Guild Wars 2

As mentioned, it hits harder than a frontstab, and thus is more consistent and costs less initiative, and can be spammed for free unblockable defenses and a gap close.

It’s the best skill on the thief as a profession and the sole reason D/P dominates, and quite frankly, a big reason why thief is still semi-competitive in general.

I agree. If they removed the steal cooldown reduction from SoH and base it baseline, I doubt very many people would continue to run it. Inflicting CC without stability on someone these days from all the passive procs often makes things more difficult than it should.

Zero.4935:

Jerus.4350:

Yes, but pretty sure that means the team doing profession balance will start using more split skills, not that the PVP team gets to make their own skills.

They don’t get to make their own skills but they nerf/change how skills act in pvp to make them more fair. Why can’t they do the same for WvW?

Because they don’t care about WvW. Not just the profession balance team (which has proven incompetence), but ANet as a company.

Recall our format lead was called to go make PvE content for the next expansion.

apharma.3741:

Blaqatak.1395:

zinkz.7045:

DeceiverX.8361:

I immediately associate condition builds with people who suck too much to play the game built power and can let their crutches give them free wins.

Erm, the game is full of crutches both power and condi, or you think auto targeted skills, basically no resource management, relatively undemanding level of mechanical ability, etc make this game skillful, if you want skillful gaming why are you even playing GW2 or an MMORPG?

There’s a reason he plays power Thief. It’s one of the few classes/specs that forces interesting choices. To your exact point: the player is required to manage resources, predict/react quickly to interrupt/evade, mind game with stealth/mobility/blind, etc. It’s one of the few classes where your win-conditions constantly change based on who you’re fighting (both class and skill).

The only thing it really lacks is the typical MMO fare of CD management – which I have never found all that engaging. Is it fighting game level of mechanics/skill/prediction? Of course not. But it’s a lot more engaging than spamming 3 & Dodge as a condi D/D thief or mindlessly punching a rotation on another class.

Condi & bunker builds are for the most part incredibly forgiving and have a drastically friendlier skillfloor. Have you ever seen a bad D/D Condi Thief?

I might agree with your assessment of thief if they didn’t have the most mobility in the game and can thus escape and reset any fight at will. I have some respect for glassy builds that commit to fights or that when they know they won’t win kitten off somewhere else.

I have no respect for people who run till ooc and come back trying to land that large burst then repeat if not successful.

Which is why I play(ed, and now quit from the stealth ICD) D/D power, and why I’m kittened off that ANet killed the set’s power-build viability with the ICD on stealth attacks, since its only good skill is a high-committal backstab. I love fighting aggressively, but unfortunately Karl refuses to let the thief have those options. We’re left with non-committal spam-evade noskill Daredevil and similar condition builds on D/D, and the typical half-trying, stealth-camping D/P build we’ve seen for the past several years.

As others seem to be commenting about the OP’s video which I still haven’t watched, it sounds like it’s pretty standard fare from QQ; unimpressive gameplay typically just done by people with huge egos playing FoTM builds or gank groups.

I don’t recommend crafting power-based gear, especially berserker. It’s easy to get on the TP and so worthless in WvW now that the price for gearing is less than it would take to get a few levels in crafting.

They left.

I don’t know of a single player who was around in 2012/2013 who still plays WvW.

Pretty Pixie.8603:

DeceiverX.8361:

I wasn’t, then I made a condi mesmer a few years ago and didn’t die after days of roaming. I tried again to not be. I then made a Daredevil and consistently started beating groups of 6+, and can pretty much win fights half-AFK against my guildmembers on it when in the guild area, which if I swap power they either put up a very good fight or win in many cases. Not closed-minded. I immediately associate condition builds with people who suck too much to play the game built power and can let their crutches give them free wins.

I don’t even care or feel the compulsion to care when I see someone putting up videos playing conditions in WvW lol.

I do like how you arbitrarily decide how the game should be played to pad your own ego. Good on ya.

Interestingly enough, condition players are the ones who decide how the game should be played by mandating the need for excessive cleanses and mathematically optimal stat configurations, and play the cheese to fuel their own egos by basically taking free-win FoTM builds.

I’m not deciding anything for anyone. But I guess having an opinion on how I see people makes my decision both arbitrary and ego-maniacal.

It’s not really an ego thing. I just don’t have respect for people who try and defend or play the builds, and don’t care to watch anyone in any sense play them at this point.

So I didn’t watch the video, and didn’t look to see the power play. Oh well.

C’mon, Ario, you and I know well there’s no chance in hell a developer in profession balance is going to care about what players have to say, particularly in respects to the thief.

I’d love to be proven wrong, and I’d join up for any such discussion, but I wouldn’t try too hard to make anything happen. They just don’t care.

Small groups quit because of crap roaming on DBL/massive player quitting, essential +5 supply guild buff progress being wiped and locked behind guild halls/scribing for thousands of gold with HoT, and the powercreep from the elite specs that absolutely broke small scale to a point where what was once a very diverse way of playing has boiled down to total and complete domination by maybe three or four cheese builds.

ANet systematically killed WvW with HoT and quite frankly, I don’t think they have any intention on fixing it.

Sazukikrah.5036:

DeceiverX.8361:

I think it’s safe to say nobody from the guild actually plays well, and either runs cheese or ganks like 3v1. Or both.

I closed the video almost immediately when realizing a condition build. Sorry, but I have pretty much zero respect at all for condition build players.

Ok. Whole video wasn’t even condition build though. But you’d never know that if you wasn’t so close minded.

I wasn’t, then I made a condi mesmer a few years ago and didn’t die after days of roaming. I tried again to not be. I then made a Daredevil and consistently started beating groups of 6+, and can pretty much win fights half-AFK against my guildmembers on it when in the guild area, which if I swap power they either put up a very good fight or win in many cases. Not closed-minded. I immediately associate condition builds with people who suck too much to play the game built power and can let their crutches give them free wins.

I don’t even care or feel the compulsion to care when I see someone putting up videos playing conditions in WvW lol.

EphemeralWallaby.7643:

Sartharina.3542:

Sammyjoe.4271:

1. Buffing then Nerfing (MOST IMPORTANT): I never was able to understand why Anet (not trying to rip on anet I love them) can’t simply make all classes even. Every big nerf patch a few classes get nerfed, and rightly so (I’m looking at you Dragonhunters and Engis) but for some reason they feel the need to buff the HELL out of other classes. So since I’ve been playing since the November after launch I dont believe I’ve ever witnessed all classes being equal. There is always 3,4, or even 5 classes ridiculously set above the rest. Like engi, I mained a engi for the longest time rocking my awesome rifle build (I’m still salty anet about removing Synaptic Overload) back when engi was believe it or not, hard to play! Well thats my rant, I feel some of the skill and knowledge of our classes and the game are fading since new players can throw together this overpowered condi build from Metabattle and destroy everyone. I could be wrong, give me some feedback and long live Gw2 (with changes)

If there’s 5 classes above the rest – that’s over 50% of the classes. You’re saying about 30-55% of the classes are ’Top Tier", which is kitten good as far as balance is concerned – most Esports and competitive games are MUCH worse in that regard.

No game has all classes equal. Every patch is about tweaking the game to try and make the game not only more balanced, but also more fun (1-handed guardian symbols are really great), and functional. Everyone’s kittening about Dragonhunters right now… but honestly, they’re finally in a kitten good spot after being completely out of the meta for so long. There are all sorts of viable Guardian builds – whether its’ 1-handed Symbolic builds, Longbow trapper builds, or even more esoteric support builds. Of course, a lot of players don’t realize that there’s more than one guardian build, so they’re getting accused of being as broken as the six-weapon-set 6/6/6/6/6 builds (With max condi, power/pre/fer, toughness, vit, and healing) that plagued the Pre-HoT competitive scene.

But the developers do not control the meta -all they do is boost underperfoming classes/weapons, nerf overperforming weapons/classes, and introduce new fun things (Or remove old broken things), and then restart the whole process.

It’s possible they have more control than you give them credit for. There’s a concept called Perfect Imbalance, and it is likely being applied to GW2.

Here’s Extra Credits vid on Perfect Imbalance, if y’all have never watched it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e31OSVZF77w

~EW

I watched the video a long time ago as i follow EC. I do believe the comparison made regarding perfect imbalance was the “noob tube” from CoD.

The difference is the sheer ridiculousness of how potent the imbalance is in GW2. Unlike the CoD example where perfect imbalance is created to give newer or less-skilled players enough potency in a typical game to keep them just successful enough to maintain interest, the imbalance in GW2 is on the mathematical and optimal levels, particularly in WvW; the easiest, cheesiest builds (prety much every condition build) maintain to be the most effective regardless of skill tier. That’s the definition of overpowered, and is something ANet has failed to even come close to addressing for years.

Not to mention the state of HoT powercreep is so awful it’s not even remotely arguable they went for perfect imbalance but just have no idea what they’re doing or wanted to try and powercreep-sell the expansion that did poorly.

jcnc.3268:

So Wall of Text = Cond. OP in PvP?
Still if this true ( I don’t PvP), devs should do something about it.

Ha, projoke. The developers have ignored the cause of strife in the PvP formats pretty much since 2013. Particularly WvW where conditions are so overpowered people can win without weapons, traits, playing one-handed, literally facerolling keyboard, etc.

sPvP it’s a bit better, but profession developers have been recently stated as having very little involvement with the PvP and WvW teams at all.

PvE has gone by fine all this time, so PvE players will make claims that the game is still healthy. Profit margins are on the decline and have been, particularly since HoT, which we all know threw class balance way out of whack. What’s not realized by most people complaining the game is fine from the PvE perspective is just how much damage the competitive formats have taken over the years from blatant negligence and poor decision-making as to what gets implemented and consequently stays in the game for extended periods of time.

GW2 had huge promise on release and was the tightest game I’ve ever played, from both gameplay and mechanics. It’s fallen hard, however, so much so that I’d rank PvP in this game less-serious than what Runescape offers just because of profession/equipment developer negligence paired with too few resources allocated to maintaining the game modes and a lack of attention to long-needed changes on the system level that were designed poorly which exacerbated stagnation.

drunkenpilot.9837:

Huh. I was in WvW last night and saw LOTS of players. In fact, since they’ve incorporated both the old and new BL maps into the current matchups, I’ve personally seen more players roaming and zerging than in many recent months. Interestingly, PvP queue times are pretty fast right now as well, suggesting a large amount of activity. HotM PvP Lobby is practically always full of players, too. I see neither a lack of players nor death of the game.

Subjective opinions are intriguing, no?

They effectively cut the number of servers in half since HoT. I can tell you confidently still that numbers are way down. It’s just the appearance that it’s not. Recall the effect of megaservers on open-world PvE fullness. That’s effectively what they’ve done.

They’ve also changed sPvP matchmaking to be faster because queue times were previously too long when looking for balanced matchups. It’s also mid-season.

I think it’s safe to say nobody from the guild actually plays well, and either runs cheese or ganks like 3v1. Or both.

I closed the video almost immediately when realizing a condition build. Sorry, but I have pretty much zero respect at all for condition build players.

My (new) concern/mentioning is that the baseline stealth duration would need to be 0 seconds since if at a 1s baseline it’d get modified by Meld With Shadows and then be wildly OP at 2 second durations.

Probably walked into DH reveal trap.

Kageseigi.2150:

Straegen.2938:

Maybe. Thief is still the most fluid combat class in the game

Speaking of which, I do wish they would make things more “fluid” inside of combat… from a technical aspect. QoL, I suppose. Like making evade skills/animations take priority over normal skills/animations. Perhaps reducing some of the aftercast delays of skills.

I know it’s a Third Person MMO, but some tighter controls would do wonders for a Thief.

Random thought… why can every Shortbow skill EXCEPT the auto-attack shoot backwards or at a target behind the Thief??? Would it be too much to add the same ability to the AA?

All ranged attacks cannot shoot from behind the player casting them.

Only if they proved that they currently had a game worth paying a sub for when asking for money. I bought GW2 because it was the best MMO ever made at its release. And it was, and I continued to buy gems for a long time afterwards, and I didn’t mind it at all.

Currently, WvW is such a mess with so much negligence and broken promises that quite frankly my attitude now on with ANet is put up or shut up. I’m disgusted by their balance team, am mostly in the mindset that the game is now a total joke, and will not fund anything from them until and unless that improves with verifiable certainty that I know they’ll keep it maintained well thereafter.

So no, if they promised improvements for a monthly sub, I’d see myself to the door for good and would never look back. They need to deliver first after four years of nothing paired with some of the worst balance decisions I’ve seen made.

The issue is primarily might stacking and the raw kiting potential on staff in regards that it’s able to kite and sustain and manage enough damage to kill. It’s not the heals/sustain, the pet, or really anything else, just the boons.

Full tank or celestial can stack massive sustain, mobility, and just enough damage to get kills. It’s not the most effective damage dealer, but 5-6k RF’s hurt almost regardless of what you’re playing.

Focusing the pet is pointless because I can tell you now there is not enough damage in the entire game from a single class to burst a booned and well-managed pet with the BM tank roaming build going around. I can deal almost 40k damage over the course of a bit over a second on my thief, and the pet typically takes < 2k from repeated bark skin + prot + massive toughness + extra damage mitigation. And my thief was the hardest-hitting build in the game, done to 100% gear completion even in omni infusions in armor for more power.

The heals are whatever, the stealth is whatever. Just like every other durable-damage-built profession in the game, however, its boons are what cause it to end up ridiculous when paired with the mobility and ranged pressure. I don’t really think the issue is innately in druid or its coefficients but rather the normal issue of boons getting out of control and accounting for way too much of player stats.

Fay.2357:

Here’s the problem with that line of thinking: why is it any better to mindlessly spam clones inside the mindlessly spammed aoe? 2 wrongs don’t make a right here, they just make double the amount of wrong. Instead of just dealing with all the aoe that exists, you’d now also have to deal with the clone death aoe!

Mindless aoe spam is a problem in this game. Adding more mindless spam is not a valid solution to that problem.

If only we could get ANet to understand these philosophies. Answering power with more power and then throwing in a few totally senseless nerfs into the mix to hope to offset things is NOT working for anyone.

Carighan.6758:

You chose… poorly – Grandmaster trait, Duelling
When an enemy kills one of your clones while downed, the clone will teleport to them and finish them immediately.

Just so you’re aware, this would actually be really broken and would likely dominate sPvP and WvW.

Persistent fields/AoE skills, AoE downed state abilities, condi ticks, etc. would effectively remove the rally mechanic from the game entirely.

Gibimo.2193:

cyberzombie.7348:

Daum, I haven’t seen that kind of damage since 2013. Can you teach me how to do that.

Its sacrifice every one of your survivability, and put it on the damage.
and if you fails you have to run unless you’ll gonna see enemy dancing on your deadbody. and saying that making example for that picture doesn’t make anysense.
any people who is not braindead would see thief has maxed out sigils and running for the full nuke, and simply dodge it. If you likly to show that picture and saying BS don’t need any damage buff, in other way it could say it needs damage nerf which is completely make thief dead.
you should compare power coefficient with other profession’s skills as normal build as spvp sets

It has some staying potential when played exceptionally well, but it does require you to massively out-play the opponent. It’s not so much “run away on failure” but needing to know exactly when to run away if you need to; even the slightest dalley would get you killed playing this build. Unfortunately, D/D power as a build is pretty much dead in the water, now (generally speaking against opponents who know how to punish well) with the changes to stealth attacks with the ICD, since CnD is unreliable with the BV change, stab becomes unreliable, and two of the five weapon skills on D/D are horrible while none of them offer any mid-stealth purpose.

As far as it always one-shotting people, no. It can take huge gouges from full tanks, but a durable meta roaming druid can facetank all of the damage and still be over half. The issue isn’t a fault with backstab, however; the defensive powercreep in HoT is just way out of hand and needs to be cut down, since pre-HoT or non-defensive builds get punished enough as it is when not playing well.

Cynz.9437:

Gibimo.2193:

I rather one shot by other thief, if I could burst someone to blow up with right combo moves

Except you won’t. Because the issue of us not being able reliably to land dmg will be still there. Not to mention any tiny buff to thief is always followed by HUGE idiotic nerfs so at the end we are worse off than before.

BS does enough dmg, it just gets nullified by absurd amount of blocks/invuls/dmg redux traits/perma prot etc. from other classes. If we had more ways to ignore those things, bs would be awesome again.

Precisely. Even worse when paired with CnD, considering the stealth and consequent damage is dependent on another easy-to-negate attack .

It really doesn’t need a buff.

sPvP stat distribution is just garbage and imbalanced on the mathematical level in so many ways that any changes made in its name would break the rest of the game.

Depends on traits a lot. Black powder does nothing to lords since anything with a break bar cannot be blinded.

SA running SE and Rejuv can sustain your HP.
Crit Strikes running IP can be a huge boon to keeping you up.
You’ll need to time your dodges well to avoid the CC the lord deals, too.

Easiest tower lord completion is probably CS/SA/DrD, though CS/SA/Tr works fine given Trickster and Withdraw.

Either they try and re-examine and re-balance all the skills in sPvP uniquely, or just give it the same stat allocations as PvE/WvW and do global skills fixes. Backstab is very powerful in WvW/PvE but because of the math behind how the thief works as a profession, hits for little damage in sPvP.

The latter is way easier to do, and would fix more than just sPvP. Of course, ANet is taking the route of trying to balance PvE and sPvP separately while ignoring WvW.

Play what you want, OP, but you’re in for a rude awakening with power D/D with the stealth attack ICD. In more competitive environments, it’s D/P or bust.

Depends on a variety of factors, but IS/AS were typically always used on engage, therefore 11 might.

SoS is typically kept as a defensive tool to deny an enemy’s (or group) critical single-hit ability if I get caught (gravediggers, killshots, PBS, etc.) since it’s a 1200-range AoE blind.

I’ll have gone to 16 and pop SoS If I previously had the target very, very close to death, but didn’t quite get there, and am totally sure they’re alone. This was a pretty uncommon thing since either typically the target outright dies or puts up a long fought-out struggle. If I fail the burst, things are hard. If I fail the burst and don’t have SoS to keep pressure and mobility for a sustained fight, it becomes almost impossible to emerge as a winner unless the enemy really screws up.

As far as unblockables go, It’s tough territory without making the thief way too strong against traditionally block-heavy builds. Consider a glassy warrior running a shield or a guard; we shouldn’t be able to just have an easy means to cut through their active defenses, just because there are too many blocks going around the game. I think adding it to mug is particularly overkill, since the trait is already very strong. Quite honestly, raw damage and in particular the reliability of damage more or less belongs in crit strikes, since that’s the entire line’s purpose. The GM’s there are already fairly weak, particularly Hidden Killer, and could perhaps be expanded upon.

Of course, this would need separate evaluation for different weapon sets, and realistically, ANet is never going to fix any aspects of the thief.

Turk.5460:

DeceiverX.8361:

Necrotize.2974:

What is the point of comparing Mug crits from 4 years ago to the meta now? Back then thief also used to have pretty strong 1v1 and large teamfight potential yet look where we are now.

Here’s a post-HoT screenshot for you.

Mug has a 20% higher coeffient than CnD.

It would be stupid broken, just as it was back in 2012.

This screen shot was taken on a full glass build vs a full glass target with 15-25 stacks of might. Blowing that target a kiss from this build would hit for 4.5k… xD

My build isn’t glass at all (did you not notice the +70% more hp than baseline for thief that I run?), and the opponent was a level 80 daredevil, thus not being as squishy as even a berserker backline ele, necro, or mesmer.

If you’re not running to play big damage, you do not get to complain your damage is too low. Play for damage, and deal the damage like you can do now. If you think damage is too low, when in reality it can be made to be very high, either do not complain or change your build.

Mug would be just totally broken to allow it to crit, unless the coefficient is cut in at least half, which is kind of stupid to do since it would accomplish nothing except make the class less consistent.

Or maybe if the elementalist was designed well such that it wasn’t either crappy or overpowered based on the state of its boon application and gearing, there wouldn’t be any problems.

But it’s way easier to blame gimmick builds. Amirite?

Jeknar.6184:

DeceiverX.8361:

Fractals are easy and raids are boring and don’t appeal to me (and PvE in this game as a whole doesn’t, either). Learn the monster mechanics and it’s all just repetition.

Isn’t that how PvE work in ANY game?

Which is why I don’t play PvE games, and why I don’t PvE in GW2.

Except it isn’t.

You have at minimum a 1s window to react upon first taking damage from mug to avoid the damage. Minimum. That’s less so than what a shatter mesmer will give you, with superior damage. That’s less so than a GF war will give you, less than a power scrapper will, JI glass-DH, etc. etkittenerally every profession except the ele can burst just as quickly with the same or more damage, and typically much better skirmish potential. Obviously the ele fairs much better in damage output in groups with Meteor Shower and the likes, and if built tank/sustain, should not die to a thief unless it plays horribly.

An optimized-damage signet build running 100% crit chance will die to a stiff breeze and deal less damage than anything else, because it means it’s running Assassin’s/Berserker.

A thief with quickness is either not playing signets or runs Flanking Strikes, which is on a 60s cooldown.

And no, it’s still got sacrifices. The signet build literally has not changed in over two years. It does not run Daredevil and does not use any content from HoT or nearby it. It’s actually gotten worse than it was prior. It’s playing D/D, the worst weapon set on the thief and one of the worst in the game, which got nerfed massively this last patch to a point where most serious power D/D thieves rerolled or quit GW2. Signets is boon-dependent, runs no cleanses, can only hit once per engage, has poor disengage, no stunbreak, no mid-stealth options on a failed backstab, unreliable setup, and is above all else one of the riskiest, skill-intensive builds in the game to play well.

The only redeeming factor of the build is a targeted strike to an unsuspecting backliner will potentially drop it, depending on the build of course. Most professions have so much passive defense from HoT that it’s not a consistent killer now, either.

You’re either playing poorly, don’t have a build to fight 1v1, or got massively out-played from just not paying attention to your surroundings and then some.

If you think D/D signets is strong… you’re in for a very sad wakeup call if you roam more. It’s one of the easiest builds to beat.

Fractals are easy and raids are boring and don’t appeal to me (and PvE in this game as a whole doesn’t, either). Learn the monster mechanics and it’s all just repetition.

Quality of fight is only similar if you run a faceroll FoTM build.

Eval.2371:

Thief is part of raid meta. Groups that know what they are doing want thief in the group, sometimes even multiple for fast runs in raids. QT recent record gorse clear is a good example of this.

It’s purely comes down to personal bias within groups and the group situation. It’s very similar to how certain groups choose not to take engineers despite them being one of the highest condi dps classes in the game.

It’s not that thief is bad, it’s just that most groups need the extra utility from the other classes to survive the fight.

Jana.6831:

ETA²: Actually a solution would be to have one item for raids that can only be used by thieves and that you only get in and for raids.

Eh, I am hoping more for something along the lines of a supportive elite spec. Shadow priest or something. That offers some useful tools for the group. It’s the only thing thief is really missing for pve. People will freak out tho if they get anything but rifle again.

Pretty much this right here. Organized groups make better use of the thief when it can absorb all the boons and buffs, etc., and they’re likely to also not need as much support or group utility. Disorganized ones, not as much.

As far as the elite spec goes, why not both? DPS/Burst sniper is a horrible idea on the conceptual level, and the thief really does need a 1200 ranged weapon of some sorts.

But then we’re back to the Deadeye discussion and that work is pretty much over :s

Necrotize.2974:

What is the point of comparing Mug crits from 4 years ago to the meta now? Back then thief also used to have pretty strong 1v1 and large teamfight potential yet look where we are now.

Here’s a post-HoT screenshot for you.

Mug has a 20% higher coeffient than CnD.

It would be stupid broken, just as it was back in 2012.

One of the more reasonable and balanced proposals for SA as of my immediate contemplation.

@Xen: Looks like you got hit by signet D/D thief or some kind of core build maxing damage, or are running a glass-built light armor profession with no boons and didn’t react very quickly to a gank. As Jana said, I can build pretty much any profession to hit just as hard or harder in the same amount of time (hello, warrior!), and that’s nothing new, either; optimal-burst thief has the same damage output as it has for the past few years, with nothing changing with HoT. It’s also considered an objectively bad build, because it’s a sitting duck for the most part as soon as it doesn’t OHKO its target.

Condi’s been running rampant since like 2013 with the addition of dire gear to the game and several buffs to condi mesmer in the 2014 area. They’ve always been better builds. People just didn’t run them for havoc groups since it’d be slower to take objectives. But since most of the havoc play died with HoT wiping out guild buffs, the only people really “roaming” these days are just the scum that camp spawn playing the new FoTM overpowered builds to gank solo players.

Muchacho.2390:

Tadsoul.6951:

do youguys think blighters boon is worth taking if you don’t have spite?

I have started using runes of the centaur along relentless pursuit you don’t get crippled.
chill is mostly applied by necromancers and elementalist and just watch out for immobilize
then pick up warhorn or spectral walk and you should be good

Yes but i think you then also have to use chilling victory and sigil of strength and you dont run a condition build (then you would run deathly chill).

Honestly i find reapers onslaught not that good for any pvp. The attack speed increase is only 15% and you cannot really make use of the cd reduction part due the fact that player dont die that much. I think it is more of an open world pve trait.

It’s amazing in mid-scale WvW. In GvG-sized fights if you get into the fight for just a little bit, you pretty much end up with a zero-cooldown Death’s Charge.

I firmly believe Speed of Shadows is a better option than Soul Marks for solo play.

If blobbing, there’s no reason to be running slow since you should be on permanent swiftness from your allies, and that’s very-easily achieved.

Jana.6831:

@ Deceiver:
Still doesn’t adress how to make D/D viable against warrior (for example) – how do you buff D/D to be able to withstand the heavy melee damage (and the stuns)?

D/D has got too little sustain for warrior/ warrior has too much damage for D/D thief.
I don’t think it’s useful to assume that every thief is a D/P DrD. That’s my point.

And: The damage in wvw went up with June 23th patch, vitality didn’t.

Yea, but blanket buffs won’t help D/D that much, either, considering the berserker is going to have the damage to take out even another 5-10k health on the thief with relative ease if he caught him to begin with. If D/D power ever gets competitive in its current weapon skills, then D/P- and likely the thief against everything else – is going to be objectively overpowered.

And before it got moved, many people argued taking SA was just as suicidal as not running the trait line entirely because of LR being in the minor slot causing melee-revealed status.

I’m not saying it’s in a great spot now, but at least it’s not considered an inconsistent and at-times suicidal trait line anymore.

LR was moved to the adept slot because they finally realized it was killing people.

They’re out of control, and why I stopped bothering for the most part with WvW and GW2 in general, since that’s what I play the game for.

But unfortunately ANet developers do not care about profession balance in WvW. They’ve said it outright that they actually do not care and that the game mode is not intended to be balanced.

The sad reality is complaining about it falls on deaf ears. Most self-respecting players just got up and left, trolls continue to run the get-carried builds since it makes people angry, and those with skill deficiencies can do the same and claim victory while refuting any innate advantages they may have.

The unfortunate truth of it is that if you don’t like it, too bad. Nothing’s probably changing to ever make it any better, since profession developers only balance for PvE.

Cynz.9437:

DeceiverX.8361:

Sindrener has a twitch stream for sPvP. That’s about it.

Most thieves worth anything were forced to reroll by their teams long ago.

fix’d

The ones who stayed, yea.

Honestly, I think there need to be signature traits in the line to give people a reason to run it. The power creep from gear combinations and the massive damage reduction most professions run has invalidated CS on the conceptual and numerical levels. I’d prefer to see a lot of that HoT damage mitigation nerfed, as answering power with more power is the wrong way to go about class balance. That said, CS does need a nudge in some things, though I don’t think it comes from just numerical areas; it’s already taken in PvE because of its optimum numbers in that niche. No need to make mesmers and other classes more upset about our already-ridiculous AA damage being even higher.

If I had the ability to change CS, I don’t think I’d change either of the above traits except maybe push Flawless to 75% health. Even that is testy considering what Daredevil is capable of doing to maintain high health in a brief fight.

I’d start easily: Unrelenting Strikes -> 12s Fury on Steal rather than on crit on enemy < 90% hp (proportional timing). Current design favors sustained fights for no reason (and poorly at that with only a 40% uptime) when NQ is supposed to do that, anyways. This also gives innate synergy to NQ on engage, and removes some dependency on needing to run Trickery for ToTC. It’d be better to make it 10s and just cut the steal cooldown reduction from SoH to baseline, but baby steps.

I’d give SoP a bonus to keep signet passives after use, like the Ele trait.

I’d make PT give bonus precision based on 14% Ferocity (cavalier now a sensible option, more purpose to berserker/valkyrie over marauder)

Ankle Shots’s cripple and bonus damage elements removed. Revert to AoE damage. Trade places with Flawless Strike.

NQ and HK merged together (burst option/crit consistency option). Damage tradeoff from losing Ferocity on PT.

Invigorating Precision causes crits to remove a damaging condition on a 10s ICD (sustained fight option).

HK’s free spot filled with Rending Shade, makes first stealth attack used in stealth unblockable (counterplay option). As a consequence, move Revealed Training to Shadow Arts from DA, restore Venomous Aura and Leeching Venoms, switch venoms and traps from DA to SA and vice versa. DA becomes a mix of utility, disablement, and options for damage focusing primarily on venoms and poisons, SA takes the ambush approach and gets a little post-stealth love via bonus damage from RT if it gets revealed.

Obviously the changes to DA imply things like Death Blossom’s bleed application taking a nerf, but I think this would set aside CS as a more consistent heavy-hitter with the other lines starting to get more in-line with what their intended purposes are.

Probably because there’s no method call to cause incoming attacks to keep traveling along their prior trajectory once the target stealths.

This applies to every ranged skill in the game, too, not just channels. The same longbow ranger can be in the early stages of shooting an arrow and his target can enter stealth, and the arrow will track.

It’s not really a big deal, though. Takes away some safety from stealth, which is preferable. It’s been around since pre-release, and it is (based on early claims from ANet) “intentional” behavior – or at least, not unintentional.

Straegen.2938:

Svarty.8019:

I want to express my empathy with the OP – you are not alone, Tolira. We all hope the system is improved sooner rather than later. Hopefully the upcoming scoring changes go some way towards providing more appropriate matchups.

I believe you will be sorely disappointed if you are hoping that scoring will fix the primary issues with WvW. Scoring cannot fix population imbalances or coverage issues.

Changing scoring is the proverbial lipstick on a pig.

They also won’t fix the absolutely trash-tier job the balance devs are doing which is causing the people who want to fight to no longer bother or care to log in.

Pretty much everything about WvW is no longer enjoyable to those who want good fights and fun matchups.

I really can’t wait for a real RvR game to come out.

OriOri.8724:

No. My personal skill as a mesmer doesn’t matter as the best mesmer players on the forums agree with me on the class being underpowered.

HAHA! (etc.)

Took literally a good five minutes for me to compose myself irl on this one. I didn’t post on this thread because while the current condition build is way overtuned in the wrong ways, I understand the kit enough to know the changes didn’t really affect the good builds at all.

But this comment… a blanket statement claiming that the mesmer is underpowered? Holy crap this is the definition of nescience. It’s got low personal DPS, yes, to which it’s a tough nut to crack to fix it because of the shatter mechanic. Power shatter wasn’t top-tier because of the ridiculous overpoweredness of the HoT power creep, and thus wasn’t played (like pretty much anything else in the old school power-burst mentality). But the profession being underpowered as a whole? That’s just an absurd remark, particularly when looking at its strictly mandatory use in WvW and absolutely dominating performance in small-scale combat.

That doesn’t mean I don’t think the mesmer needs a lot of changes. Like the thief, it needs a lot of re-examination to make into a better profession as a whole in what it’s capable of doing. But to call it underpowered on the profession-level is just simply absurd.

I’ve also explained anything not mentioned in the other thread to give you a better understanding about the CS line (and why it’s unfortunately so bad).

/5minuteforumpostwaittimeproblems

Jana.6831:

taking might from SA (yeah, I know Deceiver, still it would’ve spared us the stealth attack cooldown because SA wouldn’t be that useless now),

;D

Honestly, I’d have been fine with SA giving might. The problem is the way it gave might and how much it could give, relative to the at-the-time power SA had. Recall this was pre-Rejuv change which nerfed the healing.

If they wanted to let the line have offensive capabilities, they should have designed the offensive aspects of stealth (like might gain) to be applied in bulk on stealth activation and then decay quickly over the course of stealth’s duration.

I.E., “Whenever you enter stealth (as in it can’t be stacked), gain [5 stacks (1s)] + [3 stacks (1.5s)] + [2 stacks (2s)] might.”

Rewards more aggressive play, doesn’t favor camping stealth like D/P gaining heals + initiative + massive damage, and adds more depth to SA as a whole.

SA needed nerfs as it was, and frankly, without the ridiculous power creep from HoT, I’d actually probably say SA would be a reasonable trait line still. It’s just been invalidated with power creep from Daredevil and the opposing classes to no longer even give good in-stealth bonuses relative to what most are just running passively.

Kageseigi.2150:

BlaqueFyre.5678:

The damage multipliers are multiplicative. In PvP I find Assassins to provide more burst, due to more crits.m, while Berserker tends to due more overall.

Thanks! So the traits No Quarter and Practiced Tolerance give me about 30% increased critical damage, while Ferocious Strikes gives me about a 21.7% increase (assuming a base of 217% critical damage), correct?

I think you get the idea of how the traits function relative to one another, but allow me to fully clarify.

NQ + PT will give you in total an increased critical damage multiplier stat value of 30%. This is different from FS, which gives a 10% outgoing damage modifier on critical hits. The 30% isn’t really 30%.

This is why I think NQ isn’t a very good trait outside of PvE; That 30% increased critical damage stat isn’t actually 30% increased damage. If your pre-both stat is 187, the bonus from both combined is only about a 187 * x = 217 => x = 16% total damage modifier. Ferocity is additive, while other damage modifiers aren’t. Take out NQ and you’re at 201%. NQ’s bonus damage is now only functionally an 8% difference. That also assumes marauder gear. The bonus continues to get relatively worse when your ferocity increases more.

Ferocious Strikes is really what’s pulling the work in the end. That 10% is modifying all of that crit damage by a factor of 1.1. As mentioned, this can get pretty big and means much more than NQ and PT.

This is actually why DA is taken over CS in every build; Exposed Weakness provides the same modifier as Ferocious Strikes, but the 10% damage gain from EW is easily maintained permanently, while Ferocious Strikes only applies 50% of a given fight (maybe slightly more). Meanwhile, the DA line boasts huge utility in mug (and extra damage), poison/weakness on steal, panic strike, and either functionally more damage via executioner or more utility on improvisation. Since it’s so hard to maintain Flawless Strikes, the 7% bonus is rarely gained, either.

When all the math is done out, CS is only marginally better for potential damage output than DA assuming optimal performance and all of its conditional modifiers working together. It has more consistency, but the sacrifices to utility often push DA to simply perform better in combat. That’s also why every thief in PvE runs CS, though, since it pushes better numbers at peak performance which is easy to maintain, and where the utility from DA doesn’t have any effect on the fights, while it’s largely defined DA’s success in the PvP formats.

Marauder gear’s implementation also directly hurt the viability of CS, since its consistency-driven use-case was effectively nullified by the thief being allowed to push very large crit chance and vitality levels with next to no power stat losses, which could only ever be previously done via valkyrie gear compensated by the reliability of the CS traitline.

Kageseigi.2150:

DeceiverX.8361:

In all seriousness, nobody gets to brag about dropping crutches until they move to builds like DA/CS/Tr.

Wow, I can’t find out how to play as a core Thief without DA/CS/T.
I tried SA recently, but found out I’m too aggressive to reap the benefits of Stealth.

I fight on point much more than I should, and SA relies way too much on Stealth for survival, which means I can’t contest points. And even then, I can’t survive conditions well enough without Trickster.

So I’m right back to where I started. I use D/P and SB for the viability in PvP. But I still use the same setup whenever I try other sets as well.

I guess I rely too much on the damage output from CS. I just wish there was more utility in that traitline. I can do without all of the major traits except for No Quarter.

I would hope for a trait to bypass (either completely or partially) some defenses. Or perhaps a trait that removes a condition on a critical… so I won’t be 100% reliant on Trickery’s Trickster.

But again, the problem with CS is the same with CnD. You actually have to successfully hit for it to actually do anything. And not only hit, you have to crit as well. I really don’t like immunities from direct damage… 33% from Protection is understandable. But 100% for 8 seconds with no way to break through it? That’s way too over the top!

SA should be giving you way better cleansing unless you spend most of your time out of stealth, either indicating that you’re not playing OH pistol or simply aren’t playing it in a manner cohesive to the traits, which as you said, is probably because you play too aggressively. SA rewards more passive play, and that’s why it got nerfed hard, and is also why I think the trait line is conceptually flawed and always has been. SE is one of the better cleanses in the game when used to its fullest potential, however. EA just dominates it in every respect because it’s faster. Trickster is good, but BT is regarded as being a much more important trait to take in more competitive play where boons mean everything, and conditions typically come with longer pressure times and in more frequency in higher tiers, meaning the once-per-15s cleanse on Trickster isn’t good enough in most cases.

The problem with SA in keeping thief able to contest points is the dependency on the gains being tied to stealth and stealth not preventing captures. Of course, it’d be pretty overpowered if stealth-camped players could deny captures. SA was meta prior to Daredevil almost exclusively from SE and through denying the enemy map awareness, despite the fact the trait line is still suffering from being nerfed when it was overpowered and gave too much to everything and massively rewarded players camping stealth forever. It’s had no compensation in regards to leaving stealth or even entering it repeatedly as to promote in/out styles of play except the new Rending Shade, but that itself is a blunder since it needs to deal damage to land, and thus somewhat defeats the purpose (especially when aegis is in the mix; the trait then is literally worthless on its own), particularly with the ICD on stealth attacks preventing re-tries in most cases when against skilled players. You’ll get way less mileage from SA in sPvP than in WvW due to point-capture dependencies, though.

SA right now is a conceptual mess, and CS is underpowered for PvP environments since it can be relatively matched by DA and Daredevil in damage outpu, with both obviously having much better utility. I think you over-value NQ; it’s a very small increase in damage such that it’s almost tied by Ferocious Strikes alone.