Guild Wars 2

Tulisin.6945:

Is Tactical Strike strong? Sure. But it isn’t as good as Headshot for the quick interrupt role simply because Tactical Strike requires way, way more setup. Try as you might, you cannot react to a 1 second channel by using a combo that takes over a second to execute, even if you were pre-positioned for it.

When people see a thief going stealth for a few seconds, they usually spend this time using heal, because it’s the only thing they can do besides AoE. That means, C&D encourages them to heal, and tactical strike interrupts it. With shadow arts 15, C&D stealth lasts 4 seconds, and with acribatics 10 (fleet shadow) you will pretty much always land it.

evilapprentice.6379:

Dagins.5163:

Tactical strike daze is deadly powerful. May interrupt healing, powerful channeling skill, stomping or reviving. However, it’s rather poor in PvE, but in PvE you don’t use stealth for offensive tactics anyway.

Headshot does the same thing, at 900 range, instantly, with no stealth requirement and only minor positional requirements (don’t let another player or NPC block your HS path, as compared to being behind said target. The only thing Tac strike has on headshot is daze duration, and the downsides of S/D do not make up for it.

Headshot it unreliable with pistol MH, deals no damage, eats 4 ini, and as you mentioned, can be blocked by minions or other players. Vulnerable to aegis and blind.

Tactical strike is 100% reliable once you close range, doesn’t reduce damage output so drastically, ignores aegis and blind (if hits player with aegis or while blinded, doesn’t break stealth, so you can hit them again), and with 30 shadow arts can be just spammed to gain strong healing and might.

These two abilities differs so much. I don’t say headshot is worse, because it’s awesome and I use it a lot, but tactical strike is far superior in many ways.

Tactical strike daze is deadly powerful. May interrupt healing, powerful channeling skill, stomping or reviving. However, it’s rather poor in PvE, but in PvE you don’t use stealth for offensive tactics anyway.

Stealth:
No need to further nerf the duration of stealth.
If you go for shadow arts, you are supposed to pick utility and defensive traits (decreasing damage output). I agree, XI is powerful, but it looks so powerful, because other grandmaster traits are so bad (see best example – hard to catch – total embarassment).

Skill positioning:
Death blossom is okay.
Heartseeker might need some increase of initiative cost, and add some effect, like weakness/vulnerability for 3 seconds. Damage isn’t problem here, but spammable gap closing is.
Btw. I wonder why there is self root on shadow shot.

Health Pool:
No need to change anything here. If you want more health, put vitality jewel into amulet. But if you want to increase HP for everybody by like 5k – just no.

Useless both in PvP and PvE. It can also teleport you under map and make stuck.
Maybe give some idea how to fix it, or replace with something else? But without any cooldowns.

If I had to choose fighting against bunker or glass cannon guardian, I would pick the last one. I’m tired of these bunkers doing nothing but existing on battlefield, and I hope more people will play like this.

But as a compensation they are ugly and nobody likes them.

Godorn.2931:

Any player who player can be burst down in 2-3 seconds w/o assisting dps is bad […]

Fixed.

But to be serious, this will get fun once you know how to instagib people like this. You probably failed in GW2 PvP, and don’t know how to build and play your class properly. Grab berserker’s amulet (or either some heavy condition one), get one trait tree for offense and one for defense. Maximize damage output also by runes and sigils. Now, you should be able to kill someone before they kill you. Being passive is the worst thing you can do.

I can see learn2play issues everywhere.
1- You can use downed state to gain advantage against your enemy, and save your/your teammate’s life… but you can’t do this. Oh.
2- I don’t know which game you are playing, but GW2 gives a lot of room for build combination – traits, abilities, weapons, stats. Not enough? Oh, but you can only copy a FotM build and call it the only possible one.
3- Doesn’t make any sense, so I won’t even comment.
4- Crying about having cooldown up on after using a skill – have mercy.

In other words, you a getting instagibbed by better players all the time without having any chance to fight back, what creates irritation and such topics. It’s possible to 100% counter somebody in this game, because you might use pointless build with zero utility, damage and defense, therefore making you useless by your own wish, or you simply copy someone’s build without knowledge how to use it.

To be honest, I found mesmers one of the easiest class to kill. They can just daze, stun and burst me at some point, but with my stunbreakers I survive and kill them afterwards.

In other words, it depends what kind of weapons and ability set you use. Against FotM memers you just need some AoE, stunbreakers and maybe also small condition removing tool, that’s all.

Doomdesire.9365:

IMO instead of the “flanking” it should be a melee ranged shadowstep behind, and then stab.

No, it shouldn’t, because it’s designed to counter an attack in melee range. It’s not designed as an initiative burner, like heartseeker. The idea of Flanking Strike is cool, side evade looks awesome, but it’s delayed, what entirely kills the idea of this ability.
Example:
I fight a warrior in melee range. I see the warrior rising his hands to use eviscerate on me, and I have less than 0.5 sec to react. I press FS button, but it won’t be instant, because it will be queued after current a-a animation. FS will come +0.5 sec later, after I take a hit. Boom 10k hit on my face, I am dead.

Same problem with headshot. If you a-a with pistol, it will be delayed, and most likely will hit after the target cast something. This problem is non existant, if you wield sword in main hand, and are away from target – not using a-a. Then, it will always work.

This delay is a VERY big problem in a competitive PvP, because sometimes one interrupt/evade means you lose or win a fight. The animation engine is somehow clunky (it is set to make animations between attack smooth, queues animations), and I hope seeing it fixed asap for moves which require to be instant (flanking strike, headshot… I don’t know other classes similar skills).

PS: I would love to see a feedback from a game designer here about this issue.

The only thing which has to be fixes about FS is animation delay. It has to be instant like dodge. Right now, it waits for auto attack animation to be finished, and then eventually accurs. It kills viability of the evade, unless you turn off auto attack (main damage source…) or open with FS, so there is no animation que.

How is this 4D environment?

Learn to PvP, and I guarantee it will be fun. This is not GW1, nor LotRO, not even WoW. This is GW2, just another game, and your problem is you can’t adapt.

About downed state – every stick has two ends. You can use it correctly to gain advantage, or never bother and fail. For example, when I get downed, in 80% cases I rally back to fight, while about 80% of my targeted enemies somehow never manage to do so. How is this possible? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0yQg8kHVcI

stof.9341:

All the rectangular shaped spells except shadow trap and ambush trap do not work correctly. Talking about :

- Smoke Screen
- Trip Wire
- Needle Trap

When an hostile triggers that trap, it’ll only apply it’s effect is a small part in the middle of the rectangle. Smoke Screen doesn’t blind people on the edges, Needle Trap and Trip Wire disappear and do not apply their effect at all.

The area of the trap apply zone looks circular in fact.

Confirmed.

Evilapprentice is right. PvP fighting design in GW2 is pretty much the best among all MMOs available on market.

It’s just very hard, and it’s not hard because of no cast bars and dodge system, but because of chosing your own build and using it to it’s maximum potential. I see many people playing builds which doesn’t make any sense, and of course they fail hard while not even knowing what’s going wrong.

Ballcuzzii.8143:

Just two quick questions regarding trait mechanics.

1)Does Vigorous Recovery trigger from Leeching Venoms?

2)For party members to gain Thrill of the crime, is the proximity based on the location of the steal target, or the location of the thief when he uses steal?

Thanks in advance.

1) No.
2) Starting location of the thief.

Okay, now try some tournaments.

It is perfectly fair to have different weapon sets. Defining classes as ranged/melee/healer/tank is past, at least in GW2, and I hope this old system won’t be copied in future games. Arena Net made a step forward.

I don’t know what would be frustrating for you. You can play a ranged class with crippling traps and swiftness boons. Thief or ranger seems to be perfect for this role.

Death Blossom+Caltrops, Cluster Bomb Shotgun, and Sneak Attack builds would like to have a word with you.

I don’t know who would stand in place, tanking caltrops damage and death blossoms (mobs in PvE maybe). Both of these attacks are extremly easy to avoid, and just cannot burst somebody down, even at low HP. Also, X stacks of bleeds may be removed by a single condition removing ability. You have no chance winning a competitive 1 vs 1 fight.

Cluster bomb x3 bleed is hard to land on a good player, and if you miss with 1-2 small bombs, you lower damage output by 33-66%. This can be dodged by pressing movement buttons. Very unreliable.

Sneak attack spam might be good here, but it requires a condition – target must have low mobility. This setup doesn’t have gap closers. You can simply move out of the thief’s range, so they can’t hit C&D, and their damage output will be lowered to basement level. Not to mention some smart blinds, which will make them lose entire initiative bar on failed C&Ds. And it’s very easy to predict when the thief wants to use C&D – whenever they are in melee range.

In general, condition damage builds are very passive, and being passive in PvP means your death. You must jump in, kill the target, and jump out. The end.

Shinhwa.1604:

[…]The only way I can seem to make the shortbow worth using is going from cond build to crit so the thing at least hits harder.

Thief is supposed to be built around crit and power. Going for pure condi damage means kittening yourself. Sure, you can do this, you can do many things in this game, but it won’t be as effective as crit/power.

Real thief fights in close to mid range. If you want to be a sniper, play rifle warrior.

Don’t wait, reroll now.

Since JonPeters read this topic, I would like to quickly report a problem with Headshot – it can be delayed by auto-attack’s animation (P/P). The delay can be over 0.5 second long. So, when I see somebody rising hand to heal, many times Headshot is delayed despite fact I clicked it, and hits after the target heals.
So, please make Headshot instant and not dependant on animations, like dodge roll.

PS: same with Flanking Strike, it has to be instant, non-delayed by animations dodge!

reikken.4961:

what does this mean? the golems don’t fight back…

If the summon isn’t killed before its duration expires, it will deal about 20k damage (or how many armor+health the heavy golem has). The duration is 20 seconds.

In a true fight while leveling, you use pistol offhand to constantly blind mobs, so they never hit the thief = the thief never dies = he deals a lot of damage.

In PvP, people usually kill summons with AoE, but if they don’t, they just leave them alone and tank their damage output. If they attack summons without AoE, it’s good anyway, because summons are tanking damage or CC instead of you. For example, once a mesmer used Moa Morph on my summoned thief instead of on myself.

Shadow trap is one of the best utility we have in PvP. Just takes some brains to use correctly, without wasting it – jumping between nodes in sPvP.

Ambush trap is very good for PvE and leveling. If the summoned thief isn’t killed for it’s duration, it gives insane amount of DPS (the thief can solo heavy golem in heart of the Mists). Also, they use scorpion wire and blind field.

Needle trap is crappy, but I believe some people might panic when getting immobilized, and burn cooldowns – healing with poison on. Otherwise, it’s not worth picking over tripwire.

Tripwire is good to chain some long stunlock, for example basilisk venom+scorpion wire+tripwire+tactical strike, but if you don’t plan killing people in stunlocks, don’t bother. Stunlocks are very effective against bunker builds, but you need fire support from your teammates. You can use tripwire trap 2 times in a row for 6 second stun from this single ability.

Both tripwire and needle trap sometimes doesn’t work. They just don’t hit the target, even if they walk straight over them. Therefore, they are extremly unreliable. I think I might know how this bug works, but I am not 100% sure yet.

Most likely the first one, but if you have some “on crit” traits they can increase total damage output of crit build by a mile. Also, weakness doesn’t affect crits.

Because Americans playing on European servers would have about 2 additional seconds of delay (ping) and vice versa.

Raijinn.9065:

Well you see there this little thing called public forums. People can make posts and ask others about their opinions. […]

Yes, my post has zero value aswell. I could simply write “hahaha”, but then it would be deleted by an admin within 5 minutes.
I just wanted to show how pointless this topic is. To be honest, I shouldn’t write it, but I felt like “spamming” on a public forum when I saw this kind of thread once more.

Ok, but again – why is it pointless? Because people have no idea what they are writing about. It’s making a thread, which just seems easy to discuss for everyone, but in real it’s a very complex thing.

PS: no, I don’t feel offended, that thief is at the bottom of someone’s list. I even have a collection of screenshots of some people whining about the class in-game. I like to browse it from time to time for entertainment.

@offtopic
Samples (profanity filter off, trolling):
A noob vs Shadow Assault (Raid on the Capricorn): http://i.imgur.com/ykKjy.jpg
A noob vs Cloak and Dagger: http://i.imgur.com/4KGyy.jpg
A noob vs Infiltrator’s Strike and Shadow Return http://i.imgur.com/Vy6j7.jpg

Raijinn.9065:

Guessing your classes made it to the bottom of the list. I play engineer and engineer only and look at my list. This is a post about people’s OPINIONS so who cares

You know, this game is like few months old, and I am pretty sure, that 99% of people haven’t played all classes yet, so their opinions doesn’t have any value. Even if somebody played them all, they base their opinion about like few hours of gaming, a single FoTM build, which is nothing.

Yes, this topic doesn’t have any sense, but if you enjoy it, keep posting anyway.

My main class is the hardest, yours is the easiest, and the rest are medium.

It can also go this way: my main class is the hardest, and the class which keeps destroying me everyday is the easiest.

It doesn’t always kill you, but if you spam heartseeker or anything similar at low hp (simply skill 1 mashing), you have to expect it.

It’s a stupid trait, hard to fix, but I found it very important anyway.

http://shattersteel.weebly.com/

Heh, I remember confusion of my first time joining free tournament, when I simply abandoned que and went for normals. I figured out how to join them properly few days later. There should be a window to choose either “play solo” or “play with friends”, not just always the same window waiting to add friends. It’s a small thing, but I believe it would help few rookies in their beginnings of sPvP.

Premades joining free tourneys is a total tragedy. There are two ways of playing frees now – meet another pug and enjoy balanced fight, or meet a premade and loose the game 0 to 500.

For my first time I luckly met 3x pugs in a row and won first place, what encouraged me to play some more tourneys, but if I wasn’t lucky enough and kept fighting premades, I would have never returned (at least as a solo player).

Funny thing – people pubstomping frees in premades aren’t happy either, they even write it in chat, so everyone isn’t satisfied.

If I apply a chilled condition to somebody for like 2 seconds, and during this time they use a 30 sec cooldown skill, will the cooldown be set to 50 seconds even after the chill fades?

The best counter to a thief is a policeman, but when the thief builds as a glass cannon, you need to counter him with an antiterrorist.

Italyguy.4128:

I’m hoping the updates bring a fix to the bouncing pistol trait, make it a 50% chance for the bullets to bounce to two additional targets, ahhh that would be nice.

If you suggest such a thing, that means your knowledge about the game’s mechanics are below zero.

@topic
You don’t just use P/P. Think about it like using pistol in main hand and pistol in off hand. You use pistol in main hand for ranged damage with nice bleed and vulnerability for team support. Very good single target damage.
You use pistol in off hand for nice interrupt, and smoke field to reduce incoming damage.
There is also Unload, but you shouldn’t focus on it, because it’s just a single ability out of five. To be fully effective, you should use all of them.

Fun fact: venomous aura gives free venoms to up to 4 allies around (4 allies + 1 thief = 5 = AoE cap).

No, just all venoms need to get fixed, so they cannot be wasted by hitting in the air, attacking a protected target (block/dodge) or by using utility moves.

Look, somebody (a programmer) actually took initiative and implemented code to drop stealth when we leave shadow refuge too soon.

If it was in reverse – stealth doesn’t drop if we leave shadow refuge shortly after entering it – that might be classified as “not intended”, because it would be OP (why would you even consider using blinding powder then?).

monepipi.5160:

Yes, please have duel and 2v2, 3v3 options…

Is that so hard to put in a game?

This. It would be awesome to start a party vs party duel somewhere in world (NOT IN MISTS), or even bigger – guild vs guild. I don’t think it’s so hard to implement. It would also improve RP.

Elthurien, do you know, that you can play thief without a single venom or stealth skill? Venoms are optional, stealth is recommended, but they are not a must. Use short bow or pistol in off hand, and withdraw as a healing utility.

I would love to see fist weapons instead of some stupid sniper rifles on my thief. And a mace in main hand.

There should be implemented duels as fast as possible. And no, not only in empty sPvP rooms – also in open world. Maybe ban duels in cities, but allow them anywhere else. I’m missing them so much.

AMD Radeon HD 6850 – no effetcs.

Still, up to 30 FPS in Black Citadel, and 8-40 FPS in WvW, yet I can play Battlefield 3 on high details fluently. This is so upsetting, I am forced to do sPvP, but I bought this game mainly for WvW…
I hope Arena Net will do something about this, because it feels like licking a lollipop through a wrapper.

I use head shot almost in every fight. I switch off hand dagger with off hand pistol when my target drops to about 20% hp, ready to interrupt healing. It’s a guaranteed interrupt and a guaranteed frag (unless I slack), if the enemy doesn’t use some additional protective ability to counter the daze. Also, they can’t really run over 900 range, just LoS, but LoS isn’t always available.

I use black powder at high range while seeing some glass cannon charging at me. Blind projectile is 900 range aswell, so any damaging/CC gap closer will fail, and they also get constantly blinded in melee range, losing entire burst damage, while I stand still and laugh in their face (looking now at LDB/heartseeker spammers).

Ace of Spades.6325:

There can be no Arenas in GW2, the game is balanced toward conquest, Arena will never be balanced, and people would only complain for nothing, since the game is, and will always be balanced toward conquest.

Arena is only good if balanced, no balance, no Arena.

This pretty much put an end to the discussion.

Btw. as stated above, arena is an outdated PvP environment, and even balanced shouldn’t be implemented.

It sounds cool but it’s not needed so much. Many events can be soloed, some require a few random people to be done (call them on /map chat), and large boss events can be done by calling random people and guildmates.

Dagger Storm grants a boon “stability”, which makes you invulnerable from CC, but it can be removed by special melee attacks (not by ranged, because you reflect projectiles while spinning).

For example, mesmer’s sword auto attack removes boons. Thief’s flanking strike may also remove it.

Killua.3406:

LOL at doing it wrong i am in melee range how much closer do you want me to be in his pocket ?

Obviously, you have to hug each other in a fight. It is situational, but has its use. Also, if you have caltrops, your target will always get hit by FS thanks to cripple, even if they are trying to escape. You can also utilize cripple from auto attack.

Yes, you are doing it wrong.