Guild Wars 2

Hundred Blades deals 1224 more damage then backstab does.

Kill Shot also does more damage then backstab does if you add in the 3% damage from burst tree, even more if you take into account burst traits… Kill Shot can also pierce and hit an infinite number of targets.

sorrow.2364:

Daecollo.9578:

Flanking..Strike.. to get rid of his boons.. .. LOL….

…

LOL….

…

No…

You would barely hurt him, and you would run out of initiative, his attunements to reapply all those buffs activate every 10 seconds, it takes 10 seconds to get 6 initative back, he would have all 4 buffs up again by the time ONE of your flanking strikes is back up, and WHILE hes doing all that hes killing you.

You need to fight good ele.

Flanking Strike also does horrible damage, so each one takes about 10% of his health, and grats, he has no boons, Oh he just used his attunements to get them all back and you have 0 initiative now, he reset the fight with full and your out of luck, oh yeah your almost dead too.

Mug+CnD+Backstab = Kill him before he has protection up/all those boons up = the best way.

Or, probably, those eles need to fight a good thief.

Reading your post, I see that you want to spam your Flanking Strike till your enemy is dead but, usually, that’s not what you are supposed to do to kill a good player.
Flanking Strike is on 4 initiative, all you have to do is to time Flanking Strike to strip crucial boons like Protection, Fury, Might when high stacked and Vigor (in the preference order as they are listed).
Stripping Protections boost your damage by 50%, stripping Vigor halves the Ele’s capability of dodging and stripping Might and Fury almost kill the damage output of enemy Ele.
In most cases, keeping Protection and Fury down while occasionally stripping high might stacks is more than enough to heavily weaken the Ele.
If you also succed to daze your enemy when he’s on low health, than you’ve won.

Of course you can bash the ele with your backstab combo, but if you’ll fail it’s not the Ele who is too strong (bunkers are made just to counter those meta thieves), it’s just you who refuse to adapt to a meta shift.

Flanking Strike strips a random boon, you could strip 1 stack of might…
Your the one who suggested flanking strike, I find the attack to be useless compared to cloak and dagger.

Kerashana.5783:

Thief rifle idea:

1:

Long Shot
Damage: 235
Combo Finisher: Physical Projectile (20% chance)
Range: 500-1,200

Sneak attack:

Sniper Shot
Damage: 754
Daze: 1/4 Seconds.
Combo Finisher: Physical Projectile (20% chance)
Range: 500-1,200

2:

Penetrating Shots
Damage: (5x): 560
Combo Finisher: Physical Projectile (20% Chance.)
Range: 500-1,200
Foot note: this attack is a line attack that goes through everything.

3:

Vital Shot
Damage: 235
Weakness: 10s
Vulnerability: (10) 10s
Combo Finisher: Physical Projectile (100%)
Range: 500-1,200

4:

Magic Shot
Damage: 336 (for each hit.)
Number of targets: 5
Combo Finisher: Physical Projectile
Range: 500-1,000
Foot note: This attack is a bounce attack

5:

Snipers Retreat
Foot note: shadow step away from enemies and gain HIDE and Swiftness for 3 seconds.

I left the damage undefined because it’s better to leave that to the professionals to balance.

Hide is like stealth, except they can see your mirror image.
Hide allows you to activate stealth traits and is effected by all stealth traits, its a weaker form of stealth.

Yukishiro.8792:

Leuca.5732:

The ease with which some professions gain the protection boon on a frequent basis needs to be toned down, but the buff itself seems pretty sound to me.

It’s an either/or situation. Either protection duration needs to be toned down or it needs to be less effective.

Right now protection grants about 1000 toughness and for some builds can be up pretty close to 100% of the time you can be hit at all (i.e. not dodging or blocking).

Actually, if you do the math, about 943 toughness (if you don’t stack it.), but if you add diminishing values, it comes out to be even more toughness if you fully stack it.

25% is still a fairly NICE buff. (8% nerf.)

And making toughness a bit better as a stat will improve the game as a whole.

D/D Elementalist is probably the best tank in the game atm, even more-so then even guardian.

For a chance to get a Superior Rune of Divinity.

Atm, the prices for them are rediculous…

Flanking..Strike.. to get rid of his boons.. .. LOL….

…

LOL….

…

No…

You would barely hurt him, and you would run out of initiative, his attunements to reapply all those buffs activate every 10 seconds, it takes 10 seconds to get 6 initative back, he would have all 4 buffs up again by the time ONE of your flanking strikes is back up, and WHILE hes doing all that hes killing you.

You need to fight good ele.

Flanking Strike also does horrible damage, so each one takes about 10% of his health, and grats, he has no boons, Oh he just used his attunements to get them all back and you have 0 initiative now, he reset the fight with full and your out of luck, oh yeah your almost dead too.

Mug+CnD+Backstab = Kill him before he has protection up/all those boons up = the best way.

They need to make them a bit easier to recieve.

I like how your entire team goes after a necromancer, he didn’t even bother to throw your bleeds back at you, showing you how good the team you were actually fighting was.

Most of the people you were fighting showed little to no skill, none of them played together and you were all with eachother, they didn’t even have that good coordination.

Well the idea was to make up for a little more protection against unknown/unpredictable damage, the damage that comes before a fight starts when someone attacks you so you have a little faster chance to respond to it, and bringing its value up to vitality.

This would nerf nobody, because it would take just as much as before if you had both buffs up, which you normally would anyways if you were taking a lot of damage.

I figured this would help traits like rangers/warriors/necromancers/engineers which add a lot of toughness as well, bringing them more in balance with the other classes.

MarzAttakz.9608:

@Teabaker: Isn’t that the old EA bunker build minus Zephyr’s Boon from the newer Auramentalist build post EA nerf? Regen must be insane with that much healing power though.

Doing the Math, its 230 every second with 800 healing power. (about the same regen as the warriors F6 Heal w/o healing power.)

Normally its 130 HPS, but that almost doubles it.

Jericho.4521:

D/D Ele here. Alright, so most of what you guys have been saying is true. However, there’s some things you should know if you’ve never played Ele before:

1. Ele’s defenses are different from those of say, a tanky warrior. That is to say most of what makes us a pain to kill doesn’t come from stats directly, but rather our utilities, buffs, movement skills, control abilities, and big heals.

2. True “Bunker” eles are rarely a threat. The ones that fight back and can hit moderately hard are running the typical 0/10/0/30/30 build. That said, these builds ARE vulnerable to burst damage if we can’t avoid it, I only have 2.1k armor and 17k health on my current build.

3. Your burst combo is more effective the longer you draw out the fight. Eles have long CD’s on all of their skills, even though they have double the amount. Softening them up first and playing a little more defensive than you usually would, THEN bursting is pretty effective. Try to make us blow our Cantrip utilties and water attunement so we can’t get out of the burst or heal up from it.

4. As super said, average backstab thieves are an easy kill for a balanced ele. The concept of root and spank at the very beginning of the fight doesn’t work as well because we typically have 3 cantrips, giving us 3 stunbreaks + easy access to vigor, and tons of condition removal.

5. Daze, Immobilize, Stun, or really any other conditions in large quantities will typically make us blow Cantrips, which is the KEY to winning this fight. Without cantrips we can’t get out of bad situations nearly as easily and continue fighting.

The toughest thieves I’ve ever fought on my Ele have been ones that pace themselves, dodge frequently, and make me cycle through skills and utils just so that I can keep moving. They were running fairly high toughness, had decent defenses and kept me guessing the entire fight.

Sorry if that doesn’t help much. I’d be happy to help if you guys would like some 1v1 time in PvP, and we can practice together. PM me on my main if you’re interested, char name: Malach Galthena

Elementalists get stronger the longer the fight goes, if they gear properly, a thief has no chance unless they kill the elementalist 15 seconds within the start of the fight.

And .. wow.. really P/D thief? a good Elementalist will make you completely useless, curing conditions every time they use a spell, gaining 300 health every second, healing for full, curing conditions every 10 seconds, curing conditions when they move.

A good ele will just eat you alive.

They are much much faster then you are, and they don’t need to waste there utilitys on signets.

A good ele will KNOW your going to use CnD, put up shocking aura as you use it and stun you, and then knock you back as your stealthed.

The best way to kill a good Ele: …… Burst Mug+CnD+Backstab combo! If they get more then 3 boons up then run away, you’ve lost.

Arheundel.6451:

Daecollo.9578:

@Arheundel.6451
Lets link a video from 3-4 months ago before the barrage of 1000 nerfs to the thief class! And another video where 80 exotic thieves stomp a bunch of upleveled opponents in WvW with 2 orbs.

I’m sorry, but this is the now, not the past.

The thief in the video was using a d/d and shortbow..pls do find me the update that nerfed this 2 sets behind any possible use, here the most recent changes seen as the video is a month old

October
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Game_updates/October_2012
November
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Game_updates

Pls just stop trying to offend mine and other people’s intelligence, you know better than me that thief did not receive any nerfs ele style ever( did you ever have a skill reduced in dmg by 60% and increase CD by 50%?..ele did)

Thief:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/news/Game-Update-Notes-November-15-2012/first#post808152

DAGGER:
Dancing Dagger: This skill’s damage has been reduced by 50%.
Cloak and Dagger: This skill’s damage has been reduced by 33% in PvP only.

SHORTBOW:
Cluster Shot: This skill’s damage is reduced by 15% in PvP.

Sorry, and with your WvWvW video, they even still have orbs in them, they removed orbs a long time ago, anyone with several orbs could kill anyone, then post videos about 3 orbed level 80s instantly killing upleveled opponents.

The recent elementalist videos are fresh, meaning this is happening now, not the past.

Its not a useless trait, just one thats is only really only good in pve or holding points in SPvP.

Its quite terrible against anyone else because its duration. (0.8 seconds.)

I think the duration should be bumped up to be in line with other dodge-on-roll traits.

Also, the ability forces you into combat, so if your trying to be uncatchable (running away.) and your both out of combat, then you roll, and that will put you in combat, making you MUCH slower. LOL

Teabaker.9524:

Sustain D/D is kinda overpowered atm, at least after playing it and playing against it. Nobody says that you wont get any compensation if you get nerfed.

Power/healing/toughness-eles with 0/10/0/30/30 are just insane atm: Tons of condition removals, 100% uptime on regeneration for a long time, extremely strong heals, very strong CC (strongest CC ingame?), good AE damage), 12 seconds of stability and protection (without + boon duration), free protection and regeneration if you switch into water and earth, 27 seconds of vigor.

Though that’s D/D, no idea why the hell he is talking about S/D. Why pick scepter over dagger? The range? The spells are utter kitten on scepter and for most offhand-dagger spells you need to be in melee range anyway. So why?

EDIT: Just play some tournaments and you will see that after winning ~2 rounds you will go most of the time against 2 bunker-eles, which will dominate your whole team. You need two send two people to kill one ele and even then they can easily escape.

EDIT2: I like my ele, so I would be very disappointed if Anet nerfs sustain-eles into oblivion. They just need some tweaks on regeneration-uptime. Perma regeneration with 700 healingpower is just too much :/ Bunker D/D is already the only specc we can run (Or S/D but I think scepter is horrible. Maybe it’s just me?).

2 Runes of the Monk. (15% Boon Duration.)
2 Runes of the Water. (15% Boon Duration.)
2 Major Rune of Sanctuary. (10% Boon Duration.)
30 Points in Arcana (everyone gets this.) (30% Boon Duration.)

70% Boon Duration, Infinite Regeneration, Infinite Vigor, Infinite Swiftness, Ni-Infinite Protection. (Depends on how you spec, but its up 80% of the time, and all the time if you pay attention.)

There is really no way you can’t keep permament regeneration, way to many things add it.

Teabaker.9524:

You can’t win against a good D/D-ele as thief sadly. It’s probably the strongest 1v1 specc in the game right now.

Yep, might as well rename them Elementawrists, because fighting them is basicly like killing yourself, you hurt yourself when you damage them while they heal themselves whilst you damage them and then attack you and outrun you.

You can’t get away from the Elementawrist.

Zoke.2147:

I don’t see why they built a class around in combat stealth, even freaking wow figured it out that combat stealth is annoying, broken, and not fun to deal with. Besides the fact that Anet gave thief double the mobility of the next class, and a mindlessly skill less mechanic all combine’s to a class that continues to give players an effectiveness that they don’t actually have because all they have to do is mash a few buttons and run away if anything looks at them…

Fixes’, increase the cool downs of their stealth and remove the capabilities to use stealth off initiative, the only other class to be able to stealth off a weapon skill is Mesmer, and the torch is horrible… Stealth as it is isn’t broken in this game, but when thieves are able to access it every 2 seconds with it lasting 4… needless to say it’s annoying, especially when not every class has access to good cleaving auto attacks to be able to deal with them.

Wow, you have no idea how this class works do you?

@Arheundel.6451
Lets link a video from 3-4 months ago before the barrage of 1000 nerfs to the thief class! And another video where 80 exotic thieves stomp a bunch of upleveled opponents in WvW with 2 orbs.

I’m sorry, but this is the now, not the past.

Tynee.9427:

My feedback is for WvWvW the only change I would like to see is rendering fix or make the re-stealth timer longer. 10 seconds to re-stealth would be fair if rendering can’t be fixed. It is very frustrating to have a thief get away almost every fight because of rendering/stealthing mechanics of the game. I take advantage of it on my 80 thief doesn’t make it right

We have traits that stealth us that are our mandatory 5 point traits, as long as other classes suffer the same kind of penalty to there traits.

For example, every time a Elementalist gets protection or invulnerability, he should have to wait 10 seconds before being able to get protection again, and if he activates another thing that gives him protection or invulnerability, it should just say “Sorry, Immune” and put that ability on cooldown timer.

Revealed can break our own saves and utility slots….

Shadow Refuge, it reveals you if you leave it to early, you don’t even have to attack!

I’d expect 50% movement speed, condition immunity, 18k health.

Tulisin.6945:

Does it make more sense? Perhaps.

It’d weaken most Acrobatics builds though, the current functionality creates nice Might synergy and also helps some of the other trait lines.

We already get huge durations of Might, but meanwhile other classes get access to Might/Fury/Swiftness/Protection/Retaliation/Other Boons.

Getting out of conditions faster would also help people who get might, because that means they can worry about just dodging things at the right time and not having to worry about so many other things.

If we had something that gave us for example: 30 seconds of swiftness or 30 seconds of fury, or 30 seconds of swiftness, boon duration is not only crucial, but amazing.

To thieves who have the movement signet, have 100% Critical Chance when stealth, have everything else, we really don’t need boon duration, we arn’t made like the other classes are, we have stealth.

-30% Condition Duration would help us in so many more ways, and makes sense since it deals with acrobatics.

Trade the +% Boon Duration in Acrobatics tree to -% Condition Duration.

Why: Thieves do not have very much access to any boons whatsoever compared to other classes, stealth is our major tool and its not effected by boon duration, meanwhile, Guardians/Elementalists/Many other classes survive with boons like regeneration/protection/swiftness, all of which thieves do not have access to in huge duration, 2-5-10 seconds seems silly.

-% Condition Duration would help us get out of conditions easier.

Weakness/Chill/Cripple would be less effective against thieves, and thats what acrobatics is all about, being able to get out of these situations faster, it makes sense all around.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acrobatics
-30% Condition Duration would give us -30% Duration on Cripples/Weakness/Chill, it would make sense seeing as we are thieves, getting out of things faster would be common sense.

Nerf Protection from 33% to 25% and buff Toughness’s Effectiveness?

This will give toughness a bit more of an advantage to toughness over health.

This will make people who have toughness/protection about the same as they are now, but also increase people who just have a bunch of toughness more effective, without making protection+toughness so powerful.

1 Remove the 916 base toughness, Armor should be your only starting option, however Armor and Toughness are the same.

Blacksarevok.8104:

Einlanzer.1627:

Blacksarevok.8104:

Also, this has made wonder if the reason why Vital Shot does less damage than Bleeding Shot is to account for pistols getting two sigils.

Even if this is true, it doesn’t really compensate for the difference that exists.

More than anything, I want answers on what gives with the recovery speed on autoattacks and why it varies so greatly from weapon to weapon, making activation speed a poor predictor of how fast an attack is and making the skills much harder to compare and balance on paper. It really doesn’t make any sense.

Also, it doesn’t make any sense that you killed golems twice as fast with P/D when you said that Rifles held bleed stacks better, because the Rifle’s front-end damage is higher as well. If this claim is true, it leads me to assume your Pistol was higher level/quality than your rifle.

Well it made sense using CaD + Sneak Attack because they both do substantial upfront damage in addition to bleeds. All of the weapons are the 80 pvp exotic weapons.

But I did some more testing today (much more testing, actually). Pistol #1 vs Rifle #1, no gear, no traits, Pistol has 5% extra crit due to extra sigil. And I’ve concluded that Rifle is, on average, killing faster. Pistol can can sometimes stay close (which is what I was seeing yesterday I guess) if it gets lucky with crits, but after testing for a more extended period Rifle is usually killing 8-10% faster.

However, this doesn’t really write-off my sigil theory. But because sigils tend to affect or be affected by most offensive abilities, and because there just so many sigils, it would be hard to actually test what kind of an effect dual-wielding has versus a two-handed weapon without having some kind of simulation program.

As I said yesterday, I was going to test P/P, full berserker, highest dps trait setup, Unload pooling vs Rifle, full berserker, highest dps trait setup, Volley + Kill Shot, but I figure a lot of people are probably going to disagree on traits (I know for P/P I personally prefer 25/30/x/x/x over x/30/x/20/x) and of course sigils, so I don’t know if I will or not. I guess I could try multiple trait setups if I get time.

I just think that sigils should certainly be taken into account in the big picture of things when it comes to class balance (although that doesn’t mean I’m against buffing VS).

http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#mck9wpx9Mfcacsqm – P/P Thief.
http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#mcR9wax9MxVzkVVob – Rifle Warrior. (get all signets, its the best warrior build.)

Sethorus.9231:

I don’t mind the damage thieves actually do, the problem is the safe layer stealth can provide to them while other classes cant get that layer. Being able to basically reset the fight whenever the fight will not go right for someone is not actually a good mechanic and it doesn’t work well in a lot of games, i don’t blame thieves actually for it. I for once liked how Assassins on gw1 worked, they did fine damage and didn’t need stealth, there were nice ways to counter them. But’s is just that stealth is really a hard skill to balance it doesn’t matter which game it is. I am trying to be constructive here.
ArenaNet could improve thieves in some areas so they wouldn’t need to be so stealth reliant.

Mesmer has Portal + Stealth.
Elementalist has Invulnerability + Perma Swiftness + Lots of “Rush Away instantly!”
Warriors with Greatsword can get Perma Swiftness + Lots of “Rush Away instantly!”

Sethorus.9231:

I’d say the most worrysome problem thieves bring to pvp is how much they can abuse stealth and stealth mechanics. As the way the game is now, the thief can go to stealth several times and due to how many skills/traits they have they can just reset the fight everytime things are going bad for them. Also finishing people in stealth is another very cheap way to render some downed states completely useless. At the point the game is now it is very very frustrating fighting a thief because everytime i know i am gonna get them they simply easily escape and i can’t pretty much do anything about it. It’s probably the easiest class to focus burst damage in pvp and still don’t get penalized that much due to how stealth is. It’s so safe to play thief due to how stealth is atm in pvp that most of the community are just rolling one for almost every pvp activity that there is. Burst damage could be tweaked a little bit, but it is better than it was before.

Stealth isn’t an immune to damage button…

TwoBit.5903:

Many of those people were bad. They were wearing whites and rarely used cc, condition removals etc. They were also classes countered by d/d eles. Pit us up against one competent Mesmer, Guardian or Engineer and it’s a completely different story; we’d have problems simply avoiding ccs and would often be forced to run away.

Eles cannot get 30 seconds of protection, that’s not to say we don’t have high protection uptime. It depends on how long we stay in earth attunement. With max boon duration we’re looking at maybe 7 seconds of protection every time we switch to earth, and it’s not likely that we’ll switch out without using at least some skills like earthquake or churning earth. The same goes for regeneration.

4-5 eles doing the same thing? It may be a powerful roaming group but in now way would it stop a zerg. But if victory hinged on killing noobs and caravans then I suppose it’d be op.

With Shocking Aura they were getting stunned every time they hit the Ele, and saying they were wearing whites is pretty much an excuse, everyone who is 80 assume are in fully exotic gear, and everyone under that is in green gear, there were only 2 underconned players, the other 4 were level 80, they did not use there CCs correctly, but you cannot tell me that that isn’t insane if there were 2-3 more eles with him doing the same thing, they could ring around the rosey and destroy people in groups.

Toversletje.9345:

improvisation works in pve…
stealing recharges all skills of ONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! type. venoms, signets, traps, tricks, decceptions.

this means that if you have a full signet build… lets say:
signet of malice,
signet of shadows,
signet of agillity,
infiltrator’s signet
and they are all on cooldown, you have a 20% chance to reset them all if you steal.

you could also use a different utillity settup lets say:
signet of malice(signet),
scorpion wire(trick),
ambush(trap),
shadow refuge(deception).
now there is a 80% chance that one of these skills will reset if you steal.

if you use the last example and add basilisk venom as your elite there is a 100% chance one of those 5 skills is going to reset if you steal.

hope this made it more clear. this is the behavour in pve i dont know if its any different in pvp.

And it has a chance to do absolutely nothing.
20% Chance to reset Venoms? (Nope, next one!)
20% Chance to reset Deceptions? (Nope, didn’t proc, next one!)
20% Chance to reset Traps? (LOL Nope, didn’t proc, try again!)
20% Chance to reset Signets… (AND ITS OUT OF THE PARK, NONE OF EM PROCCED, TRY AGAIN NEXT TIME SUCKA!)

Arheundel.6451:

Daecollo.9578:

The problem with the weaponset Bunker Build is its very hard to destroy and offers amazing group utility as well as survivability while retaining good (AOE) damage.

In WVWVW they are almost invincible, 4-5 ele (which i’ve been seeing more and more) or teams of them can destroy entire groups of enemy players without much effort because they are so hard to kill, provide really good team buffs, and do amazing AOE Damage.

A group of them just constantly heal eachother/constantly lay down the AOEs/Destroy everyone else, there is nothing that even comes close to beating them except a good “well” necromancer, which are rare since its a rarely played class.

You’re wrong!
All you face are burst players with the same old build seen million of times, once you face the exception, you’ll understand the limitation of the bunker build.
There duellist rangers, pro mesmers and more

Eles don’t heal each other constantly that’s a huge lie, a bunker ele run with 13k and 1.3k healing power so each healing skill seems to fill up the HP bar everytime and that’s wrong, simply the bunker build got a lower HP cap to fill compared to a soldier amulet user.
Then many eles may use ether renewal, but given the amount of interrupts on short CD ( mush shorter than 15s) there is really little exuse to let an ele use it constantly, if you’re unable to interrupt a 3s channeling skill…well that’s hardly a balance problem.

There are professions in game which can stack multiple conditions with ease and far too often, engineers and necros can fill you up with bleeding in no time, on top of cripple/fear/knockback/weakness/poison/burning/chill….everything.

The elementalist got already the lowest HP and lowest armour, once you remove the healing and condition removal can you tell me how an ele supposed to survive?
We’ve got no in-build defensive mechanism by default : no reliable pets, no stealth and no clones( this always by the way), no high HP, no heavy armour, no multi CC skills on low CD, no uber dmg .

Basically because of the heavy set of nerfs this profession has gone through, the ele playerbase has been pushed in a corner, try to outlast your enemy or GTFO
At equal level of skill the survival department is all that’s left for eles if we want even be taken in consideration for serious PvP, this profession is so badly designed in respect to the scope of the game

- far too many manual aiming skill
- overly slow spells activation
- overly low auto-attack dmg
- extremely complex combo system
- excessive CD of many vital skill

Especially the last one, it’s the main reason why people stear clear from staff and scepter, given the amount of gap closers in this game to keep range from mele attackers is literally impossible, the staff got CC skill ranging from 30 up to 40s CD while other profession got gap closer with a 15s CD or lower and in meantime the staff skills are so slow and lacklustre that they require heavy snare to hit any target with half-brain active.

Make me a video that prooves me wrong, this is a video that backs up my case.
Imagine 4-5 Eles doing the same thing, it would destroy raids of people in WvW, because honestly, if you play correctly, nothing can stop that train.

Once I saw the huge amounts of toughness stacked with 30+ seconds of protection and regeneration, with the CC Removal and Immunities I laughed. :>

Low Autoattack Damage?
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Lightning_Whip – Eles Dagger’s 1.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Double_Strike – Thieves Dagger’s 1.
Yours does 47 more base damage with more then twice the range.

I see more mesmers/eles/guardians then I ever see thieves, even in spvp/wvw….

Robotface.8927:

Do any of the thief traits function according to their description? Here is a list of traits I have found do not work at all. I am unsure how many are not completely broken and are are simply functioning improperly.

Potent poison – does not increase poison duration at all
Improvisation – does not reset any skill
Master of deception – does not decrease stealth recharge
Meld with shadows – does not increase stealth by 1 second
The last trait I’m going to list works but is worthless.
Hard to catch – sure you warp away but you stay stunned and they can just run or jump right back on to you, because you stay stunned

Opportunist:
20% Chance on Critical to gain 1 Initative.

Never seems to work.

The problem with the weaponset Bunker Build is its very hard to destroy and offers amazing group utility as well as survivability while retaining good (AOE) damage.

In WVWVW they are almost invincible, 4-5 ele (which i’ve been seeing more and more) or teams of them can destroy entire groups of enemy players without much effort because they are so hard to kill, provide really good team buffs, and do amazing AOE Damage.

A group of them just constantly heal eachother/constantly lay down the AOEs/Destroy everyone else, there is nothing that even comes close to beating them except a good “well” necromancer, which are rare since its a rarely played class.

Aervius.2016:

Daecollo.9578:

Its kind of like Stealth, except you can still see the thief, he is just mirrored in the background, and you can’t target him, but you can still see him.

This boon is affected by “Boon Duration” and all stealth traits, but its a weaker form of stealth.

When your hiding you are harder to see, but you can still be heard walking and you can still be seen. (kind of like predator, you just mirror the background.)

And what would the purpose of this be? Because it sounds:
1.) Redundant.
2.) Something myself nor any moderately competitive Thief player would ever even consider as useful.

Two big reasons:
1.) What you’ve proposed is effectively what Stealth is already, just that you’re asking that the main benefit of Stealth be removed entirely.
2.) You’re not “hidden” if people can see you. You’re lurking, and not very well at that.

Well if your hiding in a bush and not moving its really hard to see ya, even if you are semi-visible, it hides you from being targeted/hides your name, but your still able to be seen.

Kind of Overkill, Tanks that have a powerful cannon still need some armor, otherwise a random bomb will blow them up before they are effective at all.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Vital_Shot
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Explosive_Shot

Explosive Shot is an AOE Attack. (It hits all targets around it/Bleeds All of them.)
Explosive Shot can be traited to additionally pierce, causing it to stack over when it aoes, hitting the same 2-3 targets 6 times if they are all bunched together, since each piercing shot also explodes.

Elementalists beat thieves in mobility hands down.
Elementalists do AMAZING damage (ITS AOE TOO!) and can tank 20 people easilly when they get there rotation up.

Currently the only way to kill them really is to burst them down before they can get that godmode up, once they have 50 seconds of protection/regeneration, Good Game… they do amazing AE damage (downing 3-4 people with one attack.. lol…)

As far as I know, because of how low our traits in other trees are, we are pretty much locked to this as a choice for damage.
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(this is all there is.) Viable Thief Builds:
http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#mck9wpx9MfcsozbV – Direct Damage.
http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#mck9wf0fGGVmzsVk – Condition Stealth Dodge Tank. (And many Variations of these!)
Both are D/D and Shortbow, Try anything else and you might as well play the class below.

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(And many more!) Viable Warrior Damage Builds:
http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#mcR9wxa9MxVaRzVos – Axe Warrior. (Insane.)
http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#mcRo9fax9MxVzkmVoq – Rifle Warrior. (Insane.)
http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#mcRo9fpp9MGVszaVo – Greatsword Warrior. (…)
http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#mcRo9wax0xzMabVob – Hammer DPS Tank…
http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#mcRo9fGaG0GVRzMkVo – Mace DPS Tank…
http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#mcRo9wG0xGzaVsqVo – Banner Healing Greatsword Warrior!

Theres also Sword Bleeding Condition Warhorn Warrior!
http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#mcRo9wffxaczmsbo (not a very good one.. but i’m tired now..)

ALL THESE BUILDS ARE VERY VIABLE… I’m seriously just making this up as I go!

WHY ARN’T THIEF PISTOLS VIABLE!?

Ralathar.7236:

Daecollo.9578:

I stopped reading when I heard “High AOE Damage”

Excuse me? You even quoted me as saying moderate to good AOE damage. That’s not high by any means. Moderate meaning passable.

“Best Mobility”

Thief does have, if not the best mobility in the game, then close to it. Elementalist can likely travel a little faster, but they are also far more vulnerable to CC’s of various types. All the more so since this requires them to use 2-3 utility skill just for movement and compared on straight movement they don’t beat a thief by much.

Spammable teleport that works full distance through cripple and immobilize, condition removal during stealth, Passive 25% movement that doesn’t require you to be in a certain attunement, etc.

Stealth heal curing poison/bleed/fire…

Yes, your stealth heal does that. Learn your class. http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Hide_in_Shadows . I specifically refered to using the heal to enter stealth.

Short-bow is our only AOE weapon and its the slowest weapon in the game. (The velocity speed of the arrows are so slow you might as well give the abilities 6 second cool-downs, in melee range it does high damage but LOL, you might as well switch to sword, the autoattack out damages Short Bow’s Clusterbomb.)

Arrows are slow, this is why it’s moderate to good. Moderate meaning you have passable AOE damage. It’s not negligible by any means. It’s better if your condition spec’d however. Close range the damage from short bow increases significantly due to the lesser travel time, and it’s still AOE. Yes you could switch to swords but it’s viable both condition and power damage and it’s an offhand weapon used specifically for mobility and AOE damage.

Our stealth heal only gives us regeneration, it does not cure conditions.

I have tested this. It cures poison, bleeding, and burning. This leaves 3 conditions your conditional removal while stealthed do not have to deal with.

http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#mck9wpx9ccsocb

Here is basicly the run down for what every thief gets besides condition thieves.
We have 15 points left for anything else.

Congratulations, you can still get condition removal during stealth, auto-stealth at low hp, and 1 extra second of stealth for every stealth move!! This is addition to the toughness and healing stat bonuses of course.

You lose out on getting extra initative, and edited my message after you edited yours.

Ralathar.7236:

Look folks it’s real simple. In a character thieves have:

Damage:
High single target burst damage
Good single target damage
Moderate to good AOE damage.

Warriors, Necromancers, Elementalist, Engineers can get permament 33% Movement Speed, compared to Thieves 25%.

No weak point on damage. They can do some of the best single target damage in the game consistently and have even higher burst from stealth. Yet they remain capable at dealing AOE damage if need be.

Stealth:
spammable stealth
stealth that doesn’t break upon taking damages
stealth that provides additional benefits just for being stealthed
A group stealth/heal with a long duration commonly used to stealth themselves

Stealth, while not infinite, is usable more or less at will and cannot be broken. Stealth drops conditions, keeping in mind merely using the heal to enter stealth drops all bleeding/poison/burning. Mobility does not decrease at all during stealth, it can actually increase leading to an easy 1,200 units or more covered within a couple seconds.

Shadow Refuge is also amazing for solo/group stealth and while many might say “they know exactly where to find you” AOE’s can easily be avoided within the circle (and most AOE has a good cast time, you can also use that “he must be here” against them and gain one tick and use one of your other stealth options.

Movement:
The best mobility in the game
More mobility options than they even use because they do not need them all
Mobility options that they currently do not properly exploit, it’s not needed currently

Mobility combos with stealth and the options seem nearly endless. Perma 25% move speed (Signet of Shadow), Infiltrator’s strike (and return), shadow step (and return), infiltrators arrow, Steal/mug, Infiltrator’s Signet, Shadow Trap, even heartseeker strike adds alot of mobility.

Heck people don’t even have to take advantage of the thief’s evasive roll skills because stealth + extremely high mobility using other things.

Survivability:
Moderate survivability (compare glass cannon thief to glass cannon anything else)
The ability to avoid zergs
The ability to evade ganks
The ability to bail mid fight from nearly any fight that starts to go bad. Repeatedly without having to wait on any long timers.

While on paper thief seems squishy in practice their mobility and stealth actually makes them more survivable than any but the heavy armor users. Even then it’s a tradeoff. My toughness warrior for example can take loads of its, but my toughness thief many times outlives him because I can avoid all those hits while still doing my job. My thief can actually be more brazen knowing that he has a get out of jail free card awaiting him, whilst my warrior must more carefully weigh the risks and time to retreat.

Likewise this translates over to glass cannon. While fairly easy to down if CC and focuses, thieves are rather difficult to pin down and can choose their fights alot better so they tend to easily outlive other glass cannons.

All of this in a single character. It’s obviously not balanced. It’s a situation of too many advantages all at once. Their one weak point is supposed to be they are easy to squish, but they are actually harder to kill than other glass cannons while providing competitive or higher damage and possessing many other advantages over others.

I stopped reading when I heard “High AOE Damage”, “Best Mobility”.

Short-bow is our only AOE weapon and its the slowest weapon in the game. (The velocity speed of the arrows are so slow you might as well give the abilities 6 second cool-downs, in melee range it does high damage but LOL, you might as well switch to sword, the autoattack out damages Short Bow’s Clusterbomb.)

Elementalists and Warriors out-perform us in Mobility.

http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#mck9wpx9ccsocb

Here is basicly the run down for what every thief gets besides condition thieves.
We have 15 points left for anything else. (good luck.)

Teabaker.9524:

I say it again:

Mug is the problem. Too powerful, boring to use and makes Steal -> CnD -> Backstab way to powerful.

My idea: Change mug to a short daze (or just remove it completely) and reverse the CnD-nerf.

Mug is really the problem: A high damage ability with 45 second cooldown, which doesn’t use a Utility-slot, is completely broken.

To give us something back for this nerf you could lower the cooldown of steal drastically (25? seconds) but also nerf the abilities you get with it (Just nerf the duration of all boons, debuffs and abilities by 50% maybe?).

This would also be a nice buff for squishy Dagger/Dagger which just get completely destroyed in teamfights if they used their Steal -> CnD -> Backstab combo. Stealth is just a kinda kitten defensive abilities with all the AE that gets thrown around. As squishy Dagger/Dagger you have to go in, kill something and out. Also against better players you are usually fried if you don’t have steal ready The change would make the frontburst less but the sustain in a combat better, just because you can make the combo more often.

Well, We don’t have anything else besides good burst damage, might as well take that away and destroy the class.

Its already hard enough trying to kill a bunker, if we don’t kill them before they load up on boons then we lose.

Ralathar.7236:

Rukia.4802:

Cloud.7613:

Rukia.4802:

Thieves are being removed from the game, calling it now.

I hope they just totally change the profession into the assassin from GW1 like they should have done in the first place. Honestly, stealth is never a good idea in an MMO even though it’s far more balanced in GW2 than any other.

Stealth is far more balanced in GW2 then any other? Are you serious? WoW vs GW2, a class that can only stealth with skills for a limited time, can be broken out with DoTs or AoE. Vs a class that can invis whenever the thief pleases.

Please….

Rogues have indefinite stealth and tons of defensive abilities, bro.

Thief is balanced completely around stealth unless you’re a unicorn thief, and rogue is balanced around plenty of survival tools outside of stealth. It’s totally different, but rogue also gets 3s vanishes that act the same way as GW2 stealth except they have way more abilities like 4s stun, a long dot, burst damage, sap, etc.

Indefinitely stealth vs unbreakable stealth with many bonuses such as condition cleansing (even the base heal stealth cleanses all DOTS), movement speed, regen, as well as having multiple opener options.

As well the thief can be in a single spec and be useful in most areas of the game and both AOE and single target damage. As well the thief is much more escapeable and tons more mobile. Thieves also have a multitude of defensive skills, most just don’t use more than 1 or 2. Their inherent stealthing and mobility abilities make them not need to.

Don’t cherry pick X vs Y. It doesn’t work that way.

These 30/30/30/30/30 Specs are out of control…

its fun to use an elite then get feared out of it.

OGDeadHead.8326:

Played several duels vs a thief today, me as a ranger. I run a defensive build, just to be able to withstand at least some damage. Or so I thought.

Here’s how almost every duel played out:

Thief going stealth -> first attack takes a large chunk of health, I’m stunned and can’t really do anything. Manage to get away, trying to land cripple, pet knockdown, traps, in short everything I have at my disposal. If I’m lucky I can manage to get away a few yards. Thief goes stealth again, and next attack that hits me and I’m down.

This goes on for a few rounds. I’m trying different skills, different traits, different weapons, different pets, nothing seems to help me in any way. I can’t outrun the thief, he’s always in my face. I can’t outdamage in melee, not even close. I can’t cc enough to keep my distance. I can’t put enough traps to do any significant damage, he seems to be able to loose all conditions I put on him easily. I’m lucky if I can get him down to half health before he’s bursted my sorry azz to the ground, again and again and again.

It was a useful lesson for sure. L2P? Indeed, I need to improve. But, even when I burn everything I have at my disposal, 90% of the time I’m not even close. Not even the entangle elite skill can keep the thief off of me – he simply entered stealth again and slipped passed my 150 second cd elite.

In one game, both of us got to the downed state (he must’ve been slackin’!), and I though now I can outlast him! But hell no, even when I called my pet to “lick wounds”, all the while I tossed throw dirt and thunderclap at him, he won that duel as well.

L2P? Possibly.
OP? Imho – without a doubt, at least vs rangers.

Trait for protection. (3.5 Protection every time you dodge with boon duration lol..)
Use Greatsword/Shortbow
Use a Ranged Pet with a lot of Immobilizes/Snares.
Use skills like channal that track your target.
Also, make sure to use Rampage as One, and when you see a thief roll immediately when he reaches a shortbow firing range, the first thing a thief ever does is steal.

Eduardo.4675:

20 points into acrobatics will extend shadow protector to 6 ticks; vigorous recovery has allways worked like that; steal boons are affected by acrobatics; shadow protector seems to work only with HIS; if shadow protector stacked in duration, it would be overpowered in tandem with cloak and dagger, bear in mind that it gives regen to every one around you, and stealthing every 5/6 secs is easy and virtually uncounterable, im pretty sure its intended design.

Then they need to nerf the traits of the following classes to be like that.
- Necromancer
- Elementalist
- Guardian
- Engineer
- Warrior

To also not stack with eachother, I think it is overpowered.

All the following classes above can give themselves and there whole group infinite regeneration due to there traits stacking.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Regeneration

Thieves is the only one that does not work this way, and ours isn’t nearly as long as theirs, how is this overpowered?

Vigorous Recovery should be effected by boon duration as well, otherwise you should nerf all boons that grant vigor from everyone and make them not effected as well.

There should not be a beta or meta, you have to have one or the other.

Hitting a CnD every 6 seconds is really hard as well, especially if your not in SPVP, but the regeneration heal is very little, you would be bound to miss atleast 1 though.

Silent Killer Ruven.1986:

Daecollo.9578:

Shadow Protector, Not effected by boon duration, and if you already have regeneration active, it doesn’t even grant more, no other trait in the game is like this, why Shadow Protector?

Shadow Protector’s Regeneration should go off every time you stealth, and should also be affected by boon duration/regeneration duration.

Bountiful Theft, Not effected by boon duration, its 15 seconds of vigor regardless, it used to be 30 seconds but got nerfed to oblivion.

Vigorous Recovery, Not effected by boon duration, its 10 seconds of vigor regardless.

With 20 in Acro, I get 17 seconds of Vigor from Bountiful Theft. I did not see an increase on Shadow Protector or Thrill of the Crime, but the duration does add a second longer to the Swiftness and and about 2 seconds Power of Inertia. Also, the only time I’ve see Shadow Protector stack with another regen is when combined with Hide in Shadows, you will end up with 9 1/4 seconds of stealth (20% boon increase), but that’s it (in my experience).

It seems to be hit or miss, because I got it from Thrill of The Crime, but I don’t get it from Vigorous Recovery, its always 10 seconds, but my Thrill of the Crime went up to 13 seconds.

Thats because the Regeneration from stealthing happens before the regeneration from the heal is applied, the stealth happens before the regeneration boon heal does.

Hide in Shadows. (This all happens in 0.3 seconds.)
1. Stealth First. (applies regeneration/stuff.)
2. Heal Second.
3. Applies Boon Regeneration Third.

Oldgrimm.8521:

how about, we change it to gain endurance for 50% whenever we reach 25% of hp

an extra dodge whenever we are below 25% health is nice(i think)

So its like…. Rangers 50% Endurance Regeneration 5 point Trait except worthless.

Tulisin.6945:

Daecollo.9578:

Tulisin.6945:

If you’re mobile than the thief and they stealth, you should be able to kill them anyways. If the thief is more mobile than you are, you aren’t going to be able to catch them regardless of stealth.

So why are you blaming thief stealth for your failure to kill the thief instead of thief mobility?

Thieves have weak mobility compared to Greatsword/Sword Warrior, D/D Elementalist.

The average thief has mobility on par with another profession’s heavy mobility spec. The average Greatsword/Sword warrior or D/D elementalist cannot keep up with the average thief. Nothing can keep up with a mobility specced thief, but few thieves run full mobility.

Full Mobility Thieves have to use Rune of the Centaur/Spec for Healing Signet and give up a lot of other things…

Thieves can teleport right by the gate, but it won’t let them inside, even if they are imbedded into it.

Tulisin.6945:

If you’re mobile than the thief and they stealth, you should be able to kill them anyways. If the thief is more mobile than you are, you aren’t going to be able to catch them regardless of stealth.

So why are you blaming thief stealth for your failure to kill the thief instead of thief mobility?

Thieves have weak mobility compared to Greatsword/Sword Warrior, D/D Elementalist.

The Thief should have an ability on there F2 that drops pepper on the ground, making them unable to smell the thief and if he sniffs it he is stunned for 3 minutes and cannot assist the ranger.