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1. Guild vs Guild and Hall of Heroes with a similar format of GW1. Remember when winning a PvP game mattered for something more than just personal bragging rights (i.e. winning HoH to open UW and FoW)?
2. Different objectives in PvP. Give us a full CTF or something that isn’t a territory control objective.
3. Medium scale PvP. Give us something larger than the tiny sPvP maps, but much smaller than WvW encounters (something like a 15 vs 15 maybe).
And if I could get a 4th request in, then I would also request the ability to use skills/abilities while jumping/falling.
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Eww, hell no. Charge up attacks are slow and boring. One of the best things about the Thief class is the fast-paced rapid attacks that match so well with the high mobility they have.
I liked the old Flanking Strike, I played that set in the age where D/D backstab and heartseeker spammers were rampant and have a lot of fun with it.
The single boon removal, the dodge and the unforgiving pathing made that skill a real challange giving great results if user properly.
I needed to know where is the right position to cast it to make the skill land, I needed to know when to use it to remove the right boon because I wasn’t able to afford to spam it to remove all the boons.I understand that some people who are used to leap skills like HS may get frustrated on Flanking Strike and then refused to use it, in fact the path adjusting is the only buff I can understand.
But they completely messed it. Right now, Flanking Strike is the new era of succesful spammers. 2-2-2-2 has become 3-3-3-3. You can easily steal ALL boons from any boon-reliant profession with no efforts at all while dealing sweet constant damage, evading and have the initiative cost split in 2 installments.
I mean, why? It’s like they want the Thief to be the hole where all the spammers, FotM abusers and baddies should be confined to.
If you’re not getting the ego boost you need from playing at a disadvantage, then just unequip your offhand or something.
lol.
The Weakness condition could be removed for the game and I don’t think it would really make a difference…
Wah!!!
Go to Southsun Cove as a guardian, warrior, ranger, ect… and fight a karka. Than try it with a D/D thief and it’s pretty obvious who has the most difficult time / takes the longest.
D/D tears Karka to pieces.
That’s nice and all, but this post is about team play in dungeons, not soloing in the open world. Problem is, thief doesn’t bring much to the table on the team play end. They’re pretty much a selfish class. Pretty much every other class but Ranger outmatches them in either DPS or team support or both.
Shadow’s Refuge rezes and Blinds.
DPS is only behind because are broken OP in PvE.
I think some people are missing the point of the post.
Yes, it kills you, but it’s funny that it does so with such a high amount of damage.
…but I guess some people prefer to rage and cut others down instead of having a laugh.
OP is trying to parse down the emotions and state of people into a static assumption of their overall condition. A common logical flaw that most preachy people make.
Being disappointed with things or unhappy about some things at times does not equate to some lack of overall happiness in all other aspects of life.
There’s nothing wrong with being happy at one moment and unhappy the next. The experience of all of life’s emotions isn’t inherently problematic so long as a healthy balance is sustained and that balance is different for each person. Only the individual can truly know the right balance for them self.
Beating your chest like you know other random strangers better than they know themselves really just comes across as arrogant and ignorant.
Just one thing.
Keep your personal opinions out of the video. Because I’ll say, I liked the combat. I liked that you play a S/D in a world where most people run D/D or D/P. I liked that you played an evade heavy build, rather than a stealth-heavy one.
However, you went there. You called some random person out because they ran from you. You and your partner. You play a Thief, one of the better 1v1 classes already and you put someone down because they did not want to do a 1v2 against you and your partner.
I watched the video muted…and now I’m glad I did. I hate idiots that invoke accusations of fear towards others who know how to pick their battles. It’s a weak tactic to provoke someone at best and a clear display in lack of understanding how to play competitively at worst.
Of any class, thieves should understand the logic of escaping a fight you won’t win.
The issue with PvE balance has less to do with classes and more to do with the environment.
1) Most damage in PvE is largely avoidable with dodges, which means that healing and defensive support is often not entirely needed and serves more as a crutch to groups who are new to content. If players were to take more small bits of unavoidable damage, then there would be a need for healing and support-based characters, even with experienced groups.
2) Support options often have a small effect on output and a dps-oriented character can generally bring enough support without having to sacrifice dps. Because of this, there isn’t much need for people to bring support-focused builds, even if they aren’t entirely defensive support builds.
Yea, the hotjoin menu really is lacking. It always feels like a crap-shoot when trying to get in a specific game. This isn’t much an issue for solo-queueing since you can just ‘Join Now’, but it’s a pain when you’re joining with somone. I do a lot of sPvP with my wife and this has been a royal pain for us.
Thief spear underwater is probably one of the top underwater weapons (even if it’s not the absolute number 1). Skill 5 alone gives you near permanent evade with strong single target damage for as long as you have intiative.
That being said, it heavily favors power builds, so I could see how it may look disappointing to a condition build.
People have already stated the main reasons, here’s my response in a nutshell:
D/D can only use, at most, 3 of its 5 attacks. D/P uses all 5.
D/D’s CnD requires a target, and must hit; also, it can’t be used in stealth. B/P+HS does not require a target, and does not have to hit anything; furthermore, it can be used to stack stealth.
D/D has only one thing going for it, burst. D/P has four: burst, gap closing, ranged interrupts, and blinds (many at range and many more at melee distance).
D/D takes only 1 skill to stealth (6 initiative with 1/2 sec cast time), whereas D/P takes 2 (9 initiative with 1 & 1/4 sec cast time). D/D also has some gap closing with HS and even though it’s not as effective as Shadow Shot, it does also have a cripple, which is something that D/P doesn’t have. Also, you can get the AoE blind effect to an extent with D/D through taking Cloaked in Shadow.
I’m not saying that D/D is better, but simply that your argument to justify D/P is overlooking a lot.
I don’t play a warrior, so I never paid much attention to this skill (particularly since it doesn’t seem to be used much), but wow it looks bad!
I mean, it looks like it only works to rally downed allies and doesn’t rez dead allies. If that’s the case, then anyone that’s downed will almost certainly rally the next time an enemy dies anyway.
Either way, I doubt IWAY would work in GW2, even if it worked on dead players since it’s inherently a gimmicky skill. GW1 PvE was pretty much based on gimmicky builds (EoE bomb, Ranger Spike, Minion Factory, etc.) whereas GW2 has more focus on how players use balanced team builds.
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What’s the point in telling people you aren’t impressed with it? If it’s unimpressive, you just move on. I mean, I guess I don’t see the point.
Welcome to video game forums! Here’s how they generally work:
People post something and then other people provide feedback based upon their opinions and/or experiences!
Have fun using the internet!
I’ve been playing with a lot of direct damage burst builds lately, but I still have yet to really try an evasion/caltrop build. The more I’ve run into other thieves running this build, the more curious I’ve gotten as to how well it performs in comparison to the backstab builds that seem to be popular.
So, my question is: Which build do you think is better? Does one of these builds fit the current meta better than the other?
One of the main things I often see people gloss over when advocating for D/P is that to stealth you need a 2 attack combo, whereas a D/D only needs to use C&D. I’m not saying D/D is all around better because of this, but it does have its own set of advantages, even if it’s not what it used to be.
Sometimes the blind field is a clutch factor to winning a fight and sometimes it’s getting in a stealth+backstab before your enemy heals or gets help from allies.
Sometimes the daze is a clutch factor to winning a fight and sometimes a ranged cripple is.
Hehe, Cloak and Swagger is pretty cool
1 thief spamming Heartseeker = dead thief wasting all the initiative pool
1 thief properly using Heartseeker at the right time on low health enemy = good thief that deserves that kill
and please, for God’s sake, everyone should stop posting on the forum everytime he loses
I loose to thieves all the time. Same as I win with them all the time. I dont post every time however. But if a move which is probably the single most used move in game apart from autoattack does such number in spvp enviroment, I want to know more.
That may have been the case at one time (before it was nerfed), but HS is far from the most used move in the game. Any thief who spams that ability is really hindering themselves since you’re almost always better off using the initiative to stealth for a backstab.
Put my vote in for “Sneakers”.
…although the reference may be a bit too retro for some (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105435/)
Yea, I remember when I first rolled a ranger. I remember thinking that spirits were going to be so awesome, lol!
Craft to level up. If don’t have the gold to level 100% from crafting or just don’t want to spend that much, then I recommend using p/d with sb for solo leveling and p/p with sb for dungeons.
P/d is great for solo since you can use cloak and dagger to get frequent stealth attacks which give you good damage from the burst and survivability from the stealth. D/d is a pain since you have to constantly run behind mobs that are trying to face you and s/d doesn’t have a very good stealth attack for PvE. You can also quickly get distance from your target when you need it to kite mobs with skill #3.
P/p is good for dungeons while leveling since you’re squishy as a low level in dungeons and it allows you to stay on your feat while you get used to the class.
In sPvP match. On medium armor with Soldier amulet and jewel.
Can someone please explain me the math behind this? And consequently, tell me how are thieves angry that they are called “HS spam *”? This is a bit of a QQ thread but I am genuinely curious about this particular number given that it comes from this particular ability.
So, you were at 1/3rd or less hp and were hit by a glass cannon thief with Scholar runes. If you think this makes HS spam legitimate, then you’ve never read the tooltip.
Rangers are tough to beat as a thief, but that’s one of the main reasons I’ve been running with Dagger Storm as my elite lately.
Nerf the hard hitters and then give them more gap closers, conditions protection and CC.
All the kitten like hundred blades and such is just dragging warriors down, because as long as theoretically they can do like 12k bursts every 8 seconds, they can’t really be buffed.
Slash the theoretical output by 30% and then add more NON-DAMAGING abilities to either sustain himself longer or control the fight more.
^ Agreed with this. I know it seems counter-intuitive to nerf the damage on a class that is in need of help, but I think that if warriors are given more of a line-backer role with more cc and damage reduction (besides, if any class could survive a dps nerf in PvE, it’s warriors, lol). I know doing this could make them more similar to Guardians, but if done right, I don’t think it should. Here’s how I would have the two classes defined in a perfect world with the right balance:
Unique Guardian strengths – Defensive boons, barrier-type CC/AoE CC, projection reflection, healing
Unique Warrior strengths – Boon hate, Offensive boons, Retribution-based damage reflection, direct knockdowns and stuns
Both classes should have high defense with medium damage (warrior slightly higher), but neither should be able to do the insane dps that warriors currently do.
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Honestly, I think we don’t see people with support builds in PvP for the same reason we don’t see them in PvE: Support abilities are either too weak or are so readily availble that there’s no need to trait full support.
And really, it’s kinda sad. I think viable support builds would really improve the game a lot.
At this point, it would take a lot of changes to accomplish this, but if we could get to a place where there were very strong support abilities that required a clear sacrifice of dps or bunker ability, then we might be able to see this niche open.
Making warriors into wannabe thieves just sounds like a terrible idea. If you want to argue for more survivability for warriors, then there are plenty of ways to achieve this while still allowing warriors to play like warriors (i.e. add more blocks or CC).
Hell, why not give warriors a disarm option?
Who cares about glory? I play PvP for challenging and engaging gameplay.
Are you talking solo PvE, dungeon PvE, sPvP or WvW?
It’s hard to for anyone to give the most basic advice on builds without knowing the purpose.
It’s an emblamatic problem with ANet’s decision to make ranged weapons as a whole low dps.
They’ve stated that they think ranged weapons/attacks inherently must do lower dps in order to offset the safety of not being in melee range, but plenty of MMOs out there have allowed ranged to have equal dps without being OP. This is accomplished by better enemy design in PvE (i.e. have enemies with threatening ranged attacks) and by giving melee plenty of gap closers in PvE (this already exists in PvP).
I really wish they would balance out ranged options in this game, because the melee is really too dominant in both PvE and PvP right now.
It’s obvious there’s a problem when the easiest of the ezmode farming routes is so overrun with groups wanting a specific kind of warrior and a mesmer and nothing else. I enjoy the fast cash as much as any one but, some of these loopholes need fixed.
It’s totally possible to keep CoF farmable and a quick run WHILE fixing the blatantly obvious holes that make it almost exclusionary.
My .02. Also, inc trolls.
It’s also totally possible to farm CoF with a non-mesmer. Mes/War groups are popular, but there are still plenty of people that run a group with a more varied composition.
And if you go to their forums they talk about how broken they are……like, what more do you want? Like do you want the pet to actually eat the other player in one bite and then sh——- a picture of the player’s decomposed body on the player’s class forums?
Don’t confuse PvE with PvP. Rangers may do well in PvP, but they’re pretty weak in PvE.
Why ANet didn’t just copy WoW’s queuing system, I’ll never know…
I love this game, but the system of creating games and letting players join them is just painful. This is one of the biggest reasons I just stayed away from PvP for so long.
Get rezzed by your thief friend
If you are with an ally who is playing a thief and you get downed, hold off from attacking enemies if possible. Thiefs usually bring Shadows Refuge which will stealth both of you so that you can get rezzed, but if you attack, this will break stealth and leave you open for a stomp.
This would be a huge undertaking and would probably only appeal to a very niche audience.
In other words, this will never happen.
It’s definitely fun, but I only like it in PvE. P/D is great for solo leveling/PvE and P/P is a solid spec for dungeons.
Loperdos has a great guide for a P/P dungeon build. It’s not as high damage as a melee build, but you can always swap out a few talents in the middle of a run and equip melee weapons if you really need the extra dps. Link to thread and build:
http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/82179-buildguide-examination-of-ranged-thieves/
Lots of great advice here. Thanks everyone for sharing.
@ Lane: here’s the link to the post Omni referenced:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/archive/sab/The-future-of-SAB/page/2#post1895290
Is it okay if we skip bosses too? Actually, could we just get a direct WP to the loot?
But seriously, if you don’t like playing the game by interacting with mobs, what are you even doing dungeons for?
Your logic here is flawed.
People don’t necessary skip mobs because they don’t want to interact with mobs. They do it because trash mobs aren’t the mobs they want to interact with.
Personally, I enjoy boss fights much more than trash mobs.
Also, you don’t have to kill a mob to engage with it. Finding ways to run past mobs, use stability to prevent knockdowns, use abilities to break snares, and stealth to leash mobs is fun for a lot of people. Not fun for you? That’s cool. Different strokes for different folks.
But that doesn’t mean you have to hate on people just because they enjoy playing the game differently. Also, just because someone plays the game differently than you doesn’t mean that they’re somehow playing the game in a lesser manner or are not enjoying what they are doing.
many thanks, sirs! i understand that a warrior/thief could do it faster, i just think that knowledge is power and having this sort of skill would be useful if i find myself in that situation.
one last question: could this work with a 20/30/0/0/20 trait spread and lyssa runes, or will need to finagle some stuff?
Yea, it’s rare that I’ve ever had to do the door as my mesmer, but it has come up before, so it’s good to know.
As for your build, I’m sure you could do it just fine with that build, although how hard it is will depend quite a bit as to what specific traits you’re investing in. Is this a build that focuses on keeping phantasms up? If so, it may be a bit harder than a shatter build since phantasms get chewed up by crazy flame thrower-wielding charr pretty fast, but the 1h sword still makes it relatively easy.
The 1h sword is really what you want to make sure you’re using on this, regardless of spec since it’s the highest dps weapon and is easy to stay on your feet with since blurred frenzy lets you evade so much.
Ideally, for most builds this is what I would do: bring Mantra of Pain as the other poster said, start off with greatsword, cast iBerserker, then swap to sword/focus, cast iWarden and go to town with everything you have. If you invest in the illusion trait to give you 3% damage for each illusion (which you should almost regardless of spec anyways), then wait to finish blurred frenzy before shattering when possible to maximize the damage it deals. If the boss starts to get on top of you and the controls are still alive, swap back to the greatsword and finish it off while kiting.
Have you guys ever tried to do a dungeon the "right"way. That is, killing all the enemys you come to, not using little safe spots or stack locations to trick the AI into doing what you want. Like 100% legit run it.
Probably not, or if you have you only done it once or twice. The dungeons seem like they are designed to encourage you to, for a lack of a better word “cheat” to the through it.
Now the last time I ran a dungeon was about 8 months ago, so Im sure they have changed a bit from then. But I just did TA with a group and it was basicly the same as back then, run past these enemys, hide in this corner, ect ect.
I would much rather run a dungeon the “right” way, however it doesnt seem like thats a very viable option.
A ) Running a dungeon without skipping mobs isn’t “right”. It’s your preference. It’s fine to have your preference, but asserting that yours is superior here does nothing other than oppose people against you and polarize the thread.
B ) If you want to run a dungeon without skipping, then start the group yourself, announce in your LFG that you’re not skipping and announce to the group once it’s formed that you’re not skipping. Sadly a lot of people really don’t pay attention to LFG requirements, so it’s always good to re-iterate your guidelines before zoning into the dungeon.
So, a while back, I decided that I wanted to learn more about investing in the GW2 economy to see what is profitable and what isn’t. At the time the SAB was still open and I chose to buy the Super Scepter and Short Bow skins to save and resell later. The reason was that they would be unavailable after the SAB left and would probably not return when the SAB came back. At the time, I bought them for about 8g each. I saw the price jump to about 11g on the last day of SAB and the first day after it was gone, but since then it seems to have sat closer to 6g.
My question is: Should I have sold these items when they spiked at 11g or do you think it’s still wise to sit on them to wait for the price to come back up?
It’s not that bad. You basically blow every cooldown you have (aside from Time Warp) to dps down the controls while making sure to not stand in front of the boss when he uses his flame thrower. Shatter builds do well with this since they have a lot of burst.
I haven’t played the patch yet.
But if the projectile speed doesn’t match that of the Ranger’s bows, then it should be increased to match it. It should never have been homing.
It’s really about the same as a ranger bow attack. I really don’t understand how so many people are so up in arms about this, lol.
Then again, thief has been one of the only classes that hasn’t had to worry about any missing projectiles when they are ranged, so I think it’s just a shock coming to players who have been sheltered in playing this profession for so long.
For almost every other class, it’s been understood that standing at max range increases the likeliness of your attack to be dodged. I mean, try a grenade engi for a while if you really think this is so bad.
I think you missed the point, its about thief mechanics and what seems to be coherent with the profession itself, a trick shot isn’t supposed to miss.But if you want to compare other classes, sure, lets say we get the dmg of a longbow ranger or a 100nades engi and we have a deal.
Trick shot was just fine, it did not need a buff or a nerf, they ruined the short bow.
What? Who says a trick shot isn’t supposed to miss?
I’m pretty sure that’s your wishful thinking-based assumption.
And comparing the damage of the short bow to other classes is pretty dumb. The short bow was never a primary dps weapon aside from AoE situations. Even if you did want to make that comparison, it’s laughably bad:
- The longbow for a ranger has one mediocre AoE on a cooldown. Thief shortbow deals drastically more AoE damage. The single target damage also doesn’t rely on pet with wonky AI staying alive and keeping up damage.
- 100nades engis have been dead for a while. Grenades are still the primary dps method of engineers, but that’s because it’s their only way to put out decent dps. Even then, the arc of grenades is a hundred times worse than a short bow. Also, since the 100nades build was decimated with the kit refinement nerf, you’ll never see an engi do burst comparable to a thief.
So if you don’t like how the short bow is now, fine. But don’t try to back it up with terrible misinformation like that. It doesn’t help your argument.
I haven’t played the patch yet.
But if the projectile speed doesn’t match that of the Ranger’s bows, then it should be increased to match it. It should never have been homing.
It’s really about the same as a ranger bow attack. I really don’t understand how so many people are so up in arms about this, lol.
Then again, thief has been one of the only classes that hasn’t had to worry about any missing projectiles when they are ranged, so I think it’s just a shock coming to players who have been sheltered in playing this profession for so long.
For almost every other class, it’s been understood that standing at max range increases the likeliness of your attack to be dodged. I mean, try a grenade engi for a while if you really think this is so bad.
I made a pet dodge macro. I recommend everyone who has the ability to make a macro: “F3 (wait 3 seconds) F1”
And no, my bears lasted about a minute longer than before against the bosses in AC and MF. All the rest died just as easy as before. All still fall very very easily to AoE.
They really should just give pets a dodge ability that we can control. I know ANet doesn’t want to add too many control options so that rangers are accessible to new players, but as it stands, rangers are a relatively easy profession to play and it’s better than just pitting the player against the frustration of watching their pet die to something completely unavoidable.
That’s all well and good…until your spirit dies.
Look, there are simply to many ‘ifs’ for a ranger to really work well as a damage dealer in the type of build you’re outlining
- IF you can survive and dodge without getting stuck in 1h sword animation
– IF your squishy glass cannon pet that can’t dodge and doesn’t know to go around red circles when called back survives the full boss encounter
– IF the boss doesn’t touch your spirit until you can recast it
– IF you and your group stay in range of your spirit for the entire boss fight
Meanwhile, a warrior/thief/etc. can just focus on dpsing and dodging when necessary. Many classes like thief and mesmer have abilities on their weapons that allow them to evade damage while boosting their dps (Flanking Strike and Blurred Frenzy) whereas the ranger evade attack is lower dps and condition based.
@ Wallach: Great post that sums up the state of spirits very well.
Quite well, in fact. I just ran some numbers on Ranger DPS and a 10/25/5/30/0 sword/warhorn Ranger with a feline or bird pet and max might and vuln and consumable buffs can maintain 8.1k DPS on a target while flanking it. 5.3k of that is from the ranger himself, while 2.8k is from the pet. That is super high, especially given that everyone’s favorite Axe/GS warrior only gets about 7k/s under the same circumstances, and only if he can get the target against a wall so Whirlwind Attack hits multiple times.
For reference if you throw in the warrior banners and Frost Spirit, the ranger gets as much as 9.3k/s, which is the highest sustained DPS number I have seen outside of engineer kit refinement spam, which doesn’t actually work anymore.
The moral of the story is, rangers can pump out some serious DPS, if you build them properly. Running bows or axes, on the other hand, severely gimps their DPS and gives them a bad name in dungeons. Hell, I have to admit that until I actually looked into it, I thought rangers were bad DPS too.
On paper, yes.
In practice, this is inherently problematic. The 1h sword keeps you from dodging, which is a serious liability in hard content. If you’re running CoF P1 or something like that, you’re probably fine using it, but something like high level fractals is a bad idea.
Also, unless the new buffs to pets have made a serious change to pet survivability, using a squishy pet like a jaguar or raven isn’t viable on a lot of content.
Yea, I saw this coming a mile away from when Xsorus posted his first vid, lol.
First of all, I love the new dungeon and I really appreciate that it was made available for all levels.
However, the scaling up of players seems a bit problematic. I mean, I know that a scaled to 80 isn’t supposed to be quite as powerful as a full level 80, but the difference seems to be too big.
It really takes away from the experience when low level players are either refused/dropped from groups because of the scaling inadequacy or when players with level 80s are strongly discouraged from playing their new lower level alts because of how much it hinders the group.