First, best thing you can possibly do is to play a thief for a little while. I’d just stick with sPvP. You’ll learn the way most thieves have to operate.
Also, if you’re trying to counter glass cannon thieves, you’re going to need high defenses and lots of controls. Basically, survive their burst (dodging is best if you’re fast enough), then stun/immobilize and destroy them. They have no armor and 10k health, so they melt in seconds.
For the rest of thieves, bomb kit is your friend. You can lay down bombs and force the thief to eat a ton of damage if they want to hit you with stealth. Also keep moving constantly while they’re in stealth, makes it hard for them to hit you.
They are thinking about giving Steal a casting time and/or an aftercast delay, so your suggestion is pretty much spot-on.
I hope they don’t do that. I like my steal instantaneous and undodgeable. But I definitely agree that it should interrupt CnD. I don’t think the problem is the damage of that combo, it’s the fact that all of those hits can land in under a second.
The other heal, the third one… yeah I can’t figure out what to do with that thing.
Well Withdraw has the highest total healing of the three healing skills (except for SoM with 160+ hits per minute). It also has a guaranteed success. HiS and SoM active have a cast time and an obvious blue animation that means you’re healing, so they can be interrupted. There can also be times where they’re off cooldown but you can’t use them right away (say, you need to dodge or you need to interrupt the enemy or something). Withdraw cannot be interrupted because you’re evading while you cast it. Not only do you get healed, you get immunity to everything for about a second.
It’s best with a ranged build. It breaks movement-impairing effects on you, so it makes it much easier to kit the enemy. It also opens quite a big gap (rolls ~450"). When you’re melee, I’ve found that it’s not really worth it because it forces you to give up your position. If you’re fighting someone who’s trying to kite you, Withdraw will put you far away from them.
It also works well if you grab traits, food, or runes that give you _ when you use a healing skill, because of its ultra-short cooldown.
I’d have to agree with you, OP. In noob v noob fights, heartseeker-spamming will make the thief win. However, any decently skilled player knows how to deal with a heartseeker thief, and can kill them easily.
Should we really be balancing around unskilled players? After all, there are plenty of other things that do just fine with unskilled players but die horribly when they go up against a skilled opponent, and I don’t have a problem with that. As long as it’s possible for a decent player to deal with it, I don’t see why it needs changing.
Backstab needs adjustment far more than HS. Even a really skilled player can die to backstab, but any player which dies to HS spamming is an embarrassment.
You do realize you just compared the passive effect of SoM to HiS?
Are you trying to say that SoM passively does a comparable amount of healing as HiS does actively?
Well… yeah. The SoM active heal is trash for my build, and even with most builds it’s worse than HiS and far worse than Withdraw. If you can use the SoM active heal exactly on cooldown, it will heal slightly more than HiS. However, you’ll spend 150% more time casting SoM than you will HiS, and if you can’t get that heal off every 15s on the spot or if its long cast time gets interrupted, it drops horribly in efficiency.
If you’re going to be using a healing skill every 15s, Withdraw will serve your purposes far better. Rather than having a long cast time, it casts instantly and evades well casting. SoM active forces you to spend 5 seconds every minute casting, whereas Withdraw forces you to spend ~4s every minute evading.
In my opinion, SoM is good for:
- Active heal with a signet build.
- Passive heal for any build with a high hit volume. Requires either constant AoE or attacks like Unload and Pistol Whip.
Withdraw is good for:
- Mobility and highest total healing.
- A guaranteed heal (can’t be interrutped, evades while casting).
- Builds that give you some bonus when you heal and require you to heal frequently.
HiS is good for:
- Builds that benefit from stealth
- PvP (it’s a great escape skill)
- Condition removal
Stealth revives are incredible. Stealth also gives great aggro control (something only thieves and, to a lesser extent, mesmers can do).
A S/D stealth thief can blind AoE and then daze a target for 2s every five seconds. That’s a lot of defense to the group. We can also provide some good battlefield control with caltrops (tons of AoE cripple). We have a great projectile blocker, with a 7s duration and 30s (24s traited) cooldown.
A thief can go into Trickery for AoE boons. My build gives my group swiftness (16.5s), fury (16.5s), might (18.5s), and vigor (24.75s) every time I steal, and Steal has a 36s cooldown for me. The vigor especially is really powerful, as there aren’t many skills in the game that grant vigor to a group.
A venom thief can also have crazy AoE support. They’re actually capable of healing pretty well. They can grant their group venoms, which causes each member’s next X attacks to apply a condition. For example, Spider Venom causes each player’s next 5 (6 traited) attacks to apply poison. With other traits, poisons grant 2 stacks of might for 20s and steal health with each attack. The health-stealing is very powerful, and amounts to a large amount of group healing. The group can keep permanent poison, immobilize, and weakness up on a target with a venom thief, as well as applying 20 stacks of vulnerability (5s) every 36s and two hits of a 1.5s stun for each person every 36s.
Hrm. I was gonna go dagger/dagger on my thief, but now I wanna give this a try, haha. How is it as a levelling build or is it better to wait until you’re 70-80 before respeccing into this?
D/D will give you better single-target damage by quite a margin. However, S/D gives you better survivability and AoE damage. If you’re having trouble staying alive, definitely use S/D. Otherwise, they’re about equal. If you’re fighting three or more mobs, S/D kills faster than D/D. Against one or two mobs, D/D kills faster.
S/P gives you head shot for interrupts, black power for defense vs msemsers [sic] and rangers (which gave you the hardest time) and pistol whip if they’re bad enough to try to tank your damage (which also gives you a interrupt). It also lets you keep your shadow return.
I’m really not a fan of S/P. For one thing, black powder is largely only good in PvE. In PvE, the nice little mobs will obediently stand in your tiny powder field and eat constant blinding. However, in PvP, no player that’s even half-decent will stand in that field. It’s good if you can lay it down and then shoot through it, but for S/P that’s trash in PvP except against enemies so bad that it doesn’t matter what weapon set I’m using.
Pistol Whip also isn’t that amazing. It dose slightly more damage than one full auto-attack chain, although in something like 2 seconds in stead of 3. However, Pistol Whip roots you for the duration, so it’s easy to avoid for any competent enemy. One stun break or dodge and you’ve only done a fraction of the damage. It also eats up initiative in a hurry, which is bad because my build is heavy on initiative.
This would actually make me worse against mesmers. Pistol Whip is great for clearing out clones, but it would never hit a good mesmer; they’re too hard to catch. S/D allows me to remain mobile, which means I do more damage to the mesmer and less to the clones.
Finally, I love the offhand dagger skills. Using my stealth attack, I can daze my opponent for 25% of the fight or more, which is really powerful. Without CnD, I won’t be able to stealth nearly as much. I prefer to save utility/heal stealth skills for healing or saving myself. Dancing dagger is amazing ranged AoE cripple and damage, as well as a great combo finisher.
For fast traveling you could always carry your SB to spam infiltrator’s arrow and when you’re about to enter battle swap it out for another Dagger.
I don’t just use my SB for travel, I use it as an escape. Having my SB out allows me to exit the battle any time I feel like it. I also use it much more frequently than these videos show. The spammable blast finisher is absolutely invaluable, and it’s really my only tool for attacking a keep. It also gives me access to a poison, which is great if I’m fighting someone with too much self-healing to down.
S/D gives me all the tools I really need in a typical fight. D/D could give me some more single-target damage, but I’d be giving up the AoE and a lot of flexibility to get that. I’m willing to stay with low single-target burst in exchange for all the control and utility of S/D, and use SB for fast-travel and other assorted awesomeness.
I use HiS because not only does it heal me and give regeneration, it also puts me in stealth, drops aggro, blinds nearby enemies, gives me 2 stacks of might for 25 seconds, and heals me for ~350 while I stay in stealth. Also, it’s always good.
With my build, I’d have to get ~75 hits for the SoM passive to be equal to one HiS. I usually don’t get 75 hits off in one PvE encounter. I’d rather take HiS because it doesn’t rely on having multiple enemies to hit, and because it does so much more than just heal.
Okay, here’s how toughness works. The damage you take from a skill is calculated by:
[Enemy weapon damage] x [Enemy power] x [Skill coefficient] / [Your armor]
The skill coefficient is different from each skill, and it determines how much damage a skill does. Backstab has a big coefficient, lotus strike has a small one. Armor is toughness plus armor (from gear).
Here’s what this means: if you have very low toughness and you raise it, you’ll notice a big difference. Let’s say you have 2,000 armor and you take an attack that does 1,000 damage to you. If you’d had 2,200 armor, that attack would only have done 1,666 damage to you. That’s a pretty good boost (-9.1% damage) for a pretty small investment.
So getting yourself a little toughness is very worthwhile. However, if you stack a lot of toughness, you’ll notice diminishing returns. If you had 2,500 armor and got 200 toughness, you’d get -7.4% incoming damage. If you had 3,000 armor and got 200 toughness, you’d get -6.3% damage.
One other thing to note. If you don’t have a lot of self-healing, vitality is better than toughness. Vitality works against condition damage as well as direct damage, and it gives you better short-term defenses. 100 vitality will help you more in a single attack than 100 toughness. Toughness only gets better if you self-heal constantly throughout the fight. So if you don’t have regeneration while in stealth or something like that, I’d actually take vitality for more defenses.
Give AoE blind on stealth a try. You won’t blind as often, but you’ll have much better damage.
S/D is going to be really mobile. You teleport around a lot, dodge, and stealth really frequently for lots of dazes. Works great with a stealth build. You also get good stun breaks and condition removal. You get a particularly good ranged bouncing cripple (Dancing Dagger) that makes it easy to cripple enemies and actually does decent damage.
S/P is more stationary. Your best defensive (black powder) and offensive skills (Pistol Whip) require you to stand still for long periods of time while you use them. However, if you can hit people with Pistol Whip (which is easy in PvE), you do tons of damage in a short amount of time. Black Powder lets you facetank a group of mobs without breaking a sweat. S/P also gives you a readily available interrupt.
I noticed on your page that you have food for PvE use. Does this mean you run this build out in PvE as well, not just WvW and PvP? How does it fare in normal content and dungeon content?
I actually use this for just about everything. To be honest, some of the traits (particularly trickery and the focus on boons) make a little more sense in groups than for solo roaming. They’re strong boons to me, but they’re crazy powerful when I give them to my group.
This obviously performs well in WvW/PvP. It does pretty well in solo PvE. I never die to slow-attacking PvE mobs, but the single-target damage leaves something to be desired. However, my AoE with the sword is great, so if I pull multiple mobs at once I can kill at a respectable pace.
In dungeons it’s wonderful. I have good sustained damage, tons of self-healing, lots of stun breaks, and group support. AoE stealth is awesome for reviving downed allies, and Steal grants great boons to the group. With my frequent AoE blinding and my dazes, I can really lower the damage mobs do to my allies. It’s not healing, but it does really help keep my group alive. I also have the defenses to be right in the thick of the melee without dying.
Dude, they would be the same as banners/spirits/shouts.
No, they wouldn’t. Banners/spirits/shouts have limited times and cooldowns, so using them at the right moment takes thought. Venoms would be like the traits that give nearby allies +X of a stat. No timing or thought involved.
Venom even if you apply to a group are useless because they don’t stack.
…giving 5 people the same venom is useless when they don’t stack, its not like you can turn someone into stone 5 times, you turn them into stone once and then afterwords they ignore it.
Okay, first off, you’re wrong here. One venom doesn’t stack: Basilisk Venom. And even then, the venom stacks just fine; it’s just the effect it applies doesn’t stack on a single target. However, the rest of the venoms apply conditions, which stack just fine.
If there’s an issue with venoms in group, rebalance venoms and venomous aura.
Even though the percent seems small, imagine giving these effects to other players within range of you like banners/spirits/shouts/buffs do.
…
We need to help our group, giving everyone a chance to hit a debuff would be amazing utility, if the traits affected them as well. (healing them when it triggers, ect ect, extra trigger chance.)
Your group members (or people near you.) now have a 15% chance to heal themselves on an attack AND apply an additional effect.
Each group member has a 15% chance to apply weakness and vulnerability on hit, even though its random, it could get up to 8-15 stacks passively at all times atleast with all the fire going on. (not overpowered, its a debuff.)
Each group member has a 15% chance to some times chill the opponent. (he can’t do as much and does it slower, making it easier to see his attacks, especially the ones that one shot ya.)
You know what this would do? It would turn us into an exceptionally powerful Ranger spirit.
Right now, you can properly time a venom for a devastating effect. If you’re in PvP, you can coordinate Devourer’s Venom with other classes’s offensive buffs and burning all AoE nukes to get huge, inescapable burst damage. Normally skills like Dragon’s Tooth are easy to dodge, but not if you’ve worked as a team to immobilize them first.
With your changes, your contribution to your team would be to cast venoms on cooldown and then stay within range of your group. That’s it. No more well-timed combos for devastating effect. You’d get really powerful group buffs, sure, but there’s no thought, skill, or timing in that. They’re all passive, and they’re constantly up.
I’ll agree that venoms can use some rebalancing (I’d rather see them stronger untraited and have the traits be weaker), but the style they have right now is great. What you’re suggesting is far less fun. Do you really want to spend 10% of your time standing still casting venoms, and 90% of the time focusing on staying within range of your allies rather than fighting the enemy? Venoms in the style that they are now require skill and timing; they’re active. Venoms as you want them are passive and boring.
We might as well get the classic MMO pre-fight buffs. In Lord of the Rings Online, I played a class called Captain. We were the support masters of LOTRO. We had all kinds of ways to keep our group alive and make them stronger. Some were active, and those were fun to use. I’d heal my group, or hit them with a short but powerful damage boost along with them blowing their burst cooldowns for a massive spike of damage.
Then there were the passive effects. I had several different banners I could lay down that provide a passive effect to nearby allies. I had buffs that last an hour that I had to cast on every single person in my 12-man raid. I had a couple of buffs that lasted exactly as long as their cooldowns and simply had to be spammed the moment the icon lit up.
Those buffs were chores. They’re no fun, and they don’t take any teamwork, communication, skill, or timing. There’s no difference between a good captain and a bad one. All but the worst knuckle-draggers could manage those tasks. It was cool that I was supporting my group, but this part of it was no fun at all.
Trust me, the support in GW2 is much more fun entirely because it’s active. Shouts and Banners don’t have durations and cooldowns so that they can’t be up 100%. Spirits can’t move and are extremely squishy, so you have to be incredibly careful where you place them. All of the many group boon skills we have are active and have to be timed properly. This means that supporting your group takes skill and thought, and teams of people who work together and communicate can make those skills far more powerful by timing them right. You can’t do that with passive effects.
There’s a problem with this. A big problem.
It changes venoms from something that you use to something that you have. Think about it.
Right now, using a venom gives you a guaranteed, immediate effect. If I have devourer venom on my skill bar and I need an immobilize, I use it. I get an immobilize. There was skill and timing involved. You can just spam venoms, but (with the exception of spider venom) that’s not as effective as timing it right. Using venoms requires a thought.
With your changes, venoms no longer require any thought. It’s simple. Before you fight, you stand there and cast all of your venoms. After that, you don’t have to think of them for 2-3 minutes. Your change essentially turns venoms into traits. The only difference is that these traits take up a skill slot, and you have to sit still and recast them every couple of minutes.
Imagine what a venom build would look like with this change. You would only have your weapon skills and healing skill. Your utility skills and elite are gone, replaced with passive effects that take no thought, skill, or timing. In sPvP you would just sit invulnerable in spawn while you cast your venoms, and then go out and fight without thinking about them.
You also couldn’t plan around them as part of your build. Since they only have a chance to activate, they’ll activate sporadically and you can never count on a given effect when you need it. This is fine for things like poison, weakness, and vulnerability, but for control effects (immobilize, stun, chill) it’s important to be able to time those. Those are effects that you need at a specific time to work with other skills, not just randomly.
I don’t want this change. Leave venoms the same style that they are: effects that I can use when I need them. I’ll agree that venoms could use some rebalancing because they’re balanced around traits, but that’s a matter of tweaking the magnitude of the skill, not changing the style.
…A GW2 Thief is a burst powerhouse specializing in assassinations…
Are you high? There is a SINGLE build that plays like that. Just. One. Build. None of the other ways to build a Thief revolve around insta-gibbing an enemy.
Yup. Saying that thieves are all glass cannon burst powerhouses is like saying that all warriors are knockdown → 100b spammers, or that all necros are minion masters, or that all guardians are immortal bunkers. You can’t look at one build and use that to make judgements about the class as a whole, even if that build is a little too popular.
hey dacromir.. nice job on the vid.. i dont have sound at work so i couldnt get the audio but good job with the footage..
i also run s/d with shadow arts traited. love it… so much survivability…i use the condition removal trait in spvp and now i never die from conditions. .
i also go 30 up crit line for executioner and the precision/crit dmg boost.. its just my personal opinion but i find the dmg boost is worth sacrificing all the boons you get from trickery
The video actually has captions. I typed them in myself, so they’re accurate barring any typos. You can also click the “live transcript” button (on the same row as “About” and “Share”) for a text transcript of what I’m saying that doesn’t cover up my skill bar like the captions do.
So I get this feeling thief players are OK with make mistakes and still live policy. Alright, then why dont we check countless topics where players said they got insta killed by thief and thieves say “You failed dodge.” “You didnt use stunbreaker.” Well excuse me, where is my 2nd chance?
@ddrake; and you dont make argument based off your own judgement?
Those thieves are full glass cannon thieves. They go for tons of burst and no survivability or utility. Against those thieves, you do have to be perfect. However, that’s balanced; if you can manage to avoid their burst, they have no chance of survival. So when fighting a glass cannon, there’s no forgiveness for error. If you mess up, you die. If you do it right or they mess up, they die.
My build is far from glass cannon. I take a really balanced build that has decent damage and mobility, and high control and self-healing. It’s well-rounded and performs well in almost any situation. This means that there is forgiveness for mistakes on both sides. I can mess up and still pull through, and so can they. Because I won, I simply made fewer mistakes than they did.
I didn’t even win with my gear; I have one piece of exotic jewelry and one exotic armor, rare weapons, and the rest is green (masterwork). I was also fighting people with +100 of each stat and +10% health. They had a big stat advantage. I just built my character better, and I played it better (except for that mesmer I fought; they were probably playing slightly better than me for most of the fight).
I would rather deceive and vanish more often and whittle away at someone
Throw in frequent dazes and dodging, and that’s how I play.
“I spam shout and never die lol”
Flame warriors gogogo!
Seriously, knock it off. I’m not some gimmick burst build that kills you in 0.5 seconds.
I am a roamer. I scout the enemy, destroy supply caravans, and kill groups of 1-3 people I run across. It’s a lot of fun and I never have to headbutt a gate.
Check my signature if you want a melee build that can brawl with the best and not die. I mean, just watch this fight or this one. I can survive just fine in melee and still do good damage.
I just made a WvW roaming video with voice commentary.
This is my first time doing commentary on a gaming video (and one of my first gaming videos), so I have no idea how I did. Input and criticism would be wonderful; I’d like to improve.
I just made a WvW roaming video with voice commentary.
This is my first time doing commentary on a gaming video (and one of my first gaming videos), so I have no idea how I did. Input and criticism would be wonderful; I’d like to improve.
Regardless of what you may personally want, your server has no interest in competitive battle which is why they show up with 3-4x the numbers every time an enemy shows its face. EB is likely the worst map to fight on, if we really want to team up and push YB, then head to your BL would be best as bots take up a section of your que, assuming the que system works, and I do not think it does.
I like fighting so it doesn’t matter much to me, but any Yak person indicating they want a battle is just blowing smoke up my kitten, because if that was the case you would recognize that the enemy needs a foot hold and not just storm anything they take with 40 people, minutes after they take it.
I’m sorry, I can’t control our server population. I want an even fight, but I also want to fight. Same thing applies to every other person.
I have, however, been in favor of letting you guys get a foothold. Sadly, I get shouted down whenever I suggest that because most people don’t care. I also never spawn camp, because that’s no fun.
If you want to fight on our BL, great. But both of your servers need to get on one map so you can split our numbers.
First off, you guys rock. We have a massive advantage in both numbers and upgrades/orbs, but you keep coming, Most people would just give up, but you’re taking as much as you can and holding it as long as you can. I really respect that.
That said, please start fighting in the Eternal Battlegrounds. Right now, you’re each fighting in your own borderlands. However, you’re not able to muster the presence on any one map that YB is, because you’re losing so much and people don’t want to play. If you fight on your BL, we’ll outnumber you and the other server will barely have a presence, so you won’t have much of a chance.
If you fight on the EB and focus on attacking YB, then you’ll have far more success. We’ll be split between the two of you, and I’ll bet that SF and GoM combined can match what YB can bring to the battleground, especially if you start taking things and more people are willing to come out.
You have no chance of winning either way, so it makes the most sense to abandon your borderlands and focus on the Eternal Battlegrounds. That way, you’ll at least be able to take objectives and have fun in one of the four maps, rather than being stomped equally in all of them.
I want to win, but I hate this. It’s not much fun for anyone when one server is crushing the others. I’d much rather have a competitive battle. That’s not going to happen in all four maps, but it just might happen in the Eternal Battlegrounds.
Respectfully,
Dacromir (Yak’s Bend)
I use Sword/Dagger and love it. I use Infiltrator’s Strike, Dancing Dagger, and Cloack & Dagger frequently. I use flanking strike maybe once an hour. I still love S/D, but I’d love for this skill to be improved.
No, no no no. With this trait an Thrill of the Crime, I can get 100% swiftness uptime. That lets me replace SoS with something far better, which is almost every skill. SoS is boring; you just leave it passive 100% of the time for the runspeed.
This game need mass Balance Patches. With Bufffood and a Dual Pistol do thiefs 20k++ Damage in two Seconds.
Totaly Overpowered – very bad gamedesign
Sure… a level 80 thief in full exotic berserker set and built 100% for burst with no utility/defense and all 3 orbs might pull 20k against a level 2 player with no gear on if he crits for every attack.
But other than that, no, you’re wrong. Also, I fail to see how that’s relevant to the video, seeing as I use sword/dagger the entire time (except for shortbow to teleport). Maybe watch before you comment?
(edited by Dacromir.6207)
…a group of two bolstered 80s is very interesting.
…having three orbs…
…up-leveled players and NPCs.
Yeah, the enemy selection for this matchup is pretty bad, but that’s hardly my fault. I clearly fight everyone I see, I just don’t see many lvl 80s. Next week, the videos will get much better as I’ll be fighting more/better enemies and I’ll actually be able to contribute to the fight by taking down supply caravans.
I personally don’t think dagger storming a group of two bolstered 80s is very interesting. I would suggest Thieves Guild for small group/solo.
Yeah, Thieve’s Guild is probably better for a 1v1, but I don’t care for it. For one thing, it’s so powerful that it makes 1v1s too easy to be fun. It also has no variety in how you use it. You pop Thieve’s Guild and watch as your NPCs do crazy DPS to whatever you’re fighting.
Dagger Storm can be used as an AoE, as a 10s stability buff, or as a reflect. Few things are more fun than watching a ranger kill themselves with their own arrows. DS actually requires some thought as to when to use it and how long to channel before you cancel. And it’s crazy powerful AoE, which is fun.
solidly mediocre play
Agreed. This is far from my finest work, but that’s kind of the point. I could cherry-pick a highlight reel of times where I played really well, but in stead I took both the good and the bad.
I’ve also realized a lot of areas where I can improve just by watching these videos, and I hope to get better. I’m already a far cry from how good I was just a few weeks ago.
Corpse dancing, jumping and other humilation tactics -- When are they acceptable?
in WvW
Posted by: Dacromir.6207
My favorite situation is when I do something epic but then they corpse-jump me. I’ve jumped into a 1v3 and managed to down and finish one of the enemies before I die, only to have them rez their downed ally and watch him jump on my corpse. I killed you in a 1v3; you have nothing to jump about. Makes me laugh every time, because I can’t figure out whether they’re bragging or really angry.
I’m starting a video series of WvW roaming. There are tons of highlight reels out there that only show the player’s victories. Those are really cool and all, but they’re not really all that representative of how they play.
The videos I’m recording show a section of my time in WvW. I’ll just randomly start recording for a while, and use that as my video. I don’t take anything out; the boring travel periods are sped up to 4x or 8x (because they’re no fun to watch), but other than that I don’t edit. I’m leaving the embarrassing failures in the video right along with the epic victories. This is what WvW really looks like for me when I’m playing.
This is actually turning out to be really good for me even if no one watches the videos. I’ve got the first video published already and I’ve got raw footage for a second, and after watching them I’ve realized that I make a lot of big mistakes that I need to work on. I have a particularly bad habit of trying to stealth by reflex when I have the “revealed” debuff or it’s blatantly obvious that it won’t hit. This wastes lots of initiative and even robs me of a kill in this video (at 5:00). I also really need to be better at focusing on one target.
Anyways…
Is there any interest in more videos like this? Would you guys like voice commentary, or would no one really care about that? Any comments on this video?
Sword/Dagger. Once I tried it (with the right build to back it up), I never went back.
Wow… that numbering system.
I’m twitching right now, just so you know.
Trap rangers, mark necros. The AoE condition damage they can lay down completely ruins stealth. It doesn’t matter if they can see you, they can still prevent you from ever getting close while burning you down with bleeding/poison/burning.
Also, clone-heavy mesmers. But those hard-counter everything.
We all know that building a rapport with your community is vital if you want happy players. This is something that could really help further your cause. SWTOR devs started doing a weekly Q&A back in February, and it was one of the best community decisions they’ve ever made. Here’s how it works:
- On Friday, an official thread is opened up to receive questions. Each player is allowed to ask up to three questions, and nothing but questions are allowed. The forum thread closes Tuesday night.
- A community team member goes through the thread, and picks ten questions to ask the devs. They get in contact with the devs and get short answers (one or two paragraphs).
- A blog post is released on Friday, with the ten questions and answers. Wash/rinse/repeat.
The goal of the Q&A is to give us insight into why the developers are doing things. The Q&A isn’t the place to ask for help with account issues, report bugs, or give feedback. It’s a place to better understand the thought process behind dev decisions.
Here are some question examples:
- Why is the Elementalist the only class without a “-50% fall damage” trait?
- Are you happy with the state of condition damage builds in large-group events?
- Why does Guardian get such a lower health pool than Warrior?
- Is a Beastmaster Ranger build meant to be viable in a group, or is that more of a solo-focused build?
- Why did you make so many legendary weapons require the Gift of the Explorer? Do you want us making alts purely for 100% completion?
- Do you have any plans to add housing, guild halls, or anything along those lines?
- How much of a priority is dueling right now?
Getting answers to questions like those would be really cool. It’s not necessarily something we need, but having a dev Q&A is an awesome way to build a better community relationship. More understanding leads to less frustration, so this can only be a good thing. The SWTOR Q&A has already led to lots of information that we otherwise might not have gotten. For example:
They discussed the details of how taunt moves affected threat.
They talked about how they meant for one class to be played, which was contrary to how many players were trying to use it.. This (mostly) stopped people from whining that the class was broken. It wasn’t broken, it just wasn’t designed to do what they wanted it to.
They clarified that some PvE content was more difficult than intended, and that fixes were in the works.. This calmed the forums down significantly.
Here’s the problem. Tooltips for channeled skills use four different formats. Lets say we have a channeled skill that has 5 hits, with each hit dealing 100 damage.
1) Total Damage with number of hits. Looks like:
Damage (5x) : 500
Examples: Drake’s Breath, Hundred Blades
2) Damage per hit, number of hits. Looks like:
Damage: 100
Number of hits: 50
Examples: Unload, Mariner’s Frenzy
3) Total Damage. Looks like:
Damage: 500
Examples: Cone of Cold, Healing Breeze
4) Damage per hit. Looks like:
Damage: 100
Examples: Ether Renewal, Dagger Storm
Now, #1 and #2 are both perfectly fine. They give you all the information you need about the skill. #3 is okay, but it leaves out very important information. The number of hits is very important, because some builds rely on procs from hits or crits. If someone has a chance to, say, apply bleeding on a critical hit, a skill that does 50 damage per strike for 10 strikes will be far better than one that does 100 damage per strike for 5 strikes.
However, #4 is completely unacceptable; the tooltip does not even give us the basic information we need to understand how good the skill is. If I were to look only at the tooltip for Ether Renewal, I would assume that it is a horrible heal and never try it. However, since it pulses 12 times, it’s actually an extremely powerful skill. The tooltip should give us the information we need to make a decision, and it isn’t present in #4.
I would like to see all channeled skill tooltips converted to either #1 or #2. I have a slight preference towards #1. It’s easier to compare 1210 damage (x5) with 1128 damage (x10) than it is to compare 242 damage (5 hits) with 141 damage (8 hits). However, those both give all the information we need to know, and either would be fine. The important thing is to be uniform; use the same format for all tooltips.
Additionally, it would be very nice to see some indication of how long it will take to channel a skill. There’s a big difference between a 2s channel and a 4s channel, and that can drastically change how you use that skill. The easy method would be to put “channel duration” on the tooltip.
However, there’s another way that I kind of like. Give each skill (all skills, not just channeled ones) a “speed”. You could use an hourglass icon and place it similarly to the cooldown. A skill’s speed would be twenty seconds divided by its channel/cast/animation duration. With this system:
Math comparing skills would be easy. [damage] x [speed] = [DPS]. This would be friendlier to people who don’t like math, but still want to think about their builds; “18” is a lot friendlier than “1.18 seconds”.
This would allow tooltips to give you a much more accurate view of the skills. If you look only at the tooltips for Long Range Shot and Crossfire (Ranger longbow and shortbow “1” attacks), you don’t get the full story. It appears that unless you can attack from behind, shortbow will never do as much damage as longbow, even at point-blank range. However, this doesn’t take into account that Crossfire fires several times faster than Long Range Shot. By adding a speed indicator, you’d be able to tell that from the tooltip alone.
More informative tooltips can only be a good thing.
A speed indicator isn’t necessary, although I think it would be really good. However, you really do need to update your channeled skill tooltips to give us all the information we need. Those skills that fall into category #4 especially need some attention.
For single-target fighting? No. It’s our worst weapon.
However, in an AoE it’s incredibly powerful. If you’re blasting away at multiple mobs, you can do higher damage with the shortbow than any other weapon, by far. It’s especially good for WvW, where you can blast people on the ground from the walls (or vice-versa).
Combine with Signet of Malice, and you’ll have very high survivability in an AoE situation.
These things you’re saying tell me that Thief is not the right class with you. Thief playstyle does not match your playstyle, and I don’t think you’re ever going to enjoy it.
Just like I do far better with my Thief than with my Warrior, you (seem to) do better with your Warrior than your Thief. So I’m not saying “L2P”, I’m just pointing out that this may not be the right class for you.
Give this build a try. It’s really fun, and you can destroy those no-skill bursty glass cannon builds with ease.
Infiltrator’s Strike / Shadow Return (sword #2 ability).
Best stun breaker in the game, because it also takes you out of the battle and you can use it over and over again.
Template here. Anything I’ve selected is essential to the build. Unspent traits/points and empty slots are up to you, they’ll all work. I’m frequently changing it up myself. At the moment, my build looks like this.
This is a jack-of-all trades build. It has good damage, great survivability, great mobility, and can support allies with some really strong boons. It is extremely good at beating burst instagib specs (like Hundred Blades warrior or Pistol Whip thief).
The key to killing burst builds is one skill: Infiltrator’s Strike/Shadow Return. IS/SR is the best burst-avoidance skill in the game. It breaks stun, moves you well out of danger, and even removes a condition for bonus points. The golden rule of this build is to always have SR available. The moment you get stunned before the burst comes, hit SR to escape to safety. They’ll burn initiative or cooldowns hitting the air where you used to be while you laugh at them. I usually immediately follow up with either stealth or a daze/knockdown.
While in combat, your damage is all coming from your spam attack. You want to keep your initiative high, because each initiative you have gives you 1% damage. Dodge often; don’t just spam dodge, but any time you see a big skill coming you can dodge it. With this build, you can dodge every 3s, so don’t worry about saving initiative. Likewise, each dodge gives you might (which comes out to ~4% more damage) and you get +10% damage if your endurance isn’t full.
You should also be frequently using Cloak and Dagger → Tactical Strike. That 2s daze is really strong, and you can pretty easily apply it every 5s. Likewise, stealth can really disorient your opponent. If they get good at avoiding you while you’re stealthed, combine stealth with SR. Set them up so that your SR spot will put you near them when they try to avoid you. Stealth, then use SR to go somewhere they don’t expect. Daze them, and then immediately use IS so that you have SR available.
This build also has great escape potential. If you’re trying to run away, lay a fresh SR spot. Then run the opposite of the direction you actually want to go (so if you want to flee east, run west). Let them follow you until you round a corner or otherwise break LOS with your SR spot. Then stealth and use SR. They’ll sit around waiting for you to reappear, desperately trying to avoid the Tactical Strike daze they’ve learned to hate, and they’ll never realize you’re already on the other side of the map. It’s an even better mindkitten if you use Shadowy Refuge, because that can stealth you for up to 15s. I’ve watched people sit there for the whole 15s spamming AoEs and waiting for me to reappear (I, of course, was far away at a nice vantage point regenerating).
Anyone seeing a sudden jump in DPS in WvW? Prior to 2 weeks ago things seemed normal but now I am getting hit for over 8k damage now the last couple days from thieves and a few rangers. I checked the math and did someone figure out how to get 12k Power? I’ve seen 2k normal attacks and 4-8k for abilities. Are people just hitting the top end gear now?
One mistake you’re making here. You’re assuming that all of the damage increase comes from power. Thieves have lots of talents that increase damage by a percentage. Off the top of my head, in one build you could have:
+10% damage if your enemy has a condition
+1% damage per initiative (up to 15%)
+5% damage if you’re behind your target
+5% damage with a given weapon
So with all of those traits, they could be up to +35% damage passive bonus. You could also throw in a Sigil of Superior Force on the weapon for another +5%. This could explain the high autoattack hits, although they’d still need tons of power to get that high and I haven’t done the math.
Yeah, the fire shield is for protection/fury/swiftness. While using this build, I’ll be doing my absolute best not to be hit :P
Link isn’t working.
From the sounds of it, it is a nice build. One issue though, as far as I know, Fire Shield only does damage when you are struck making it much less useful.
Something about the forum is broken, thank you. I didn’t change the url, I just changed it from a link to plain text, and now it works.
As for fire shield, I’m basing this off of what I can find online. The wiki says
Grants the Fire Shield effect, burning foes that come within melee range.
However, even if the burning only applies when they hit you, that’s still pretty sweet. Either way, your enemy is taking lots of burning damage. Also, how does that work with multiple hits? If a warrior is hitting you with hundred blades, do they get a ton of burning because it’s 8 hits? If so… cool ^^
whats your plan to surive those hits ?
I’m not saying I’ll intentionally get hit. However, at some point I am going to get hit, and having fire shield means they’ll take some damage. It’s a side benefit.
Link isn’t working.
From the sounds of it, it is a nice build. One issue though, as far as I know, Fire Shield only does damage when you are struck making it much less useful.
Something about the forum is broken, thank you. I didn’t change the url, I just changed it from a link to plain text, and now it works.
As for fire shield, I’m basing this off of what I can find online. The wiki says
Grants the Fire Shield effect, burning foes that come within melee range.
However, even if the burning only applies when they hit you, that’s still pretty sweet. Either way, your enemy is taking lots of burning damage. Also, how does that work with multiple hits? If a warrior is hitting you with hundred blades, do they get a ton of burning because it’s 8 hits? If so… cool ^^
I’m at work screwing around on a build editor, and I think I’ve found a potentially awesome build.
gw2skills.net/editor/en/?fEEQJAoYhMmebux2gjEAkCvEUIACjHgICJiCPA;TsAA1CtoAyAkAIbXOgkdNC5EycDA
The basis of this build is to give you 100% protection uptime. You also get:
- Roughly 60% uptime with Fire Shield, which burns people in melee range. Lots of damage.
- Signet of Restoration passive up at all times, as well as active used on cooldown.
- A ranged (1200) immobilize (3s), blind (5s), and chill (4s) on low cooldowns.
- 10% movement speed and condition removal every 10s, up at all times.
This build is based on three traits:
Written in Stone: Maintain the passive effects of signets when you activate them.
Elemental Shielding: Gain protection for 3s when applying an aura.
Fire’s Embrace: When you activate a signet, you gain a fiery shield for 3s.
Written in Stone turns Signet of Restoration into one of the game’s most powerful heals. You get a moderate heal every 20s and a small heal every skill use. Likewise, that makes your other signets very powerful.
Elemental Shielding combines with Fire’s embrace to form the defensive core of this build. Every time you use a signet, you gain a fire aura which gives you protection for 4.5s (with runes). With four signets (cooldowns: 16s, 20s, 24s, 24s), you can keep protection up 88% of the time. Add in the auras from weapons for 100% uptime.
Fire’s Embrace also contributes to a lot of damage. 60% uptime of a skill that applies constant burning to everyone near you is very, very powerful. Burning will deal 403 non-mitigated damage per second with the build I linked.
I need to get home and actually experiment with this, but it seems like it has potential to be a fun build. It should definitely have good survivability, with 390 toughness from skills/traits, 100% protection uptime, and lots of control.
(edited by Dacromir.6207)
I just recently started my Ele. About level 20, maybe 15 sPvP matches. I’m playing D/D and constantly changing my traits around.
I enjoy the class because there’s SO MUCH to do. Other classes tend to have a DPS rotation of a couple of skills. There’s a lot of skill involved in when to use utility/control/defensive skills, but for just doing damage it’s usually auto-attack plus one or two skills when they’re up. With my Elementalist, I’m playing Bach on my keyboard and it’s awesome. I’m constantly shifting between attunements for some really cool combos and awesome moments.
I’m still learning the class, and the complexity is a little overwhelming. However, it’s a glorious, chaotic, colorful mess and I’m loving it. I’m not sure what all the QQ is about, because the amount of damage you can pull out on an Elementalist is crazy. I can see having the issues you guys describe if you’re using a staff (AoE weapon) against a single player and trying to face-tank them, but I’ve not really had the issues. Yes, I die, but I’m a squishy and that’s what I expected going into it. However, with all of the different tools at my disposal I can counter almost every gimmick build.
I’m having a blast. If you’re not, play a different class.
gold by doing a survey? don’t you think that’s a little to much. maybe 10 silver each day by doing the survey, but i like this idea
As Alviss guessed, “gold” was generic for “in-game cash”. I was personally thinking 1s/level if they did monthly surveys, or 50s per level if they did weekly surveys. The survey can only be completed once per account, so I guess it would use your highest-level character as a guide for how much money.
Also, the more I think about it the better I like this idea. Not only does it give them accurate feedback, it gives them extremely detailed feedback too. They could analyze the data by class, level, time played, etc. This would let them know exactly who thinks an idea is good and who thinks it’s bad. They could also weigh votes differently.
For instance, if there is a question about WvW, they could only count votes from people who have 10+ hours in WvW, and maybe give extra weight to people with 50+ hours or people with 10+ as a commander. After all, feedback about WvW for people who have only spent half an hour on it is not worthwhile feedback (unless the question is why they don’t play).