Guild Wars 2

Sebrent.3625:

Here we have my Mesmer get killed before the Thief even becomes visible on the screen. 11k just from the backstab and I’m wearing full exotics with ascended pieces.

The thief uses the well-known combination of:

• Cast cloak and dagger
• Steal right before it finishes the cast so both hit instantly and they are stealthed
• Backstab

I was in the middle of fighting at a tower when suddenly just dead. No thief was visible until 2 seconds after I was down and then only long enough to cloak and dagger to stealth again to down me.

5.3k, 5.1k, and then 11.3k and I never got to see him and it happened in a second at most.

Tonight, from the gear, you can see I was more glassy than when on my tanky ranger, but even then I should at least have the chance to pop distortion, blink, etc.. A chance to actually see my opponent and react.

On my ranger, who can always be found in full exotic with lots of toughness (knights) and with 30 wilderness survival (300 more toughness) loses at least half his hp to this combination and then the thief continues stealthing and backstabbing. With a ranger pet, the stealth is even worse. Often it only takes the initial combo plus 1 to 2 more stealths and he’s down. Perhaps they are just lucky when hitting my tanky character :-/ Lol

---

Combat in GW2 was advertised as being able to actually fight your opponent and watch each other’s animations to do so. This is broken when you fight a non-baddie thief.

Furthermore, the ways you counter the thief’s burst are on longer cooldowns than the thief’s initiative regenerates and they have the stealth, mobility, and ability to shed conditions (via stealth) to reset the fight quite easily.

¹ First of all, you don’t have vitality.
² You are in full Berserker’s Gear. (Glass Cannon, no toughness.)
³ You Are in Light Armor.
⁴ You probably don’t have any defensive traits.

You deserve to die instantly.

If you caught a thief off guard, you could probably kill them instantly as well.

killahmayne.9518:

Daecollo.9578:

killahmayne.9518:

Among many things, I think we can probably agree upon stealth being somewhat of a broken and unbalanced mechanic in GW2.

It removes aggro for the most part, an amazing escape tool, you avoid most damage, great at setting up bursts and combos. It is an amazing offensive and defensive tool all in one. And the fact that thieves can do this almost constantly puts them at a huge advantage offensively and defensively.

For the most part, I don’t really have a problem with thieves constantly stealthing in the sense of setting up their backstabs/offensive skills and what not, this can be avoided by learning how to use camera angles, swinging your weapon, anticipating their position, etc.

But I can’t stand thieves who constantly stealth, get hit for half their health or are getting owned, then stealth again. It is a very unskilled and noob friendly mechanic that does not promote good gameplay at all (as well as being the cause of griefing). Getting owned? Stealth and run away np, getting caught out of position? np stealth away. No map awareness? np stealth, made 10 mistakes? np I still get away cuz i stealthed 2 times in 6 seconds. As opposed to someone like a warrior, where just 1 slight mistake can be the end of them. You can completely outclass a thief, but often times this is not rewarded because you can’t kill them due to multiple stealth abilities. At best, it is a stalemate and the thief can’t kill you either.

To me, it is too much of a “get out of jail free card” of an ability, especially when used and abused repetitively. I don’t really have much of a problem with the damage that a thief does, they are a roamer class, that is what they do, I don’t mind them being a slight cut above other classes in terms of 1v1 scenarios. But the stealth is just ridiculous.

Since I don’t really see any way that GW2 will fix this culling issue, I think once simple thing can be done to balance out stealth. Most MMOs introduce some sort of penalty to using stealth, while GW2 isn’t like any other MMO, GW2 could use a page out of that book.

My suggestion is to perhaps introduce a 30-50% movement decrease while in stealth. I think this would be fair so #1: Thieves can’t simply disengage battles they cannot win as easily, #2: Stealth is used more strategically instead of a panic button mechanic that people just mash and everything will be fine, #3: Promotes better positioning/placement.

Or maybe you take 10% more damage while in stealth or something, but some sort of penalty for using stealth should be implemented to offset the never ending culling issues. And this should apply to all classes who are in stealth mode.

People wonder why thieves use these type of builds, because it is a cut above almost every other build, the gimmick, 3 second burst stealth. While understanding thief mechanics can help tremendously in terms of fighting and dealing with them, GW2 should be promoting more build diversity, instead of making almost all other possible options underwhelming compared to others.

Buff some of their traps, venoms or other utility skills to bring them up to par with the other mechanics. It is a really delicate line in terms of balancing the thief compared to other classes. GW2 needs to make sure they don’t nerf them to the ground but at the same time need to promote more build diversity and rewarding skilled gameplay.

What is this ability that lets us just stealth and run away?

Step#1: The ability to press a key or click corresponding with a skill/triggering an innate stealth mechanism through traits that gives you on demand stealth.

Step#2: The ability to orient your camera view using your keyboard or mouse in the opposite direction of the enemy and then pressing the key that allows you to run forwards.

I can’t believe that was actually a serious question lol.

Should I continue with naming every ability that can give a thief stealth?

Which skill is that?

I only see Signet of Shadows/Shadowstep/Assassin’s Signet on my utility bar.

I can probably run away, but I can’t run away + stealth.

frans.8092:

Daecollo.9578:

“When you stealth, you gain swiftness for 10 seconds.”

Lets not. They’d make it like the regen trait, where it’s not applied if you already have that boon active, to prevent in from stacking in Shadow Refuge.

Impossible, then they would have to change the dodge on swiftness trait to vigor.

Iohanna.4863:

Daecollo.9578:

Iohanna.4863:

Daecollo.9578:

No, there really isn’t.

P/P has poor damage, very little utility besides blind that many just move out of and high end bosses ignore, and a high cost daze.

In PvP, Thieves P/P is probably the worst weapon sets in the game, this is comparing to almost every other classes weapon sets.

To be fair, P/P excels at taking out extremely dangerous individuals – such as Keep lords, Siegerazers or rampaging Beserker Warriors.

It is a support single-target DPS weapon set however: it only excels when your group outnumbers the enemy, or if the enemy can’t reach you.

I could pretty much put any weapon besides P/P in that and say it does it better. Also what does P/P do to make the enemy not able to reach you?

I’m pretty sure it doesn’t matter what weapon you use if you outnumber the enemy.

The Thief’s other weapons require the Thief to be in melee range: which can often be suicidal regardless of the Thief’s skill or the no. of allies (see Siegerazer).

I do consider P/P to be the least practical weapon set, but one must at least recognize its strengths. It is bad practice to rashly dismiss the weapon as inferior.

No, your forgetting about the Short Bow, which does everything you said the pistol did above, but better.

¹ To be fair, P/P excels at taking out extremely dangerous individuals – such as Keep lords, Siegerazers or rampaging Beserker Warriors.

The Short bow can cripple, while dodging backwards, kiting the enemy if they get close and dealing more damage then pistols ever dreamed to, this cripple is spammable.

² It is a support single-target DPS weapon set however: it only excels when your group outnumbers the enemy, or if the enemy can’t reach you.

Short bow can lay down combo fields that can poison entire raids of enemies, and if your outnumbering the enemy, short bow can cripple or infiltrator’s arrow to chase them.

Its absolutely inferior, in almost every way. (which is very sad, because its what attracted me to the class.)

Iohanna.4863:

Daecollo.9578:

No, there really isn’t.

P/P has poor damage, very little utility besides blind that many just move out of and high end bosses ignore, and a high cost daze.

In PvP, Thieves P/P is probably the worst weapon sets in the game, this is comparing to almost every other classes weapon sets.

To be fair, P/P excels at taking out extremely dangerous individuals – such as Keep lords, Siegerazers or rampaging Beserker Warriors.

It is a support single-target DPS weapon set however: it only excels when your group outnumbers the enemy, or if the enemy can’t reach you.

I could pretty much put any weapon besides P/P in that and say it does it better. Also what does P/P do to make the enemy not able to reach you?

I’m pretty sure it doesn’t matter what weapon you use if you outnumber the enemy.

Oxygen.5918:

Daecollo.9578:

1) They are exactly the same speed, but one is a boon so its effected by boon duration. (which is what the tree has in it, lucky we have all these boons, right?)

2) Its usable outside of stealth as well as inside, so if you trait differently and stack boon duration, you can get a lot of swiftness like other classes enjoy.

3) Since its usable out of stealth, it will help the thief close gaps easier with there enemies, which is hard to do because everyone runs faster then we do, since we don’t have access to much swiftness outside of clunky long cool-down mechanics.

The intent of the trait is to provide movement while stealthed, though. Points such as “swiftness can be used outside of stealth” are irrelevant because that’s not the intent of the trait. It’s a tier 1 trait; anything more would make it too powerful. However, that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have to be “fixed”, should your claims that it doesn’t stack with swiftness, and the wiki’s claims that it is in fact capped to 33%, happen to have empirical foundations. Which I’ll test right now.

Regarding your #3, if you trait far enough into acrobatics to access FS, you have swiftness on dodge. I’d call that far from a “clunky long cooldown mechanic”.

Of course, wasting your dodges for boons is a great tactic, I highly recommend it. (I am highly annoyed at anyone who suggests getting non-defensive boons from dodging a good idea, it makes people say things like: YOU HAVE plenty of swiftness, just dodge over and over again, when dodge is one of the most “You should use this to get out of sticky situations, not waste it.” thing.)

I only suggested it being swiftness, because thieves have little to no access to boons like other classes do.

It would not be overpowered, it would match other similar minor-major traits, such as the engineer one does.

It also fits the class, one that brags to have the highest mobility.

No, there really isn’t.

P/P has poor damage, very little utility besides blind that many just move out of and high end bosses ignore, and a high cost daze.

In PvP, Thieves P/P is probably the worst weapon sets in the game, this is comparing to almost every other classes weapon sets.

Retanaru.2901:

Sword light #3 actually does some decent damage when in berserker gear and you can spam it quite fast. I’ve used it for fun in WvW and it can be quite hilarious.

Sword Autoattack: 269 – 437.
Stab: 336.

It doesn’t really do that much.

Oxygen.5918:

Daecollo.9578:

Fleet of Shadows is actually 33%.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Fleet_Shadow

Bug: Fleet Shadow bonus to movement speed is only 33% when in combat.

Then, your point of criticism is a bug regarding the trait, not the trait in itself, as we’ve pretty much objectively established that, on paper, the trait ends up being better or at least equivalent to swiftness as they work together, not against eachother.

edit: It makes sense for Fleet Shadow to feel ~33% when in combat, for .75*50 may have felt pretty close to the players who have tested this for the wiki. Since their methods haven’t been documented, I’ll test this out myself on video. They could have been wrong. It doesn’t change my opinion in regards to the trait however. It’s still a good one.

Swiftness/FoS do “not” work together.

But you can test it by using consumables for Perma Swiftness, and the 16c things that stealth you, so you can get 20 seconds of stealth.

I will go ahead and list three pros:

1) They are exactly the same speed, but one is a boon so its effected by boon duration. (which is what the tree has in it, lucky we have all these boons, right?)

2) Its usable outside of stealth as well as inside, so if you trait differently and stack boon duration, you can get a lot of swiftness like other classes enjoy.

3) Since its usable out of stealth, it will help the thief close gaps easier with there enemies, which is hard to do because everyone runs faster then we do, since we don’t have access to much swiftness outside of clunky long cool-down mechanics.

PopeUrban.2578:

Daecollo.9578:

Oxygen.5918:

Fleet shadows is actually better than swiftness for a few reasons, but notably these:

1) The 50% speed bonus brings you to 125% while in combat, while swiftness would only bring you to 108%; together, they bring you to the 133% maximum

2) It counteracts the effects of cripple and chill more than swiftness does, and as mentioned above, stacks with swiftness to help counteract these effects even more

3) It cannot be stripped

Movement speed is capped at 33%, regardless of what you have.

133% is Normal move speed +33%

AKA the cap.

Fleet shadows makes the absolute move speed cap achievable while in combat (in stealth), and this is accurate information. It’s a very good trait that’s better than swiftness when in combat, where your stealthed move speed really counts. IMO it’s one of the best 5 point traits we have avaliable.

Fleet of Shadows is actually 33%.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Fleet_Shadow

Bug: Fleet Shadow bonus to movement speed is only 33% when in combat.

Oxygen.5918:

Fleet shadows is actually better than swiftness for a few reasons, but notably these:

1) The 50% speed bonus brings you to 125% while in combat, while swiftness would only bring you to 108%; together, they bring you to the 133% maximum

2) It counteracts the effects of cripple and chill more than swiftness does, and as mentioned above, stacks with swiftness to help counteract these effects even more

3) It cannot be stripped

Movement speed is capped at 33%, regardless of what you have.

Oxygen.5918:

Daecollo.9578:

I actually play a warrior, and pistol thieves are an absolute joke unless they are D/P stealth users, I just run at them and autoattack, they dodge twice and then die, because they have no cripple or snare to stop my rush, and there damage and conditions are pitiful, Black Powder can simply be moved out of and costs half there initiative to use.

Dagger offhand has a cripple, and P/D has an instant shadowstep away in melee range. Against who have you been playing?

“unless they are D/P stealth users”

I wish everyone played thieves, then my necromancer would be so OP.

killahmayne.9518:

Among many things, I think we can probably agree upon stealth being somewhat of a broken and unbalanced mechanic in GW2.

It removes aggro for the most part, an amazing escape tool, you avoid most damage, great at setting up bursts and combos. It is an amazing offensive and defensive tool all in one. And the fact that thieves can do this almost constantly puts them at a huge advantage offensively and defensively.

For the most part, I don’t really have a problem with thieves constantly stealthing in the sense of setting up their backstabs/offensive skills and what not, this can be avoided by learning how to use camera angles, swinging your weapon, anticipating their position, etc.

But I can’t stand thieves who constantly stealth, get hit for half their health or are getting owned, then stealth again. It is a very unskilled and noob friendly mechanic that does not promote good gameplay at all (as well as being the cause of griefing). Getting owned? Stealth and run away np, getting caught out of position? np stealth away. No map awareness? np stealth, made 10 mistakes? np I still get away cuz i stealthed 2 times in 6 seconds. As opposed to someone like a warrior, where just 1 slight mistake can be the end of them. You can completely outclass a thief, but often times this is not rewarded because you can’t kill them due to multiple stealth abilities. At best, it is a stalemate and the thief can’t kill you either.

To me, it is too much of a “get out of jail free card” of an ability, especially when used and abused repetitively. I don’t really have much of a problem with the damage that a thief does, they are a roamer class, that is what they do, I don’t mind them being a slight cut above other classes in terms of 1v1 scenarios. But the stealth is just ridiculous.

Since I don’t really see any way that GW2 will fix this culling issue, I think once simple thing can be done to balance out stealth. Most MMOs introduce some sort of penalty to using stealth, while GW2 isn’t like any other MMO, GW2 could use a page out of that book.

My suggestion is to perhaps introduce a 30-50% movement decrease while in stealth. I think this would be fair so #1: Thieves can’t simply disengage battles they cannot win as easily, #2: Stealth is used more strategically instead of a panic button mechanic that people just mash and everything will be fine, #3: Promotes better positioning/placement.

Or maybe you take 10% more damage while in stealth or something, but some sort of penalty for using stealth should be implemented to offset the never ending culling issues. And this should apply to all classes who are in stealth mode.

People wonder why thieves use these type of builds, because it is a cut above almost every other build, the gimmick, 3 second burst stealth. While understanding thief mechanics can help tremendously in terms of fighting and dealing with them, GW2 should be promoting more build diversity, instead of making almost all other possible options underwhelming compared to others.

Buff some of their traps, venoms or other utility skills to bring them up to par with the other mechanics. It is a really delicate line in terms of balancing the thief compared to other classes. GW2 needs to make sure they don’t nerf them to the ground but at the same time need to promote more build diversity and rewarding skilled gameplay.

What is this ability that lets us just stealth and run away?

Columba.9730:

Jerks.3172:

Columba.9730:

Many of us experience culling far longer than 0.5 s. if that’s all it were, there wouldnt so many complaints. Secondly, the so called low dps of a perma stealthed thief is a myth. maybe it’s low compared to other thiefs, but I’ve seen perma thieves dishing out 5k+ hits, even though my armor is 3k and my toughness is 1900. So i guess that’s lower than 10k hits reported by other thief victims, but at 5k a pop, it doesn’t take long for a perma stealther to kill players, particularly when they cannot be targeted.

Last, ive seen CnD do 2-3K damage. that’s not weak.

last last, the rhythm of other classes has been messed up with changes. we had to adapt.

Use Tab next time, even if “culling” is there you can target the thief.

Thank you. However, that doesn’t really work. I’ve tried.

Works for me.

I made a thread about it here:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/One-Hand-Only-Thief/first#post1448120

Is there going to be a fix for this?

We got a lot of nerfs to our damage skills…

ensoriki.5789:

It makes no sense to look at the warriors rifle. Warriors are supposed to hit harder from the get-go. Looking at what you are naturally supposed to be inferior to, to debate your inferiority just doesn’t make sense to me.
That being said I mentioned DA simply for the significance of where a trait goes effecting how outrageous it can be.

That just goes to show you how outrageously underpowered P/P is in the long run, its an absolute joke and this trait is balanced around the fact its a master trait and it makes several builds more viable.

All P/P has is Unload, which is nice until you run out of Initiative, giving them Double Tap would make them do decent damage outside and make them a threat they were meant to be, They do not have the gap closers or snares or anything to make people get away from them like other range classes do, nore do they stealth. Nore do they have clones or blinks. They also lack the range as well (this is a pretty big deal…)

ensoriki.5789:

No. I just quick hopped into the mist.
10/30/30 spec, made no changes from my melee spec.
Dropped in a pistol no trait changes took me about 11s counting in my head (obv fallible). With an air sigil and accuracy. Swapped to my sword, took me 6s with a flame sigil and the same sigil of accuracy. So if I take my 30 in SA into Acrobatics. All that changes as a P/P is that I go from 11s to about 6s (lets round up for my inaccuracy) or the same as my sword. From 900 range. Naturally time fluctuates between both based on crit activations.
Again you’re doubling your power… Assuming haste I’d probably get it down to 3s to kill from my pistol auto attack but assuming my bleeds are important, maybe 4/5.
The trait is ridiculously powerful brah that’s all there is to it.
For basically little relevant change in a build I double my output. Not as bad as if you put it in Deadly arts but obviously relevant. I think it is far too much. Probably would look even better if I put in that pistol trait to up it 10%. Or to put it in other words, I’d now have to think how this would compare of 10/30/0/30 vs a 25/30/0/0/15 build for instance and I think this would edge out though I’m not doing the math.

I still believe Pistols main issue is that it’s a defensive duck and body shot not holding it’s weight. If I see a P/P thief, I already know it’s not like they’re going to Shadow return behind cover, or HS the hell away, or Evade some attacks or whatever. They’re just going to eat whatever I give em till they weapon swap or pop a utility.

Yeah, they wouldn’t waste there ability to get away, and P/P isn’t as initiative reliant as D/D, D/P, they have to use initiative to damage, they can’t just CnD and Backstab or Quick Attack.

Vital Shot and Body Shot are both horrible moves. (The reason I said head shot as well, was because it could get rid of 2 stacks of the fractal bosses stun moves instead of one, and increase the stun to 0.5 seconds from 0.25.)

I mean, assuming we are both thieves, we “Must have.” Shadowstep/Signet of Shadows on our bar.

Think about it though, is double tap really considered a “deadly art?” and putting it in deadly arts would greatly favor the critical strikes user, because of all the % damage traits.

Vital Shot may indeed apply 2 bleeds, but then again, Warrior Rifle has a chance to do the same with no traits and there bleeds last twice as long as Pistols (and then a +50% Bleeding Duration Minor trait.). Along with a chance to pierce (and bleed even more targets.) connected with higher base damage and range.

ensoriki.5789:

Grandmaster trait so what?
Where does the trait go?
If you put it in DA who cares? As if panic strike and residual venoms were important.
If you put it in CS, Hidden killer sucks for P/ thieves anyways so it’s between that and executioner. You won’t be losing much damage at all by choosing this instead since it doubles the power of your 1 & 2 and possibly 4 if you go /P. In other words vs executioner it’s a 2x boost vs 20% boost to slots 1,2 and 4 & 5. Unload get’s used less since Body shot will deal such abhorrent damage meaning you can save ini quite easily while just pounding people. You’d probably take this trait over executioner. 4/5 of your attacks doubled vs a global 20% that basically just means your number 3 doesn’t get neglected as if it’ll matter in the grand scheme lol nope.
Can put it in Shadow arts, maybe the best trade of, since now you have to minimize maximum damage. Problem being that it essentially means even being bulky you hit bloody hard, so it’s favourable for anything bar a P/D troll spec though Shadow Protector can make up for that as well.

In acrobatics? Hard to catch isn’t getting run anyways so it’s this and quick pockets. Your auto attack doing 2x damage means you don’t need your ini skills as attacks as much, generally meaning you’ll spend less ini to begin with so it’s generally a better investment as well.

Finally you can put it in tricker which isn’t much of a choice at all. Lol, 2 traits with relative CD’s for a 1s daze or 4 ini, or put out 2x damage in the time it takes for those to recharge. Lol no thanks.

This trait is redonculus.

It could work well in acrobatics, since its a feat of quickness and finesse rather then power or striking or trickery, I mean firing your weapon twice sounds very subtle anyways. (Condition damage pistol users and Power Damage Pistol users both like to dip in this tree, so it benefits them both almost equally.)

Putting it in Shadow Arts would benefit P/D Thieves way too much.
Putting it in Critical Strikes would benefit P/P Thieves way too much.
Putting it in Acrobatics would make sense, and benefit both of them equally, because they would have to both sacrifice 30 points to aquire it.

Condition Thieves would have to take 30 in acrobatics and atleast 20 in trickery. While Power Thieves would take 30 in acrobatics and atleast 20 in critical strikes. I guess you could do both, but it would be very tricky. I would probably only go one way or the other.

Eduardo.4675:

Melee bruisers allways have to chase down their prey. I dont care about IA, or steal, thats a one use gap closer only, not a permanent, like higher movement speed than your opponent or cripple, both of which would glue you to your target. You need to guarantee this gluing to get that result. Everyone kites away. You can gapclose, land a few hits, but then they run. Pistoleer have a loss less trouble hiting me than a melee. Warriors are easy prey to me coz of this, if they start bruising me, i kite. Its their bane against ALL profs, btw. They have gap closers too. But after one use, i kite. As all do. Ask them.
You have never chased down an ele, if you think sword its a guaranteed “no chaser”. Or a thief, for that matter. Or a engie. Or any class with perma swiftness. SoS is noticeably slower than swiftness. Do you know whats the best way to kill a thief in www? its ranged chanel skills, they dont chase (no need, it fires from afar), and the channel goes through stealth. Dual pistol thieves are now on the rise coz of this. To fight other thieves. I know, ive seen them a lot.
And btw, s/d is my main set, and by a large margin my favourite. But i know its limitations. And i know that they have a slower activation time than vital shot.

I actually play a warrior, and pistol thieves are an absolute joke unless they are D/P stealth users, I just run at them and autoattack, they dodge twice and then die, because they have no cripple or snare to stop my rush, and there damage and conditions are pitiful, Black Powder can simply be moved out of and costs half there initiative to use.

Eduardo.4675:

“claiming that pistol is only a condition, bla bla, … shows incompetence, yada yada”
Chillax. No need for that, man. Almost insulting coz of diference of opinions? Calm down.
Where did i say that pistol is only a condition set? I just presented one possibility, condition builds, where there is no trait sacrifice (in regards to trait IX in trickery, which i believe ist what you meant by sacrifice).
Also, I tested all activation speeds with all thief skills, autos from pistol land in 0.75/0.8 secs, full auto from sword takes 2.4/2.5 to land, its definetely NOT faster. Plus, its melee, chase them down and then hit. Pistols you just whack away. Dont read skills descriptions, tooltips sometimes get it wrong. I made those tests for a thread in guru for a guy a while ago, it was done using inbuilt cronographer from G13. That thread was then posted here, too, for a DPS thread.

Thieves have multiple gap closers and a sword thief never has to chase anyone down due to infiltrator’s strike and steal, Pistol thieves have a harder time chasing targets down then a sword thief does, and pistol thieves don’t even have any abilities that snare or cripple like a lot of other ranged weapons do. (less you count our broken trait.)

Penguin.5197:

Daecollo.9578:

Penguin.5197:

You might wanna tone it down a bit. How about a grandmaster trait along the lines of pistol shots pierce. Nothing else, just that. Sounds perfect right?

Engineer Pistol attacks pierce, explode, and they do more damage AND they fire faster and can be traited to bounce, pierce and have more range.

Thief Pistols are single target only, unless you spend 20 points into condition tree to make them have a small chance to bounce. (Which is a waste of points, because its completely random and all it does is pull unintended aggro, and its only 1 bounce as well…)

What? No one was talking about engies, whatever gave you that idea lol :P
Anyways when comparing Vital shot base stats to Explosive shot, Vital shot is significantly more powerful due to its single target nature. Higher base damage plus a bleed that lasts four seconds, while explosive shot only lasts half as much at 2. They also shoot at the same rate at 1/2 a sec (Although yes both shoot somewhat slower due to their animation speeds).
Since grandmaster traits are supposed to be powerful I could see it affecting a skill like body shot but not every single weapon skill.

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

Main-hand
Hair Trigger – Rifle, pistol, and harpoon gun skills recharge 20% faster.
Rifled Barrels – Improves rifle, pistol, harpoon gun, and elixir gun range.
Coated Bullets – Pistol shots pierce.

If a engineer pistol attack pierces and hits 2-3 more targets, it can hit 2-3 times and explode hitting the targets again and again, and causing them to bleed as well.

Engineer pistol attacks also have longer range and can hit up to 5 targets, and if it pierces and hits another target, it will hit all those targets 5 times again, it is VERY powerful in pve/pvp. (especially in zergs vs zergs or fractals.)

It can be up to 590 damage x how many targets it pieces and hits.

Eduardo.4675:

Daecollo.9578:

Eduardo.4675:

Daecollo.9578:

(Master Trait.) Double Tap:

Several Pistol Attacks now fire Twice, this does not effect the refire rate.
¹ (Vital Shot.) – Fires two Vital Shots.
² (Body Shot.) – Fires two Body Shots.
³ (Head Shot.) – Fires two Head Shots.
⁴ (Black Powder.) – Fires two Black Powder Shots.
(optional.) ⁵ (Trick Shot.) – Fires two Trick Shots.

Animation:
(If you have one pistol equipped, you will fire one of them twice, if you have two pistols equipped it will fire the first one, then twice to fire the other.)

Originally I thought this idea was overpowered, but pistol damage is quite horrible, and it does not look like they are going to fix the refire rate for quite awile.

Its OP.
In a power build, vital can easily crit for 1.2K, with double tap it would be 2.4K, tooooo much for a auto that would also apply 2 bleeds. From 900 units away. Also, crit procs. In www, omnom ghosts with this would eliminate the need for heals, as firing from afar its easy. And lets not forget the trait initial strike (IX in trickery), that would become a 14% chance to gain one initiative with a ranged attack. Thats just from the top of my hat. There is definetely more considerations.

So? you would have to sacrifice traits for it, and pistol damage is horrible, 1.2k if you have full BERSERKER gear, in full knights sword autoattack hits for 2k, in full zerker it hits for 3-4k.

It would fix Vital Shot, Body Shot, and Head Shot all at once.

And those traits deserve a buff anyways, they were meant to be powerful.

…. And with the Omnom Ghost thing, Unload hits 8 times, I am sure that beats 2 attacks by a lot. … I could name off many other examples and make that sound stupid, but I am not going to bother.

Unlike other classes, Pistol Attacks are not AOE, nore do they pierce. They should have significant higher base damage or traits to compensate.

Nope. Sword is a melee weapon. A real melee weapon, not as a melee weapon like d/d eles, which fire from 300 units away. Sword is 130 units. And its slow, its auto chain takes 2.4 secs to complete, you have a lot of trouble landing those, hence the higher dmg. Plus, ur auto #s for zerker sword autos are unrealistic, tone them down. Only the last hit can hit like that, and in a very very glass build. As for Unload, its a 5 initiative skill, not a zero initiative skill. And in a condition build there is no trait sacrifice, all of them go 20 anyway in trickery.

We’re thieves, we have more gap closers then any other class in the game, Pistols attack slower then the sword chain does, I can get 1-2-3 on my sword chain faster then firing 3 Vital Shots.

All Thief Weapons are ranged, Daggers have Heartseeker and sword has Infiltrator’s Strike.

Claiming that Pistol is only a condition damage weapon shows a bit of incompetence, since it has a trait that increases its base damage, its intended to be a power OR condition damage weapon, much like Dagger is, since Dagger has poison on its Autoattack.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Spatial_Surge (A 1,200 Ranged “1” Attack that fires 3 times, and does twice as much damage as pistol autoattack untraited with more range.)

Adding all the traits is an impossibility, there is no 30/30/30/30/30 build, you either have to have conditions or power, and theres several things you absolutely “need” for both, a Condition Pistol Thief would want lots of Stealth Traits, while a Power Pistol Thief would want lots of Precision/Critical Damage.

Pistols are still worthless, we are still being complained about despite being the worst class in PvE.

Penguin.5197:

You might wanna tone it down a bit. How about a grandmaster trait along the lines of pistol shots pierce. Nothing else, just that. Sounds perfect right?

Engineer Pistol attacks pierce, explode, and they do more damage AND they fire faster and can be traited to bounce, pierce and have more range.

Thief Pistols are single target only, unless you spend 20 points into condition tree to make them have a small chance to bounce. (Which is a waste of points, because its completely random and all it does is pull unintended aggro, and its only 1 bounce as well…)

Eduardo.4675:

Daecollo.9578:

(Master Trait.) Double Tap:

Several Pistol Attacks now fire Twice, this does not effect the refire rate.
¹ (Vital Shot.) – Fires two Vital Shots.
² (Body Shot.) – Fires two Body Shots.
³ (Head Shot.) – Fires two Head Shots.
⁴ (Black Powder.) – Fires two Black Powder Shots.
(optional.) ⁵ (Trick Shot.) – Fires two Trick Shots.

Animation:
(If you have one pistol equipped, you will fire one of them twice, if you have two pistols equipped it will fire the first one, then twice to fire the other.)

Originally I thought this idea was overpowered, but pistol damage is quite horrible, and it does not look like they are going to fix the refire rate for quite awile.

Its OP.
In a power build, vital can easily crit for 1.2K, with double tap it would be 2.4K, tooooo much for a auto that would also apply 2 bleeds. From 900 units away. Also, crit procs. In www, omnom ghosts with this would eliminate the need for heals, as firing from afar its easy. And lets not forget the trait initial strike (IX in trickery), that would become a 14% chance to gain one initiative with a ranged attack. Thats just from the top of my hat. There is definetely more considerations.

So? you would have to sacrifice traits for it, and pistol damage is horrible, 1.2k if you have full BERSERKER gear, in full knights sword autoattack hits for 2k, in full zerker it hits for 3-4k.

It would fix Vital Shot, Body Shot, and Head Shot all at once.

And those traits deserve a buff anyways, they were meant to be powerful.

…. And with the Omnom Ghost thing, Unload hits 8 times, I am sure that beats 2 attacks by a lot. … I could name off many other examples and make that sound stupid, but I am not going to bother.

Unlike other classes, Pistol Attacks are not AOE, nore do they pierce. They should have significant higher base damage or traits to compensate.

(Grand Master Trait.) Double Tap:

Several Ranged Attacks now fire Twice, this does not effect the refire rate.
¹ (Vital Shot.) – Fires two Vital Shots.
² (Body Shot.) – Fires two Body Shots.
³ (Head Shot.) – Fires two Head Shots.
(optional.) ⁴ (Trick Shot.) – Fires two Trick Shots.

Animation:
(If you have one pistol equipped, you will fire one of them twice, if you have two pistols equipped it will fire the first one, then twice to fire the other.)

Originally I thought this idea was overpowered, but pistol damage is quite horrible, and it does not look like they are going to fix the refire rate for quite awile.

That would be impossible to code, because it would grant stealth from blast finishers, then immediately end because it did an attack.

Columba.9730:

frans.8092:

Columba.9730:

well none of my ranger weapon skills work under water either.

You unlock underwater weapon skills by using the weapon in combat, same as regular weapon skills. If they are broken I am sorry, they oughta be fixed asap. Underwater is poorly done, combat wise.

The OP was talking about utility skills.

My utility skills don’t work underwater either.

Rangers still have access to there pets underwater, and they also don’t lose anything but some shouts and traps, thieves lose almost all of there mobility and skills and stun breaks underwater.

Thieves also lose there F1 Ability. (Steal.) Underwater.

Rangers at the moment, are the strongest class in the game underwater. They simply cannot die, even with 4-5 players beating on them.

Olba.5376:

Daecollo.9578:

There, healing reduced.

Dueling does not need to be balanced, it does not effect any content and its meant to be a fun mode like costume brawl is, its just a little more personal.

Where’s the fun in dueling if the outcome can potentially be decided by what professions are facing off or by the difference in their specific builds? Because in a setting where damage and healing is reduced on the current balance paradigm, the biggest sufferers will be the glass cannon builds, whereas the bunker builds don’t suffer as much.

And let’s face it, if you reduced healing and damage by 50%, any GC vs bunker match would be really boring because neither would have the damage to kill the other, assuming that the GC knows to kite.

¹ If they are both bunker. Then the fights would last until one of them makes a mistake, therefore a very long and epic duel.

² Balance isn’t fun, some people like taking down opponents who clearly have an advantage over them, do you really see a “thief” dueling? (I play a thief, and in a real duel, I would clearly have a disadvantage anyways, so mechanic wise, it makes sense.)

³ This game isn’t all about gear a lot of it because of the way dodges and healing works is player skill.

⁴ Since healing is reduced, effects like Poison are going to be very very mean, and the big bunker classes (Ele/Guardian.) do not have Poison.

⁵ The Down-state is removed in a duel, if you are downed you lose, or have to wait until your team is downed, while downed you are immune to damage and cannot heal. however you can /surrender. (/surrender takes you out of the fight.)

There, healing reduced.

Dueling does not need to be balanced, it does not effect any content and its meant to be a fun mode like costume brawl is, its just a little more personal.

To make this less confusing
_____________________________________________________

¹ Lock the players to each other when they initiate the duel.
² If the players wander too far away from where the duel began, they lose.
³ (/duel) They can use this command anywhere, as long as they have a target, if they challenge someone to a duel, a banner with there guild flag will hit the ground and they can click accept, the challenger can challenge a group of players as well, but they will be warned that if a group member is near him, he will be able to fight with the challenger. (however, they can only use this command every 3 minutes to prevent spamming.)
⁴ Fights are up to 5v5, meaning a group can challenge a group. (although you will be warned if you are challenged by a group of players instead of just one, likewise if you challenge a group of players, it will ask “Do you really wish to challenge this group to a duel alone?”
⁵ Damage Taken, Condition Damage, Healing is halved, allowing for longer, more interesting to watch fights.
⁶ You are not allowed to use consumables after the fight has began, however you are able to use food and drink beforehand, this prevents crazy consumables from being used in the fight.
⁷ You will not be able to damage PvE mobs in this mode, however they will be able to damage you. You can always /surrender! :>
⁸ When you are downed, you are taken out of the fight or lose the duel, not when you die.

I’ve always liked the old SWG duels, where dueling could take a long time, but it was exciting and challenging and fun to watch and could be done anywhere.

This allowed people to make epic videos of people fighting with eachother on bridges or on top of places (like on top of a lodge in hoelbrak.)

(example of an old video.)

Add a dueling system which not only allows us to duel everywhere [Allow people to duel up to 5 people at once, so you can have up to 5v5 in a single duel.]

for the combat:
A Banner with the challenger is placed on the ground (it displays the guild tag of the person challenging.) If you leave 5000 range of that banner you automaticly lose.
If you die to falling damage, the opponent automaticly wins.
You lose when you and all your team is downed, if you are downed you must wait for all of your team to be downed as well, or you can vote to surrender.
Reduce Player Damage Taken by 50%. (this does not effect pve.)
Reduce Player Condition Damage by 50%. (this does not effect pve.)
Reduce Player Healing by 50%.
(this means longer fighting, kind of like the costume brawls.)

Kurow.6973:

Daecollo.9578:

Kurow.6973:

Dee Jay.2460:

Yeah…while the 10 seconds are somewhat excessive I agree that Swiftness just makes more sense than the ominous “50% speed increase”….which apparently isn’t 50% anyway but rather 33%…which is exactly what Swiftness grants.

The reason why they probably didn’t make it Swiftness is because as a boon it is prone to modificators like “boon duration” .

That in turn might result in Thieves having quasi “perma-Swiftness”, which while nice, goes against the “temporary boost” nature of boons.

You mean like what’s in my picture?

Try guess what balanced class achieved that (all by itself, not through boons from other players/objects).

I thought they patched it so boons could not go over 1 minute, my Warrior can get 1 min of swiftness, but if he uses anything else, it will just go 1 minute again.

Yea…no. That screenshot is from today. I can get 9 minutes if I really wanted to. I’ve done it before.

Lemme test this really quick…. aaandd.. you are right! ….

It just confusing because it doesn’t say after 1 min…

Advent.6193:

Daecollo.9578:

Advent.6193:

There is still one arguable advantage of current FS. If it’s not a boon, it can’t be ripped or inverted like one. Although, considering the 5 point minor in Acrobatics, Daecollo’s suggestion could work … it’s a tricky situation, and both concepts have ups and downs.

even if it was a boon, how could they rip it from us immediately if we are invisible?

A couple of ways come to mind. I main Mesmer, and a well-placed Null Field’d nuke that boon right fast. There’s also the Necro Well that inverts boons into conditions.
That one’s get a guy if he’s trying to cloak n’ run, or if targeted correctly with the trait that allows for ground-targeted wells.

Also, as for Sarrow’s comment: I definately agree. Although, it’d be interesting to see.

Well, thats balance for you. I think it would be fun and add some counters to stealth, while buffing thieves a little. (AKA.. LETTING ME USE SOMETHING else besides Signet of Shadows.)

Sarrow.2785:

But then you wouldn’t be able to travel the map at super speed by C/Ding cute little bunnies.

I think that if Fleet Shadows gave ____ duration swiftness then it would need to be in a higher tier. It would be extremely powerful for the sole reason that it would free up the utility slot taken by SoS.

However I am all for more build diversity, so me likey. The fact that it will encourage more stealth spam builds leads me to think that the change would be an unlikely one.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Infused_Precision

Karolis.4261:

Daecollo.9578:

Karolis.4261:

I dont see any reason why it should work with off hand skills and why would you want that.

Why wouldn’t it?

Why would it ? Im pretty sure that such traits are intended to work for mainhand skills + nr3 skills if mainhand is involved in action.

Blademaster – Increases your critical-hit chance with a sword by 10% should not work on Impale/Rip and Riposte then.

Karolis.4261:

I dont see any reason why it should work with off hand skills and why would you want that.

Why wouldn’t it?

Aven.7295:

i think hes stuck on the necros have low dps thing… which couldnt be further from the truth….

Sustained dps on a boss > burst

most of what he thinks is good dps is actualy just burst damage

i love haveing a necro in party it usualy makes things go rather smooth

My Necro can do 3000 DPS, not burst.

Advent.6193:

There is still one arguable advantage of current FS. If it’s not a boon, it can’t be ripped or inverted like one. Although, considering the 5 point minor in Acrobatics, Daecollo’s suggestion could work … it’s a tricky situation, and both concepts have ups and downs.

even if it was a boon, how could they rip it from us immediately if we are invisible?

Fasalina.6571:

halloween event anyone?

Eh, not a halloween event.

http://swg.wikia.com/wiki/Quarantine_Zone

Read all about it, it was AMAZING

Inside each camp is an NPC who will gladly administer you with a vaccination. This provides a buff that will last for 1 hour. In Camp Alpha the vaccine can be given by Dr. Zahara Cody on a player’s first village and after than, and in all other Camps, you will have to speak to the 2-1B droid. Should you decide not to take the vaccine or should the vaccine duration run out, you will start to suffer from the debuff called ‘Light Infection’.
Light Infection will remove 10 points of stamina and health and has a duration of 5 minutes, at which point the debuff will transition into the Intensifying Infection debuff.

Intensifying Infection will take away 1.5% of your health and action per stack of the debuff and will add a new stack every 65 seconds. If you continue to do nothing, you will suffer the ‘Infected!’ debuff.

Infected! will take away 90% of your health and action. Infected lasts 60 seconds and will refresh itself upon timeout.

Upon leaving the Quarantine Zone, all of the above debuffs will be removed.

Every time a mob attacked you, unless you had a vaccine, you would get a stack of infection, the mobs didn’t hurt much, but it would start ticking away at you.

Basicly, it was an uncurable dot.

You basicly had to go into safe zones, but the mobs would pretty much swarm you, some bosses actually had strategies to kill them as well, was REALLY fun.

Columba.9730:

so if it’s not useful, then why are you arguing so much against changes to stealth, Lol?

Because maybe it would effect things that are useful?

Kind of like nerfing Dancing Dagger unintentionally nerfed S/D more then what it was intended to nerf.

This is not a Mount.

This is an item that has infinite uses and replaces your “skill-bar” with one ability.

Blast off the ground, damaging nearby foes and leaping to your target.
Leap damage: 248
Landing damage: 596
Radius: 120
Combo Finisher: Leap
Range: 1200
(10 second cool-down.)

I don’t want it to be a fractal, it would be a FUN Game type pve area, like SWG zombies had.

It would be for special armor sets, special looking weapons and be a fun mini game… :>

Kurow.6973:

Dee Jay.2460:

Yeah…while the 10 seconds are somewhat excessive I agree that Swiftness just makes more sense than the ominous “50% speed increase”….which apparently isn’t 50% anyway but rather 33%…which is exactly what Swiftness grants.

The reason why they probably didn’t make it Swiftness is because as a boon it is prone to modificators like “boon duration” .

That in turn might result in Thieves having quasi “perma-Swiftness”, which while nice, goes against the “temporary boost” nature of boons.

You mean like what’s in my picture?

Try guess what balanced class achieved that (all by itself, not through boons from other players/objects).

I thought they patched it so boons could not go over 1 minute, my Warrior can get 1 min of swiftness, but if he uses anything else, it will just go 1 minute again.

Columba.9730:

rylark.3418:

Columba.9730:

rylark.3418:

xiv.7136:

Just as an example.

Stonemist gets taken. A few mesmers die inside and don’t release.

A thief perma-stealths inside and cannot be found. Once people have left the area after doing several thorough sweeps, he resses the mesmers.

Squad waiting outside.

Portal.

Portal.

Kill Lord without even starting an alert.

Pretty much breaks the whole of WvW I think you will find.

Stealth like that has no place in the current game. It needs to be fixed.

What’s the point of perma-stealth if you do no damage at all? I’d actually love to fight 5 perma stealth thieves, oh yea get lord what now? I’ll be waiting for your 3k backstab while we’ve 3 points captured and when you appear get ready a burst that you can’t do.

I thought that you claimed perma stealth is impossible?

Congrats, I was wrong. Yet, I want to see you using that in tournaments. I can see your own team flamming you to death with such useless build.

I am not discussing tournaments. I am discussion wvwvw where permastealth is completely imbalanced. If you’d like wvwvw to have the same nerfs for thieves as spvp, that’s fine by me, as long as they fix culling/stealth combos.

At least you can admit that permastealth is easily doable. with culling bugs, you don’t even have to give up much.

How does Permastealth help you take keeps/camps?

davidhoughton.2104:

I’ve seen people on YouTube and in my guild get a full 25 stack of bleeds on a target within a matter of seconds, my question to my fellow necromancers, is how? The maximum I can usually get is about 12 stacks.

S/D+Staff+Utility.

Its pretty much: Well I’m unable to be caught anymore in PvP.