can reduce the cast time and buff the damage, but the baby boom of cc spam has got to stop.
Slick shoes trails the engi rather than trapping someone in a small zone, and if you don’t run back into the slick shoes you won’t be knocked back down. If the engi runs around you then evade out after first knockdown, but you can’t evade out of hunters ward.
It just adds to the ridiculous amount of cc floating around. I’d be fine with it if you could only be affected by the cage once rather than being stuck in it for 6 sec if you can’t port or have a lot of stab handy. C’mon, 6 sec of restraint? I can’t even think of any immobilize skills that last for that long.
Thief is a selfish class, so saying they’re selfish running staff over SB isn’t saying much. And not everyone wants to decap all match and wants something with more offensive potential, so they may choose staff. If they’re not on the ground and are contributing, then who are you to say that they would do better with SB or not? They may be able to get a crucial down because they had the better damage from staff, etc. If if works, it works, and I would rather not force SB any more than some people would d/p.
It’s a very telegraphed skill, and the ice field can usually be avoided if you evade the initial strike. When I played reaper in pvp I seldom used the skill because it just never hit with that huge wind-up. Very easily interrupted if you’re out of stab. I think the ice field is fair because the skill is a very hard to hit one and usually does nothing for you. I feel sorry for anyone who does get hit by it though.
Weakening strikes works well against an enemy that isn’t going anywhere and can see vault coming. Hook strike+ vault+ weakening strikes is a very nasty combo to hit someone with since the vault comes first during the knockdown, and most people can’t react fast enough to stop one vault. Weakening strikes after since you’re more likely to hit at least one or two hits before they stun break.
Probably because they don’t like SB? I’ve done this set before and it can work when you’re conscious of when you swap and, most important, do -not- spam vault. Staff is great for finalizing with great burst damage and evade frames, but too many thieves flip around wasting ini too much. Also staff is much better for when another thief drops a SR, then,and only then, do I ever spam vault, and then swing around AA’ing for the downed body.
Toning down CC in general would help relieve thief and its lack of stab.
Didn’t watch the video but I know the OP was a druid. ‘Sic ’em’ would have revealed the thief who likely burned everything he had trying to get it to work. There were ways counter it, and, from what everyone is saying, the OP was caught off guard and didn’t react properly. That’s on them.
2k on Scrappers. Much proud, very ;_;
Yes, add more reveal to thief on what’s probably the least used set of utilities because someone made some really gimmicky thing work. Great plan.
I have to agree with Jana and Kageseigi about mobility. Being able to move quickly because I have ports and stealth isn’t going to help me kill the DH that blocks every attack once basi hits twice, or the scrapper the waves his arm up and reveals me and has the sustain to hold off my offense. A non mobile thief is a dead one, no matter the offensive pressure he has because he has no defense to hold him in the fight to avoid running. I’d rather see elites get toned down rather than us get buffed, to be honest. The power creep is very real and Anet doesn’t seem to be able to realize that. The boon spamming problem should not have been ‘addressed’ by giving more boon hate, you need to tone down the boons being crapped out by everyone. You don’t have to raise other classes damage/offense to deal with one that’s out of line, tone it down. I really don’t want to see more damage buffs come next balance patch, but I have a feeling that’s probably all that’s going to happen aside from a few minor things here and there.
I know about channels like rapid fire, but this just seeks you out. I tried it with a friend in our guild hall; I used SR and was within 600 range, he uses the skill and it tracks like you weren’t in stealth. I know channels follow -after- you go in stealth, but precision strike will follow you even if you were stealthed before he cast it.
It may have been mentioned and I missed it, but has anyone else noticed rev sword 2 tracking stealth? Just had it happen on a rev today in WvW and I tested it with a friend later. I know the skill is still in the hotseat but I doubt this is intended. Got hit for nearly 3k for every hit and he never knew I was there.
I agree with Hanza, the amount of passive play with classes now is out of control. All of the ‘cause X effect when hit by cc’ need to go along with the toning down of cc in general. Passive invuln like auto endure pain are just lazy and stupid, and shouldn’t even be considered for a passive procing trait, the skill itself is fine because you have to actually use it at the proper time instead of it activating when you get your goose cooked as a get out of jail free card. Things like this are just lazy for any competitive aspect of a game.
I’ve gone against a lot of d/p thieves with staff and it’s usually the first mistake determines the fight. The better stealth access from d/p gives a lot of trouble to staff, but a solid hook strike into vault and weakening charge downs most before they react or if they’re out of stun breaks. Blinds tend to work very well against staff if they don’t AA or weakening charge since the other attacks are single hit.
Not sure how I lost you at soothing bastion, it’s a viable option to stall and heal with as a passive defense and with increased boon duration with shield. All Herald GMs are good and viable, EB and SB being the more annoying over elders force.
I’ve always run SR, Spite and Reaper with d/w and staff. Rise, either spectral armor or walk and plague signet with consume conditions for heal. Flesh golem for duels and lich for big groups. I don’t take the elite shout since the starting animation makes it easy to see coming and avoid. Only trouble I ever get is from thieves that use a LOT of stealth and Scrappers since I don’t have much corrupt and poison.
Some of the bias here is unreal. I’ve seen revs take or groups of 3-4 and last long enough for help to come. Retribution is probably the lazyist spec to choose because of all the ridiculous passive defenses. Take soothing bastion and you can chain the root block twice with shield, free stab on evade, two stacks if you take EB, passive endurance regen from retribution so more free easy stab, stun break every 8 sec on a minor that’s just as good as Foot in the Grave for necro and that’s a GM, reducing weakness effectiveness for some stupid reason, 50% damage and condition reduction on wait for it….another passive defense that’s also a stun break, free unblockables when you get blocked and the option to have those attacks have greater damage and both passive, numerous evades on weapon skills, plenty of blocks, high offensive pressure, good mobility (to anyone dumb enough to say rev has bad mobility then look at necro before you complain, and it doesn’t have near the passive or active defenses rev has). Core rev isn’t near as bad as people say it is when you stop looking at ventari and corruption’s lack of synergy with the new Mallyx, and everyone knows Herald is beyond out of control. Rev has to make little to no sacrifices in order to have most of these things and do them very well, not the best at them, but very effective. I played rev in the betas and knew after bw3 it was out of line, and was salty about Mallyx. I don’t play my rev anymore because it’s boring, half of the class can potentially play itself because you can rely on something activating that you did nothing to cause. Does it have its problems? Yes, ventari and salvation are useless, Mallyx and his line couldn’t be much farther apart, hammer is useless aside from CoR spam and it’s still full of bugs. The only thing rev truly lacks is good condi cleanse, bit that’s intended.
I’ve been using dominator and I love it.
YsiM does garbage healing if you have a tick of poison though. If you’re having trouble with CC being interrupted then drop RS while infusing terror is up while you still have stab and you won’t be interrupted. If you get interrupted by something like revenant staff 5 then you had no hope of getting the heal off either way.
While I agree that when people spam CoR it’s extremely annoying, hammer has nothing else going for it. If you’re not I a zerg and someone is coming after you the hammer has no way of keeping them out. 3 is a free pass to walk up to them because the animation is so obvious and it’s only one attack. If you get hot with 5 then…idk what to tell you. So yeah, CoR is stupid, buggy and really strong for something that can be spammed at 1200 range, think of any other reason to use hammer.
It shouldn’t have great dps when it’s OP in sustain, but some of these suggestions look like they came from that rev post that wanted hammer 4 to reflect projectile and have 5 unlockable attacks after port and a whole bunch of other ridiculous things.