Guild Wars 2

Skelk venom is the worst healing skill in game after necromancer’s signet of vampirism. You potentially could use it with venom share to give it to allies, but it requires too big investments and isn’t worth it.

Poison is not a counter to healing signet, because they have strong condi cleanse, and you just can’t keep it up all the time – as opposed to ‘burst’ heals, where you can time a few seconds of poison to reduce all healing income within even 30 seconds.

Yes, traits like this or things like runes of nightmare is one of the main reasons why GW2 is sometimes so frustrating to play. The warrior doesn’t expect it, the attacker doesn’t expect it, nobody expects it but the game engine.

And how much damage these condis deal with power spec over 8 seconds? Half of a single auto-attack?

@Static
I used to play it in 50-100 soloque few months ago, and it was even before initiative buff, what made it much stronger.

This trait is supposed to replace signet of malice in PvE, where you do big AoE damage with shortbow, so you can equip hide in shadows for condi cleanse. I don’t think there is any more use of it. Just another underpowered trait not worth grandmaster slot.

How do they math? Here is the answer:

Number of people playing ranked matches is so low, that if you wanted to play a ,,close match" every time like in LoL, you would need to wait in averange like 30 minutes or more. Instead, you are matched with players pretty much regardless of their ranks, what greatly reduces waiting time, but also team balance.

To sum up, the longer you wait and the bigger the community is, the closer matches you have. Here, you don’t wait for long and the community is small, but at least you are able to play.

@Swim
Mesmers are good at interrupts, but interrupting in this game is a pain in kitten, because there are no castbars, and animations (especially on asuras) are usually unreadable. This makes majority of people going for low-risk-low-reward clone/stealth spam builds, complaining about getting low rewards all the time.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vYAQNAqaVlsMpvpdPx0JsPNRs9onAlncFcq2DaiTYC-TsAg0CnIQShkDJDSSksINsYBxECA

It is made mostly for ambushes and fire support in sPvP. With that much power, might and crit, you can one-shot another glass cannon from range, and finish off fleeing low HP enemies without problem.

And what if you don’t want to eat the soup? Surprisingly, even seasoned players have problems countering it, because they don’t know what to expect.

Anyway, for WvW d/p is mostly better option, but only because of its chasing capabilities with shadow shot, since noobs (especially warriors) tend to run away when they are low HP, and there are lots of situations like this. In sPvP its a different story, and there it is truly fork vs. spoon argue.

@Maugetarr
You just said something like ,,couldn’t you use spoon instead of fork in a restaurant?".

Actually, I use two weapon sets (like majority here) – p/p with <surprise> shortbow.

yolo swaggins.2570:

From what I’ve witnessed, its probably because of its low utility and poor synergy with itself.

Then you haven’t witnessed much. The utility P/P gives is great (easy interrupts and stomps), and all attacks (projectiles) have synergy with black powder, but there is even more.

Stolen items work the best with pistol main-hand and pistol off-hand. Example: you are ranged, but axe stolen from a warrior combined with smoke suddenly makes you very dangerous in melee. ‘Throw gunk’ is very effective aswell, because you can apply multiple stacks of confusion. If you combine it with ‘panic strike’, this is very hard kicking. ‘Throw feathers’ from thief allows you to proc a combo field on your way x5 or create a gap for safe unloads, maybe even both.

There are many very effective synergies only possible to P/P. Condi P/P is bad, but somehow people I meet are surprised when they realize I’m playing it power.

It boosts your attacks by about 8%, it is not worth it. If it gave +20% boost on revealed, then we could start thinking about it, but now – not really.

Playing p/p without stealth is a bad idea, because it is either a suicide, or slapping with a wet noodle – because you need extra toughness or vitality to survive. Stealth allows you to create gaps between you and your opponent, what is very important, plus cleansing condis. Not to mention it gives you mini-unload on #1 (sneak attack).

As you have zero stealh from your weapons, you should acquire stealth from utilities, such as: shadow refuge, hide in shadows, blinding powder, even shadow trap. And of course, most important gap creating skill, which is shadowstep.

The new TDM map is fun, but not that much interesting for longer play.

Also, 10vs10 with 3 nodes but on bigger maps would be fine aswell.

Could add some sweets like ballistas* for extra flavour.

*slow, long range, small AoE, hard hitting and hard to aim (with mouse).

Possible where?

In PvE, everything is “possible”, but I think shortbow is better anyway.
In PvP, panic strike is much better.

I think it would benefit only CnD+backstab spam against a mob, picked with dagger traning. Useless in all other cases.

I almost never PvE, I don’t even know what is this Karka queen, I have only half of map uncovered, and I had zero problems unlocking all extra traits for my character. If you only PvP for a few months, you would have now a pile of gold from wintersday boxes, covering your PvP lifetime spendings.

Besides, now you can farm a lot of gold through sPvP.

The evade should be 1 second, and animation 1.5 second, add to it slightly longer jump to compensate. Similar with leaping death blossom or even all dodge rolls.

The 1/2 sec evade is too short to time anything, especially when added uncontrollable skill queue delay, and it will be still all about spamming #3, but now it will just randomly fail. I am a human, not a robot. The problem was approached from wrong side.

Patch notes:
- We changed something, but won’t tell you. Send your community ninjas for reports.

In past, it worked pretty well.

Why would I bother with some hybrid builds that just prolong a fight if thief class allows me to instagib people?

It might be getting a big nerf to backstab damage, but it will still do its job. Anyway, I wouldn’t use it instead of berserker even before nerf.

Actually, builds are limitted, because playing some advanced builds requires you to be a robot, not a human. There are builds in which screwing an evade or an interrupt costs you a victory. You have to watch that tiny asura to move their hand by an inch and react to it – otherwise, die.

Nobody bothers with it; it’s stressing and not fun. Viewers won’t even notice that ‘epic’ dodge, because you have to pay VERY close attention to see that pindown inbetween auto-attacks. Increasing cast time to 1 second won’t help either.

People play faceroll builds instead, like hambow or PU mesmer, that require from you zero awarness and skill to stay effective. With these builds, you literally have to worry about nothing but your and your enemy’s health bar – step back when yours is decreasing, and push when theirs is low. That makes really flat, boring gameplay.

If between you and your enemy is a wall, then you won’t receive an item by shadowstepping to them and stealing. After patch, you will receive an item even if there is a wall on your way, and traits like mug will work aswell (hopefully).

This is the only thing getting fixed. This wasn’t even a bug, the “obstructed steal” was coded on purpose, and now is being reverted – it wasn’t always like that.

I used to play this in top 100 solo que few months ago:

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAqaVlUm6N3eS6E95Ex2jeCUeyVwpaPc5LhJA-TsAg0CnIqRVjrGTNyas1MsYBxECA

There is totally no point playing P/P in sPvP without 30 critical strikes and deadly arts, because your only defense is killing your opponent before they kill you – the faster the better, preferably before they even close range or notice what hit them. If you drop deadly arts for anything like trickery or acrobatics, your damage output will be simply too low to do anything (around 20% lower), rendering you useless.

Alternatives: you can use signet of malice+something instead of shadow trap for pure fire support, but it is weaker than shadow trap+thieves guild combo node protection.

PS: I wrote a small guide about it, and it was before initiative regen buff what made it even more powerful
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/sPvP-P-P-SB-confusion-build/first#post3421439

Water is also on Kyhlo when it rains, so remove Kyhlo aswell.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

the arcing arrow’s projectile speed is very slow.

it is only fair to reduce the recharge time and reduce the activation time if the damage is to be reduced.

The game is not supposed to be ,,fair", but balanced.

If somebody triggers your shadow trap while not expecting it, they are pretty much dead. You can summon thieves and click teleport 0.5 sec before the cast is over, then instagib the node invader, but it is not always recommended – mostly it’s better to teleport and look around first. It is possible to kill your opponent with a single pistol whip (10 might with fury), if they are glass.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vYAQNAsaVlsMpvpdPx0JsPNRs9Yn6kncFcq2DaiTYC-TsAg0CnIQShkDJDSSksINsYBxECA

Yeah, buffing everything will surely make build diversity, just like devs did with warrior. Everything works as long as you have a healing signet and 20-30 points in defense. But this is called power creep and it has nothing in common with balance.

Phadde.7362:

So it would seem that some don’t like this… variation while playing sPvP? Seems wierd since a big chunk of the criticism towards PvP in GW2 is its repetitive nature (perhaps because there’s only one game mode?)
…

People will always complain about something. If nobody is complaning, that means the game is dead.

You will see when new game modes arrive, people will complain about something else. GW2 is a unique game, what produces many conflicting opinions. Thankfully, devs don’t do rapid actions based on them, because that would seriously harm the game.

@Lukin
1. Yes, you are punished for bad positioning. Nothing wrong here.
2. I have mixed feeling about the cannon, but let’s say it could be somehow changed.
3. Then go play chess.

@Phadde
You see, there is a bunch of so-called “pro players” who would only fight in a square arena without any objectives, because every extra addition is potentially OP.

They play the best build found on the internet, and any change made to it is unacceptable, because in their way of thinking they would become underpowered (what is not true). Some of them create their own -best- builds, but the above rule still applies.

Skyhammer forces players to play differently than on standard maps, what makes them totally lose their minds.

Still, majority of players enjoy Skyhammer, and they are simply enjoying it in silence.

No need for any diminishing returns. You have stability for hard CC, and condi cleanse for soft CC.

Warrior’s hammer should just do less single target damage, not shorter CC. Extra +20% dmg to stunned targets has to be removed, same with +50% crit chance, or at least put the second one to grandmaster tier.

About chain fear – same as above, just remove damage on fear. Fear is supposed to be a CC, not a damaging attack. Child of a power creep.

Pistol whip – remove evade. Right now, you can’t even interrupt it, because the interrupting attack, be it melee or ranged, will be evaded. This is lame and reduces counterplay.

Again this thread…

Okay, then remove revealed and buff damage of all stealth attacks by 50% to compensate. Then you can counter half of my total damage output by pressing a button, in many cases randomly. I foresee people would just move to evade spam builds.

But seriously, I have no problem protecting myself from backstabs when an enemy is already in stealth. I would even dare to say, mostly I damage my opponent more than they do, when they try to position themselves for a backstab.

So, for you pressing a button = skill spam? That’s a pretty wide interpretation.

Activating retailation doesn’t take skill or timing. In 99,9% of cases its either randomly shared by teammates, or from -actual- spamming your weapon skills from left to right whenever they are off cooldown… And these random, chaotic decisions are hard counters to certain weapon skills. It is not even ‘low risk, high reward’ – it is ‘do nothing and win’.

Confusion isn’t a problem, because it has a hidden cooldown which is weapon swing animation, is much easier to remove, and usually lasts a few seconds, actually allowing you to wait it out.

1. Voice chat is totally not needed. Pings are enough. Make one ‘red’ and another ‘yellow’, like in LoL – first for attack, second for retreat. With sound.

2. I don’t know who my teammates are. Give me information about their stat distribution around their portraits in a ring, so I know what to expect from them. For example: red color means power, orange crit, green condi damage, blue healing power, purple vitality, some-other-blue toughness.

So, a player with dominating red color is a berserker, and another one with dominating blue color is a bunker.

OR simplify it, and set red for all combined offense, and blue for all combined defense.

It would be nice if this was also visible on enemies.

Chaotic.9742:

Retal working as intended. Perfect counter to oblivious skill spammers. All you have to do is watch the for the boon and not kill yourself like a fool. If you die to retal, it’s your own fault.

Please define ,,skill spam".

I can heartseeker 5 times in a row, receiving 5 retailation ticks, or pistol whip only once and receive 9-27 ticks.

High retailation uptime is just another hard counter to some specs, just like automated response, berserker stance and diamond skin are. It is certainly not fun to get hard countered with the only option of ,,just don’t attack", because you can’t wait out 100% uptime, and boon removal outside of weapon skills is poor in this game.

Solution: set n second cooldown per person, meaning no matter how many times or how many enemies you hit with a single AoE attack, you will never suffer from retailation more than once every n seconds. I suggest the n number to be in range of <1;3>.

Carpboy.7145:

People dont often realize daggerstorm reflects. It pretty much entirely shuts down engis, rangers, p/d thieves, and bow warriors. Its also extremely helpful against certain mesmers as well. In addition, its our only access to stability outside of lyssa or boonstealing. And its on half the cooldown of TG. Its a clear choice for me.

Why would I ever go defense with dagger storm giving initiative to an opponent, if I can go full offense, especially as a thief, and instagib them? Waste of elite slot.

TG is very nice, because it gives defense, offense and utility. It can totally put off the track even experienced players. Not to mention it allows you to pretty quickly solo a bunker.

khadorian.6417:

i think they should just buff it to more bleed. else there is no condition damage build for melee

Thieves have no viable condi build for pvp not because their bleeds cause not enough damage, but because they rely only on bleeds. They have no spammable sets of different condis to cover them, not to mention no access to burn, which is a very powerful damaging condi.

Let’s hope venom (and trap) rework will come soon, so thieves can at last start playing around condis for real.

Well, you need 30 points in trickery for utility, 30 in critical strikes for damage, and 10 in deadly arts for mug. This is very common build with dagger/pistol. Some people play it with sword/pistol aswell, or even sword/dagger. Gear is berserker, of course.

Traps as traps should stay, because their mechanics are interesting to play with and make sense for a thief.
They are just underpowered, and totally useless against swarms of mobs, especially in PvP, but this can be fixed.

Traps (not only for thieves) should follow these rules:
- +3 sec planting time to avoid the golden rule of MMO – ,,If you want a trap to be any useful, you must plant them directly on top of your enemy."
- They need to leave a debuff on the target like Impale (warrior’s sword #4) and apply conditions periodically. Of course, it doesn’t mean they can’t have an initial effect, like knockdown or immobilize.
- Cannot be evaded or blocked (see a trap? dodge roll in it! – stupid).
- Trap should go on cooldown after destroying it, not after planting.
- And most important – if a mob triggers a trap, the trap is disabled for several seconds, but not removed. It should be removed only upon a player entering it.

These ,,niche situations" make good thieves and great thieves, because reacting to them might win or lose you a team fight, or even a match at higher level of gameplay.

Problem is, you are probably looking at it from D/P point of view, where black powder + heartseeker combo is somehow over the top, and the nerf would be more or less needed to this weapon set; especially when you have already ranged blind on shadow shot, which is also cheapper.

And last – you predict thieves are going to be nerfed, so you started inventing things to keep the -nerf list- full? Such a wrong way of thinking. Nerfs should be applied to overpowered mechanisms, and buffs to these underpowered – that’s all. There should be no ,,we nerfed two things, so we should buff two things as a compensation" because this is not how you make balance. If making this class balanced means only nerfs (or buffs) then do so.
Being protective against nerfs and cautious with buffs is important, because it saves us from chaos, which is a negation of balance. Thankfully Devs know this, and they rarely make knee-jerk decisions.

Dee Jay.2460:

To be fair, I wasn’t thinking about S/P much. But then again you still have Headshot which serves the same purpose as an interrupt.

So the point remains.

You can’t interrupt somebody who is in downed state (with exception of launch) and under stability effect. For me, it is very common to blind a downed guardian/warrior/ranger/engineer/necromancer from range, who is being stomped by my teammate to secure the kill; especially when playing p/p, when I can’t close range and put smoke field on top of them.

Black powder and headshot differ a lot in terms on interrupting attacks. A good thief use them alternately, depending on situation. For example, it’s the best to blind an eviscerate, earthshaker or heartseeker, while blinding hundred blades, a stomp or a heal is pointless – where you should use daze instead. There are much more examples, and they can be found against every single class in this game. Yes, your suggestion would dumb down the thief.

@Travlane
I use shadow trap with some full glass builds in sPvP, it allows me to instagib node invaders out of nowhere. It is the best trap in game.

Tripwire is weak and needle trap is below terrible.

Do you realize that sometimes black powder is used just for that single ranged blind , especially with pistol and sword mainhand? For instance, it can interrupt CC from some classes’ downed state at range, or an incomming burst aimed at your teammate, if enemy has stability.Your suggestion would dumb down this class.

And as written above, it costs 6 initiative, which is a lot.

No, it just needs reliable evade like shortbow #3 and much higher power damage. I think 70% of pistol whip’s damage plus that small bleed would be fine. Could also increase initiative requirement back to 5. That’s all.

Paragon.5479:

dont bother if u don’t have serious team to practise with

This is so stupid that I’m missing words to describe it.

Yes, if you don’t want random people to join your room and break your rules, buy a private arena and protect it with a password. Simple.

Golden rule of MMOs says:
,,If you want a trap to be any useful, you must plant them directly on top of your enemy."

The only trap which doesn’t entirely support this rule is shadow trap, but as a compensation it has a horrible uptime of like 2 minutes, what means it destroys itself in the least suitable moment…
I hope in future all traps work similar to shadow trap, and without any stupid limits of uptime.

Ambush traps is meant for leveling with pistol off-hand. If you protect your summon, it will deal the highest single target DPS among all utility skills thief has.

It has already 2x projectile, and with one bugged trait it gives both of them 100% chance to trigger combo fields plus range increase. How is this bad?

We don’t need more mobs to clutter screen. Also, you have ambush trap and thieves guild for it.

I would like to have some short-cooldown long leap (not shadowstep) or knockback on my thief, because it would be awesome in jumping puzzles and EotM.

We also need to have some condi removal outside of stealth, so it would be a signet protecting us from these, without need of having runes of lyssa.

@Saturn
It reminds me fighting against a dps guardian, who literally stood all the time inside BPs, casting random flurry of attacks at me that ignored the blind, and to make it even funnier about 30% (if not more) of thier total damage output was from retailation. There was no kittens way I could do anything to them.

So, we have flurries of attacks, ranged weapons, condi immunities, pushback/pull, and simply standing outside of the field – it sounds to me like a decent counter list.