Guild Wars 2

You can’t maintain permanent stealth with an offhand dagger without a static target that’s letting it get hit, as the thief must leave stealth first to re-gain it, and still, this setup will run out of initiative after only nine seconds, unless you want to imply the thief is traited for Trickery as well, in which case it gets twelve. There is a resounding grace period of < .05s where the thief can chain it, however the hitbox of the dagger has to collide at the proper time (thus a stationary target is necessary because this also requires pre-casting delays to be timed and potentially latency taken into account), otherwise you are either visible or are revealed.

As the initiative consumption would lead to the following levels:
12 -> 6 -> regen to 9 (3s)
9 -> 3 -> regen to 6 (6s)
6 -> 0 -> regen to 3 (9s)

Which on a 9s regeneration pattern = 50% stealth uptime under absolutely ideal circumstances including what is considered an objectively bad weapon set and no initiative to perform other skills, all with perfect timing. This percentage holds for Trickery alone as well, since the cap is only increased and not the rate of regeneration.

So for > 50% uptime in an ideal environment, you need two trait lines on a thief. Yes, Trickery is taken on every single thief build because the line is universally good, but it does not discount the fact that the comparison you’re making really isn’t totally valid.

Don’t really need to let clones sit around for burst. Also depends heavily on context in what is preferential. If you take your target to 30% every 3s, but it can heal to full every 3s, it never dies. Sometimes that 100-0 potential despite being on a longer cooldown is necessary. It also depends on how you constitute cooldowns; do we include steal? BV as a critical part of reliability? Sustained encounter presence when taking into account the initiative regeneration timing potentially leading to an upwards of 10s of do-nothing? There are a lot of variables up in the air. The burst is certainly different, and that’s again why I’ve said mesmers will continue to deal weak sustained DPS in PvE; their burst via their innate class mechanic (shatter) that operates independently of weapons and has very little dependency on trait modifiers compared to most other builds is holding the class back from being able to be given sustained DPS features; otherwise it just becomes either OP/UP by design with an impossible-to-balance class mechanic, or the mechanic is removed (maybe with the next ES) in favor of a sustained damage approach so that the burst isn’t so crazy with offering ranged safety and blur.

But that’s a whole other topic in itself. Stealth access for every class but scrapper (as access is kind of fixed and also ridiculous for what it is) requires a huge investment. Imho, the mesmer would probably be better off as a class without it as then it could get proper traits and balancing. Frankly, I’d like to play my thief without the stealth dependencies (though preferably not power-creeped like Daredevil or any of the elites), and the mechanic as a whole has proven more troublesome than it’s worth in my opinion because balancing efforts are pretty much impossible.

babazhook.6805:

DeceiverX.8361:

babazhook.6805:

DeceiverX.8361:

Zilvereen.2091:

^ Im tottaly sure I have seen Pulmonary Impact critting for 3500+

That’s non-crit. It just has a very high damage coefficient.

Edit:

As for Swindler’s, baba, it’s not even as good as 1s cooldown reduction. It’s 1 PERCENT reduction — .2 seconds per evade – which caps at close to 2 seconds peak if using perfect dodges and all initiative to evade with FS over the 21s. I’d argue SwEq is the worst trait in the entire game right now, or at the very least, close to the top.

Where do you get the one percent?

From the wiki

>>Successfully evading an attack while wielding a sword or spear recharges steal by a static amount. Swords and spears deal increased damage.

A static amount is not one percent because it would not be static given a cooldown can be as high as 30 seconds and as low as 21.

from the wiki

>>Damage Increase: 5%
Recharge Time Reduced: 1 second

The ingame tooltip reads the same.

From the June 23 patch notes.

Swindler’s Equilibrium: Successfully evading an attack while wielding a sword recharges steal by 1 second. This effect has a 1-second internal cooldown.

Again 1 second. I can not see a single source for this 1 percent cooldown.

EDIT. I just went in game to confrim. As far as I can see this 1 second off steal cooldown per evade. I stole to a critter and did evades using #3 and every one second with an evade the timer dropped by 2 seconds.

Yea, seems they changed it and I never noticed (never paid attention to the trait as I never thought it would be worthwhile). The whole concept seems rather weak, though.

It was not changed to my knowledge other than adding the 5 percent bonus to sword. It not all that bad a trait as is for someone going Acro line. In a typical fight (no trying to lower steal cooldown but just using tactics you normally would) I figure you can get 4 or 5 seconds shaved off a steal cooldown meaning it drops from 21 seconds to 16 with SOH.

depending on how you trait that can mean anything from more mugs/heals…more poison/weakness…more INI from klepto , more steals from Improv more endurance from endurance thief and an earlier opportunity to port to an enemy again.

Bundle it with havoc mastery and bounder and you got 22 percent bonus to the sword on its own. In a s/d build INI is generally high as the AA does most of the attacks meaning lead attacks will stay near its full 15 percent damage if you take TR. (upper hand also is significant improvement with INI return)

I still think a boost warranted. As example remove the ICD so on a multiple evade you can get multiple seconds shaved off the steal or increase the bonus sword to 7 percent.

Acro is getting very much better than it was before. The tweaks made in last patch were subtle but they make quite a difference.

I’m near-certain it was a percentage, and was why I ignored it to begin with. It has some use but you’re absolutely right that to really optimize its performance, the ICD is counter-productive as-is.

I agree the ICD needs some changing, but I don’t think it needs to be totally removed. Imagine having FS evade a hasted Rapid Fire or unload; you’d be shaving off half the cooldown from steal basically from one evade. The ICD going to 1/2s or once per evade as to allow chained evades to benefit from cooldown reductions for each new attack evaded would probably be the best way to handle the trait. As far as the damage goes, the sword gains most of its damage from sustained combat via the AA and LS. 5%, even if modified, really won’t do much for how the weapon plays (especially with the crazy mitigation in the game these days), and I’d argue that the steal cooldown reduction is the big reason to take the trait over the damage, particularly when compared to HtC, which is one of the big draws to Acrobatics at this point.

Same issue for me started happening yesterday. I get the message every 30s or so in WvW. Not sure if guilds are actually bugged because pretty much all of my guilds have quit since HoT :s

babazhook.6805:

DeceiverX.8361:

Zilvereen.2091:

^ Im tottaly sure I have seen Pulmonary Impact critting for 3500+

That’s non-crit. It just has a very high damage coefficient.

Edit:

As for Swindler’s, baba, it’s not even as good as 1s cooldown reduction. It’s 1 PERCENT reduction — .2 seconds per evade – which caps at close to 2 seconds peak if using perfect dodges and all initiative to evade with FS over the 21s. I’d argue SwEq is the worst trait in the entire game right now, or at the very least, close to the top.

Where do you get the one percent?

From the wiki

>>Successfully evading an attack while wielding a sword or spear recharges steal by a static amount. Swords and spears deal increased damage.

A static amount is not one percent because it would not be static given a cooldown can be as high as 30 seconds and as low as 21.

from the wiki

>>Damage Increase: 5%
Recharge Time Reduced: 1 second

The ingame tooltip reads the same.

From the June 23 patch notes.

Swindler’s Equilibrium: Successfully evading an attack while wielding a sword recharges steal by 1 second. This effect has a 1-second internal cooldown.

Again 1 second. I can not see a single source for this 1 percent cooldown.

EDIT. I just went in game to confrim. As far as I can see this 1 second off steal cooldown per evade. I stole to a critter and did evades using #3 and every one second with an evade the timer dropped by 2 seconds.

Yea, seems they changed it and I never noticed (never paid attention to the trait as I never thought it would be worthwhile). The whole concept seems rather weak, though.

Zilvereen.2091:

^ Im tottaly sure I have seen Pulmonary Impact critting for 3500+

That’s non-crit. It just has a very high damage coefficient.

Edit:

As for Swindler’s, baba, it’s not even as good as 1s cooldown reduction. It’s 1 PERCENT reduction — .2 seconds per evade – which caps at close to 2 seconds peak if using perfect dodges and all initiative to evade with FS over the 21s. I’d argue SwEq is the worst trait in the entire game right now, or at the very least, close to the top.

Fay.2357:

DeceiverX.8361:

I’m sorry confusion’s active effect got nerfed when it was given a buff in PvE. A lot of mesmers (and mace warriors) cried and whined they couldn’t deal tons of damage to PvE mobs while playing their faceroll dire tanks. I don’t have any consoling words except that this is what happens when broken stat combinations are balanced around.

So I don’t feel like dealing with the rest of your post, but I just wanted to point out how patently absurd this bit is. Confusion was absolute garbage in PvE before. Confusion is absolute garbage in PvE now. Additionally, are you really saying that “faceroll dire tanks” are relevant in PvE? If so, just keep in mind that you’re so far from the truth it’s not even funny. There is no element of truth to any part of the argument you just made.

The entire reason behind why confusion was changed to deal DoT damage, according to ANet’s own announcement’s discussions, was because of complaints about its poor performance in PvE. Confusion was buffed once on 1/27/15 for increased damage, which showed a lot of backlash for not being enough, and had a lot of suggestions (in this forum and in general discussion) to make the condition tick “similarly to torment with a passive DoT” as one post mentioned. It then underwent this exact change on 6/23/15.

Yes, it did suck before, and it still sucks. I never said the build or condition was good in PvE. I said dire confusion perplexity players in PvE were effectively the reason why confusion got changed to begin with. That’s historical fact. If you bothered to read my post, I argue against the current implementation of confusion. A build being weak in PvE also doesn’t stop ANet from making changes. Making adjustments only to the top-performing builds is a horrible way to balance and develop a game. Ask any expert in the industry that question, and they’ll respond in the same manner. But there are few threads complaining now, because the dire-faceroll tanks playing the build are no longer crying that they do not see any numbers at all.

As for PvE being the reason for unjustified changes, do you think the thief needed AA damage increases? I certainly don’t think so. I doubt you do, either. Do you know why they buffed the thief AA chains? PvE. Why? Because the thief was out-gunned by the revenant and out-supported by everything. It had literally zero use as a profession in the game’s PvE content. The whole of sPvP balancing is pretty much a farce when it comes to class skills. The reason ranger got the druid as its spec was to maintain its support role in raids (ranger before sinister engi previously had a critical role for speed running dungeons due to damage augmentation support). The reason necro got melee DPS and cleave was to have a position in raids. The reason berserker and daredevil do nothing new for their professions was because their core professions were already used in top-tier PvE and taken over other professions. The reason mesmer got support DPS with a new mechanic via Chronomancer was to make them un-replaceable in raids due to their low personal DPS (we’ve discussed this). The reason guard got a DPS boost was for use in raids. Why ele got a nerf to AoE ring abuse? Also raids.

Balance and profession design has barely ever been about sPvP and WvW, and despite me being here entirely for those game modes, I’ve come to terms with the fact this game is balanced for PvE.

If you want to argue about the integrity of my posting content, I would suggest you instead read my posts before making any kind of assumptions and dismissing my whole argument. I really would like to see how you reached the conclusion that I somehow argued confusion in PvE was even remotely good. Last I said, the mechanic got gutted and I would have preferred to have had the active effects been buffed to deal more damage to unskilled players not cleansing the effect.

Carighan.6758:

DeceiverX.8361:

Confusion dealing passive DoT now makes the build a lot more difficult to counter.

True! Now instead of only torment dealing negligible damage, confusion joined the club and can be safely ignored instead of needing to be cleansed.

Seriously, the damage is stupidly low, the condition is just pointless to even have. It’s equivalent to the background noise of procced bleeds. Yes it deals damage, but it does so in the most unimportant and non-impactful way possible. It used to at least have a unique mechanic which got gutted in favor of adding ignoreable passive damage.

Torment still does more damage than bleeds if the target is moving, by a factor of just over 50%. It used to be overpowered because a majority of the condition removal skills in the game didn’t remove torment. For example, the thief only used to be able to remove torment with Antitoxin Spray, which they removed from the game. A majority of skills still do not remove torment. Clearly, all torment sources are weak because torment is weak because its static-object DPS is lower than bleeds! Clearly it’s not designed to not be effective if the target stands still, but punish targets for moving! That would be logical and imply a counter!

Back to confusion, though.

That 7k damage from scepter 3 is really, really weak. Not like it’s almost ticking the same as Deathly Chill does.

Oh wait, except it does. Because confusion ticks are actually strong. I guess we’ll just neglect the fact that the act of cleansing the condition applies its active too, so that when all things are said and done, it frequently deals its listed full damage, which is often better per cast than a majority of the skills in the game employ, particularly against targets in say, full Nomad’s armor.

I’m sorry confusion’s active effect got nerfed when it was given a buff in PvE. A lot of mesmers (and mace warriors) cried and whined they couldn’t deal tons of damage to PvE mobs while playing their faceroll dire tanks. I don’t have any consoling words except that this is what happens when broken stat combinations are balanced around. I liked the prospect of the old confusion, and thought it was fun conceptually (implementation was iffy, though, cleansing skills should have removed/still should remove the confusion before the damage kicked in, as often the act of cleansing would kill the player, which is dumb when you’re bringing cleanses to a fight to counter-act the torment/confusion to slip hits in). I’d have liked to have seen it much more punishing and played similarly to interrupts with high-intensity but short duration stacks, but that’s not the vision a large number of condi PvE players wanted.

Ananeos.4587:

Menaka.5092:

Mesmer is clearly OP. Proof: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XhyhUm2VEA0

All I see is a mesmer using every skill he had to kill someone trying to spam aoe banner skills. If another person were to suddenly show up he would have been screwed.

Depends heavily on the builds of people involved. Very easy to kill players while using banners, though. Managed to snag one on my tankier necro and ticked people for 7k burn ticks. Whole parties wiped in < 5s.

Only things I can suggest without getting into controversial weapon skill changes are:

0.) Preparedness baseline. I once thought Kleptomaniac might be a better choice for preserving balance, but doing some further analysis led me to believe this change is both the easiest one to manage while keeping weapon skills balanced and balance between builds including trickery or not. We should be trying to demote spammy play and promote skillful execution of skills. Slightly upping the max pool helps with this so long as initiative regeneration isn’t buffed and some skills like Shadow Shot and vault see slight increases in initiative costs (1/2).

1.) To reduce the base cooldown of steal to 25s, remove the reduction on SoH, and put the 20% reduction on Lead Attacks to make traited trickery keep a 20s CD on steal while an un-traited Trickery have a 25s cooldown. 20% CDR for a trait line isn’t at all unheard of, as that’s what most weapon skills get. This helps push Trickery away from being mandatory.

2.) Give Unrelenting Strikes 10s of Fury when activating steal and remove the 90% health part. This reduces dependency on ToTC a little bit by keeping its functionality and nets a slight buff to non-NQ builds, while preserving the same proportion of fury uptime it has now, but allowing for more extended use, up to, if traited for Trickery, potentially permanent fury without NQ, or slightly improved uptime via traiting Lead Attacks.

3.) Give Hidden Killer a little love by removing one condition when becoming revealed. This makes CS a much more competitive trait choice.

4.) Exchange Bountiful Theft and Flanking Strikes in the Trickery line for a bit more build diversity potential (BT/Trickster/SoH as a lockdown/trickery setup vs ToTC/FS/QP as a pure DPS setup), also letting CS become optional for some builds by letting a maxed/traited Trickery line yield permanent fury via ToTC and FS combined.

5.) Buff Swindler’s Equilibrium in Acrobatics to not be so dreadfully bad. Its best possible results are like a 2s cooldown reduction. Bump it to 1s per evade with a sword instead of 1% recharge performed. It already does this. Reduce ICD to .5 seconds or have it only proc at most once per evade.

Acrobatics is hard to designate a rework for because the traits themselves feel very low-impact but holistically have ridiculous synergy with Daredevil. Shadow Arts is in a similar position as well, and I can only foresee a small damage bonus being allotted to it (+5-7%) if any at all to keep it balanced. Picking a trait to remove or change substantially here is likely more effort than ANet would ever want to put in, and Daredevil makes this a conceptual-balance nightmare.

Depends heavily on context and format.

I’d argue power reaper is the most balanced elite spec released with HoT, and necromancers countering boon builds is really healthy for the state of sPvP. More boon access nerfs and more buffs to professions’ core traits as to make counters more definitive would be a big push in the right direction imho. We shouldn’t see professions running around with permanent swiftness/protection/regen/stability uptime with frequent aegis and resistance.

The only profession (long before HoT) with access to permanent speed increases used to be the thief on Signet of Shadows, which held a weak active effect to compensate, because no class could stack permanent swiftness on itself and no other classes had movespeed signets. A utility skill would be sacrificed for a slightly weaker version of permanent swiftness. Seeing so much boon use cover so many build holes while making no sacrifices is what has led us to bad class balance and design over the years.

Boons are supposed to compensate slightly for a weakness or bolster a strength to get the edge on a foe, not make something good innately at everything by stacking them so severely. If this is a new design philosophy, then there needs to be more boon removal than there is even now.

I don’t even think Gravedigger is that great, honestly, except in a few very odd scenarios. I find GS to be fantastic for its first two AA attacks and skills 4 and 5 with quick life force generation on 3.

Onslaught is decent, and I only really run BB if I’m heading to an encounter where I know the issue will be surviving. I agree DD is mediocre, though. I find CV a much better pick.

Soul Eater is just a horrible trait.

Heavily-buffed conditions and a lack of adjustment to removal options have lead a lot of builds into this problem. Only the guardian with the changes to Smite Conditions has really gotten a substantial buff to counteract spam condition play.

Core thief had no mechanism to remove conditions without traiting SA.

Core warrior was largely dependent on CI to do so regularly, but CI got nerfed.

Core guard before the Smite Condition buff was made was struggling despite the light field and whirls due to low health, and often traited SoTF or went meditations with built-in-cleansing and healing to do so and counteract the effects of conditions

Core ranger (and even Druid to an extent) has pretty much always needed WS to cleanse conditions well. HS doesn’t work in the sustained burst/re-application game.

And we have the same problem with mesmer and Inspiration.

Most classes and other trait lines could use some condition-cleansing love. Though a nerf to some of the condition builds is also reasonable considering what we’re seeing in terms of competitive play.

Can’t confirm whether or not it will, but if I had to make a guess, I would expect it to. HtC likely just calls a generic stunbreak function, which will break taunt.

I’d argue chronomancer is the better pick in both scenarios unless you run core necro well-o-mancer for corruption and maximum ranged pressure. Unless you run a tank build to frontline, the reaper dies really fast while running wells and can’t properly utilize its melee-oriented shroud, and condi builds do not work in ZvZ, ruling out both its most powerful builds and its ranged pressure.

Power reaper is decent in the smaller-scale encounters, however typically the condi variant out-performs it.

Chronomancer brings a ton of powerful utility via wells, alacrity, boon removal, AoE stealth, better ranged damage (again unless core necro is used) and better AoE swiftness over even guardian/DH.

Shovel Face.4512:

DeceiverX.8361:

Shinobi.3240:

1. 15k HP base, would be around 21k with Maruder.

O.K.

2. 15 initiative baseline and make Prepardness where initiative cost for all skills is decreased by 1. (Ex. BP would be 5 initiative not 6 with this trait.)

15 Ini baseline okay, rest not.

3. Add F2 blinding powder skill. Why does Thief not have this? I’m surprised this isn’t even in the game considering Theives are “master of stealth”

Could agree with that on a 60 sec. CD.

4. Replace blinding powder utility skill with “Evasion” – evade all attacks for 6s

Would make thieves way too strong. 6s to freely rampage … hell no

5. Deadly Arts: Executioner trait rework – all attacks ignore armor and protection from targets below 75%, damage is increased by 20% when target is below 25%

So you want to ignore 967/1118/1271 armor rating depending on the class and on top of that the reduction from protection + 20% increased dmg at 25% health. Sounds completely broken.

6. Significant CD reductions to certain thief utility skills (SR, Roll for Initiative, Haste, Etc)

You can reduce the cds already when you trait for it

7. Dash dodge – gain 2.5s of quickness for every dodge.

Quickness on thief is really strong with the buffed autoattacks. Would be broken.

Bound – gain 2.5s of protection for ever dodge.

So perma protection .. nope

Lotus training – give ur opponents 5s of weakness( 20% dmg and condi reduction)

You can have permanent weakness uptime on your target already when you trait DA and DD. No need for more.

8. Steal – CD decreased by 5s

Steal is already so strong with all the enhancements. Reducing the cd even more would be crazy.

9. Reveal does not work on Thieves

Counterplay

10. And finally, fix the cluster bomb. Why does that thing defy gravity?

Agree with that kind of … its nice to set up your burst .. clusterbomb .. switch weapons … blackpowder .. heartseeker … steal .. backstab … can make it hit all at once. Fixing the travel speed would ruin this combo.

As i see it you don´t aim to balance thief you want to make it broken. We have Revenant already as an example for overtuning. Thief maybe needs minor fixes but no buffs. The other overperforming proffessions need a nerf.

Best regards!

Shino!

This. I stopped reading at the ignore armor and protection part if a target is below 75% health lol. 30k+ backstabs would be dumb. Was hoping I’d see a comment like this to reassure myself the thief community isn’t crazy wanting free wins on everything.

Edit: Though I think I like Ario’s response a little better.

The only cooldown adjustment I could see being made to steal is removing the cooldown reduction on SoH and just making steal’s base CD lower such that it has a reasonable cooldown when not using Trickery as to promote using other trait lines/other traits in trickery. It absolutely should not be lower than it is now.

30k backstabs? Huh? What amulet are u running? LOL If you didn’t know, Thief backstab damage is ridiculously low for the amount of effort to pull it off. In the current Meta, backstab only does around 3k dmg and that with it be a crit. Reason why is because of the protection up time every class has arm. I guess I did go over board on the Executioner rework so instead I’d like to see something where Inly the skill backstab ignores armor and protection. I think that would help us out a lot.

Armor penetration would double or more the damage. I was also speaking from a WvW perspective, mostly, where people already complain about it, particularly mine

Here’s how I’d fix steal and Trickery dependencies:

- Preparedness made baseline
- Base steal CD reduced to 25s
- Removal of steal cooldown reduction from SoH
- Lead Attacks giving a 20% cooldown reduction to steal instead of 15% -> 20s CD from 25s
- Crit Strikes’ Unrelenting Strikes gives 5s Fury on steal and 5s Fury when hitting a target below 90%, 10s ICD.
- Trickster removes two conditions

Preparedness baseline does scare me, though. While I advocated for Kleptomaniac instead in the past, and still believe it might be a good-enough offer, some initiative costs are too high, and others are too low. The baseline initiative increase could allow for some better-balancing of initiative costs so that balancing doesn’t need to be done with such an important and wildly-swinging variable. The change to give CS better fury access also follows logically as to remove dependencies on ToTC for crit builds to get their damage when they need it and promote more CS-oriented builds.

Trickster just needs a little bit up an up, as if we contemplate similar options, such as Wilderness Knowledge on the ranger, and compare how useful tricks are to survival skills, as well as their cooldowns, I think it’s safe to say this wouldn’t break anything, particularly since ranger base HP is better-suited to dealing with conditions, Healing Spring and Unguent are amazing anti-condi heals, and Druid CA form gives a lot of anti-condi bonuses as well. One trait to reward trick usage more and make core thief healing competitive with DD heals (traited withdraw vs CV + EA/UC applying three times) seems pretty reasonable, and better-defines Trickery as a counter-play trait line (interrupts, boon hate, condi cleanse buffs) rather than a grab-bag of everything needed to make the thief function.

Shinobi.3240:

1. 15k HP base, would be around 21k with Maruder.

O.K.

2. 15 initiative baseline and make Prepardness where initiative cost for all skills is decreased by 1. (Ex. BP would be 5 initiative not 6 with this trait.)

15 Ini baseline okay, rest not.

3. Add F2 blinding powder skill. Why does Thief not have this? I’m surprised this isn’t even in the game considering Theives are “master of stealth”

Could agree with that on a 60 sec. CD.

4. Replace blinding powder utility skill with “Evasion” – evade all attacks for 6s

Would make thieves way too strong. 6s to freely rampage … hell no

5. Deadly Arts: Executioner trait rework – all attacks ignore armor and protection from targets below 75%, damage is increased by 20% when target is below 25%

So you want to ignore 967/1118/1271 armor rating depending on the class and on top of that the reduction from protection + 20% increased dmg at 25% health. Sounds completely broken.

6. Significant CD reductions to certain thief utility skills (SR, Roll for Initiative, Haste, Etc)

You can reduce the cds already when you trait for it

7. Dash dodge – gain 2.5s of quickness for every dodge.

Quickness on thief is really strong with the buffed autoattacks. Would be broken.

Bound – gain 2.5s of protection for ever dodge.

So perma protection .. nope

Lotus training – give ur opponents 5s of weakness( 20% dmg and condi reduction)

You can have permanent weakness uptime on your target already when you trait DA and DD. No need for more.

8. Steal – CD decreased by 5s

Steal is already so strong with all the enhancements. Reducing the cd even more would be crazy.

9. Reveal does not work on Thieves

Counterplay

10. And finally, fix the cluster bomb. Why does that thing defy gravity?

Agree with that kind of … its nice to set up your burst .. clusterbomb .. switch weapons … blackpowder .. heartseeker … steal .. backstab … can make it hit all at once. Fixing the travel speed would ruin this combo.

As i see it you don´t aim to balance thief you want to make it broken. We have Revenant already as an example for overtuning. Thief maybe needs minor fixes but no buffs. The other overperforming proffessions need a nerf.

Best regards!

Shino!

This. I stopped reading at the ignore armor and protection part if a target is below 75% health lol. 30k+ backstabs would be dumb. Was hoping I’d see a comment like this to reassure myself the thief community isn’t crazy wanting free wins on everything.

Edit: Though I think I like Ario’s response a little better.

The only cooldown adjustment I could see being made to steal is removing the cooldown reduction on SoH and just making steal’s base CD lower such that it has a reasonable cooldown when not using Trickery as to promote using other trait lines/other traits in trickery. It absolutely should not be lower than it is now.

From other class perspective, it’s pretty important to use. Was one of my gripes with the RF casting time on the ranger; I miss being able to track thieves through their entire stealth to keep track of positioning by timing the skill nicely, despite the horrible damage.

Channeled single-target abilities are fine, even damaging ones. Channeled AOE-stealth-targeting CC is a problem I have, but this is restricted pretty much entirely to the elite specs.

Right, which means you’re either also running less stab damage on the “meta” build through the loss of CS, or you’re missing out on Mug by the loss of DA. In many instances, the “meta” thief also misses the effective damage from CnD in its burst speed via the use of D/P, and often deals less damage due to the initiative costs preventing Lead Attacks from working at peak, unless BD is used on daredevil, but the split between BD and Dash use is pretty even these days.

So a more typical build will hover at around a 12-14k total combo on average, if not a little less.

Fay.2357:

DeceiverX.8361:

Fay.2357:

Ahahahahahahahahaha.

Oh wait, they’re serious.

Ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.

Serious that the issue stems from dire/perplexity gear being overpowered and the root cause of the problem in the case of PU mes, rather than the mesmer design itself? Yea, actually. Unless you’d like to argue that dire/perplex isn’t OP for roaming, in which case you’ll basically get laughed out of WvW.

Overpowered in solo roaming? Sure…so what? Solo roaming doesn’t really matter much unless you’re in T4 and below. Dire/perplex loses effectively drastically once even small (3-man) roaming groups are taken into account, so who cares?

Edit: And did you even read the op? Whining about how mesmers can solo camps on their own? Come on, you make a fool of yourself by defending this rubbish.

Not agreeing with the OP on the principal I think the mesmer itself is overpowered, but the dire/perplexity PU build in solo roaming is.

As far as taking camps goes, anything can, which is why I’d like to distinguish myself from the OP. I have a feeling you didn’t read my first post, either, which states I don’t think the trait composition itself is overpowered, or that the mesmer is overpowered, but that this combination of gear makes the build holistically overpowered in small-scale or solo fights.

This is why I said this gear is the issue (and it is on everything) and should be removed, and not the mesmer nerfed. Understand the difference?
——-

As far as the comments regarding mirror not being used by most mesmers… I’m sorry but almost every single roaming mesmer I’ve ever met with an ounce of skill or understanding of the format runs this trait because it deliberately hard-counters a substantial number of burst/combo builds which are what counter PU condi dire/perplex (or are supposed to).

As far as being prepared, I already also addressed this; when roaming you need to account for diversity in fights. You can’t go running around with three utilities of cleanses with a cleanse heal. A power build will walk up to you and kill you with extreme ease of that’s the case, and in most cases, cleansing abilities and stunbreaks are mutually exclusive, and most classes do not have a condition cleanse on weapon skills to compensate. My post indicated Dueling/Chrono as swappable on the last trait ine option as DE isn’t imperative. Passive torment on scepter AA chain will often do more damage than bothering to shatter, particularly since even rapid cleansing will not keep up. A kitten CD 3-cleanse skill + boon rip is actually a pretty reasonable cooldown. Mantras are extremely low.

Apharma did the math out assuming the thief runs a specific build. Don’t run SA and thief stealth uptime drops to <40%, even on D/P.

Fay.2357:

Ahahahahahahahahaha.

Oh wait, they’re serious.

Ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.

Serious that the issue stems from dire/perplexity gear being overpowered and the root cause of the problem in the case of PU mes, rather than the mesmer design itself? Yea, actually. Unless you’d like to argue that dire/perplex isn’t OP for roaming, in which case you’ll basically get laughed out of WvW.

Confusion dealing passive DoT now makes the build a lot more difficult to counter. Also note some classes, such as the thief, have general condition cleansing on only a handful of abilities; some cleanses only remove a select few conditions which often do not cleanse confusion nor torment.

WvW roaming typically features a very diverse set of builds which leads to encounters being unpredictable. Unlike sPvP where comps are pretty well-defined and roles are typically preset and optimized for specific duties, WvW roaming can encapsulate anything, and often, duels are based on matchups between players not both suited to roam; in many instances, it comes from the roaming player ganking another trying to get back to a group of others, where such cohesion is handled through group utility.

Pretty much the entire Chaos line is passive effects (meta rejuv, membrane, mirror, PU) and the entire Illusion line rewards camping stealth while not really doing anything but summoning clones (let’s not also forget about desperate decoy being another passive). Shattering clones is often pretty wasteful unless your target cleaves heavily, but this isn’t recommended considering it involves running around a lot to chase clones (torment procs), and attacking a lot to kill them (perplexity/confusion stacks on scepter 3/Ineptitude). PU being considered underpowered is a ridiculous statement because it’s unpredictable and frequently allows near-permanent protection uptime, crippling most power builds.

You don’t really need perplex for the interrupts but rather the passive 3 confusion it applies just for being hit. It works nicely with mirror because often you’ll get the 3 from being hit + 3 more from interrupting CC. 6 stacks of passive confusion is extremely strong.

You can’t run away from a condi mesmer without having cleanses because of the simple fact that the torment will kill you. A transfer is the same as a cleanse, and very few classes (actually, just the necro and mesmer) have access to them, and typically speaking, plague signet is not used in WvW because the self-transfer radius is so large and often can get one killed. I’d also further mention that this build also has some of the best condition removal access of any roaming build on any class, so claiming that condi damage counters PU mes is just a false statement considering it can and will out-cleanse almost every other build via its trait options providing so much cleansing via The Pledge, and a comparatively-low-cooldown burst cleanse on thievery or MoR, which gets further augmented by the effects of alacrity for even superior cleansing if running chrono. It also has some of the best cover condition access in the game and rapid-application and repeated use of said cover conditions and high-impact abilities.

All the while it’s running random defensive boon gains on top of defensive stats and 40% more base health than a thief or ele, with stealth, and a skill tied for the lowest-cooldown teleport in the game. As far as not camping stealth, it has superior stealth access to the thief unless the thief uses Shadow Arts or Daredevil while using D/P, so even that argument is pretty much invalidated.

Without dire/perplex gear, the build would be killable. It would still absolutely punish bad players, and likely require more active play, but as it is currently, unless the player fighting against it knows well in advance it’s going to be fighting a PU condi mes in dire/perplex gear, a diversely-built roamer rarely has the tools to deal with one while providing enough damage to actually kill it. It’s not a fault of the mesmer but one with dire/perplexity gear causing the counter (burst damage between intermittent condition removals while not taking action or taking limited action) to not actually work. It’s why the build isn’t OP in sPvP but attracts a lot of negative attention in WvW. The kit punishes playing against dire/perplexity innately, and while dire/perplexity is already overtuned, it creates pretty much no available space for counterplay in the WvW roaming scene.

It’s definitely over-played in WvW. Certainly not overpowered in sPvP, but easily competing with the top spot for WvW roaming. Both power and condi variants are extremely strong builds here because the power/ferocity stats aren’t awful in WvW, allowing for mesmers to actually get off the damage they need, and the lack of dependence on traits for damage lets them be a lot beefier and more flexible than other classes in the end.

Dire perplex condi mes is absolutely OP, and probably makes the most out of dire and perplex, but dire perplex anything is overpowered. I wish ANet would honestly just remove this combination from the game like they did with the Magic Find stat and refund players with selectable stat armor with the ability to pick any other stat combination in the game and any associated runes. Would definitely help WvW balance a lot and really wouldn’t affect PvE or sPvP at all.

Most common classes I find these days in WvW tend to be DH, chrono, and Herald, then reaper, followed and scrapper. The rest kind of follow as normal. Interesting how the two most common aren’t used at all in competitive sPvP but define a lot of groups in WvW.

Can’t really say the class is OP when it’s balanced for sPvP, in which case it’s weak. The condi variant is definitely overtuned for WvW regarding ease-of-use and how effective it is.

Would like to see some more reward for active play on the mesmer, though. It has a lot of passive effects that involve waiting around in stealth a lot, and I’m not fond of being on the giving or receiving end of such things (also why I dislike the Shadow Arts thief trait line).

As far as the whole “veil bot” thing goes, it isn’t true. A lot of zergs are running increasing numbers of chronomancers for backline support and damage, as the number of reflects and aegis-spamming going on is heavily hurting a lot of traditional ranged builds, and being able to strip aegis quickly, provide cooldown reduction to a blob, and simply go invuln/stealth/AOE stealth the backline if attacked by periph to not die are huge gains for a backline to have and make frontline work a lot easier.

That timing lol. 16.6 without the Stones, which add another 1k health, which causes a push to 17.6 with no extra bonuses.

Valkyrie gear causes Sharpening Stones to scale more power off the bonus to vitality.

MithranArkanere.8957:

The problem isn’t the skill as much as the game mechanics. Nothing done by a player with their profession’s skills should be able to take more than 1/3 of anyone’s health in less than 1s. They’ll need to use something like siege or map mechanics for that.

If there was such limitation, then anyone focusing too much on damage would be basically wasting their resources, like hammering a nail with an excavator-mounted hydraulic jackhammer. Yes, you can do it, but it’s a waste, because you’ll be bringing more power than you will actually use.

We’d need an overhaul of the whole game to do so. Everyone would need the same base health pools and armor values, as well as armor values from gear. A comprehensive rework of the thief and mesmer would need to be performed. Axe and rifle warrior would need to be re-designed. Longbow ranger would need reworks. Condi builds would need to get absolutely gutted. Sustain builds would need to be effectively removed from the game. Protection would need strictly more limited access… the list just keeps going on regarding how much would have to change to make this kind of adjustment. sPvP features pretty similar design and balance, pushing the number to around 2/3, but one-shot mechanics basically do not exist.

Which is kind of what makes D/D stab fair to an extent. The entire combo takes just over a second to execute, and doesn’t engage from stealth. Like I also mentioned, to get such damage, it’s kill-or-be-killed, for there’s zero sustain in the build at all. I’ll say now that against dire-gear players, even my own burst often fails to kill them, and is usually dependent on a few AA’s or a HS to finish them off. Throw protection into the mix, and typically things go south real fast. Sustained-base elementalists are often able to take my backstab down to less than 6k. I fought a nomad guard recently who I simply wasn’t able to come close to killing due to the amount of toughness and mitigation he had, paired with a strong knowledge of his class (we agreed to stop fighting mutually because the duel was going on for almost 15 minutes and both of us were just out-healing each other). Part of the risk of playing for damage is being blown up at any given moment, but the reward is being able to do so to other such targets, or maybe extend the damage you can deal to contribute to killing tankier ones in a shorter amount of time.

Turk.5460:

DeceiverX.8361:

Mathematically speaking, I’m the single (or tied with) hardest-hitting thief in GW2, as there’s no potential way to increase damage further. It’s like saying all CEO’s are billionaires and we should tax all CEO’s of all businesses regardless of size a very large amount, because some CEO’s are billionaires.

Mathematically speaking, you are not. Unless you have proof that only you and this “tied” person are the only people to run the same skills/gear/traits that is pretty easily obtainable by every other thief.

Please don’t be so arrogant, as to make such claims you must be renowned or wvw famous, yet I’ve never heard anyone mention your name, or even make a comment on any thief from TC.

I said tied because there is no way to further increase damage, and because I don’t know if anyone is running the same build. I’ve never met anyone else who has run as committed to it as I am, and they subsequently take damage losses. It’s frankly impossible to do more damage in the game on the thief class, so even if someone is running the same build, we are tied, which is what I said to begin with. If someone else is running the same build, then they need to be running the same gear. If they’re running the same trait build, and full ascended gear with power omni infusions in all of the armor and power infusions in the rest, as well as running force/impact sigils (balanced for day time) an alternate ascended dagger for night/impact, (one with Accuracy/Force as well if consistency against a known player is needed), etc., then we’re tied. Otherwise, because there is no way to deal more damage except for getting your enemy to run over two traps (Shadow and needle, perhaps) and use Assassin’s Signet with no stunbreak or teleports beyond a target running over ST (which unless playing D/P ghost is not even remotely realistic, due to dependencies on Daredevil and/or SA, in which case there are huge losses in the lack of CS damage augmentation, and still losses via the pistol’s weapon damage being lower than the dagger’s as to prevent a small discrepancy favoring the dagger after many simulations, or assumed a proportional “steady” weapon).

As far as being famous goes, I transferred to TC a few weeks ago, and don’t really spam map chat about how great I am. I often run both very defensively for camp and tower capture prevention, or run periphery for the blob. I prefer using VoIP services with my friends rather than hearing the garbage in server TS which often doesn’t even have to do with WvW and are usually just dumb and immature jokes. In instances in the past, I have helped people learn the build/thief to refine skills and remove dependencies from defensive lines because learning a full-offense builds better-teaches one how to act and react with limited defenses. Many revert back towards strictly better builds after getting a handle on this because then they can take learned skills to a new level. What I find is that being “famous” either is the result of something extraordinary occurring for the world to see with quite blatant visibility (such as being a great commander, everyone sees the tag and the PPT/fight victories are very apparent for being good), being obnoxious to the public such that people start talking about you out of resentment or astonishment (trolls, the controversial presidential campaign of Donald Trump), or simply being an early-bird on a highly-researched subject with a peak emphasis on performance gains, and publishing findings. I was not the early bird here on signet thief; Yski was, for he made excellent videos and tutorials about the build early on and throughout his play time, while I fiddled around with possibilities, and have made no such videos. I don’t really care about being famous, and don’t really care (or in the past, did not have access to) about putting forth the resources to do so.

I do not claim to be the best thief in the game. No way. I know for a fact I am very far from the best. I might say I’m a good thief, but that’s subjective. I claim to be the hardest-hitting one, or tied for the spot should others be geared and built exactly as I am. It’s not arrogance but mathematical proof. Anyone can crunch numbers and look at the highest value, and that’s exactly what I did while keeping the build remotely reasonable as to be able to emerge a victor from some fights. Technically, in a vacuum, given an entity with stationary or controllable behavior, with infinite time leading up to the burst attempt allowing for AA’s and other effects to ramp damage up, there is a way to increase the damage via a Shadow Trap and Sundering Strikes build. I did devise such a build as a suggestion for someone in the past asking for the theoretically-optimal DPS/burst build for a thief assuming no other players were around to provide support in damage such as external vulnerability or might stacking. I care not to find the post because I have an extensive post history and frankly, don’t really care so much. I made the claim I did above to demonstrate that the OP’s request for backstab nerfs using my own figures are no basis for comparison for the rest of the class.

So maybe I’ll concede that I’m not dealing the absolute maximum damage possible in the game in ideal scenarios in speciality PvE use or against AFK players using the build in question by the OP. I mean, I could run SoM’s active for about a 4% gain at the cost of likely getting killed in any and every 1v2 scenario, and against almost every skilled player. Though such an obvious switch won’t really consitute a major build ideology or change, and frankly, will likely be superceded by RNG on weapon damage rolls, anyways. That said, I did independently also devise the one which can do so on its own, and I think the math and basis for comparison for trait and gear setups regarding having pre-stacked vuln/might is quite easy to do, as then it’s just about stacking damage modifiers.

Maybe I wasn’t clear. Maybe you misread my post, I don’t know. I mentioned the tie because I do not know any others who do have exactly what I do, but the probability of others running it is absolutely favoring such reality. If I claimed to be absolutely the hardest-hitting thief in the game with no competition or equals, then that would be naive arrogance, because as you mentioned, the tools to do so are available to everyone. Pluralization or a grammar mistake may be a fault of my own to make it explicit that the number of other thieves tied for this position may be greater than one. Either way, there’s effectively zero way to improve damage in a build which offers reasonable capacity to fight in a PvP environment without encroaching upon the philosophy of what constitutes an effective or reasonable build or what idealistic scenarios could possibly exist in WvW environments. I’ve spent thousands of hours playing this build and always looking for ways to refine it more, particularly in respects to consistency of matchups as to win the fight I partake in (it’s no good to fail to kill someone on the burst and then die to a few long-lasting stacks of bleed or something), and believe I’ve hit the point where it’s just not possible to improve much beyond what I’ve got based on current implementations and available prospects for the thief.

If there are some new-found mechanics which nobody has previously considered, I’ve love to see and partake in discussion on them.

Earth and water attunes are actually what lead to the generation of might on ele.

The DPS is over-criticized because so many people seem to not care about how significant alacrity and quickness is, screaming instead for more selfish DPS because apparently they don’t want defenses and don’t want support or reason to be taken in competitive environments.

The mesmer has a spot, like the ranger, in competitive PvE because the DPS it contributes party-wide is worth more than the gap between it and that of the top DPS class, and the class can also be a very functional tank in the meantime while cutting losses. Only when the personal DPS is bigger than the collective value of all of the damage gained from support or is the best in the game will a DPS-based setup be usable in competitive PvE, or since this influences normal PvE, pretty much any PvE.

The chronomancer lets the mesmer get better burst and lots of support. Maybe the next elite spec will feature DPS increases at the cost of clones, we don’t know. but that’s the objective of the spec and how it needs to be balanced around.

Richard Marcinko.5132:

So I’m capturing a camp solo in eternal battlegrounds and out of nowhere I get 3 hits from a thief and I’m dead. Go back and look at the log and I find a backstab that hit for 14,112 followed by double strike for 2,144 and a cloak and dagger for 6342. Never had a chance. I’m a necro with 24K health and down before even getting a skill off.

Once a week thieves come into Necro forums saying how op we are. A single hit for 14k tells me there is nothing you ought to be crying about. I got beat plain and simple, but the next time one of you cries op I’m going to post this screenshot and say B.S.

Hey, that’s me! (Silver Footman on TC with big stab numbers).

I recall sneaking up on you yesterday. I came in from the opposite angle of our spawn (from hylek) for a surprise to prevent a camp flip. Seems it worked :P

That’s actually kind of on the low end, honestly. I hit some glassy war yesterday for 20k (couldn’t get a screen as it was in a 1v2). I’m guessing you run some kind of more durable build than berserker, or that’s with protection. More typical are numbers like these (see attached; against a thief). Be happy I wasn’t a mesmer, honestly, as a burst-built mesmer in WvW can combo for more damage in the same amount of time, all while running a fully defensive trait setup and utilities, and stealing boons.

WvW numbers are way higher than in sPvP. It’s a fact you need to embrace and recognize that the pace of play is WAY faster here than anywhere else. If you don’t react fast enough to something and/or keep your eyes open for ganks at all times, often you’ll die. WvW isn’t so much imbalanced so much as it lacks a meta, because almost anything can be made viable (the exception here is that the Scrapper is objectively OP and everyone knows it, as is anything in dire perplexity gear). This makes encounters really hard to predict and leads to a lot of confusion of “how is that even possible?” moments.

As far as the damage being OP, not really. I did a 26k Gravedigger yesterday against some poor ele while playing my reaper, and normal GD’s/soul spirals/scythes usually pick around 14-16k as well.

I’ll mention that this thief build sacrifices literally everything for damage. To hit like that, you need to play active signets. This build runs:

- No defensive effects , traits, runes, sigils, or utilities.
- No Daredevil (not enough damage)
- Next to no condi cleanse (just sword 2 and Trickster on Withdraw, sacrificing boon stealing).
- No stun break
- No chain stealth/lowest stealth uptime
- Predictable burst (CnD/Stab rotation)
- Low escape potential and mobility (even DH’s can catch up if they play well) as I cannot afford the luxury of using a shortbow as I need sword for condition cleansing.
- After engaging, it has no available utility skills for a minimum of 24 seconds.

While the above posters are somewhat correct in that the build does one thing and one thing only (burst damage), the build can be played well and see very positive results in WvW, but is one of if not the single worst build in the game in sPvP. It’s also very easily countered, and suffers from the opposite issue most thieves have; it kills heavies but dies almost immediately to mesmers running mirror, as eating my own CC will often give the mesmer the time needed to stunbreak and 100-0 me with a shatter combo. Passive procs pretty much reduce the viability of this build substantially, as it’s dependent on the foe not reacting fast enough to you. The reasoning behind this is baseline power values are way higher than they are in sPvP since sPvP nerfs the power and ferocity stats by around 30% each. This, paired with a lot of might stacking on signet actives and around 70% more damage in external modifiers stacked up, results in a series of a few extremely explosive attacks, because power and damage modifers at the end of the day scale exponentially. Thus, the more you can get, the more damage you’ll do, and it’s not at all a linear trend. One proper stunbreak, dodge, and corrupt boon, and I’d probably have been squirming or have needed to run away.

I had to explain my damage to someone else recently and why the disparity is so big between me and other thieves; almost 80% of a thief’s potential damage comes from traits. If the traits are removed, the damage is. Thus, the thief has very little build variety and wildly-swinging capacity to deal and take damage. The thief skills and overall class kit is imho the best-designed one, because trait selection matters so much. Trickery-dependency aside, I think getting more variability within classes is something ANet should be pushing for, rather than just letting a one-size-fits all selection of traits (often defensive) carried by ridiculous damage coefficients (Gun flame, Rapid Fire, True Shot, CoR, Mind Wrack, to name a few).

A “normal” thief not using my build would have probably backstabbed you for around 6k. That’s hardly OP at all.

Overall I think reaper and thief are in pretty good places at the moment (though I think condi reaper could still use a little nerfing, core necro needs stability options in shroud or something minor). It really boils down to the fact my build and style of play (pure assassination) with taking advantage of the element of surprise simply worked out. Part of playing in WvW is always being cautious and ready.

As far as thieves complaining about necros, it’s probably about sPvP, too, where the backstab equivalent would have been like 4k. I take my reaper to sPvP just because it’s so much better than the thief. Apples to Oranges comparing what works in WvW and sPvP; as everything about my build (D/D + S/D signet burst without Daredevil) just does NOT work in sPvP, and reaper by comparison has a lot more going for it in sPvP since thieves are glassier and do less damage. The number of thieves I’ve one-shot in sPvP on my reaper with scythe is kinda funny. Not to justify complaints, but to mention invalidating any such complaint with your screen really isn’t at all accurate or a proper way to do so.

Lexander.4579:

you got sniped by a legendary geared thief, son

Correct, but not the sole reason. Aside from running Signet of Malice as a heal (which is a horrible, horrible idea), It is physically impossible for a thief to get more damage than what I have. Even the +5 omni infusions in ascended armor to get more power.

Thus again, this is an edge case where a complaint can’t really be made against the whole class from my build and gear setup. Mathematically speaking, I’m the single (or tied with) hardest-hitting thief in GW2, as there’s no potential way to increase damage further. It’s like saying all CEO’s are billionaires and we should tax all CEO’s of all businesses regardless of size a very large amount, because some CEO’s are billionaires.

Vayne.8563:

No point in incentivizing it until the issues with WvW are fixed. Anet knows about them. They’re working on fixing them.

I’m guessing the reason we haven’t had a new season in WvW is because there’s no point with it being in the state it is now.

Incentivizing WvW now would give a very mixed message.

Them knowing about issues and having a genuine understanding on how to fix the issues are two entirely different thing.

Based on the current trend, it’s doubtful that anything positive will come from ANet at this point regarding WvW.

Liston.9708:

I just wonder what the enemy sees when we are “invisible” from that AND marked by a sentry. Do you not see the players, but see the dots on the mini-map?

But back to OP – broken as all get out. Way worse than the airship because it lasts so long……

You see the last-known position of the marked players before entering stealth. If they were stealthed before they got marked, their dots are not visible to opponents despite having the marked debuff. If the stealth effect is cast after being marked and it ends before the marked effect ends, the dot position simply updates to the out-of-stealth location.

Most features for WvW with HoT are poorly-designed and have little purpose in being there. Banners, tactivators, etc., are pretty much all universally seen as horrible features that never should have made it to the live game.

I’m pretty sure my first six or so 80’s were done via leveling up without tomes or writs because those characters were leveled up before writs were a thing, and before tomes could be achieved outside of sPvP.

OP is making some serious assumptions about how people play, which from what I can gather, are very, very incorrect.

I’d also further mention that new characters needing to re-play old content in an RPG setting isn’t at all illogical or unstable; when you start a new Dungeons and Dragons campaign, you don’t get to take the level and gear from the highest-level character you’ve ever made, and continue on your level 20 quest to slay gods. The campaign happens under the DM’s rules and under the rules of new characters. You’re going to deal with the low-level humanoid bandits and the likes repeatedly over many campaigns. That’s how RPG’s are when you start anew, and since game video game development is a slow and expensive process, creating new settings and stories ever character is impossible and an unreasonable request.

A lot of PvE is definitely easy, or at least from my POV, and many others. But age means very little in regards to difficulty. I recall back in my early teens I was min-maxing in Runescape and become one of the top 1% PvP’ers in the game. Even then, PvE content, and really, GW2 as a whole, is meant to be approachable by a very large audience. ANet has to account for players of low skill and allow for them to be able to beat the story content and make basic progression. The big selling point of the game was “play how you want.” We don’t need to enforce difficulty standards to cater to a certain specific type of player. It’s why OW PvE is easy and Raids/high-level fractals are meant to be difficult, and why there are two different PvP formats.

You’re absolutely right that ANet has made horrible decisions on a lot of the HoT content and made 180’s on its core design principles. That said, this has nothing to do with playing a single character or any kind of progression system.

Azure The Heartless.3261:

Jana.6831:

Azure The Heartless.3261:

I actually meant you do have a point on many cases.

Annd I consider WvW reasonably fair game when looking at class balance, bearing in mind that foods and the like tend to often cause outliers. There should be reasonable balance in WVW as well, as far as it can go; and since I often do not play wvw over PVP you and I may well be seeing two largely different states of the thief class.

Whatver the situation may be, though; I firmly believe that this is more of a ( some other classes are slightly overboard) moreso than (Thief is too weak), given the volatile nature of thief in general, because removing the amulets that created incredibly tanky specs and modifying tanky runesets in pvp made thieves drastically more formidable as far as spvp went. If we buff thieves first, I think future adjustments to the other classes are going to leave imbalances that will be blamed on thief being OP.

And since thief’s playstyle is highly reactive, we can’t really handle nerfs well. Might be best to use the thief as a barometer of sorts for locating the problem rather than thinking thief being too weak is the problem.

All I would write to this would be a repetition of what I already wrote (a million times since June actually) But I have to get that off my chest:

Food is really not that important balance wise as you pvp guys think – it’s just to compliment your build: Assassin = more damage and more crit, tank = more vit and maybe more power – the extras usually even each other out when both opponents have got food. Like a trinket. Speaking of a 1 vs 1 situation. For zergs we formerly used food that reduced the condi duration, now we’re using food reducing the stun duration. So basically; we’re comfort eating because of the lack of balance.

Fair enough.

I’ll jump into WVW and see what that feels like.

Thief is much more viable with a substantially larger array of usable builds in WvW than in sPvP. Counters shift around a lot, though; mesmers can absolutely destroy thieves in WvW and depending on builds, the mesmer can have an advantage. A thief can also much-more easily counter DH here than in sPvP.

Thief issues more or less stem from weapon skill balancing failure than traits and overarching mechanics. Most HoT content, including the Daredevil, needs nerfing down to keep it in line with the rest of the core specializations, and there are a lot of superfluous and pointless weapon skills for the thief, and a lot of new features are developed for the “good set”.

The 25% margin is identical to changing the number of hits from 20 to 15 in regards to damage output per use of F2.

It tracks stealth and teleports as well, so an extended cast can benefit the ranger against thieves and mesmers. I might be showing my age, here, but does anyone not recall the days before RF got its channel time cut? You could pretty much keep perfect track of a thief or mesmer while they were stealthed, and the ability was impossible to fully dodge. The extended animation of 20 hits provides this utility at the same damage output as of getting fewer attacks.

I suspect that the fix is just a “lazy” one where the devs decided to change the coefficients rather than re-make the animations and effects, though. Doing 33% more damage than it should is a pretty big deal; arguing that it isn’t is arguing that the damage adjustments made to the thief AA chains are just as insubstantial. The irony being of course both changes were made as band-aid fixes to fundamental class and design issues (be it with their own or other classes) rather than the problems stemming from bad coefficients on their respective classes.

The coefficient is higher on BF than backstab.

What a lot of people seriously fail to recognize is that traits often make up for more than half of the thief’s damage, up to almost 80% of it depending on build; the damage comes at the cost of sacrificing defenses because those defensive options are pretty much objectively horrible.

You’re likely not running a trait setup conducive to ramping BF damage. I played a S/S mesmer a long time ago built on BF and got its damage to peak around 6-7k per cast when combo’d correctly. Further, it depends heavily on the format; an 8k backstab in sPvP is actually on the high end and implies the use of sub-optimal trait choices or external might stacking. in WvW 8k is average/low, but so is a 6-7k BF.

Tbh.

The skill with proper teleport use is double AOE backstab with evade frames.

I’m sorry but there’s not a lot of skill involved in doing BV → 5 → F1 → 5, particularly since it’ll likely just outright kill most people.

Most people aside from clueless deniers acknowledge that staff’s damage is overtuned as compensation for pretty poor utility and mobility.

Rain.9213:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

“It’s extremely important that we stay true to our philosophy that you should be able to play Guild Wars 2 the way you want to play the game in order to reach the most powerful rewards.” – Colin Johanson, January 2013 (link)

I guess that philosophy is no longer being followed.

To add to your theory, I do remember Anet actually being legitimately annoyed at S/D Thieves when they were running around in PVP meta last year.

Something along the lines of “It’s not fun fighting something you can’t hit”

Then they gave Chronomancer, Scrapper, and Revenant a ton of evades and blocks xD

And gave thief more evades as its big mechanic bonus as an Elite spec.

They’ve contradicted a lot of their past statements which sold the game and did good things. Most of what’s released now makes no sense to their original manifesto and ideology which got them to be so successful to begin with.

Sandrox.9524:

It just seems to me you dont really have dmg on him as s/d like on d/p and I know d/p does more dmg but the gap in dmg is not like when I play for example.

Agreed. I noticed his crits were like my non-crit AA’s. Usually I pull 6-9k LS’s and 4-6k AA’s with MH sword in WvW.

S/D does fine damage. It’s just got weird casting time issues on its damage and a crappy 4’th slot ability.

Backstab Cooldown via animations to gain stealth/revealed (minimum 3.5-4.25/4.5-5.25s, minimum 6 initiative, degen rate sustained use implies 25% increased cooldown per use up to 7.25s minimum based on D/D max pre-casting). Only Blinding Powder utility can reduce this to a true 3s/4s cooldown every 40s.

True Shot (DH) 4s – higher damage than backstab.

Traited GF war (4.25) – higher damage than backstab, identical cooldown in sPvP.

Coalescence of Ruin (Rev) (4s) – higher damage than backstab.

Maul (ranger) – still 6-8k burst depending on build, cooldown reduced to < 5s.

Dragon’s Tooth – similar damage to backstab, 6s CD un-traited.

Death Shroud AA chain (traited DPH Spite ‘n’ Might core power necro) – easy 6-8k hits via might stacking (got mine to 14-16k in WvW) – 1s cast/CD.

Gravedigger – up to 1.25s CD depending on reset proc. Traited < 6s.

There are a lot of skills that can easily burst for substantial damage on similarly-low cooldowns. I’m not understanding the explicit thief hate in your post, Ansau.

And then there are all of the brief multi-hit skills which do even more damage like RF, blurred frenzy, Unload, UA, ZD, wrath, everything on scrapper, death’s charge, soul spiral, volley, MR, grenade engi, life transfer, GC… just to name a few.

Issue more or less stems from dire/perplex gear in WvW. But everything in dire/perplex gear is ridiculously overpowered. And I’m sorry, there’s really no defending that gear combination as balanced. In sPvP the build is kind of whatever since the defenses aren’t so absurd.

As far as moa’ing a thief, I’m sorry but if a mesmer can’t land a moa during the 3-4 second period of reveal they have a serious l2p problem. The rest of the matchup is heavily build/format-dependent. In WvW the matchup at times can favor the mesmer (even on power) with such drastically increased shatter damage. Condi dire/perplex PU is cakewalk as a build, but so is anything running dire gear as mentioned.

NinjaEd.3946:

Justine.6351:

Would reducing the stealth from 3 to 2 on leaps and increasing it from 3 to 5 on blasts be better or worse?

I think better, the biggest culprit I’ve seen from suggesting thief buffs is taking d/p into consideration and reducing it’s effective stealth uptime between bound/HS would tone that down but still give s/p and p/p a moment to reposition.

Could in turn allow meld with shadows to increase combo finisher: leap – smoke field duration as well so SA has a little more of a purpose to be chosen.

Agreed.
/15char

No buffs needed. Most of the new builds out there from HoT are just OP. We shouldn’t be trying to solve issues with overpowered classes by making more classes “overpowered”.

“Can potentially bring to a[ny] PvP match” isn’t questioning the utility of the class when examining a particular PvP match. The bit about potential is the critical part. A HB warrior can potentially bring a lot of damage to a fight. But that’s fight-specific and the damage done is dependent on a lot of factors, typically not at the discretion of the warrior but of the foe.

Current mesmer/chrono does better against the thief than it ever has, which overall has pushed the mesmer and thief matchup to be pretty balanced. A lot of people deny this, but on equal footing, the matchup is honestly pretty split these days. It’s only really favoring the thief in duels, but that’s quite the opposite of competitive PvP. You didn’t see Helseth seem to care at all about Daredevil play or Toker going on mesmer-slaying rampages. While the thief does bring the most potential decapping of all of the classes, the top-tier play is a different beast. The pros claim the thief isn’t even a consideration for decapping because combat matters more right now and the revenant, mesmer, and scrapper, all offer similar decapping potential, but much better fight presence. Just because the “potential” is there, just as how portal can being huge “potential” utility, doesn’t mean it’s going to be necessarily worthwhile in the top tiers of play. That is what I said, no? Right.

I’ve got a feeling we’ll see druid use over thief use even in leagues where no duplication is allowed, just because the druid does a better job against a variety of classes, can hold a point, and offers substantial mobility while directly hard-countering any prospective thieves. The primary role of the thief was to decap uncontested points. Even that has been phased out, and the mesmer matchup of the days of olde favoring the thief so heavily have long since passed.

Fay.2357:

DeceiverX.8361:

-snip massive irrelevant post-

This entire thread is about PvE. The comment you quoted was responding to a comment advocating mesmer burst in PvE. Literally nothing in your post is even remotely relevant or useful.

Seeing as game balance and class design is based on multiple game modes, multiple game modes are necessary to be considered for PvE balancing as well. I also refuted the claim made about about GF war offering superior burst damage to the mesmer, which is completely untrue. All game modes are linked one way or another. Neglecting to consider other game modes and other classes and the design principles of the game will accomplish nothing for the class or the greater good of the game across all formats. It’s why you see uninformed posts about Backstab needing substantial damage bonuses, warriors needing more defense, rangers not having enough burst, etc., because right now, each class has vastly different levels of power in different formats. Basing balancing changes by examining one format and only one format brings even more disparity to the classes and defines an even stricter meta across multiple game modes.

Frankly, the condemnation of my post and not examining the reasoning in the later half of it when I address PvE brings nothing useful to the discussion. If you wish to proclaim any dispute over balance is “not useful” if it argues against the principle of mesmer DPS being top-tier, then just let me know and I’ll simply stop bothering trying to advocate for this class to be designed in the proper direction as a whole to contribute more towards a healthy game environment, because then this thread is just a cry-fest ignoring other aspects of the game and the potential damage or other PvE design decisions which need to be accounted for.

So far, I’ve seen very little discussion as to how the class could be improved, or why, but rather “x class is better than us for the personal DPS role and we suck based solely on this designation, more damage plz.” That’s not how the game should be balanced. Even the thief community didn’t want AA damage increased to get them a spot in raids; there are fundamental mechanical issues which inhibit the class from growing. The damage bonus was a band-aid to a gunshot wound. More personal DPS on the mesmer to boost it to levels people actually care about (I.E. optimality) would make the class OP in PvE and PvP. And most level-headed people agree being OP is boring/stupid.

musu.9205:

DeceiverX.8361:

TheOneWhoSighs.7513:

Also, “fantastic and frequent burst”. Like, who cares about burst damage?
Even if we’re talking about burst damage, nothing comes anywhere close to gunflame warrior.

The entirety of the PvP and WvW communities do. Sustained DPS means absolutely nothing in these formats. Either you facetank and attrition or you hit like a truck in kill-or-be-killed. The celestual amulet was only good on (some) classes in sPvP because it had almost 40% more stats on it than it should have, and boon spamming and defensive traits accounted for the losses on a few builds, keeping up durability to bunker-build levels and enough damage to beat out heals and evades which normal bunkers couldn’t do.

Mesmers have the best burst per time in the game of all classes off an MR combo. Period. Gunflame does around 2/3 of the damage of a proper MR alone. A whole GS/blink combo does around double the damage. It’s funny, because stage 3 Killshot does more damage than GF. GF is just more accessible so it seems more OP than other skills. Claiming GF burst is the best in the game is both ignorant and wrong.

The only class with comparable burst damage capability in such a period of time is the thief, but to do so you need to run D/D signet backstab, which is widely considered as the worst and least-viable synergy-built build in the entire game.

Yea, in PvE burst doesn’t mean much, but maybe, just maybe, it isn’t the mesmer’s goal to be killing hordes of trash mobs in PvE. The entire class is built around confounding enemies and annihilating an individual target, unless you’d like to declare shatters aren’t meant to burst a single target nor provide defensive bonuses.

And so, the mesmer got alacrity, instead, to justify use in PvE, because the party-wide DPS it gives makes any argument about personal DPS insubstantial. The entire speed-clear (which is what the arbitrary berserker meta came from) scene was about group-damage augmentation. Rangers were taken in these groups despite previously offering the worst personal DPS in the game (yup, lower than mesmer) due to Frost Spirit and Spotter providing substantial party-wide gains which overshadowed their poor personal DPS.

The only fair way to bolster the mesmer’s personal DPS potential would be an elite spec that just straight-up removes shatters. But frankly, this will/should never be used and design-wise is a horrible idea, because unless selfish classes like the thief would gain massive group support roles, and the mesmer’s personal DPS would top the charts, the combination would best be served for thief as DPS and mesmer as alacrity, otherwise one class under-performs at its own roles, and either one is nerfed into not being an optimal composition, or one is buffed into being superior at one of those roles, just changing the scene and not improving the gameplay. Simply, the dynamic doesn’t actually allow for diversity, but rather shoves the same problems to other classes.

To create an optimal PvE composition and subsequently make content around these types of compositions, there requires more and more power creep. This drives a lot of players away as we’ve seen with HoT and is one of the biggest if not the biggest complaint about the expansion.

with so called best burst damage , mes still cant kill equal skill tempest , repear scrapper , thief /DD , rev and druid due to lacking of sustain damage while other does less burst (actually some does same in reality since mes combo in high end pvp is far harder to pull off almost impossible without stealth,but whatever i will give this best burst ),but far better sustain .ITs not hard to check , log on a rev or thief or ele or necro or anything else , swing your melee weapon on golem, and log on mes , swing your melee weapon also summon izerker , and see how pathetic the mes sustain damage is even with one izerker alive (lets ignore the surviblity problem of illusion also ignore the longer set up time .)

btw im pretty sure op was asking about pve content , can you have some common sense before you say mes damage is fine .
idk why ppl could lie like this i meant seriously , mes is hardest class for lvling and doing worst dps u can not really argue with this .it is not us asking for a power creep level damage buff plz , its us as the lowest dps class asking a reasonable buff on sustain damage .

“Yea, in PvE burst doesn’t mean much, but maybe, just maybe, it isn’t the mesmer’s goal to be killing hordes of trash mobs in PvE. The entire class is built around confounding enemies and annihilating an individual target, unless you’d like to declare shatters aren’t meant to burst a single target nor provide defensive bonuses.”

“The entire class is built around confounding enemies and annihilating an individual target—— so as this nonsense talk goes , thief should do poor damage since they should go stealth ! when we are talking about the game balance and actual game play , u suddenly dropped the class concept ?whats your logic ?

”But frankly, this will/should never be used and design-wise is a horrible idea, because unless selfish classes like the thief would gain massive group support roles, and the mesmer’s personal DPS would top the chart“

before HOT thief did have group support ,plz group wise stealth and aoe blind , also cc on demand . you know before hot thief was in most pve dungeon and fractal speed run right ?

and again there is difference between asking for a reasonable sustain damage and asking for buff in order to be dps king . can you read , or you dont understand how worse it is for a mes ?

“the mesmer’s personal DPS would top the chart“ math doesnt agree with you .

And the thief frankly doesn’t do very good damage. It was ranked sixth below the AA damage increases and rev’s nerfs. It’s now sitting at second place for sustained DPS for PvE and in the middle/low tiers in PvP and resides currently in middle-high for burst damage only when playing against glass targets with no boons and running a fully-aggressive build that uses zero utilities and has no condition cleansing. They in fact do heavily utilize stealth as a compromise for their defenses. They lose damage when using stealth. Again, the reason why the thief does so much damage isn’t good design. It’s a band-aid fix to a gunshot wound.

Thief’s “utility” was SR to skip trash mobs. AoE blind was negligible, and was not used. Competitive DPS was D/D, which has no access to blind, and assuming SA is foolish because CiS resulted in DPS losses due to needing to use stealth. MI and portal can handle this niche as well. Further, group support in speed clears meant damage. Again, this is why the ranger was used in top-tier groups and kicked on sight in pug groups.

A slight DPS boost will do literally nothing for the mesmer, though. That’s what I was saying to begin with, and seemingly went over everyone’s head. Raid groups and high-tier PvE groups play for optimal compositions. I play a mesmer. I even said that the mesmer’s personal damage is bad. A small boost won’t help the mesmer be more useful in meta-setting/abiding PvE because nobody will care about its damage unless the damage is optimal or near-optimal. The thief still did tons of damage before the AA chain increase. Yet the class was kicked-on-sight by an overwhelming majority of groups on the basis that it didn’t do the damage a Rev or Ele did. If the mesmer didn’t have chrono/alacrity, sure I’d advocate for a reason to get mesmer’s damage contribution group-wide to increase in some way. Fact is that it has these mechanics, and to balance its massive burst potential and keep its DPS in check, sacrifices have to be made from a numbers perspective. Subjectivity here is null and is what caused the celestial-stat meta in PvP. These kinds of balance ideologies fail on principle and the results have already been shown to have failed when put in practice.

I play and have fully-geared every class in the game except engineer, swapping frequently depending on the role I need to fulfill. Again, you’re taking my post out of context acting like I don’t understand that mesmer DPS is poor. Problem is to balance its burst and DPS. This is something that needs to happen because ANet needs to balance for multiple formats. As soon as the DPS becomes competitive enough to justify a DPS mesmer in PvE (which as I mentioned will not be justified unless it tops the charts due to raid/fractal composition ideology/meta adaption), if nothing is sacrificed, the build hits overpowered status in sPvP, and it will get nerfed, or as a consequence, something else will get buffed to be stronger than the mesmer, and we’ve just shifted roles or are back to square one except then the game is power-creeped and more people leave.

Too early to call anything good or bad. We saw sub-par performance which on that level is massive.

Anyone who questions the utility a mesmer can potentially bring to a PvP match is a fool, though. I diagnosed portal play as being what will be a critical factor in sPvP play quite some time ago with the introduction of chrono and also again with the removal of celestial/defensive amulets. Whether or not that utility gain will matter in the highest echelon of play is the question at hand due to the fight difficulty being so competitive and the tactics employed recognized and countered early such that combat classes may be preferential. Good portal play can and will accelerate a team into the pinnacle of performance where other teams won’t expect it or know how to deal with it, but whether or not it holds true at this level is yet to be determined.

TBH, I’m surprised power shatter wasn’t used over conditions. The strength of the mes right now is portal play pretty much defining a win or lose, and overall, classes are a lot glassier than the previous tournaments such that power’s better off than it was before. I feel conditions is too weak against reaper and boon stripping and bursting a number of the current builds used is a pretty big deal.

No war/thief/guard is unsurprising. These three truthfully are bottom-tier and bring nothing to fights which rev can’t do better while bringing nothing mechanically unique/powerful to the battlefield. No druid is more surprising than anything else.

TheOneWhoSighs.7513:

Also, “fantastic and frequent burst”. Like, who cares about burst damage?
Even if we’re talking about burst damage, nothing comes anywhere close to gunflame warrior.

The entirety of the PvP and WvW communities do. Sustained DPS means absolutely nothing in these formats. Either you facetank and attrition or you hit like a truck in kill-or-be-killed. The celestual amulet was only good on (some) classes in sPvP because it had almost 40% more stats on it than it should have, and boon spamming and defensive traits accounted for the losses on a few builds, keeping up durability to bunker-build levels and enough damage to beat out heals and evades which normal bunkers couldn’t do.

Mesmers have the best burst per time in the game of all classes off an MR combo. Period. Gunflame does around 2/3 of the damage of a proper MR alone. A whole GS/blink combo does around double the damage. It’s funny, because stage 3 Killshot does more damage than GF. GF is just more accessible so it seems more OP than other skills. Claiming GF burst is the best in the game is both ignorant and wrong.

The only class with comparable burst damage capability in such a period of time is the thief, but to do so you need to run D/D signet backstab, which is widely considered as the worst and least-viable synergy-built build in the entire game.

Yea, in PvE burst doesn’t mean much, but maybe, just maybe, it isn’t the mesmer’s goal to be killing hordes of trash mobs in PvE. The entire class is built around confounding enemies and annihilating an individual target, unless you’d like to declare shatters aren’t meant to burst a single target nor provide defensive bonuses.

And so, the mesmer got alacrity, instead, to justify use in PvE, because the party-wide DPS it gives makes any argument about personal DPS insubstantial. The entire speed-clear (which is what the arbitrary berserker meta came from) scene was about group-damage augmentation. Rangers were taken in these groups despite previously offering the worst personal DPS in the game (yup, lower than mesmer) due to Frost Spirit and Spotter providing substantial party-wide gains which overshadowed their poor personal DPS.

The only fair way to bolster the mesmer’s personal DPS potential would be an elite spec that just straight-up removes shatters. But frankly, this will/should never be used and design-wise is a horrible idea, because unless selfish classes like the thief would gain massive group support roles, and the mesmer’s personal DPS would top the charts, the combination would best be served for thief as DPS and mesmer as alacrity, otherwise one class under-performs at its own roles, and either one is nerfed into not being an optimal composition, or one is buffed into being superior at one of those roles, just changing the scene and not improving the gameplay. Simply, the dynamic doesn’t actually allow for diversity, but rather shoves the same problems to other classes.

To create an optimal PvE composition and subsequently make content around these types of compositions, there requires more and more power creep. This drives a lot of players away as we’ve seen with HoT and is one of the biggest if not the biggest complaint about the expansion.

Ashenvall.1564:

DeceiverX.8361:

Tadsoul.6951:

They should make this skill be a real risk to the necromancer
For example it should apply like 20 stacks of bleed for 1 minute
I’m in a hurry so ill post reasons later.

Lol.

Step 1:
“Apply 20 stacks of long-lasting bleed to self.”

Step 2:
Using staff, press 4 underneath target, taking an unblockable 20 stacks of long-lasting bleeding.

Step 3:
Watch them die to what was intended to be your own 20 stacks of bleeding, or if cleansed, apply your real conditions.

Nope. Just nope.

I never thought to that! W

Was one of my first thoughts when using BiP on core necro. Since pre-reaper staff was the shroud weapon due to higher base damage, I did BiP → staff 4 → shroud-bursting for really massive damage. The extra power means a lot. Sigil of Strength with the Spite line led to stacking 25 might in just seven autos.

If BiP got moved to stacking so much self-bleed, this kind of combo would be completely out of hand on condition builds. It works well at the moment because blowing a transfer that early is risky business, and the duration on yourself is three times shorter than on your foe from the cast itself, so it’s often preferable just to eat the damage.

Tadsoul.6951:

They should make this skill be a real risk to the necromancer
For example it should apply like 20 stacks of bleed for 1 minute
I’m in a hurry so ill post reasons later.

Lol.

Step 1:
“Apply 20 stacks of long-lasting bleed to self.”

Step 2:
Using staff, press 4 underneath target, taking an unblockable 20 stacks of long-lasting bleeding.

Step 3:
Watch them die to what was intended to be your own 20 stacks of bleeding, or if cleansed, apply your real conditions.

Nope. Just nope.

Sustained DPS approaches have never been competitive even in PvP, though. Burst for executions between heals in order to kill a bunker outright is frankly the only damage-oriented model which has worked.

The thing about the shortbow is that if it gets competitive DPS, there becomes little incentive to not use it if that DPS is buffed to a point where it can kill people substantially easier, or still entirely a situational weapon because the kit, as mentioned, it designed entirely for support.

Regarding everything else being power creeped so why not the thief… this isn’t the way to solve a problem. Making the problem worse doesn’t do anything but justify other sides of the scale (other classes) demand that they get more power because the scale tipped a little bit more out of their favor. It just becomes an arms race until the game is no longer playable. And we’re already very close there.

The OP stuff has to get nerfed, plain and simple. And the decisions of which weapons to bring and when to use them, should be designed to be as ambiguous and difficult of a decision as possible. Otherwise you end up with one single build dominating the others with no room for the others, design-wise, to take precedent. This is the case with D/P and shortbow already. We don’t need to even further ingrain alternate-weapon dominance.

Don’t get me wrong, I completely agree with both of you in that condi application these days is way too easy for how strong the ticks are. Thing is, the PvE crowd demanded huge condi damage to compete with berserker gear, and it’s very unlikely that this will get redacted. Upping cleanse is probably the only feasible idea.

I wouldn’t say that reveal is too easy to come by so much that it’s too potent at the moment, and the thief is too dependent on the effect. Sic ‘Em is a fair example of a skill which does the application properly in that is still requires a target. AoE applications on fairly low cooldowns just don’t really make a lot of sense.

There definitely needs to be cooldown adjustment and a reversion of spammy play back more towards how the game was defined at release. These days all skills seem to be made useful all the time and available all the time with no drawbacks due to the passive nature of defenses. This trivializes a lot of the fighting and makes the game as a whole a lot less enjoyable. I feel like I’m back in a WoW-clone at times.

Almost like they intentionally changed Shadow’s Embrace to handle these kinds of issues and completely ignore cover conditions as to prevent DoT death by prioritizing heavy incoming damage for better sustain potential.

People still shout it was heavily nerfed, though, failing to recognize how much better this trait is these days.

But yea, part of playing condi is covering DoT’s with “useless” or spammable effects to prevent cleansing. Easy these days just because of the number of passive procs and random conditions being applied by everything, though. Bulk cleanse to remove the DoT’s is typically much more important than a high rate of single-condition cleansing.