but then slowly we end up with 1 weapon set with 2 skills and half a utility because “well theres something viable lets ignore the unviable/broken stuff”
For example if suddenly D/D was changed to do no damage and be totally unviable but P/P was buffed to be the best weapon ever, is it ok that D/D no longer works? If not why? We would still have P/P viable?
Its because the games meant to be about choice and viably customizable builds, the moment people end up just “accepting” that certain things will never be viable all that choice starts to fade.
Ideally what should happen is people discuss both in a rational and semi-thought out manner at the least, however this being the internet the best we can really hope for is equal amounts of hyperbolic spam either side with the occasional good posting about both sides.
(edited by Dasorine.1964)
I’d assume this is to sell expensive runes and such back when changing upgrade components?
I doubt it would happen because the destruction of either the upgrade item or the item itself is sort of part of how they balance the economy.
but you don’t really get to say whether someone should have to run at their most effective outside of setting up your own teams.
Now for the real question:
How much is your time worth?
$10, which could get me a chicken parmigiana at the pub, if only the group killed things quicker =’(
soo… if we all ran zerker warriors we could end world hunger!
Skill > Stats is the only argument for MF gear.
But does not Skill + Stats make you more effective? Sure, having a skilled player in MF gear is better than a noob in Zerker gear that is constantly dying – but that’s not the point. This is not a discussion of player skills, but the fact you’re gimping the party to feed your greed. The whole party dies but you’re the last one standing, yay? But what if you actually had the stats that gave you the ability to kill everything before your party died? Taking a minute or two longer to kill something can make a major difference on a party success… and even if it all is already easy, you’re taking the entire parties time by making the dungeon longer because you are lowering your DPS majorly (not arguing lowering your defense, since the argument of MF is ok because you’re skilled and you don’t need that defense, it should be turned into DPS).
TL;DR –
Magic Find is a greedy stat that you are lowering your effectiveness to use and hurting the party to do so. If you argue that skill makes up for it, NO. The math should be taking Skill + Stats then. The argument that you’re better in MF gear than a noob in Berserker gear that constantly dies is just stupid and unrelated. I’m better than someone without arms or legs at basketball – does that mean I should tie an arm behind my back making the game harder for my team because sponsors might give me more money?
Then your at the situation where only the most optimal stats should even exist, using anything other is “lowering your effectiveness” even if its giving more effectiveness than MF its still less than the “perfect” build
Skill+Stats is best yes however this is a game and people are (read should be) free to play the way they want to, if that means someone who is good at playing decides they want to run slightly less effective for the chance of more personal loot then let them, if you don’t want them you don’t have to take them, just like I don’t have to take idiots in full zerker that will be whining non stop through the dungeon and dieing all the time.
Only when content starts being at the point where its absolutely necessary to have the perfect stat load outs will the argument “but it makes people less effective” really hold any weight as being less effective doesn’t actually stop anything at worst it slows things down slightly.
MF find may be a “greedy” stat but so is wishing the game to be changed because you don’t like how someone plays (as long as its within the rules of course)
the problem with evades on ranged attacks is (specially with thief ranged) they’ll often put you out of position for shooting, not so much a problem if the move is entirely based around that function (disabling shot) but if its tacked on to other moves that are used for their actual effects such as head shot or unload it fast becomes a pain in the butt.
the 2 better idea’s would really be:
A) Give attacks slight control effects (short duration immobs/cripples/chills/stuns etc) this allows you to manually avoid many things by keeping most the threat away from you (with stuns and dazes even stopping the attacks) but with the downside of not actually being an evade for those damage you can’t just stroll out of.
B) Give endurance recovery/vigor granting effects, this means while the skill doesn’t its self evade it gives you more option to manually evade which is generally going to be more usable.
you can’t say someone is skilled because they obtained the gear unless your sure its specifically bind on pick up content locked stuff, else how hard is it to put in credit card details and buy a full set of exotics with gem gold?
As has been said many times, MF is not an issue, at worst it slows down a team that you’d prefer be running full bezerker, but then players dying ridiculously does that far more often.
And of course where do you draw the line at whats useful to the team or not? They are only getting better loot for themselves sure, but how much more useful is that warrior in healing power gear using just signet? specially if its either at the points where they are dying or not taking any damage due to avoiding all dangerous stuff.
And IF, IF MF is really being so much of an issue for those wanting to speed run dungeons and such, then maybe its time to set up dedicated groups with people you know?
comparing a nerf gun toy not being used as an actual weapon in reality to a class skill not being effective is silly.
Traps could be effective with thief mobility if they were worthwhile, you could set up area’s of traps and using your mobility get the enemy to chase you into them etc etc, they’d also work well for protecting the rear of groups. Thematically it would be great if you could set up traps in a small valley in WvW so when enemy groups walk in they set em off to start a cool ambush but the game, and players, don’t work like that. But traps COULD still be useful, just because a few select skills are currently are way better doesn’t mean anything that isn’t should be dismissed.
If it comes down to it if something is truely that bad then it should be removed and something better take its place, the use of skills should be about choice and what fits best for your build not “well everything else is garbage so I’ll just use this one set regardless”
Saying that its fine to see skills like this is quite literally moronic and if you apply it to skills you may as well apply it to other things and change the whole game, whats that you want to play a thief? sorry but we decided they were garbage/casual you now have to play Mesmer if you want to do this content.
(edited by Dasorine.1964)
But its not really a combo finisher, in terms of an attack combination finisher you generally end with a big hitter to ensure the target goes down, which headshot isn’t, its more of an opener to disrupt your target setting them up for the rest of your attacks.
At best its a combo finisher in the sense that its a projectile finisher for combo fields but then so is almost every pistol shot in game.
the lack of damage on head shot is only really an issue if your trying to use it as a burst/damage skill, which is silly.
Sure dancing daggers does more damage but it also does a generally less powerful condition as well.
Though namewise something that doesn’t make people think of a sniper headshotting would be nice, perhaps we should steal the name “concussion shot” from rangers
See this is what I’d think of if I redid pistol for thief, bearing in mind this is basically just focusing on MH pistol which is the weaker aspect of the pistol, the off hand is generally fine. Of course would probably need a lot more tweaking.
The overall idea is to both increase the base damage slightly across the set, put more use into the set and bring its style inline with other thief sets, yes it would be the first ranged attack to have an actual auto chain but when it comes to thief gunners you’d really expect fluid movement across different types of fast shot. I also wanted to up the overall effectiveness of all the skills across the set to make it viable for differing builds the same way daggers are. (daggers good direct damage with a solid condition choice, pistols good condition damage with a solid direct damage choice)
Auto-Attack chain:
Arm Shot: 0.3SkCo | Weakness 1s | Combo Finisher: Physical Projectile (20%) | Range: 900 | Activation time: 1/4
Fire a quick shot into your targets arm weakening them.
-> Body Shot: 0.3SkCo | (2)Vulnerability 4s | Combo Finisher: Physical Projectile (20%) | Range: 900 | Activation time: 1/4
Fire a quick shot into your targets torso making them vulnerable
-> Vital Shot: 0.4SkCo | (3)Bleeding 4s | Combo Finisher: Physical Projectile (20%) | Range: 900 | Activation time: 1/2
Fire a quick shot into your targets vital spots bleeding them
Total effect of constant attack chain: 1.0SkCo/s | 100% weakness up | 6 stacks of Vulnerability | 9 stacks of Bleed
Current total for constant attack chain (if they fixed activation times): 0.8SkCo/s | 7 stacks of Bleed
Current actual total for constant attack chain: 0.46 SkCo/s | 5 stacks of bleed
Stealth Attack:
Dirty Shots: 0.3SkCo | Bleeding 6s | Poison 1s | Random additional Condition 1s | Combo Finisher: Physical Projectile | Range: 900 | Activation time: 1s | Shots: 5
Fire a quick barrage of tainted bullets at your enemies vital spots
Total: 1.5SkCo | 5 stacks of bleed for 6s | Poison for 5s | 5 random conditions lasting a second
Current Sneak attack: 1.25SkCo | 5 stacks of bleed for 4s
3 initiative cost skill:
Leg Shot: 0.75 SkCO | Immobilize 0.5s | Combo Finisher: Physical Projectile | Range: 900 | Activation time: 1/2
Blast your enemies legs momentarily stoping them in their tracks
Effect per second (until inititiative out): 1.5SkCo/s | 1s Immobilize
Current skill effect per second (without activation time issues): 1SkCo/s | 10 stacks of vulnerability
Current Skill effect per second (with activation time issues): 0.57SkCo/s | 5 stacks of vulnerability
Dual Skill With Pistol:
Unload: 4 Initiative | 0.3SkCo | Combo Finisher: Physical Projectile (20%) | Range: 900 | Activation time: 1.5s | Shots: 10
Blast your foe repeatedly with both pistols
Total effect: 2.0SkCo/s
Current Effect: 1.06SkCo/s
Current Effect without activation time issues: 1.37SkCo/s
Pistol Traits:
Shrapnel Richochet: Pistol shots have a 20% chance to bounce to an additional target and a 40% chance to apply bleed(2s) to foes in a 120 radius of target (including the target)
Pistol Mastery: +10% damage with pistols, Pistol Critical hits have a 66% chance to apply vulnerability for 10s (1s ICD)
Quick Draw(replacing ankleshots in critical strikes): On weapon swap to pistol you gain quickness and 10% critical damage for 2 seconds (20s cooldown)
(edited by Dasorine.1964)
hmm strange with 2 power primary exotic weapons, full power primary exotic armour and accesories and a masterwork back item you should be hitting the 1700’s thats before traits, upgrade slots, food buffs etc.
never mind you editted :P
but yeah if your using the active on the signet your deciding that you want that extra damage fast, you use it fully aware that for x amount of time after your going to be weaker just like all signets.
If your not a burst build or never encountering burst situations where this active is useful then your not really meant to be popping it, sure it means it would mostly go unused for your build, but others might be popping it every time they can (pvp burst shots for instance).
Its the same way you wouldn’t pop signet of malice unless you desprately needed the 3k healing now or signet of agility unless you need the cure/endurance fill.
Yes signet is weaker across many builds and could possibly do with a look at but its not totally outclassed by its passive in the situations its sort of meant to be used in.
With some rough calcs in a mid-high power set up with a rough crit rate+damage (can’t guarantee complete accuracy these are fairly rough calcs) over those 5 attacks you could see upto 1k more damage over that 5 attacks, that could be a difference between something dieing and something surviving, and if I went to extreme glass cannon levels I dare say the difference gets more pronounced.
and thats with a mid tier heart seeker damage coefficient as well I’d add.
So yeah its still great for burst if you absolutely want to maximize your chance of killing someone in as few hits as possible, with the downside your going to be weaker afterwards.
And all my theory crafting is fairly weak to a point where the numbers are probably lower than they would be and this doesn’t factor in utilizing 5 big hitting skills and burning your init which is more effective with active (5 boosted big hits followed by subsequent weak hits that aren’t boosted any compared to 5 less boosted big hits followed by boosted weak hits)
(edited by Dasorine.1964)
indeed, but its technically meant to be a loss of 11.25% damage AFTER the enemy is dead.
Situational I know, but thats sort of the point of signets, you have a nice passive boost or an active thats better in a specific situation at the cost of that boost for a duration after.
granted assassin signet is fairly weak situational outside of burst situations/builds but its not the only signet like that.
(edited by Dasorine.1964)
well with 1600 base power the 180 power should equate to around 11.25% increase, compared to the actives 15%
In that situation it wouldn’t take long for the passive to overtake the active, but that is a) quite a low base power b) ignorable if the target dies in the 5 15% boosted hits but survives the 5 11% boosted hits (as thats the point of burst)
Ideally you shouldn’t be popping the active until you know the active is going to acheive what you want, aka kill/finish the enemy faster with the knowledge that your not going to be fighting anything the 180 power is crucial for in the cooldown period.
and yeah if it didnt drop the power it would be a nice boost of damage, though then you’d have to factor in the extra damage from signets of power for some builds which would then take the burst even higher and such.
Perhaps a good compromise would be to half the passive on active use, so you can sit with 180 constantly or you can burst for 15% more for the next few attacks at the cost of 90 of your power for that duration (effectively reverting the “penalty” of activating it back to pre-boosted levels)
(edited by Dasorine.1964)
ahh right, cos criticals should push the signet damage a bit further ahead (so more hits with 180 power needed to catch up) buts its all academic
did you calculate in critical damage factors? and what base power did you use?
(yes you agree with me, but now you got me doing maths your not allowed to escape! :P)
yeah the attack portion of the steal could very well be the cause of the animation reset.
You might want to pop this into the bugs forum (probably there already but you never know)
Yeah most likely, stealing resets the animation but your still “knocked down”
I think I saw this happen once or twice on my thief, I’d get knocked down, frustratingly mash f1 to try and recover (even though I know it doesnt work) to be standing next to the enemy then after a second or two the character would twitch into the end of the standing up animation and things would carry on.
However other thieves may want to chime in as I’ve done no real testing of this so this is at best anecdotal.
(edited by Dasorine.1964)
You can check the wiki to see if the heals your planning to use have had their healing coefficient calculated and see how effecting your healing can be with the healing power numbers you can achieve (though keep them as rough estimates rather than solid numbers as there’s always possibility of rounding errors/miscalcs)
For example regeneration was calculated at 0.125 healing coefficient, so 1000 would give you 125 healing a second increase.
Pretty sure steal has never cleared knock down, you just teleport along the ground to your opponents feet where you have a nice nap brought on by their use of a knockdown skill (how long does it take anyone to stand back up? let alone the “acrobat” profession one of my pet peeves about this game)
In fact, and others correct me if im wrong, steal doesn’t clear any CC or stun/daze its just usable during them.
I’d guess if you went for a heavy group heal spec it could become useful the more heals you get the more useful it is.
If your running with resolves passive being the only real healing your using then its not going to be a massive gain (1000 is about 60hps? maybe as low as 20hps with the silly tooltips)
but once you start adding more and more heals on top of that you can rapidly end up getting much higher.
its because they where also under the impression thief skills where spammable and that we some how got more base skill uses than others so to counter the speed at which we could attack/reuse skills they clearly had to lower the numbers…
Then of course someone noticed initiative was more restrictive in this manner than regular cooldowns for the most part.
Here’s the recap. Bow shoots and hits fine if the target is running directly towards or away from you but if they’re going even the slightest bit sideways, it’ll miss.
That’s how it’s suppose to be in the first place, the previous functionality is obviously a bug and this is the fix.
The only thing that needs changing is the projectile speed, it’s too kitten slow.
lol. So I guess this master bow user I made, that is good enough to bounce arrows from target to target, can’t aim slightly to the right or left to hit a moving target? Riiiiiiiiight. I don’t know how people are able to hit moving animals when they go bow hunting irl. Must be hacks.
That’s how the Ranger’s bow functions only their projectiles travels a bit faster. Rangers shoots at a faster rate using shortbow and most of them misses a moving target.
If you want a reliable ranged weapon, use gulp a pistol. :/
Outside of condition builds or “cool factor” builds the most reliable range weapon would actually be the thief launcher, launch your thief at the target with one of many much more reliable skills and take down your enemies!
Impress your friends by buying the new deluxe edition thief launcher now with added survivability (disclaimer, new deluxe edition thief launcher only compatible with sword dagger build, not to be used as an opener, any loss of limbs, life or armour integrity are sole responsibility of the user)
well 15% is still significantly greater on those 5 attacks with 180 power once your past the 1200 base power mark and of course its for a completely different situation.
If your clearing trash or starting a boss fight that 180 power will be more damage over a longer period of time, however once they are in that butter zone where burst then becomes key (last bit of a end boss health for example) the active suddenly becomes worth loosing that 180 power for the 36-45 seconds because ideally the fight should be over in or close to those 5 hits (and at a reasonably high base power level that 180 power could require 20+ more hits to achieve the same “bonus” damage)
If you get signets of power then for 5 seconds while your doing your 5 attacks you only loose 5 power (granted before you used to gain a lot of power instead) meaning its even more handy for burst situations.
it was around 460-470mb for me If I recall correctly.
signets of power is really quite a changer for it, sure you have to trait for it but it essentially negates the loss of the passive (before it used to actually increase the amount) as long as you aren’t running with max stacks anyway (which as a thief you most likely wouldn’t have been/won’t be unless your S/D and against an engi or such).
That it, at least for burst builds, which are arguably the ones that would really be using the active anyway.
possibly its working like condition remover on, last one on first one off and it just so happens that as you attack people they throw up/refresh their defensive boons.
Possibly requires more testing.
well it still sort of depends, if your popping it for spike then your aim is to do all your damage in those 5 attacks (longer than most burst chains) in which case its much greater gain than the 180 power for your specific use. Even more so if your running with signets of power or such.
And tbh if its really that bad that could be an easy solution, change it from next 5 attacks to something along the lines of for the next 10-15-18 seconds all attacks deal xx% more damage.
But it really does come down to what your using the active for, its very much a burst booster and for them it can add quite a considerable amount of damage over the passive 180 for that short period of time.
And I’d love to know where people get the idea that any skill on a thief is any more spammable then face rolling over 2-3-4-5 on anyone else.
not to mention it would reduce burst more AND would be useless in most of PvE and any fights against non-heavy boon users.
Assassins signet is fine currently, yes you loose upto 180 power by using it but you should be gaining far more actual damage than that 180 power would give anyway.
I wasn’t aware that having legit physics in a game is considered a nerf.
“My target dodged my arrow because he moved out of the way.” Where’s the problem in that? A heat-seeking arrow? Even in GW that sounds farfetched.
We can dodge NPC projectiles, so why is it a bad thing if players can dodge player projectiles?
Don’t want a player to dodge your arrows? Stealth and shoot him/her up close. Use a trap.
The problem comes with stuff like latency and sync issues, with no even slight compensation mechanics for that it means you can end up only ever being able to hit people immobilized in some shape or form (this should be for everyone not just trick shot) and your out of luck if your immob/knockdown/stuns work in the same way.
NPC’s don’t have these issues.
I did put zhaitans body on a chain around my neck but I found my mobility suffered considerably while wearing it.
bouncing attacks aren’t really AoE
tbh if everything worked exactly as it does now but instead of going invisible you just become invulnerable in an unremovable way thieves would be unstoppable, no matter how much “knowing where they are” would stop that, compared to now where players can actually counter (unless they aren’t paying attention and such)
If you are walking around and see a thief stealing someone’s boons (both thief and the other guy are foes). Is it ok to steal the thiefs stolen boons?
I mean… should there be an agreement there somewhere?
Honor among thieves means, you can’t steal from their stash, but it’s ok to steal from their pocket.
Kill first or not kill first? also whats the rules of taking body parts as trophies?
Hmm the active should be a damage gain numerically (I avoid utilizing % damage gains in straight power calculations as the % varies wildly depending on the base comparison numbers, much better to compare actual damage numbers) once your past the 1200 power mark at the base level.
Im sure if you factor in might on signet or criticals it becomes better at lower power levels for damage per hit (for those hits its active on)
Again it may take a bit more before it beats it overtime (how many hits you get with the 180 power and how many you get with the 15% boost for example) but it shouldn’t that far off.
(edited by Dasorine.1964)
of course it is! its all the peoples boons! now hail the moletariat!
actually a fair few people would prefer it did what it said on the tin, not only for consistency but also for the option of burning extra init to evade into range.
it could also be to try and cover the gaping defensive gap in thief toolsets (more so if utilizing a sustained damage set like s/d rather than burst)
the thieves that prefer stealthing over invulnerability are those that don’t want the class dumbed down and made ridiculously OP, those that are going with the invuln suggestion are mostly just trolling the troll thread.
The fact that you think being able to see them will make a blind bit of difference while they are invulnerable is just funny, sure you can dodge an attack slightly better (even tho some people already can dodge those attacks) doesn’t change the fact that you can’t do anything to them if they don’t want to, unlike now where if you actually put a modicum of thought into it instead of complaining about being ganked by people sitting around an empty path for the entire match or people that came around a corner while you where looking you’d know that you’d be able to shut down a large portion of the low tier thief population… but hey ho
If you want thieves to be actually overpowered and then complain even more when you realize that you still can’t stop em then go ahead keep making posts like this where the only non thieves that will really respond are only here to complain as well.
theres some slight variations to some of the cultural armour but it would be nice to see some actual armour sets for each (I think some of the npc’s have it already).
Also you wouldn’t believe how hard it has been to write that one sentence without adding in some life of Brian quotes :P
They tried to take the retaliation boon icon and put it behind the numbers, somewhere along the way someone decided it needed to be that slightly nauseating shade of yellow/orange instead of the white of the icon, then they added a flaring skirt which I can only guess is meant to be fire of roughly the same color (as far as Im aware not present in any of the other icons of retaliation) which obscures the shape and such.
Remove the skirt, make the fist the white of the boon icon with possibly yellow outline (not flaring skirt thingy), give it a mid to high transparency problem mostly solved.
Considering the state of WvW due to trying to keep it consistent with PvE its amazing what they decide not to make consistent.
So… wheres my sith inquisitor!
Yeah, not learning new game lingo can be annoying and its almost exclusively from WoW due to some thinking its the only mmorpg ever and the only good one (though have to admit so far the forums and map chats have been clean of such conversations which I have to say if a first for an mmo game of any sort for me)
No no no you all have it wrong to stop zerg you need to block the entrance to your base with a bunker and fill it with marines. If you happen to play protoss same thing just use your gateway and fill the gap with zealots.
but now they just jump up the walls!!!1!! much better to just float your base into their base and base in a base so you can base while you base and win!
Now back to GW2, the issue with doing stuff like removing caps is then it becomes much easier to defend against even the biggest of zergs, them splitting up and hitting other area’s doesn’t/wouldn’t make it any easier for them to take that base as generally they’ll have most other points if your at that point anyway.
Of course you could bring in new objectives like others have mentioned, like taking specific contest points gives certain advantages in an area but in the end you’ll still end up with a zerg vs zerg situation, if you don’t then your just trading PvE bases and theres little to no actual pvp/wvw content happening.
Plus as someone else has mentioned the large scale battles are supposed to be the point of the WvW, however personally there is a lot lacking to make those large scale battles anything more than a skill spamming lagfest. But it would take a lot of additional stuff to make them even remotely how I’d like to see large scale siege warfare work.
Imagine that – not having their tooltips match the actual ability?
nawwwwww…
I know right?! they’re clearly slipping!
WvW and balance? whut?
I’d say the fact that outside of stealing them we really don’t get many reliable defenses so we have the lowest effective health generally.
Though you really cannot expect any sort of balance in WvW, anet makes little attempt to keep that place balanced and when you have the huge variance of players it makes it hard to really tell if something is overpowered.
Sure you may have managed to take out a team of 6 as your thief, but maybe thats not down to being thief? maybe they were all PvE uplevels that only came to try jumping puzzles/see what the fuss is about? Whats to say the engineer around the corner wouldn’t have taken em as well?
You might go your entire WvW career and never meet someone who actually knows how stealth works and know how their build can counter it, which makes all the difference.
For the most part its like running a condition necro against people that aren’t just not slotting condition removers but have never heard of conditions at all.
Which actually happens more often than I like to admit when I take my necro in to WvW for stomping uplevels and such solo roaming.
Could you explain me stealth? maybe im just understanding it wrong and thats why revealed debuff seems like nothing to me. You can stealth whenever you want and you get revealed debuff if you attack some1 while in stealth, so basicly you never get revealed if you dont try to get more dmg via your stealth attacks, right?
And im pretty sure surviving/killing 1v6 is all up to beeing thief, you really wouldnt be able to survive 4+ people on necro or warr even if they would just press #1.
It would be fine that thief can survive against 5 clueless people if all classes could do that but almost no other class can do it.
Mainly the fact that generally the thieves largest damage comes from the stealthed attacks means if your not utilizing them to have a high uptime on stealth your essentially doing around half of any one elses auto-attack chain every 3 seconds which is not a dangerous amount of damage.
Then you have stealth not giving any protection by itself, it can be traited to give the thieves good regular condition removal if used in specific ways and the regen and heal over time can help a bit but would really be the equivilent of say a guardian or a warriors passive healing but only while stealth, all the while your still susceptible to the full damage others can pull of if they manage to get it to where you are (bar one or two skills that absolutely must have a target and don’t just turn into melee attacks)
If for example your chilled and crippled upon hitting a stealth, even if traited for condition removal those two conditions without using any other condition removal will basically keep you in place for the 3-4 seconds you’ll be stealthed, allowing anyone who noticed where you are when you stealthed to beat on you unless you burn your other skills to make your first defensive skill work (think of it like having to pop a stability utility to make protection boon work).
Yes we can get a lot of access to it but we give up other stuff for that (the aforementioned boons for example among others)
Of course this doesn’t make a lick of difference against low tier opponents as they tend to simply can’t handle you going invisible at all, which is why thief is seemingly so godlike in hotjoin sPvP and uplevel/pub stomping in WvW
That advantage rapidly decreases as you go against more experienced players which is why thieves aren’t much of a presence in organized team fights and higher tier play.
Again it mostly comes down to WvW not intended to be balanced and the effectiveness of being able to flee and confuse new players compared to being able to take their hits instead.
Of course you’ll always get the regular thief haters going on and on about how all of this is rubbish and thieves are OP because they killed them and such but thats how the current mechanics sort of work out and generally how they work out in every other game (though other MMORPGs’s give less access to stealth for actual defenses outside of stealth or just nerf the stealth archetype to the lowest of the low levels)
(edited by Dasorine.1964)
yep the agility signet has an incorrect tooltip currently (just not updated) still gives the increase it should
skill initiative goes:
Skill 1: Free
Skill 2: 3 initiative
Skill 3: 4-5 initiative
Skill 4: 4 initiative
Skill 5: 6 Inititiative
Exceptions:
Skill 2 on Sword: Optional follow up for additional 2 cost
Skill 3 on Sword+Dagger: Lower base cost of 3 with follow up additional cost of 1
Skill 2 on Harpoon: Higher cost of 5
Skill 5 on Aquatic Weapons: Lower cost of 5
As for the order of the strikes I have to semi agree with Vincent with a few changes.
Dual skills all use their off-hand first for the animation (even though all the damage is based on mainhand) before it was evade and stab with dagger removing 1 boon (before the damage was applied) follow up with a big ol’ slugger with your sword.
So all the damage was after you potentially removed protection/aegis
Now its evade and small hit then boon steal and bigger hit afterwards.
Comes out as 33% of the damage from the attack happens before you potentially remove the defensive boon you might have removed before.
So I would have kept the order the same/similiar so that you get the full potential still (as it stands its a slight damage loss unless your gaining something meaningful from the stolen boons)
my ideal rotation would have been: First dagger strike Evade, one boon steal then the small damage
Second sword strike flip skill, one boon removal(or steal if you really want it at full power) and big damage
Means you potentially remove a defensive boon before any damage like before with added utility on second strike that you don’t have to wait a day before landing.
Also thematically you’d be stealing with the precise subtle weapon then smashing with the big one, but thats my personal preference.
Guess it will work out how it is but still seems a bit silly moving so much of the damage in front of the boon removal.
WvW and balance? whut?
I’d say the fact that outside of stealing them we really don’t get many reliable defenses so we have the lowest effective health generally.
Though you really cannot expect any sort of balance in WvW, anet makes little attempt to keep that place balanced and when you have the huge variance of players it makes it hard to really tell if something is overpowered.
Sure you may have managed to take out a team of 6 as your thief, but maybe thats not down to being thief? maybe they were all PvE uplevels that only came to try jumping puzzles/see what the fuss is about? Whats to say the engineer around the corner wouldn’t have taken em as well?
You might go your entire WvW career and never meet someone who actually knows how stealth works and know how their build can counter it, which makes all the difference.
For the most part its like running a condition necro against people that aren’t just not slotting condition removers but have never heard of conditions at all.
Which actually happens more often than I like to admit when I take my necro in to WvW for stomping uplevels and such solo roaming.
tbh cluster bombs moving faster would just even out the damage across the ranges rather than make it ridiculous, the maximum burst will always be shotgunning, that wont change with faster projectiles (if anything it would possible lower it as it becomes harder to properly shotgun with the faster shots)
while at max range it might actually arrive before your initiative fully regens, so slight increase in DPS from it but not full burst to the point where nerfs would be needed in other aspects.
For trick shot I think I saw 1 post complaining about it, but that was complaining that the bouncing attack would hit people on keep walls when it was shot at cannons/siege weapons people decided to build on the edge.
If anything more weapons need a slight homing effect, sure stop them being able to do U turns or 90 degree turns, but give em enough to hit people that are just running (or at least sidestepping)
If anything I’d love to see trick shot becoming more of a trick shot in all cases (bouncing off floor/walls when no additional targets maybe?) but mostly was happy how it was (barring post-activation delays that plague so many attacks)