Guild Wars 2

The subject of burst damage assumes stealth due to the nature of MH dagger/backstab. Shadow Shot can be fired from stealth, and during the trajectory of the bullet, the animation for backstab can be performed. Upon the impact of Shadow Shot, the thief will be teleported to the target mid-backstab animation, causing the backstab to land despite being revealed “prior” to the skill landing with the successful Shadow Shot. When considered as “pre-backstab” enablers, be it entering stealth, closing the gap, etc., Shadow Shot out-shines CnD by both its burst damage and the time between skill uses, as the damage portions of Shadow Shot and Backstab will occur within minute fractions of a second of each other to the degree of border-line parallelsm whereas a CnD → Backstab is sequential and CnD has a longer cast time and aftercast.

Would rather see it as on a dodge with no ICD with Acrobatics getting the cleanse on evade as to cut down on the number of evade-spam builds running around, frankly. Pushing evasion back into Acrobatics and buffing the line would help spread these builds out a bit better, particularly because then it leaves further room to buff Acro and core thief cleansing a bit more.

Ohoni.6057:

Fact of the industry: PvP is more marketable and spectator-friendly. ANet’s fascination with E-SPORTZ!!!!1! shows this trend as well, as per the success of many PvP-centric games and micro-transaction-model imports with deep PvP systems.

They can be, in other games, but GW2’s never shown that it has the potential to be successful as a PvP-focused product. It is a successful PvE game that includes a PvP element, it is not LoL.

It wasn’t initially because they made their combat mechanics too complex for newbies to watch and understand the depth of what was occurring, they’ve never properly balanced their game, spectator options didn’t exist for the first two years, and they didn’t innovate on their game mode in regards to formats, maps, or systems changes for competitive leagues done properly (HoT season is also a failure here).

sPvP’s lack of success has been attributed to many failures design-wise. My comment was to parody ANet’s continual devotion and consistent failures on the basis that despite having long-lost its massive “E-sports” potential, they still push so hard for it because it’s so marketable. PvP systems and good combat mechanics ultimately are what define success in this industry. I played League in its beta days and have playe dit and continue to play it. Let me tell you, that game was NOT graphically-attractive, its champion pool extremely limited, and its player count was very, very low. Its balance was impeccable, though. Its gameplay extremely tight, and champion design was very simple. They worked on streaming options and did their streaming of major events in-house with proprietary tools, then released those tools as early as possible with claims years prior mentioning that it was on the way and a big development focus. League’s current state of affairs and imbalance, complex champion mechanics, and highly-competitive prizes are achieved at this point largely from their game’s size.

Online gaming at its core is largely competitive, and this is very marketable. That’s what I’m trying to emphasize.

Staff has been known to out-DPS D/D for some time on the basis that the amount of static damage modifiers when building for staff in Daredevil is better than the entirety of DA and CS combined above 50% boss health.

D/D will out-DPS D/P due to the initiative savings for stealth access and brief vuln on CnD. D/P will out-burst D/D because Shadow Shot’s damage coefficient is higher than CnD’s with the recent changes to CnD.

Ohoni.6057:

Short bow and pistol… p/p does have dmg. 6k crit cluster bombs and crazy unload dps spam.

Unload is relatively weak and very expensive without Ricochet to spread out the damage. It’s just the best DPS a Thief can do from range.

Unload is weak? What planet are you on? Traited for damage, Unload now deals almost 40% more DPS than Rapid Fire and P/P overall can out-damage LB ranger. Unload has dealt higher DPS than longbow/Rapid Fire this entire time because it has much more than half the damage in half the casting time.

And longbow ranger continues to be one of the worst PvE DPS sets in the game.

So in your opinion, which are the strongest 1200+ range sets out there?

Ranger longbow. And it absolutely sucks relative to melee combat in regards to DPS, because not only by design is it meant to (ANet has come out publicly and stated this during talks about the ranger considering the perception of the ranger and the old longbow during various class showcases, CDI, etc.), but like I said above, you’re not gaining or giving utility at 1200 range. 25 Might + 180 power/precision/ferocity, Alacrity, Quickness, and 30% outgoing damage in modifiers are massively important to speed up a fight.

Frankly, I can get a gold medal in Teq using Scorpion Wire’s damage. There’s your 1200 range-much-needed safety-net skill. Just rebind it to 1 and spam it. You’ve got what you’re asking for.

What I’m asking for is to meaningfully contribute to the success of the event as well as anyone else around me, not merely to “tag and get my credit.” I’m not satisfied with “press 1” gameplay.

So being at the event finishing people’s combo fields, providing heals, buffs, boons, debuffs, and break bar damage isn’t meaningful contribution despite them being quite literally necessary to beat the encounter?

I’m sorry but World bosses by their very nature ARE “press 1” gameplay. I’ve literally gone AFK at these fights in melee range on my thief and have been fine.

If there was an actual purpose or need for the 1200 range DPS rifle for safe gameplay for the thief for PvE, sure. The thing is, there currently isn’t. All it’d do is break PvP formats.

And I know for a fact the fallout from deleting WvW would be way bigger than ANet removing World Bosses. I’m next to certain the major focus on WvW occurring in the near future is because their business statistics are plummeting and multiple new games are being released featuring WvW-style gameplay that are frankly going to do it better than what ANet has now, particularly in the minds of the players who are disgusted with HoT’s WvW changes. Every leading WvW player condemns the changes made recently and entire communities have been left fractured if not broken because of them. They’re scared because they’re going to lose huge business. I recall at release the queue and overflow to Lion’s Arch was shorter than the queue to any of the WvW maps. The audience is there, and not paying attention to it is costing them business. WBT is historically just a bunch of people running around getting their daily gold or because they’re so bored of everything else.

I respect those who do Triple Trouble untagged with no people to mooch off of them. That’s about it.

Sandrox.9524:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Nah, Greatsword comes with a gap closer on GS5 and Shroud 2. Sure, the former is less reliable than we’d like, but it’s there.

No, the only change that Death Spiral should get is a cast time reduction from 1 second to 3/4 second. The only other change I would say Greatsword specifically needs is a shorter cast on the third auto hit.

Pulls in general need attention, but I fully recognize that they are not easy to fix.

+1 agree on all points

Agreed. The only buff to GS I really see as being justifiable is reducing the cooldown on Grasping Darkness. We’re not meant to be mobile chasers outside of shroud. I ran Spectral Grasp for a while on my reaper just because the extra pulls were really helpful to locking down particularly cleanse-heavy builds like Eles due to the removal of chill. Putting the skill down to 25s and seeing some GS love outside of Soul Eater (let’s be honest, this trait is awful) could make the GS much more formidable in PvP environments without just buffing the auto. With more reliable pull effect game-wide, we’d end up in a really solid spot for control with the GS

All evades and movement effect skills do not allow you to pass through warding effects. This includes things like thief Sword 2, which despite being a teleport, cannot pass through wards.

Stability or Shadowstep effects are the only way out. It’s for this reason DH counters thief so hard.

The more recent cast will overwrite the previous one.

Serious Thought.5394:

Like I’ve been saying- only reason to take this line (unless you really want the augmented steal) is for preparedness. Anet makes it baseline, sudden build diversity ensues, they realize how bad this line is minus 4 or 5 selectable traits. Profit?

Thrill of the Crime.

I could leave it and be willing to lose preparedness. I can’t leave it and lose ToTC.

Ohoni.6057:

The game is balanced around sPvP. That’s a fact, that’s the truth, and that’s the premise for all decisions made unless people start not playing the game at all or something is definitely not working as intended. As far as balancing goes, ANet’s stance really does not indicate much of an interest in how the PvE tiers are.

Perhaps so, but I refuse to play along with their biases on that. I feel we as a community can do better than they have, and should always try to consider all aspects of the game, not just sPvP like ANet does.

PvE is doable by anything given the skill. What you’re asking for is easy-mode pewpew with competitive DPS to melee alternatives.

I’m asking for a standoff range option for Thieves that puts their sustained DPS at that distance on par with Ranger, Engi, Hunter, etc. If they aren’t going to deliver on that, then I would rather they not give the Thief Rifle/LB at all. I see no benefit to a ranged weapon that is used as another support tool.

This will literally never happen in the competitive PvE environment, and frankly, the number of players who actually care about high-end PvE is so miniscule that if Anet actually catered to them, we’d have a horrible state of game balance and thieves would not even be as strong in PvE as they are, because our damage would need to get nerfed or others buffed; in which case our utility suffers for pug runs which is what the majority of players pay attention to.

That’s nonsense, Thieves are by no means in demand for any PvE content except to provide Stealth or to venom share. Or DPS is not considered a necessary contribution.

Fun fact, six chained interrupts and permanent 25 vuln as I mentioned in my specialization on no cooldown via the initiative system would absolutely destroy break bars to the point where the rifle would be an amazing weapon for high-end PvE as a secondary for damage ramping. Stacking modifiers and group utility always takes precedence and is why Water Spirit + Glyph of Empowerment Druid is so heavily used. Oh wait, you never read my proposal and are making claims about how it wouldn’t be functional for group PvE. The irony.

Understand this, you don’t matter. Your proposal does not matter. If someone chooses to read and respond to your proposal directly, then they are doing you a favor, they do not owe it to you, they are not lessened by not having done so. I am not discussing your pet rifle build except in direct response to you bringing it up, and going by what data you present here. If I speak of a Thief Rifle build, it will be a general one that may or may not have any relevance to the one you came up with, because again, the one you came up with does not matter.

Also of note, ranged DPS scaling with distance doesn’t work in high-end PvE. The reason that longbow ranger was hated on so much for dungeons wasn’t because it had poor damage but because it missed out on all of the utility gained from being bunched up together for combo fields, boons, buffs, and other effects.

It really depends on the content. Some content the players all bunch up on top of the enemy, in which case a melee/skirmish weapon is best. In other cases, they bunch up at a distance from the enemy, in which case a standoff weapon is the best. In other cases, large groups do both. I’m not talking about things like Raids or dungeons, who cares about those? I’m talking about the actual content of the game, the open world events.

So what you’re saying is we should disinterest ourselves for every single major aspect of this game in favor of open-world PvE events to give the thief a DPS 1200 ranged weapon and forsake all competitive interests in the game despite them accounting for the majority of player interests and monetary gain for ArenaNet? You proclaim I do not matter and yet your interest lies in such a miniscule, closed-minded association and claim your subsequent opinion matters more to the integrity of the game?

I’m sorry but you’re absolutely delusional. Frankly, they could take away half of the World Bosses in the game and people probably wouldn’t care that much. Just like your claim about my proposal not mattering, you also mean nothing in a world boss. Your DPS coming out of a rifle means nothing when 100 other players are shooting away as well. Anything with a multi-hitbox range is going to crush your rifle ideology’s impact on the fight as a whole.

Who cares about raids and dungeons over open world content? I haven’t done a world boss in over two and a half years. I have zero interest in pressing 1 and watching something die. I have little interest in PvE as it is because I think it’s either largely too easy/waste of time in the case of dungeons for the reward it provides, or too big of a meta-shouting raging buffoons for raids and competitive groups.

Ohoni.6057:

Shadow.1345:

Rememeber back when pewpew Ranger was considered one of the two weakest classes along with Necromancer? That’s what a 1200 range DPS thief would be but squishier and lacking a pet. So, no, I won’t quit if they don’t get rifle.

Yeah, but then they buffed up Longbow. We’d want the “post lessons learned” version.

And longbow ranger continues to be one of the worst PvE DPS sets in the game.

If you want to talk about PvE so much and balancing towards it, please understand what constitutes viability in PvE. Otherwise you’re talking out of your bum proclaiming yourself as correct about so many assertions that are blatantly false, and you’re making up blatant generalizations about what the game wants and what does/doesn’t matter in the eyes of the players in regards to what needs to be balanced.

Frankly, I can get a gold medal in Teq using Scorpion Wire’s damage. There’s your 1200 range-much-needed safety-net skill. Just rebind it to 1 and spam it. You’ve got what you’re asking for.

Ohoni.6057:

People who really care about optimized PvE are the smallest of the smallest of groups of players.

Bull. People that pay close attention to it may be small, but everyone likes to feel like they are contributing 100% to the game, or get frustrated if they feel that they are dying too often, or taking too long to kill things. The people focused on PvE balance may be relatively small, but the people who care about PvE balance make up the overwhelming majority of players, whether they realize it or not.

Yea. As long as they’re not dying and dealing enough damage to make a run go fast enough/successfully enough, the majority of players are happy.

If the PvP formats aren’t tightly balanced, the entire integrity of the game modes falls apart and people move to different games. Count the number of mesmer for me please who quit GW2 because they weren’t leading in DPS/in super-high-demand for competitive speed-running dungeons pre-HoT.

Now count the number of thieves who have quit the game from being sub-par in the PvP formats. We lost Sizer when Acrobatics got gutted. A lot of mesmers left before they got massively buffed.

There’s a reason that games focus on balancing PvP over PvE unless PvP doesn’t exist or isn’t a primary feature of the game, and it has nothing to do with player enjoyment or viability. It comes down to money and the integrity of their game. PvE being imbalanced doesn’t change a lot. PvP being imbalanced causes people to leave, the game to get worse reviews, marketing to fail, and ultimately the game’s death.

Fact of the industry: PvP is more marketable and spectator-friendly. ANet’s fascination with E-SPORTZ!!!!1! shows this trend as well, as per the success of many PvP-centric games and micro-transaction-model imports with deep PvP systems.

Xillllix.3485:

Zefrost.3425:

Those are some balanced piercing auto attacks

We used to complain about 8k Backstab from Thieves when the game was released. Now Heavy classes do 8k auto attacks from 1200 range (or 14-17k bursts every 3 seconds if they press 2 and get lucky).

I understand the concept of inflation but I didn’t think MMO skill damage was also subject to it.

If you were complaining about 8k backstabs you weren’t complaining about the right damage or skills.

Hasted RF was worse than it is now and dealt more damage, pets could solo groups of players, and backstabs could reach 30k easily if the thief was built properly.

Thing is, ANet tried to balance their game and for the most part did a decent job at it. WvW pre-HoT had tons of viable builds for all different purposes – moreso than sPvP – but the expansion has brought in absolutely absurd power creep (Revenant, DH, Scrapper) and horrible guild upgrades which trivialize content and make fighting unfun and very limiting now.

Junkpile.7439:

Avit.3165:

Kekkei Genkai Kage.5930:

Get some toughness.

Get some toughness???
Are you serious, i’m a Guardian with 3066 armor and Rev hit me for 18k., sorry but can you please tell me how much toughness exactly i need?
/i have screenshot somewhere, im just too lazy to find it./

How can heavy class have only 3066 armor? Even light classes have over 2900.

… no?

Base on light is 1920, medium 2064, 2211 on heavy.

Due to the massive numbers Revenants push out, optimal blob setup is pushing an emphasis towards full Nomad’s gear including the backline. Death by a million cuts, so to speak, because one good CoR from the enemy and you lose your fight when five people hit the floor.

apharma.3741:

vana.5467:

apharma.3741:

It’s the modifiers you should be complaining about.

I do. All the time.
My post was not intended to call out Hammer Bolt as a core issue, though I do think the range is silly.

Range is 1200 (looking at it right now on tooltip) same as everything else, if it is hitting from much further away then that’s a bug.

I edited some numbers mostly rough and taken from my own zerker rev in full ascended. The might generating with CR is where the numbers really get high imo, 4K auto for no might in full zerk and all mods isn’t that bad and it’s more like 3.5k without executioner.

Every single ranged attack in the game functions this way except for firearms and ranger shortbow based on how physics projectiles are handled. This includes mesmer GS’s auto as well. Fun fact, if you jump, you can get further distances. ANet has also publicly come out (I can’t remember where, somewhere on the ranger forums) and made claims that this is working as intended and there are no plans to make changes.

Seeing as it already exists and thief has some of the best DPS in the game based only on its < 50% boss health figures alone, the trait is objectively better than others for PvE use.

OP isn’t asking for buffs or nerfs (“yet”) but discussion on the trait in sPvP. Based on the opinion on the OP, he’d be swayed towards buffs which would only benefit PvE players.

People who really care about optimized PvE are the smallest of the smallest of groups of players. Pugs get their ideas set by people who optimize groups, but the people who actually go the extra mile are fewer and further between than the number of players who engage in sPvP and WvW or casual PvE, RP, etc.

Ohoni.6057:

I don’t think you actually read the spec, nor did most people.

Yes, i said as much. I do not have the time to engage with it, and you did not provide a "TL;DR in your initial post. Don’t expect other people to care about your pet project as much as you do, and be considerate of their time.

That aside, I’m not a fan of the Thief getting a “beast mode” alternate form, particularly one that isn’t especially “thiefy.” When I think Stygian Hunter" I think “Ranger alt form,” or even “Necro alt form” before Thief.

I would argue that 6 chained dazes is pretty strong at 1200 range for sPvP.

And I would argue that who cares about sPvP? Thieves need a rifle for PvE enemies that hit too hard in melee range.

If we’ll ever see second set of elite specs then I’m pretty sure you’ll be able to pick just one. Too many problems would come if people would take 2 and a lot of complications could happen.
Without Daredevil line and Dash, thief isn’t THAT mobile.

Yes, and also keep in mind that the Thief Rifle spec, or the weapon itself, can always come with built-in restrictions that would further reduce base mobility. They can make the spec whatever they need it to be.

One other thing that I think should definitely be a factor if Thieves get Rifle would be that old “more damage at max range” element that Rangers and Mesmers have. If you want to do competitive DPS with a Thief Rifle then you not only need to be within 1200 range, but also over 900 range, meaning that if you’re dealing with enemies that will close to melee with you, then you can’t use that attack at its best, even if you can kite them into the 400-600 range effectively. Throw in a little self-rooting or self-crippling and they could make a build that is very effective for alpha strikes and for sustained damage against fixed targets, but not in the slightest overpowered in a 1v1 situation.

The game is balanced around sPvP. That’s a fact, that’s the truth, and that’s the premise for all decisions made unless people start not playing the game at all or something is definitely not working as intended. As far as balancing goes, ANet’s stance really does not indicate much of an interest in how the PvE tiers are.

There is no monster in this game that is objectively too dangerous for the thief to melee or use P/P/shortbow for. We have a plethora of evades, now a block-all-ranged-attacks skill on a very short cooldown, and Shadowstep. Actually, P/P hits like a truck and would probably out-damage the rifle unless they just made the right straight up overpowered.

PvE is doable by anything given the skill. What you’re asking for is easy-mode pewpew with competitive DPS to melee alternatives. This will literally never happen in the competitive PvE environment, and frankly, the number of players who actually care about high-end PvE is so miniscule that if Anet actually catered to them, we’d have a horrible state of game balance and thieves would not even be as strong in PvE as they are, because our damage would need to get nerfed or others buffed; in which case our utility suffers for pug runs which is what the majority of players pay attention to.

Fun fact, six chained interrupts and permanent 25 vuln as I mentioned in my specialization on no cooldown via the initiative system would absolutely destroy break bars to the point where the rifle would be an amazing weapon for high-end PvE as a secondary for damage ramping. Stacking modifiers and group utility always takes precedence and is why Water Spirit + Glyph of Empowerment Druid is so heavily used. Oh wait, you never read my proposal and are making claims about how it wouldn’t be functional for group PvE. The irony.

Also of note, ranged DPS scaling with distance doesn’t work in high-end PvE. The reason that longbow ranger was hated on so much for dungeons wasn’t because it had poor damage but because it missed out on all of the utility gained from being bunched up together for combo fields, boons, buffs, and other effects. This hasn’t changed, so giving the thief a DPS weapon at range will not help the thief in PvE and it will not help the thief in PvP aside from making people cry more about the damage the profession does from relative safety (stealth) and high mobility. Again, your understanding of PvE seems way off the mark, and rangers were still used in competitive PvE prior to HoT because Water Spirit and Spotter provided huge damage bonuses, and these bonuses would not be active if the ranger was using a longbow, thus, the ranger went S/D or S/A until sinister gear came out and burning got buffed like crazy to let the condi variant take over (still building all utility for water spirit/spotter) despite taking personal damage losses.

If you think you’re going to kite anything in this game while being under any effects except super speed you’re delusional. I don’t care how far away you attack; you’re being caught, and you’re being caught fast. A D/P thief can engage easily from 3k+ and stay stuck on anything. A warrior can do similarly, as can a DH, scrapper, ele, and ranger. Oh wait, I gave Stygian Hunter form a lot of Super Speed access and mobility, kind of like it was meant to be kiting when played optimally and build for it. It’s kind of like this spec has these measures built-in and again because you’re refusing to read the details you’re having an argument for no logical reason by making the false-claim you’re right because you say you are and I am not because I disagree with some of what you have to say when basing the specialization on a few fundamental ideas.

This disagreement and capacity for building for different things is the entire foundation behind the specialization idea because it can achieve so much and offers so much diversity in play while “changing the way you play your character” [Colin Johanson on Elite Specializations].

Seriously. If your time is so valuable, read the thing you’re going to argue about before you waste your time arguing about nothing.

DPS is fine on ranged weapons. Burst isn’t, particularly when it involves high stealth uptime.

Give a GF berserker stealth and you’d be seeing the same problem. It’s also why power shatter chrono is more deadly than the thief for 1v1. Burst means way more in the PvP formats than DPS when it comes down to dealing damage, and it’s this that needs to be distinguished when arguing class balance. The thief has some of the best single-target DPS in the game, but it offers only comparable burst and lower sustain than most other classes. For this reason it can’t hold its own well enough in sPvP and can’t front-line WvW blobs, but its excels at periphery in WvW; it can’t do enough in sPvP because of the way stats are allocated and capped in the way the thief’s damage output and other class’ durability scale.

Depends on the class, but I would argue that the trait isn’t that amazing except for Shadow Shot spammers. Odds are if you got them below half, the 20% multiplier isn’t going to help all that much, because either they’re already in the act of mitigating and healing, or they’ll just flat-out die.

That said, I’m not really fond of any of the DA tier 3 traits.

Ohoni.6057:

Again, I highly suggest people look into my suggestion. A burst/DPS rifle-based sniper spec doesn’t work by design and would create anti-fun gameplay situations.

Your post does not give a good explanation of the point of the spec. If you intend it to be some sort of supporty/CC spec then we have no need for that, we have Short Bow and Pistol already. What we need is a 1200+ range DPS spec so that we can engage in content that is too risky to melee.

I don’t think you actually read the spec, nor did most people.

Stygian Hunter form allows for the ranged DPS desired, innate durability, high movement speed, and better evasion, but the class does not feature stealth-burst sniping-instant-downs like a lot of people seem to want from 1200 range. The rifle itself is a support weapon used for massive interruption and control conditions application.

I’ll update the original thread later with design intent, but the focus on the Revealed debuff enabling the damage is to prevent us with stealth-killshot effects causing people to just flop over. It’s unfair and quite frankly, unfun.

I would argue that 6 chained dazes is pretty strong at 1200 range for sPvP. That takes +1 to a new level and gives the thief a mesmer-like support quality but still without the innate bunkering/point control ability mesmers have from invulns. Good use of shadowstep could let the thief effectively play in two “locations” near points at once.

There’s also huge synergy here with condition specs for getting torment on interruption, potentially quickly loading 18-21 stacks of torment or more on your foe, and getting devastating poison DPS from the rifle alone on point, further accentuated with some degree of point control with melee-range fear and an extra dodge.

For WvW, you become a stability-stripping, ranged-DPS, AOE-healing backline from Stygian Hunter form, with built-in counter-periphery on the rifle, or on an alternate weapon set which the class can already excel with.

The spec gives the thief definitive places in situations it currently has no role in without just incorporating more stat inflation or a stealth-snipe instant-kill that wouldn’t be enjoyable to play. Additionally, the spec was designed to cover necessary utility roles provided in various trait lines to be able to replace but also work exceedingly well with any build, gaining the capacity to replace any trait line from Shadow Arts to Trickery, but also be able to incorporate both.

As far as 900 range vs 1200; there’s a massive difference, particularly when projectile physics are involved. The pistols do not gain from physics, but Ranger longbow, DH lowbow, Mesmer GS, warrior longbow (largely the devastating ranged builds) all do. Good players at these classes will absolutely show you the difference between 900 and 1200 range (in the case of the above, it’s actually 1500-1800) given the opportunity. 1200 without physics-based projectiles is in my opinion a fair compensation, on the basis that we have enough mobility effects to get us within that proximity fairly easily. The stickiness is a completely different subject, but again, is why I made Stygian Hunter and Skirmish the way I did.

I may or may not win this thread a little bit.

Hôpless Necromantic (Pronounced Hopeless Necromantic with the circumflex). Clearly a human male starting with the Charm character personality, despite his constant failures to woo the woman of his dreams because, well, he’s a necromancer doing blood rituals and summoning gross undead things.

Again, I highly suggest people look into my suggestion. A burst/DPS rifle-based sniper spec doesn’t work by design and would create anti-fun gameplay situations.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Suggestion-WIP-The-Deadeye-ES-Suggestion/first#post5872957

I must ask, why the furious sharpening stone over oil? You’d get more power and would be more resilient to conditions while running Plague Signet from the extra 1k health.

Good to see another power reaper tearing it up in WvW. I run a more damage-oriented build than you, but power reaper is crazy fun. I recommend giving Reaper’s Onslaught another try. The full-cooldown reset on Death’s Charge is amazing for small groups and the DPS increase is way more than 15%.

Yea I don’t think it really needs more damage. Gravedigger covers that pretty nicely if you’re able to secure a hit against a target with the greatsword in general.

If I had to give the GS an improvement, I’d go for reducing the cooldown on Grasping Darkness. GS can do a lot of burst damage very quickly, but it’s pretty dependent on setting up with GD. Frankly, I think once every 30s (24 traited but let’s be honest here, Soul Eater is weak) is a bit long. Going to 25 and sharing with Nightfall or removing Soul Eater and seeing further reductions on GS cooldowns across the board would make the weapon substantially more useful.

I absolutely hate the core necro/death shroud. I understand the OP with the aesthetics as well.

Reaper imho is the single-most redeeming factor of the expansion. The rest of the game would have been better off without it. I spent the $50 on HoT exclusively for this spec because it is that much fun to play. Despite putting a massive amount of effort into my thieves and being a thief at heart, the Reaper pretty much became my favorite character to play overnight and is one that I consistently bring to most game modes over all others (I have 16 characters).

I had to tome my necro to 80, though. I absolutely couldn’t stand leveling core necromancer after like level 20. Too slow and too clunky for me. If you don’t have tomes, I’d suggest taking your time to level another profession and saving the log-in rewards of Tomes of Knowledge. It’s like 10 per month which means it can take a while, but if you do crafting on the necro + every so often a bit of leveling + tomes, you’ll get there pretty quick.

Evilek.5690:

DeceiverX.8361:

Conditions got buffed massively due to people whining about their dire condi tank builds not being able to out-DPS berserker-geared players in speed-run dungeons with very easy and very stale encounters.

The thief has limited cleansing available and a low health pool, making it extremely weak to conditions innately.

It’s just a bad state to be in. I usually just don’t bother fighting people who condition-oriented weapons because it’s pretty much a surefire loss unless investing deeply into camping stealth with Shadow’s Embrace and Rejuv.

What,What ?!! limited cleasing ? Hide in Shadows 3 , Signet of Agility 1, Infiltrator’s Return 1. Shadowstep 2. 3x codition cleanse with CD andone without CD.

Now traits: DD Escapist’s Absolution – cleanse condition every evade,

Traits 2:Tric Trickster = cleanse condition on all tricks skills – Withdraw,Caltrops,Haste,Roll for Initiative,Scorpion Wire,Dagger Storm.

Traits 3: SA Shadow’s Embrace =clenase condition every stealth – Blinding Powder,Shadow Refuge,Shadow Pursuit,Cloak and Dagger etc.

Traits 3: Acro Pain Response,Guarded Initiation,Don’t Stop (imune on immobil,chill/criple -50% duration)

Yeah Thief has limited conditions cleansing lol.

D/P,P/D,S/D Thief is unkillable with condition build

HiS doesn’t cleanse confusion or torment and is a very slow cast.

1 condition every 30s on SoA isn’t even worthwhile because other utilities could do it better or the endurance is used for evades.

IR is 1/3 max initiative to get a cast on, and it cleanses after the skill is pressed for the sake of confusion allowing for multiple ticks from its casting times + two procs of skill use just to attempt to remove it.

Shadowstep doesn’t cleanse on step but on the return only. 60s cooldown paired for the most significant mobility utility in the game makes it fight with re-positions and stunbreaks for use over cleansing. Bait SS and you win the fight.

Absolution has an ICD.

You believe that tricks are actually good, which they aren’t.

SE’s about the only respectable cleanse the class has, but one every 3s over a spread of conditions and cover conditions will kill the thief before SE can cleanse it all when against burst conditions.

Pain Response, again, only works on Bleed/Poison/Burn, not torment and confusion. GI only works on above 90% health (trash) and doesn’t remove DoT’s (trash) such that after one tick of anything it won’t go into effect anyways.

Don’t Stop has a 10s ICD and again, doesn’t do anything about DoTs or burst conditions.

Moral of the story is Shadowstep is the only option thieves have for doing anything against burst condition application, fights with other required utility purposes and abilities, and has a 60s cooldown as opposed to say, 30s on Cleansing Flames, 2 cleanses every 5s on a druid, kitten cure-all Signet of Stamina + Healing Signet on war, 30s Consume Conditions, 30s plague signet, 50s WoP, on necromancer for cure-alls, SoR’s passive, same-cooldown Cure-all on CoP on same cooldown, cure-all on PF on 35s, smite condition 20s for guard, 20s 4x cleanse on Mantra, kitten transfer on thievery, 32s cure-all on null field, Mallyx on revenant with ridiculous resistance uptime.

Those are just the utilities or weapon skills I know of. I think engineers have worse cleansing options than the thief, but they also have medium health (I.E. 50% better condition resistance) and around eight times the healing to just out-sustain the ticks with.

The cleansing options on the thief and overall mechanisms to deal with conditions are poor for the health the class has and its requirement of building squishier to do virtually anything. A build running Acro/SA/DD would be so laughably bad that all it could even do was maybe deal with conditions for a few seconds longer than normal, his a cooldown wall, and either just need to go into permanent stealth and camp stealth like a scrub, or die.

Conditions got buffed massively due to people whining about their dire condi tank builds not being able to out-DPS berserker-geared players in speed-run dungeons with very easy and very stale encounters.

The thief has limited cleansing available and a low health pool, making it extremely weak to conditions innately.

It’s just a bad state to be in. I usually just don’t bother fighting people who condition-oriented weapons because it’s pretty much a surefire loss unless investing deeply into camping stealth with Shadow’s Embrace and Rejuv.

Apparently not many. Nor do many recognize just how busted some of the spamming can be.

Shadow Shot itself makes most fights absolutely trivial when just timed correctly.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the initiative mechanic because sometimes I really need that double/triple cast on Dancing Dagger or chain evades during channeled skills like Rapid Fire or the entirety of a shatter mesmer burst combo. Some of the skills are just overtuned/don’t match their costs, though.

3spam unload prior to its buffing was kind of necessary for P/P to work due to the damage being too low for bursting someone down and the rest of the kit really not being that great when at range to begin with. With P/P buffed heavy this isn’t as big a concern, but spamming it isn’t really punishable and is still better than not doing so due to flaws in the weapon set’s design.

The rifle could fulfill a niche for a > 900 range weapon. Shortbow used to offer this but got nerfed due to its amazing utility. In WvW, a 1200 range weapon is almost required for several purposes involving attacking some tower/keep archers and being able to apply hits and pressure in the current NA meta.

I really do suggest you look at my suggestion regarding the Deadeye. I think its weapon skills provide a lot of coverage on useful utility that doesn’t reward spamming so much as Unload or Shadow Shot.

There’s way too much to post. I originally had it explained much better and laid out in another thread, but the thread got deleted and I can’t be bothered trying to explain it repeatedly. Look at the conversation that ensued. There’s a lot of information.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Much-like-ESO/page/2#post5821015

martin.1653:

Witch-hunter – rifle or crossbow oriented with a touch of magic. Basically make Van Helsing.

Psst. You might like this.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Suggestion-WIP-The-Deadeye-ES-Suggestion/first#post5872957

1200 range on a weapon would be nice for WvW to actually defend against incoming sieges when on walls and other similar terrain. I get the intention of not wanting a 1200-range 360noscope1337ski11zheadshot sniping burst build, though. That’s just OP and I hope we see some tweaks made to GF, TS, and CoR soon to accommodate for this.

Jayne.9251:

Oddly I get less lag playing EU than I do playing NA .. and I live in NA.

I think it’s an east coast/west coast thing though.

I’ve heard a mixed bag, some claiming it’s better, others worse. The US is really big, so servers stationed in WA can be similarly-far as to reaching EU. Depending on your ISP, traffic could be the breaking point. I’m on the East Coast as well and I maintain a pretty constant 40-80 ping to the NA servers, which is pretty solid. Don’t feel like starting over to test latency when I’m not really having issues.

The concept of “solo-roaming” only existed as a consequence of a massive loss of players after the initial surge of WvW was gone. Since WvW’s beginnings, groups have taken priority in effectiveness. Duos and Trios were considered valid. Solo, though? No way. Only the reduction in population has allowed the “role” to flourish.

You won’t find a server with a sustainable population that allows this to happen. Unless you only like flipping camps and not fighting other players, T1/T2 is where you have to go. it’s blobby, and every single person running in a gank squad is running the cheesiest, dirtiest, most overpowered builds they can with the full intent to 5v1 you, but it’s the only tier where you’ll get action.

I transferred out from the middle/low tiers a few days ago because I was quite literally our entire map presence. No guild, no tag, no pugs. Outnumbered 24/7, teamspeak empty. A group of five held our entire server’s presence back with us ticking for 50 for several days because we couldn’t muster more than three people to fight.

YES. More much-needed quaggan love.

“Now available for particularly large guilds is this beautiful overlook; a passageway can be unlocked to gain access to this area starting at guild level 100 with the use of an Guild Hall Overlook Passageway Ticket, a very rare drop from Black Lion Chests.

Don’t forget your Black Lion Chest Keys, available in the Gem Store for only 125 gems each!"

What do I want more of?

The delivery of content based on the original manifesto. The F2P/Expansion DLC/skin-moneygrab is a sad state of affairs for how little we’ve seen aside from some pretty maps in the past few years. MMO’s prosper on persistent worlds. Why do I feel like we’re just on a new map treadmill where the “good stuff” is always-moving to new maps? We’re not on a level or gear treadmill, but it kitten ed well feels like it, because there’s zero incentive to go back to previous zones that nobody occupies.

ANet to start focusing instead of trying to fix everything at once. HoT’s attempts to make changes to everything shows how big of a blunder the mentality of “change it all” can result in. The product feels unfinished, concepts are unpolished, there is a lack of depth in content necessary for an MMO world, content is time and money-gated, prior features were blatantly and insultingly removed, and most design solutions seems half-baked before they were rushed to implementation.

Real interaction between company and players when creating and shaping what comes next. ANet’s no-communications policy has created extensive rifts between community and company. We as players do not know what they are doing as to help them through the development process. HoT and prior implementations have proven there is a definite disconnect between us and those in charge of development decisions. The developers and leads frequent third-party media to interact with players more than their official forums. Developers and designers seem afraid their ideas will get shut down by the community before implementation despite the massive negative consequences that will come from such ideas if they were to be implemented. Various examples for HoT including Hero Points, Guild System reworks, and class design have left us with shoddy implementations with limited or no expressed concern. Only when the situation becomes so bad that their primary showcasing stars start to claim failure are actions taken. This is way too far.

Giving us the whole truth. I’m sick of hearing about how great the future of the game will be via features X and Y, which seem great, but these features come bundled with unannounced features and prerequisites A and B which completely destroy other aspects of the game or what was marketed as being a fun and fair service. A massive majority of the problems plaguing the game could have been prevented if the players were involved in the release process, and development time could be cut down immensely if project ideas could get scrapped at their inception versus post-implementation.

Not being afraid to admit failure and undo effort. Even on the rare occasions we’ve seen ANet admit failure due to their no-communications policy, their mentality has largely been “deal with it for now and we’ll fix it… eventually… maybe.” Some of the new implementations are absolutely abysmal failures. Reverting these changes promptly is sometimes necessary, and even the biggest, most successful companies in the world admit when they screw up and drop whatever they’re doing to fix and undo changes. Change isn’t always good, and when it isn’t, it’s important to go back before even more damage happens.

I feel like all I’m describing is what are considered as good business and software engineering practices. Why a successful company is floundering here I genuinely don’t understand.

He’s saying that from a purely technological level getting the interactions between NA and EU data centers and subsequent players would be so disgustingly laggy the game would just be unplayable.

Which frankly, I’m going to have to agree with him. There’s already pretty huge latency disparities within the US alone. OCX gets a near-constant 400 and frankly they’re always under-performers because of it. Getting those centers to interact without processing time for the data (which would be insane) would put everyone’s network stats to garbage.

After my prior discussion on the topic with Jayne, I think NA needs an intelligent system built on the megaserver technology that learns player trends to create more dynamic and fair matchups, and I think EU just needs some compression due to the way their communities differ from NA’s and how the state of WvW is different between the two regions.

We shouldn’t be replacing server communities altogether but simply introducing other people. ANet upholds transfer profits this way as people shuffle around to organize for their guild’s purposes for community permanence, stacking becomes impossible, and more people end up in the format and potentially a sense of honor is put into place for the game mode; last week’s enemies might be your staunch allies, so respecting your opponents – a critical pillar in building a good game community – can be better established when they’re more than just bitter enemies. Consequently, a cheating server or guild notorious for cheating will get eaten alive by its allies and enemies repeatedly, increasing report and ban accuracy in the long-term.

zhonnika.1784:

Going to guess that even if they could put in barriers around keeps/towers, people would find ways into them. Fix that way, and they’d be at it again. Instead of constantly patching what could be endless bugs (or ignoring them forever), they probably just wanted to avoid it all together.

This was my initial reaction to gliding being introduced – my mind immediately went to a variety of towers and the cliffs by Anz in EBG leading to tower/keep flips, and how difficult it would be to manage.

I’m not sure if I’d want it in some maps and not others. Since gliding is a HoT-only feature, you’d have people forgetting where it is and isn’t available as many do already. Real frustrating to jump off a cliff only to remember while falling you can’t glide in this area. I know a lot of people have died this way including myself. Going on BL patrol for several hours and then moving to EBG would probably cause of lot of unnecessary deaths.

I really just want alpine back T.T

That’s actually my bigger concern. Mallyx/Shiro I find isn’t too bad to deal with. It takes some skill and cleansing properly but it’s doable.

Shiro/Glint just has so much mitigation and immunity uptime with huge spikes in between that I’m struggling to find a way to fight remotely skilled ones. Due to their prevalence in WvW atm (I’d estimate around 70% of players in WvW are Shiro/Glint revs atm), hard-countering them directly in the absolutely most aggressive counter is imperative to survive. DD doesn’t quite do it due to UA hitting for an upwards of 30k and CoR hitting an upwards of 15k; it can dodge a lot, but as soon as you get into position to start hitting them, they seems to just pop another invuln.

It doesn’t matter the build or class, I just need the biggest baddest counterbuild possible. I have ascended sets sitting in the bank and 300 levels of tomes to pop for an instant counter. Right now the class is destroying WvW for a lot of people and so being able to kill them is a huge morale boost for many.

Willing to interview from small-scale hyper-organized havoc for next time. Who should I contact?

ArchonWing.9480:

Both banners are garbage and show a lack of thought and lack of testing of which isn’t atypical for the game, especially when it comes to WvW.

Yea, stuff is “imbalanced” in WvW, but that’s not that big of a deal. I see them as “tools” that anyone can use. Anyone can roll one of dem heralds or chronomancers or whatever the trend is with a good stack of tomes. Anyone can buy some superior siege. Anyone can do the silly laser event. Except this isn’t a thing everyone can use, it’s confined to rich guilds, making it a borderline p2w. People complained about ascended gear giving an advantage, but it was still possible to acquire on an individual basis and wouldn’t change the tide of battle like this. At least the chilling thing has a point in defending structures.

It’s also a lack of creativity. One is stack every defense ability. One is do lots of damage. Wow, that’s such engaging gameplay!

And again, it’s not much of a balance issue as it is a intent issue, of which I can’t read any beyond “let’s put a really expensive gold sink in and not test it out in a realistic environment as well as again alienate people that aren’t in a big guild”.

It’s an extremely disturbing trend in HoT that I see a slow promotion of power creep (inaccessible stats, i heard u liek pirate ship so we put some pirate ship on top of your pirate ship), lack of freedom of choice (Do this content to get this reward, and we won’t let you pick alternative ways), and exclusion (Non-HoT players lose guild buffs) that fortunately isn’t taken to that much of an extreme in most cases that I think really ruins the appeal of this game. This isn’t a step in a good direction.

I think the most optimistic way to evaluate the situation is that HoT was indeed so rushed that the current version of WvW is literally a skeleton model that was never meant to actually be played and we are still beta testing. Hey, I’m trying to be positive!

+1. The disparity between sheer size of guilds is completely absurd. My home guild of friends I’ve played games with for almost ten years has gone from being the best havoc multiple servers have ever seen to nobodies who’ve largely left GW2 with the unbelievable cost and pressure tied to guild halls for WvW success. These changes are way too excessive in how they favor massive blob-based guilds, and almost all design decisions for havoc and small group play have been and are continuing to be destructive such as through the rallying rework.

It’s extremely irritating to be told what we’re getting with no information or discussion prior to it. This format is expansive and covers a lot of play-hours for many players. The attentions and willingness to communicate ideas before they’re implemented is imperative before we lose more players due to ANet’s negligence and use of old information and poor implementation strategies caused by a disconnect with the players themselves.

Kaishina.6584:

Even ESL players could’t deal with them because of overall terrible low skill cap on the pvp scene post HoT

Fixed that for ya. Now that the skill cap is so low, and everyone just plays professions to their maximum potential by rotating some skills and chain-casting damage immunity effects, the ESL players can now properly mitigate any advantage a particularly skilled thief may have against them.

What I don’t understand is many thieves who make the class to troll with, act all trolly in-game, and then lose fights and then get salty when they fail at trolling because they got their faces melted by someone better than them.

Just curious, what class or build is consistently able to beat the revenant and why?

The animations on the human female thief are rock-solid. I think Norn females are better for rangers, though, from animation and lore perspectives.

I don’t really agree DB is needing buffs, particularly since it’s a cheap evade that deals quite a bit of condition damage already. Dagger Training should just be improved and made to apply 2s of poison on Double/Wild/Lotus Strikes to give the set more than just 3spam and need to use a not-so-safe auto to really optimize damage. Ideally design decisions should cut down on “cheese”, and without just removing DB or nerfing it, I see no middle ground other than traits or making the build carry some more risk to optimize its damage.

Frankly, I don’t think D/D was meant to be a condition set, and it happened as collateral when Death Blossom was forgotten about before they added condition damage into the game a long time ago. P/P is definitely intended to be the hybrid set and P/D the condition one. One carries strong interrupt potential with bleeds on the auto, the other one heavy use of Sneak Attack and the same torment access from Shadow Strike. D/D as a set feels half-developed in two directions; it’s like they initially wanted to make the set based heavily on power, then decided recently on conditions. I don’t think this has to do much with sPvP, though, rather that they’re trying so hard to bust the “zerker meta” in PvE and are giving D/D thieves better condition access and synergy with Daredevil as this won’t require a gear change.

Given these adjustments to DT, I think Death Blossom and Dancing Dagger could get reworks in their design. We don’t necessary need more or less condition application in either of them, but rather what makes this set fail for power builds and “cheesy” on condition builds and lack useful utility other sets have other than just evading while dealing damage.

For power, the set performs poorly since most applications of DB and Dancing Dagger are better-performed by D/P; Shadow Shot’s blind works excellently to mitigate an incoming attack and does massive damage rather than DB, and Headshot also has very strong interrupt capabilities, particularly when stacked with Impacting Disruption on the Daredevil. D/D is a very aggressive set for power builds, so dealing with slow animations is difficult. As far as Dancing Dagger goes, the skill has a poor skill coefficient and only works reasonably well against two targets grouped together where neither are dodging or invuln/blocking. These conditions are way too restrictive for the skill to function, particularly due to the sheer number of block and invulnerability skills now in the game. It’s long-lasting cripple may be intended to allow a chase, but a 900 range unblockable-teleporting-nuke on Shadow Shot doing almost 250% more damage is just objectively better at everything mentioned, while also providing defensive support through blinds as mentioned.

For conditions, the set lacks skills to deal condition damage other than Death Blossom. As such, because the evade has been buffed substantially, the bleeds last decent duration, and it has a lot of synergy with Daredevil’s condition applications, the build can readily rely on spamming 3 to mitigate damage and deal substantial damage in the process, all while being innately tankier than a power build by the nature of competitive condition damage stats.

Frankly, I’d rather see condition builds carry the same risk as power builds when optimizing for damage output instead of a sustained fight, so I don’t really support Death Blossom’s bleeding on its evades.

The resolution I see is completely changing the skills and their intent;

Death Blossom shouldn’t be such a short-range evade that can easily rack up condition pressure, and should instead focus on the evade and repositioning for chase potential, such as Whirlwind Attack. The damage should be kept low as to prevent spamming it for kills, but maintaining this mobility and defensive utility not while stealthed is something D/D absolutely needs to compare to D/P. Rather than blinds, the set can gets its defense on evasion, and bring more mobility to the table than D/P when out of combat, providing a potential purpose in decapping in sPvP. This skill can also apply some cripple and Vulnerability as to allow for cover conditions for condition builds and secure chases easier for power builds like Shadow Shot does for D/P, while ramping damage for D/D’s more aggressive nature.

Dancing Dagger should be remade into an entirely new skill. We’ll call it Blade Fan. The skill applies 50% more damage than Dancing Dagger hitting one enemy, but daggers are thrown at an enemy and up to four additional nearby targets, inflicting some brief torment and bleeding. The design intent is allow for better condition spread and have D/D have ranged options in both its physical and condition damage builds, while having Dancing Dagger not suffer from its primary target having a block or invulnerability preventing subsequent bounces in instances where it would be optimal. Due to the buffing the skill is undergoing, upping the initiative to four is necessary as to prevent the ability from being over-used over a stretched period of time.

I’m not fond of giving CnD an interrupt just because that’s really flavorful to have on the offhand pistol; kind of like a gunslinger who quickdraws his gun to stop someone as soon as they try to mess with him. CnD is tricky to balance, because increasing its reliability would have potentially disastrous consequences; that said, Shadow Shot seems to be doing fine in terms of balance (/sarcasm). I think I’d rather see the skill see a reduced initiative cost due to the risk it carries (down to 5 or even 4) and the vulnerability it applies heavily increased, allowing for D/D power to hit harder than D/P as it used to, and x/D conditions to tick harder on both D/D and P/D, as again, the build isn’t as safe as P/D or P/P interruptions due to the blinds, interruption-oriented play, and ranged capabilities.

But yea, thread derailed :P

Seera.5916:

Healix.5819:

Amazon (FR) has it for €20 (also the boxed version). It’s really not that odd considering some places had it down to $34 in the months prior to launch. The $20 range however seems like a possible mix-up considering the core game was around that price just a few months ago.

DLGamer.us has the digital version on sale for $37.

Doesn’t mean the store isn’t taking a loss on GW2: HoT if they think it isn’t selling well and want to reduce stock.

If it cost them $50 to buy it off of ANet, losing $25 is better than losing $50, if they don’t end up selling all of the keys before HoT gets discontinued.

They buy the copies in bulk at a rate dependent on the number of copies purchased. The more you buy, the cheaper the rate; this is based on expected demand. When demand increases, the retailers win. When it’s low, the vendor wins. Walmart probably bought hundreds of thousands of the things to store in its warehouses and put on shelves, reducing the price they needed to pay ANet. If they sell poorly, the price converges towards the rate they purchased them for. If they sell really poorly, the retailer takes a loss because that shelf space could be stocked with something else that could make them money, so they try and just liquidate them.

If I had to wager a guess, it’s reached the “not as big of a demand as expected” mark at this retailer; the cost of shipping them out to another one where sales of higher based on the number stocked locally is also probably not worth doing.

Good to have another person involved in the discussion.

I still play D/D to this day – I think D/P is frankly quite boring and very easy such that more interesting fights are often trivialized to spamming stealth and eventually bursting or just spamming Shadow Shot (I have proven many D/P players wrong about this skill being “fair” by beating them exclusively with this ability and killing them in three hits).

It’d still only take SR to stack the might necessary to burst. HA’s might gain would put CnD and backstab damage equal to that of Mug + CnD + backstab damage. I even went as far as testing this myself, and my claims hold true (Jana clearly did not).

And that’s exactly the thing: SA being nerfed didn’t really “ruin” D/D, and restoring it won’t really help D/D or balance the thief; all we’d see is an even bigger gap between D/D and D/P as I mentioned above, and D/D would just end up even further behind when D/P takes the balance considerations by being the strongest/meta build in what’s still an under-performing class. To buff D/D, the facets of what makes D/D rather weak need to be isolated and then reconsidered. A trait line universal to the entire thief class which genuinely only has minimal impact on D/D will not be a solution and likely end up causing unnecessary nerfs elsewhere as a consequence, potentially hurting the rest of the class even more.

SA is a very strong defensive trait line, and just giving it might gain doesn’t fix the problems with D/D or the thief in general. When considering balance, the class needs to be looked at holistically, not just through the lens of one weapon set. D/P is the primary concern here in regards to balance, despite the fact such a trait would ramp D/D into being objectively better and make SA deal more damage than DA. If people really want some damage on SA, I proposed a solution earlier to give a smaller damage modifier to stealth attack skills; this way, all builds based on dealing damage out of stealth (primarily D/X) benefit equally, and the line gets some more damage but not more than DA, which it shouldn’t, unless DA ended up getting things like cleanses and healing, but that would be overpowered considering DA is already considered one of the better lines, and is often used in conjunction with SA. If any line deserves more defensive utility, it’d be crit strikes, and probably modifying HK, considering backstab builds are not very strong relative to Shadow Shot/Auto-attack/Heartseeker spam D/P even within the scope of the thief itself.

Jana.6831:

DeceiverX.8361:

So HA provided two stacks per second? You’re at 13 with ToTC providing 14, which is 420 power. If it was one gained per second, it was bugged at decaying 2 per second and you’d still end up with 14 realistically on a CnD/Stab and 15 on a SS/Stab.

What are you talking about? Sword Sword and stability? And you’re assuming a build that no one ever used?
People were either running 26600 or, weirdos like me 06620 – I got my extra might from Acro.
And please don’t forget that I had to sacrifice stuff for that, as well as those who ran 26600 – they had to sacrifice as well.
You’re throwing numbers around you rather randomly and don’t stay with one topic: Pick a build and analyze that and don’t pick the best of everything to which no one ever had access to.

DeceiverX.8361:

420 net power will supersede 10% damage on DA. You can’t factor in Executioner as a valid damage modifier as it only applies to attacks made after the target is below 50%.

Of course I can as the fight was already ongoing, otherwise the other thief wouldn’t have 12 stacks of might you assume he had all the time. Oh wait, you assume he had 15 – which I have never seen on myself.

DeceiverX.8361:

There is no counter-argument here. Unless you run a base of around 4000 power without might (literally impossible), the gains from HA will be undeniably and factually better than the modifiers from DA. Period.

No, and I already explained why. Period. But you guys seem to have fun fighting golems.

You don’t want to get my points, that’s why I seem to refuse to see in your opinion.

DeceiverX.8361:

Also, 100k thief kills is BS. You’re implying you have ultimate dominator like six times over just based on class distribution in roaming for WvW.

That number was pulled out, yeah but I can fight thieves without killing them and I can also be in pvp. Also I’m doing a bit more than solo roaming – you can assume that I fought a lot of thieves. And actually you also don’t know for how long I’ve been playing and am playing each day

DeceiverX.8361:

You really didn’t get your point across because it’s not valid. HA’s reversion would just be straight power-creep on what’s already the meta builds and place an even bigger disparity between the trait lines that are already considered strong (Tr/DD/DA/SA) and weak (CS/Acro) as well as pushing even more in favor to D/P over D/D.

As it stands now D/D is dead – has been killed off in June. So if nothing is happening to buff D/D they’d still be better off against any opponent if the changes were reversed – I explained the why. The best a SA thief could get from HA was a damage spike after sacrificing a lot of utility. I don’t care about a possible power creep for D/P thieves as how it is now I don’t have any chance against any opponent and a D/P thief can always go DA which still is a stronger line than old SA.
(Get it now? – guess not, because you want to be right, no matter what. So, let me rephrase: I hope the rest of who read this got my point as that was what I wanted).

Shadow Shot Backstab. I already mentioned this combo. It offers better, faster, safer, and more reliable burst than any D/D build ever has. You talk like D/D has actually been good or had its good moments, but D/P has always been the better set.

Yea, people were running 2/6/6/0/0. Because it was optimal damage. They got the best of both words by getting Mug and EW from DA, the crit damage modifiers from CS, and the cleansing/blinding/stealth/initiative regen/healing/huge damage from SA.

When trickery and PS were figured out as being amazing, people dropped CS for DA/SA/Tr because Panic Strike’s utility required a big investment and SA still offered both necessary support and damage that was just better than CS’s to begin with.

I don’t understand why you’re fixated on Thief vs Thief encounters. If they really mean so much, D/D just shouldn’t be played because D/P is so much better.
A thief building CS/SA/Tr on the old trait lines will not need to be engaged in combat for less than a few seconds, and his target will be killed off by the backstab itself at over 50% or heartseeker if it doesn’t finish the job, something which executioner really doesn’t help with burst-wise. Executioner helps make bigger numbers. It doesn’t necessarily help dropping a single target any faster in regards to a target not engaged in combat; actually, it rarely ever does. It’s taken in the D/P sPvP meta because the +1 role is to drop targets already engages faster, not to increase damage on an outgoing burst when targets are OOC. I run this trait. It’s very easily replaced and serves no purpose outside of ganks. I run it for aggressive edge periphery in WvW blobs; better to kill the target on CnD alone and save the backstab for someone else entirely for two finishes over just one. Absurd damage I get occurs because Mug and CnD have already taken the target below half. 20% more on a backstab literally serves no purpose because the target is already guaranteed to die even if Executioner isn’t applied. Executioner only benefits heartseeker heroes and +1’ing using autos and HS in sPvP.

The fight doesn’t need to be ongoing for the thief to stack might from HA. He can do so before ever engaging. You’re not reading my posts or something, because I properly explained to you why you never had 15, be it from the way D/D works or a bug in HA causing stack degradation occurring too quickly.

If you’re willing to pull our huge numbers from your bum in regards to bragging about how good you are or how much experience you have, yet call yourself a “noob” in your defense when being wrong as a joke, there’s no helping you justify your argument. You’re making up numbers and not even attempting to justify them.

You’re neglecting the importance of might, closing your ears screaming “BUT DAMAGE MODIFIERS!!!1!” I’m sorry, if you honestly think DA offers more damage than ~400 power, you’re very far-removed from the reality of how the trait lines currently work or how the damage formula works.

SA sacrificing a lot of utility?… Are you crazy? SA IS the utility. Hell, even some staff Daredevils are taking SA because the utility in SA is so strong that coverage from BP and SR alone makes the entire trait line worth it. That’s like saying D/P has to make some sacrifices when switching from D/D because they miss out on some evasion frames and AOE cripple utility.

D/D is dead? It died in June? D/D hasn’t been as good as D/P since they introduced Revealed and nerfed CnD in 2012. It’s just taken people that long to realize this, and with CnD being nerfed in PvE for the normalization of buff in sPvP recently, D/P has only been improved by comparison by just being a better set, replacing the need for anything power D/D can bring and providing better utility and damage. D/D didn’t die in June. You not being carried by an overpowered trait line died in June. Since June, I’ve still played D/D with even better success than before (until now with HoT but I think we can agree there are balance problems completely unrelated to the thief here), because a lot of traits got moved around or improved for better coverage spread. You know what really died in June? Acrobatics and S/D. That was actually a good weapon combination that lost its oomph due to a lack of burst on the weapon and low utility if not played very well. Acro got gutted to make way for Daredevil (the combination of old Acrobatics and DD would be way too overpowered and most skilled thieves agree with this because it is quite obvious as to why). SA got nerfed because it was actually just overpowered and brought too much of everything to the table while rewarding unskillful play with unnecessary amounts of damage.

The glory that was once DA/CS/SA Assassin’s Signet on a thief was both the best and worst thing in GW2 imho. 30k+ backstabs were hilariously overpowered.

Esquilax.3491:

What would your reaction be?

Probably a lawsuit for them blatantly violating their privacy policy.

So HA provided two stacks per second? You’re at 13 with ToTC providing 14, which is 420 power. If it was one gained per second, it was bugged at decaying 2 per second and you’d still end up with 14 realistically on a CnD/Stab and 15 on a SS/Stab.

420 net power will supersede 10% damage on DA. You can’t factor in Executioner as a valid damage modifier as it only applies to attacks made after the target is below 50%. There is no counter-argument here. Unless you run a base of around 4000 power without might (literally impossible), the gains from HA will be undeniably and factually better than the modifiers from DA. Period. I told you the conditions to go test this out by; might gain on this level is substantially better for damage.

I don’t understand the basis by how you’re refuting this, particularly because DA and CS are designed to offer more damage than the rest of the trait lines, with Acro and SA providing more defensive options; it’s why these lines provided Power and Condition Damage, Critical Chance and Critical Damage, Toughness and Healing Power, Vitality and Boon Duration, respectively. If you want SA and Acro to offer a substantial damage advantage, you better be willing to give CS and DA condition cleansing and initiative generation. HA was nerfed because SA was an offensively-damaging trait line with massive power on defenses. Because it was designed to be a defensive trait line, they removed the might gain because it was just excessive.

Also, 100k thief kills is BS. You’re implying you have ultimate dominator like six times over just based on class distribution in roaming for WvW. That’s literally 100 thief kills per day which at an average of playing 3h per day is one thief kill every 30 seconds. Hell, even people surfing blobs are not even accumulating that kill rate across all classes.

You’d only need SR to cap the might gain – better than casting three signets, D/P can get permanent stealth without too big of a challenge, and D/P Daredevil does this without needing any utilities.

You don’t need this for sustained amounts of time because you’d be killing people in two attacks. I play signets. Fights are usually over in under five seconds. If you’re stabbing below 10-12k on even a tank with just 10 stacks of might you’re doing something wrong. SA giving 15 would replace the need for DA on all fronts and net better burst damage running SA/CS/Tr and would make D/P even stronger because it offers higher damage coefficients, faster burst, and better stealth uptime to stack might and take advantage of the benefits of SA much easier.

You really didn’t get your point across because it’s not valid. HA’s reversion would just be straight power-creep on what’s already the meta builds and place an even bigger disparity between the trait lines that are already considered strong (Tr/DD/DA/SA) and weak (CS/Acro) as well as pushing even more in favor to D/P over D/D.

I said SA was stronger because it bursted harder because DPS means nothing in PvP. I said DA/CS/Tr is better DPS, but since it means nothing in PvP, it can be ruled out as irrelevent. DA/CS/DD is actually the best DPS.

I don’t understand what the argument is here or why you keep insisting DPS matters when in all honestly it really, really doesn’t. Mesmers have the lowest DPS in the game, but shatter is a pretty strong build. There’s zero correlation.

—

D/P got hit harder by HA being removed because it could benefit from HA more than D/D. Yes, D/P is and was better. It doesn’t change the fact that HA being removed hurt D/P’s potency more than D/D’s, because D/P got more out of it than D/D. CiS let D/P actually maintain permanent stealth and maximum initiative easily to begin with. It’s no longer as big of a case. Yes, no other weapon set needed it – particularly D/P – but it doesn’t change the fact that D/P could be accelerated further even better than D/D because of the absurdity that was SA. D/D was only ever “good” because of SA; D/P was still better and it was better to an absurd extreme. SA was objectively the best trait line the thief had for every build based around even portions of stealth uptime. It’s still used because it’s just so strong as a defensive line. The offense was over-done and D/D wasn’t the sole benefactor in the slightest bit. If HA would be re-implemented, HA would still be even better on D/P than before because of Bounding Dodge on Black Powder. You’d get close to signet damage with massive numbers of evades, double condition cleanse, lower initiative costs, better utility, and more damage than D/D.

—

You’re not understanding the testing methodology. All you’re calculating is the damage difference between having 450 bonus power from might which is what HA would give on current might values versus what would be possible without it. And no, the 450 power is accurate. HA gave one stack of might on a 15 second duration. You never saw 15 seconds because in between CnD’s, you would not be under the effects of stealth for fractions of a second from the game engine’s point of view. This would reset the ICD for HA and cause you to miss three ticks to 15 stacks, resulting in a maxium might gain of 12 without runes of Strength. D/P could maintain the 15 stacks, though, which is what you’re really looking for in terms of how broken this trait was, especially since now D/P out-damages D/D due to the nerf to CnD in WvW. 450 power is what 15 stacks of might grants, no might-duration runes needed.

I’m saying not to use Assassin’s Signet while testing because it provides power and a damage modifier that would create inconsistencies in the tests. The other signets do not modify damage in their passive/active states.