Guild Wars 2

I’m sorry but the entire Win10 thing makes no sense. It’s the most successful and backwards-compatible version of Windows in history. Changing over to Windows 10 from 7/8/8.1 has only been shady for really old legacy systems or SysAdmins who’ve modified so many settings and scripts prior that they don’t know how or what to integrate into a new environment and don’t feel like trying to work with a new system. For those who’ve done their homework, though, it’s the best OS that’s come out of Microsoft to date from performance, security, and upgrade perspectives. Also, the data submissions can all be disabled and you can revert a lot of the core desktop functionality like searching through the old search bar overriding Cortana via extensions like Classic Shell. Again, you can also disable all advertising and all services that do so. Frankly, if you have an Apple or Android device, their communications and data sharing policies are much more lax. Google makes the majority of its money by selling information about/of its clients for targeted advertising to data analysis and advertising companies.

I understand it’s trendy to bash Microsoft and praise Linux systems. From software development, working with linux is horrible. It’s a fun platform for small-scale pet projects because you can hack at it, but making professional software for multiple linux platforms due to its extensive co/prerequisites and constantly-changing environment, lack of professional support options for developers and lack of business accountability for critical failures makes such development extremely risky from a business perspective.

Until Linux systems start dominating the consumer market for personal use, video games, especially MMO’s, will not be developed targeting Linux distros. It’s too risky, for video games have such astronomical budgets these days that a stable platform with good support and accountability requirements also used by the majority of consumers is too good to pass up.

Sounds like your college has an incompetent IT department who probably goofed something in Active Directory or similar software, is modifying the OS, or updated some distribution system with Windows 10 before checking for reliability and is putting the blame on the OS rather than their work and/or distribution methods. Actually, it sounds like your college has an incompetent IT department by making the suggestion of putting all students on Linux systems due to the harsh dependencies that some business applications have on Windows environments, and the relatively poor security of user workstations when hooked up over wireless networks to people who can work magic on these kinds of systems. Creating a localized virus is way easier on Linux than Windows.

Jana.6831:

I mean DPS as you should include how long a thief had to be in stealth to get the 420 extra power you assume they had all the time.

Honestly: When I started I was happy to be a noob and always said thatthe day I can calculate which gear/food/runes etc is the best for me would be the day I’m no noob anymore.
I’m still a noob but somehow see all what’s right or wrong long before others do – so I don’t get why you and the dev responsible for kicking D/D thieves out of this game don’t. That’s why I asked you to do the math – I know I’m right I want you to calculate and see that I am.
D/D has been completely destroyed with the botched SA line – the only ones “profiting” from it were D/P thieves who used other traits to which they still have access to. Those who are happy to play with DA have a huge advantage over CS, which is another D/D line, not so much D/P.

Okay, two things:

1.) DPS has literally nothing to do with PvP potency because DPS is DPS; damage per second. There will always be an optimal DPS trait line and it will always be the one with the highest numbers for DPS. This before daredevil was DA/CS/Tr from the damage modifiers at play because stacking the might from SA and Acrobatics took either too long or implied not attacking. PvP functions completely differently and anyone making claims that optimizing DPS is the key to winning in PvP has no idea what the hell they’re talking about.

2.) SA being nerfed has nothing to do with D/D exclusively. SA’s nerfs hit D/P harder than D/D because D/P is objectively better at abusing stealth and was objectively better at maintaining stealth in any scenario above D/D. D/D has always been sub-par to D/P on a design level and only ever offered slightly more burst potential with CnD’s higher damage coefficient. Otherwise, Shadow Shot deals more damage, offers better engages, offers better stealth, offers safer skill usage, offers better utility, and offers better damage. D/D sucking has nothing to do with traits and entirely to do with skill design. If Shadow Shot wasn’t one of the most powerful skills in the game and Death Blossom and Dancing Dagger being borderline useless for power builds reliant on CnD and backstab, D/P would be just as bad as D/D and both sets would still be equally horrible. The only “advantage” D/D has ever had was lower-initiative cost stealth. The thing is, D/P ignored this penalty from CiS + initiative regeneration in stealth + increased stealth duration, allowing for permanent stealth uptime, thus gaining better might-stacking than D/D because it’d never miss a might tick on Hidden Assassin before engaging.

Regarding DPS:

If I said there was a skill which was an unblockable attack that cannot be dodged, reflected, or mitigated or prevented in any possible way which dealt 100k damage on a 1 minute cooldown to any given target up to 1800 range away, but disabled skill use during the cooldown of the ability, would you call this skill OP for the PvP formats?

Probably. You’re instantly killing someone every minute. Then you just turtle around for the cooldown.

How about for PvE?

Nope. It’d be the worst DPS in the game-levels of bad. That’s only 1667 damage per second on average – worse than a ranger using the longbow’s auto and only the auto to kill things. That’s dreadful. Burst wins PvP. DPS means nothing unless you’re playing a sustain build which can’t beat out the enemy’s incoming damage. It’s why certain builds are good in the bunker meta in sPvP and why a lot of these builds don’t work as well in WvW where the incoming damage is higher; sustain only works against sustain or if it can out-sustain burst. Otherwise, burst wins, and there’s no way around it.

So no, D/D and Shadow Arts have nothing to do with each other, sorry. You objectively lose damage on D/D when using Hidden Assassin versus D/P. I know you think you can chain CnD’s and you’ll never be “visible” to another player, but the game itself isn’t tricked in terms of how ticks for time aren’t calculated that .001 second frame causes the ICD to reset and you lose an additional might stack every chained CnD. You don’t and never did with D/P because you would never formally leave stealth.

You’re asking me to prove if 420 power is better than DA? Go to sPvP, spec SA/CS/Tr and leave SA blank, fill CS/Tr out as you would for damage, except make sure you have CS traited for signets.

Use SoM/SoA/SoS for 15 might and whatever other combo you’d do when doing a CnD/stab.

Now spec into DA replacing SA for DA/CS/Tr, do not remove SoP in CS, but this time activate no signets. Again, make sure Assassin’s signet was not used or equipped in the test prior to this due to the 15% damage gain on active or the 180 passive power. Repeat the process using Mug/PS. If you want to test what it was like when executioner was not a GM in DA and instead in CS, just leave the last trait blank.

You’ve now successfully achieved the difference between what was DA and old SA via 450 power off of 14 stacks of might before an engage (you’d likely drop to 13 mid-stab unless timed properly but ToTC grants one). Actually, SA would have dealt even more damage from might providing an additional 5 power per stack before might got nerfed.

Mind you, D/P offers even more damage as Shadow Shot -> backstab is a thing, and the coefficient on SS is better than CnD, and the 3% bonus damage likely will not offset this difference, or there will be no difference.

Correct in that increasing core count will not increase performance of this game in a vacuum. Core clock speed is what really matters, though it does matter if you run more than just GW2 and another application or two.

Again, it depends heavily on the laptop. ASUS’s ROG line has the best cooling on the market. Mine from around five years ago still can play the game on near-max at above 60 frames except blobs in WvW, and it never goes above a few degrees above idle temperature in the process.

Kind of the same boat as the OP in regards to the mentality. Every single person in my extended family who has had a drink in their life has become an alcoholic except my mother. It has destroyed every family, career, and relationship in its wake in my extended family. I have crippling neurological disability because of it.

I almost quit the game at the Order of Whspers’ pirate drinking contest mission my first time through. Tybalt got me through it, though. I reminded myself grog is basically water :P

As far as the “deal with it” attitude presented by some people, everyone’s entitled to their own opinions. Everyone affected by it has been affected by it differently. Someone mentioned we’re killing people and all the violence, etc. I’d sooner murder than drink alcohol (though I’d even sooner probably sacrifice myself as drinking would actually kill me from said above neurological disability, and murder is horrible).

I’m just not participating in the event. Sure, artistic licence. Sure, it’s all fake. I still have my convictions, and real life takes precedence on this subject. Do whatever you need to do.

Personally, I’d have liked to see an alternative, and maybe in the future we’ll see one to such things, but ANet has their opinions on what they want to put in, and so they do it. It’s something that hits close to home, and frankly, that’s just how it is. I’m not going to try and get the game changed or pioneer society away from what many argue is an age-old tradition just because I disagree with it. We can only be mindful of other peoples’ perceptions of their own joy and hope we get the same treatment in return; no point in leading a crusade people aren’t willing to follow.

OP, how much money are you willing to spend? Do you have size/“on-the-go” portability concerns, or just general travel/away from home? How are your needs for battery life? There are some seriously powerful gaming laptops out there, that will easily play on 60+ FPS on the higher settings, but they’re often very pricey and don’t hold a charge well due to the power consumption of the hardware.

The following list is on the high-end for what’s out there. The more performance-oriented you go, the better the performance overall and into other games.

For sheer performance, check out the Origin EON15-X, or ASUS’s ROG line. These have the best reputations for reliability and are built to last you several years.

For something in the middle between performance and portability, consider the 2015 Razer Blade; older models had many more problems. Razer’s customer support and RMA processes are absolutely dreadful, though, and their QC lately has been flaky. If you get a good one, awesome. If not, you’re in for a rough ride.

If you need to be constantly on the go and need decent battery life, try the Surface Book/SP4 with the dedicated GPU. For demands for 60 FPS, though, I feel like this isn’t what you’re looking for, particularly since getting that 60 frames will be difficult to do on the higher settings and the screen size is smaller, despite the massive screen resolution.

I see this thread as being troll-bait, but I’ll post anyways.

I play both. My characters are characters ported from various Dungeons and Dragons campaigns I’ve played in over the years. While I’m not big into e-Roleplaying at all, I’m fond of the tabletop kind, and making the same human male with the same aesthetic nine times over is pretty boring. It’s really cool watching a character you “made human” through deep role-playing and explicitly working through the actions of playing in a truly open-game setting in another universe be realized and get the visual aesthetic in a video game; it’s a big appeal for me for MMO’s in general aside from the PvP.

I envision my characters not as myself or the “I’d rather look at a girl’s butt” mentality, but as separate entities living and fighting in Tyria. I use the chat features for personal use as a tool. My first-ever character in D&D, a rogue, who has a similar personality to myself, is not an engineer/artificer. He’s not a warrior/barbarian. He’s not a paladin/guardian. He’s also not his own girlfriend, or his life-long best friend, who had their own campaigns which occurred within the time-frame of the initial one.

I make multiple characters under the same name with different professions due to multiclassing in traditional tabletops to reflect their combat styles. It’s not uncommon to find me having duplicates of the same class under different character names… which are also shared out to other, differing classes.

But that’s just my own reason. It doesn’t mean there is one, and there are definitely many. Actually, there’s probably one per player. Everyone has their own thoughts that lead to character creation; whether or not we can generalize is a bigger question in it of itself, though.

Yea, there’s definitely perversion, hormones, or whatever other taboo, quickly-dismissed-and-despicable-subject-you-want-to-declare-it-as desire to be playing a female for a bunch of people. Some people are pretty open about that. And it isn’t restricted to just men, though. I have a lesbian friend (yes, in real life) who makes the most… “ridiculous” characters in video games she plays because she likes to look at female bodices. She has more fun this way, just like the pervy teenage boy. Is she more entitled to do so? Does her being a woman despite having the same intent make it any more okay? Before we go labeling people, these are the kinds of questions we need to ask ourselves. Do you really know the guy behind the screen playing the female character? Is he in the wrong to have the options to dress her as he pleases? Should we value the opinions of other women in this regard? If so, who? Are different demographics of women more or less okay with his decisions? If offending a few over many takes precedent, or listening to a particular demographic over another does, are we not discriminating against a subsection? Who is to blame for this kid’s decisions? The kid? His home life? Our culture? The influences upon that culture?

Okay, new facts about the so-called “pervy teenage boy”:

He’s playing a female character. He doesn’t have a lot of friends in real life. He poses as a female online as well to hopefully experiment with what it’s like to be a woman for a little while in a virtual world behind a mask. He finds he enjoys it a lot, makes a lot of friends, who are both male and female in real life. He’s pretty believable and is really enjoys it. Sometimes he dresses his character up skimpy when he’s “in the mood”.

You’re immediately thinking he’s a creepy perv. Now I’ll let on some more new facts.

“Pervy teenage boy” has been battling depression for the past eight years, as long as he started understanding puberty and the distinction of male and female we don’t see kids recognize until early middle school. He doesn’t know why. He just really doesn’t feel right. He’s got really low confidence, and he knows it’s why he doesn’t have a lot of friends; he just never felt right.

He turned to online games for a bit of an escape and to make friends and socialize without needing to be seen for what he is. He feels comfortable playing as a digital model, and has played some male characters in other games in the past as himself. He just recently tried a female one, considering posing as a girl. He’s enjoying himself. A lot. Over time, he realizes something; he actually prefers to be a female. He talks to his psychologist, and some test are performed, and many questions are asked. Later he realizes he has a gender identity disorder and it’s been causing his depression for all those years. He undergoes some physical and chemical changes and becomes a women for real. He’s then very happy with his life thereafter, living as a successful and happy woman with a job and family.

Now how perverted is “pervy teenage boy”? How justified were her decisions? Is her opinion of the subject to be treated with less value than that of other women? I’m not saying every male who plays a female character is flirting with the notion of getting a sex change, just that we can’t gloss over this subject and assume “all men playing female characters are wrong because I said so”.

I bring this story up because this quite literally happened to what was a suite-mate of mine some time ago in college. People are different, and because of that, trying to appease absolutely everyone at all times is literally impossible.

The only time people should really get offended is it something is done with malicious or degrading intent. Otherwise we should be able to discuss these matters civilly and reach mutual understandings on the subject.

On the other hand, I know a few players who literally just spin the wheel on character creation and skip everything, taking whatever random or default settings are provided, and pick a random word or words from the dictionary or arbitrary name (not spam as it raises bot flags) for their characters, because they just see them as tools to beat the challenge of a game with; you don’t name and stylize chess pieces before each game, no? Their reason for playing female characters is “it got me through creation faster”. Everyone has different approaches and reasons in regards to this subject.

TL;DR: Don’t make assumptions about people and their reasons for making their own decisions on what and how they play the game.

I do prefer GS over dagger for PvP environments in that I think skills 4 and 5 are amazing and offer the reaper tons of utility not found elsewhere.

Grinding away bosses PvE, though, both are very good to have equipped. The dagger’s damage is much higher when the boss is under 50%, but once you can start spamming gravedigger, the DPS is competitive and from my experience, favoring the GS.

DPS or burst? These are two hugely different things. DA/CS/Tr will always out-DPS CS/SA/Tr on the basis that the might gain would require stealth stacking which would mean no damage. Burst potential, however, the 10% reliable gain from DA and mug will not offset the benefits of 15+ additional stacks of might. That’s 450 power; roughly 20% of base power, giving substantially better damage against squishies and better performance against tankier players as well.

It worked in the old trait system because DA provided 300 power as bonus stats versus SA providing toughness. This meant that SA would always deal less damage than DA, but SA could maintain what was still very competitive damage. Under the old traits, CS/SA/Tr was a very prominent build in WvW for assassination builds, because it stacked more might than any other option the thief had while retaining the best damage modifiers for burst, and provided excellent support/defensive options. Half-baked signet burst playing CS/SA/Tr could maintain permanent stealth on D/P, and had a similar (and now superior) damage coefficient on Shadow Shot vs CnD, while engaging at 25 stacks of might and the 15% modifier on Assassin’s signet with two free utilities open, allowing for huge opening bursts with all the extra utility needed to follow through with a backstab.

Tell me, what other thief builds got the best of everything? Executioner was a horrible trait for reliable assassinations over HK and was better used as a finisher, since the build didn’t run DA for mug’s damage, as there was no need. Acro is the worst trait line now. SA is still operating as an optimal trait path for D/P. CS got much-needed love and tuning at the time and it is still deemed as inferior to SA, Trickery, DA, and Daredevil. Trickery got some love for build coverage and pushed for making tricks more useful towards recent balance.

Frankly, I believe SA’s defensive options have gotten objectively better; it just isn’t a one-stop-shop trait-line now that provides huge damage, defense, and initiative gain like it used to be, considering the damage with the separation of attributes from traits would make the line almost objectively better than the rest for everything but heartseeker hero PvE speedruns and bunkering sPvP, and even then, traversing the map in permanent stealth from D/P would make the 1 potential extremely potent with a free 15 stacks of might on Marauder.

Fat Disgrace.4275:

i have been hit by long bow aa’s twice after i entered stealth. think its just lucky for them.

If quickness is applied, if the attack is even slightly made before you enter stealth, the arrow will travel. All projectile effects do this and the only way to negate the damage is to move beyond the maximum range of the weapon during flight.

A friend of mine and I have quite literally tested this using Shadowstep; I’ve used Shadowstep during the flight at the apex of a corner, and the arrow has actually curved 90 degrees around the corner and hit me when timed to do so. Stealth operates the same way and that the attack is assigned to hit you unless you force it not to as soon as the animation begins. This is why the changes made to the longbow’s projectile speed were the best QoL change made possible to the ranger in terms of hitting targets (as the old longbow could be dodged by just strafing left/right without timing anything), but at a slight cost with issues like this. That said, it does apply to things like pistol and rifle autos, too.

Quickness with Lead the Wind would allow the ranger two attacks off at around the 1800 range mark before the first one hits, so both get the tracking.

Ario.8964:

…Remember, the goal is to balance the professions, not cause more power creep as that will just kill the game over time. …

Thank you. Someone finally is getting it.

babazhook.6805:

I can stack 25 stacks of might on my scrapper without even thinking about it. It just happens. Everytime I look I got over 20 stacks.

It the same with my reaper. Even easier then the scrapper.

I think what has to happen is as another suggested. Allow the thief even more boon stealing where they get full durations and stacks. This might make the Reaper/scrapper and others think twice about stacking all those boons as they will be stacking them for the thief to take.

Necromancers don’t have the damage modifiers that thieves do. 25 might on my reaper puts the auto-attack damage on a dagger still lower than maybe 7 or 8 on my thief, despite the better coefficients favoring the necro.

And I completely understand the philosophy of stealing or at the very least stripping more boons. The “we should get it because x other class has it and it’s unfair” is the whole reason why we have a number of the balance problems we have right now; Let’s look at a lot of the abilities that at release were almost explicitly unique to the thief:

- Permanent movespeed bonus via either swiftness or a signet/passive effect; no other class had this feature at launch.

- Extended stealth; only a few abilities in the game granted stealth, let alone anything more than a few seconds on long cooldowns.

- Single-hit single-target burst; backstab had the highest damage coefficient in the game in regards to single-hit abilities. Not the case any longer.

- Low cooldown engages and disengages; there are an absurd amount these days.

Obviously there are a lot more.

Boons at this point are making builds that should be okay at anything be amazing at everything. Give the thief protection and resistance, and it becomes OP. Giving the thief more damage from might won’t solve the boon issue on other classes and only makes the very few strips/steals that do exist on the mesmer/thief/necro debilitating.

As far as Hidden Assassin, Jana, the resistance to this isn’t elitism but blatant balance concerns. There is no mythical ICD here; it would provide so much damage that the fight would be over by anyone running CS/SA/Tr in better speed than a DA/CS/Tr signet build currently can, which already kills any non-toughness/vitality build in the game in under two seconds, all while gaining the full defensive benefits of stealth.

This is blatantly overpowered. I don’t want the thief to become overpowered. I want the thief to be balanced, because being overpowered just causes more nerfs, and ANet never goes back on their buffs to nerf them when they overtune things; they always just modify something else as an excuse.

Heck, the initiative gain and condition cleansing in SA already offsets half of the investment of Trickery for such a concept, so a DA/CS/SA build would be capable of pumping out way more damage with way less risk – I.E., 30k damage backstabs in WvW on engage with invisible engages with a full condition cleanse, passive reduced damage, healing, and initiative regen on stealth, and three more utilities. This isn’t healthy play and anyone trying to justify this as healthy gameplay either has a motive or has not actually done their homework on the subject and is arguing from a purely anecdotal point of view from their own personal experience.

Yes, trait concepts need some overlap, but massive damage bonuses are definitely not a feature SA should be giving. I could see maybe 1 might for 5 seconds each second in stealth versus 1 might for 15 like it used to be in HA. But at that point, why not play the theme and give the thief like 7% bonus damage on stealth attacks in the SA line? Now you’re rewarding the use of stealth and not the abuse of stealth, using sneak attacks like an Assassin would, and offering competitive damage to what Trickery offers while giving damage superiority to CS and DA like the lines should have, and then there’s no need to nerf the defense and utility on SA.

Base necro might need some QoL, but nothing major. Its issues stem largely from a lack of stability for what are a lot of channeled abilities; otherwise it has an amazing counter-pick game and can really shut out difficult-to-beat builds. Making it not have such binary encounters for consistency’s sake is the best move here, even if at the cost of making some tweaks downwards in power if they nerfed some of the excessive builds that it counters as a consequence.

Reaper is very solid. Of the new elite specs and overall meta use, it performs well but not excessively. I’d argue the spec is pretty balanced for the most part, and it’s just a lot of the new ones are completely busted overpowered more than anything.

I think the reaper is probably the single biggest redeeming factor about the expansion.

I genuinely do not like the majority of what came from HoT. Actually, I don’t think I really like anything in particular about it except this specialization.

Reaper of Grenth does not apply chill/poison every second. It applies it once every three seconds.

I initially thought this utility could be amazing with a once-per-second application, but I did some tests and found it doesn’t apply it at such a frequency, making the skill a poor performer.

DPS? Dagger.
Burst? GS.

Power of Inertia can’t be brought back because DD has so much damage on it. Yea, if they nerfed DD’s damage output, PoI being brought back and giving more might on a successful evade might be reasonable to ask for.

Hidden Assassin, though? No way. 360-420 power camping stealth was absolutely dumb. SA is a defensive line, like camping stealth is supposed to be. You shouldn’t be getting the same damage from SA as DA with all the bonus utility of playing safe in stealth. I’m a proponent of skilled play and high damage rewards, but HA had no opportunity cost and made camping stealth OOC while regenerating initiative have quite literally zero downsides.

Not landing vault is a lack of practice/L2P issue as much as I hate saying the term. The radius is imho quite forgiving. Spamming absolutely mindlessly will be punishable, but decent pacing of the ability and an understanding of what you’re opponent is going to do in the near future (an essential skill for PvP for any class/player) makes the skill quite easy to land and very usable.

I would argue SE got buffed in terms of cleansing power. Nothing was worse than cleansing a stack of vuln and a 4s blind over 19 stacks of bleeding or a ton of confusion and torment.

The thief class is definitely suffering relative to other professions. Is it totally bad? No. There certainly is a lot of overreaction and some of the proposed buffs and changes people make would drive the class into just being wildly overpowered.

You’ll never find yourself in demand playing a thief. If you’re not playing with a group of people you know, you’re not getting priority in any setting over another player at anything. All I can suggest is to practice and see if you like it.

Staff is an amazing PvE weapon. It has huge burst damage and cleave on vault with lots of evasion. D/D is still a better boss killer set, but only barely.

Depending on the camera and targeting settings, skills can be used without a target, thus a smart enemy can directly counter the effects of stealth if they know where the thief will likely be.

1s of quickness is relatively poor for swapping into the shortbow, particularly since it doesn’t change flight time on the bomb. Quickness also reduces evade frame duration on shortbow 3, which depending on the needs for the swap could end up hurting you.

It was intentional. I figured more modifiers included for the calculations would cause a bigger damage range as to offset the effects of the variance when testing without steady weapons. This would make calculations more definitive.

I don’t understand the argument about passive VS active upgrades.

The system does it for you automatically, fixed so that it now is based on incoming supply so it’s not deterministic and time-bound

vs

Some guy is standing in a tower queuing them when the supply is ready. He’s bored, but cares for the PPT.

I’m sorry, but I don’t understand the reasoning here. People were complaining about the cost of upgrades, so they made them automatic, but erroneously made time-based. People were complaining about supply trolling to prevent upgrades, so they removed the need for supply to be used as a resource. Now they make the upgrades supply-delivery-based again, AND this can’t be trolled with wasted siege, and people are all up in arms about not pressing the button.

If they made WvW actually competitive and the matchups good, there’s no reason to have some guy sit there and wait to queue and upgrade. There wouldn’t be nightcapping. Hell, these systems explicitly prevent nightcapping by making upgrades occur automatically such that one guy doesn’t ram down a t1 keep at four in the morning when nobody’s playing.

A structure won’t get upgraded without supply deliveries, or will be taken over again by another server if not enough get there fast enough. It’s still absolutely about the players, because players are denying those yaks.

Instead of a guy pressing a button to get an upgrade, a guy is going to be able to single-handedly hold back the upgrade from even occurring. That’s awesome. It promotes the use of havoc squads but also punishes servers that let opposing havoc run rampant. We’re back to where we were with this system in regards to player actions deciding what gets upgraded, except instead of someone camping a structure waiting for supplies to come to lose 10-15 silver and press a button, or a server’s negligence to care to do so because the ktrain is strong, it’s done regardless.

Players complained that defense was too difficult, ktraining structures was too common, and havoc/small group/solo player didn’t matter.

Now they’re listening to those complaints by making changes to fix them, and people are complaining again because of arbitration in the user experience. I’m rarely one to favor ANet’s decisions; to put it bluntly, I’m distrustful of them as a company and was extremely vocal about the HoT blunder, but come on folks, keep complaining for no reason and they’ll just stop bothering.

There just doesn’t seem to be an actual argument against this change that promotes healthy gameplay and a sustainable future for the format. This is objectively an improvement.

For the rally cap limit and OOC resurrecting, I’ve spoken my mind already; I think it’ll have the reverse affect they think it will for small groups. I hope they pay this heed, and I am absolutely concerned about it.

Serious Thought.5394:

DeceiverX.8361:

muscarine.5136:

Argument.

Rebuttal.

I was thinking Pistol/Pistol but the problem lines with how much reflect there is currently. It sucks to unload and die to your own ability On top of that, I lose my stun and about 10-15% damage differential. Also, soldier drops a considerable amount of damage. I’m focused on Assassination over extended duels, it’s why I give up my survivability. I’m also confused why it seems like I’m tackling too many objectives- HiS for free engage, ID comboed into infi strike is usually very potent (as well as more combos), tripwire because blockspam in spvp made me want it, SR for jukage and baits, Basilisk because its simply the best elite we have.

I land Pulm fairly often and its focused on burst engage- using abilities in an unconvential manner to make it harder to predict how the opposing player will need to respond, causes opposing player to blow cooldowns because they aren’t sure how to respond. If nothing else, it makes a passive go off that I don’t have to worry about. Again, spvp focused not sure how to transition into WvW. But when I did go (however briefly) it was a lot of squishy players especially in EotM. Any stun applied will be countered by an instant cast 1s daze which is just as good imo. SR is for baits, I encourage someone to play dumb and waltz in seeing as Shortbow immobs and I usually toss out 2 of those shots before it registers reveal which means 4s immob. SR is my backup insurance, if I can’t first round em swapping to Shortbow for the triple crit and mind games is usually my way of finishing people off. No one suspects the banana (Zenith skin). It’s rather hard to find a utility to give up, ~~the build is a burst-stun mind games kinda build~~. Anything to assist there would be something I’d take in a heartbeat, but shadowstep is a one trick pony seeing as people load the return these days.

Omnom having an icd is unexpected an sad. But it still adds damage which is the goal. Is there any other food type that allows me to proc damage?

Disclaimer: I am not trying to be aggressive, I just have to be sure of what I’m doing.

Tl:dr- S/p is less for pulm and more for the sheer damage and follow through, pulm is icing along with Draining sigil. HiS is for the engage and less on sustain approach, ID is for combo orient+dodge baits, tripwire breaks blocks and its the block meta, sr is for mind games and baiting, basilisk remains the best elite. Build is burst-engage (ask for description), mind games, and just tons of giggles. Is there a better dps food than Omnom that still provides a damage proc?

I definitely get the reflect concerns. Recall I was recommending P/P soldier’s on an interrupt concept; your primary source of damage would be from Pulm impact over unload, and you might have the durability to maintain it better. Reflects aren’t used as often in WvW, though a tempest would make you hate yourself. On the converse, though. P/P is absolutely amazing relative to the rest of the weapon sets available against DH’s, and right now DH’s are carrying the roaming scene in WvW. Going into melee against one is suicidal because one trap alone will kill you in under two seconds.

I recommend Shadowstep because it’s going to be more helpful in a variety of cases. Your biggest fears right now are GF warriors, DH’s, and hammer Revenants, all three of which are capable of one-shot killing you at range. sPvP has extremely low damage output values compared to WvW. Expect 20k Gun Flames frequently, 18k True Shots, 10k trap ticks, 18k CoR’s, Scrappers 100-0’ing you in under two seconds, permanent revealing effects, and 16k Rapid Fires. Good players know what to do against SR, and the aforementioned skills will track through stealth if casted before you enter. In my personal experience playing against skilled players in WvW (EoTM also is the bottom of the barrel for skill), SR is a deathtrap (Almost every thief who uses SR against me dies in SR, and almost every time I’ve run it, I’ve found myself dying within it to skilled players). Shadowstep can let you port while the gun flame/TS/CoR/RF/etc. are all mid-flight, and there’s no counterplay to being out of range to kill, either letting for an escape or a re-engage on your terms.

I say you’re trying to do a lot because I’m really not seeing anything that makes this build difficult to deal with or have battlefield persistence. A lot of your competition is going to hard-counter you directly, and a lot of your killing/combo potential is pretty target-dependent to succeed. The build covers a broad spectrum of abilities, but none of them seem particularly devastating. Holistically they are, but realistically I don’t think you’re going to combo against most players as hard as you think you will.

S/P also just does a poorer job at assassinations than D/D from a pure damage/burst perspective, especially if not hasting the PW. You’re running the same condition cleanse as DA/CS/Tr signets (or worse) with what’s objectively lower and slower burst. I run the signet build mentioned, and my engages are usually close to 30-35k damage in under a second against any berserker build caught off guard. Without protection, anything in the game running without extra toughness or vitality straight dies before BV’s even over. If they’re built more durable, though, which is pretty much every condi build out there (dire gear is absurdly tanky), you’re in for a struggle. This is why I recommend that if you’re not really, really invested in PI, drop it for the cleanse, because that mesmer will turn around and will load you for 19 stacks of confusion, some torment, vuln, some blinding, cripple, and burning, and you have no way to deal with that. I run Trickster on Withdraw for this reason; CiS doesn’t cleanse everything, and its animation is slow, especially if you’re already being locked down. Again, this is why I stress Shadowstep over SR. If you were in SA, I could see an argument either way due to SE, CiS, and sword 2 taking care of cleanses while stealthed. Without it, though, I pretty much see a utility that while yea possibly making you more unpredictable, makes you very easy to kill if your burst doesn’t succeed, and having no contingency options to get out and live hurts you a lot when in more challenging situations. It’s why I run D/D + S/D over shortbow; the disengage on IR is faster, cheaper, longer-distance, and cleanses a condition while still giving me some killing power and utility, whereas the shortbow’s escapes cost more, are slower, and leave me in a turtling state with not much killing power.

WvW is FAST, particularly for assassination roles. It’s for the most part kill on engage or be killed if you’re playing that archetype. Squishies against me often die from Mug and CnD damage alone dealing an upwards of 16k blinking in from 2100 range. 10k PW’s over the course of a second and a half might be a huge deal in sPvP, but it’s nothing in WvW.

If you’re playing for assassination, it’s this need to really focus on minimizing the amount of time needed to reliably kill someone over the combo damage potential. You might not be running a stunbreak or stability, but they definitely are, and odds are, it’s off cooldown. It’s why I mentioned the context for this build as well, be it running solo, periph in a blob, or in small group play; I can definitely see it in the latter two, as your allies can cover for your engages and force enemies to blow CD’s before you lock them down. In a pure 1v1 against what’s in the “solo roam” trend, you’ve got a lot stacked against you.

I suggest you duel in Obsidian Sanctum or join a good WvW guild with a guild hall arena and mess around with some of their members which have roaming, periphery, or havoc characters and some experience behind them to get a feel for the way the format plays. I don’t really think I can explain the mentality or pacing any better.

Also, there is no proc food better than ghosts. It’s why I suggest just running raw power, particularly for skills with high coefficients like Mug, PW and PI. It’ll scale better after a few attacks within your combo and will do you much better over a fight. I can only really recommend the ghosts on builds that crit a fair amount but don’t build for it and are more or less built on sustaining and slower attacks; there aren’t many builds that fill this criteria.

They buffed Death Blossom immensely in regards to its evasion. There’s a reason D/D condi Daredevil is a thing right now.

I am really sick of all the chain-blocks and invulns, though. Used to just really be guards that played well and built around it. Now it’s like half the skills in the game just grant straight immunity effects.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

DeceiverX.8361:

If the critical damage at hand was 150%, your math would indicate:

7016 (crit) / .5 = 14032 (non-critical damage) * (.5 + .07 + .1) (stacked modifiers) = 9401

You’d then be mysteriously dealing more damage with lower critical damage and lower damage without critting.

I totally botched that. I realized the same thing after posting it when I tried using lower values like you just did. (back to the drawing board)

However, your formula also deals more damage with lower crit value:

(7016 / 1.94) * (1.94 + .07) * 1.1 (Ferocious Strikes) = 7996.07
(7016/ 1.5) * (1.5 + .07) * 1.1 (Ferocious Strikes) = 8077.755

/shrugs

I re-calculated the above to show you where your math wasn’t making sense. The “non-critical damage” being higher is the value that really matters. The “lower value dealing more damage” is correct universally in this instance for the following reason explained below.

As a direct comparison, though, you can’t use this method to compare modifiers for which one supplies more damage. The initial math I did above, because it wasn’t making a comparison between two different modifiers works out. The 7016 value is the result of a 194% modifier without any other modifiers at play. Undoing the critical hit damage by dividing by 1.94 gets us to the non-critical damage of the backstab. This is just “undoing” the critical hit.

Dividing by a smaller number will increase the damage which is performed without a critical hit; as the critical damage modifier would approach zero, the “non-critical” damage would approach infinity, where on the converse critical damage would approach zero. You’re then re-multiplying this value again, either with the .07 added or also multiplied in the mix. Since the critical damage modifier approaches zero at lower modifiers, multiplying by the .07 is arbitrary; an infinitely big number multiplied by zero is going to result in zero, and the sum of adding the .07 will net a result larger than the multiplication because of it see the following example:

Additive:
(x infinitely-sized base damage * (0 + .07)) will result in a still-infinitely large number, for a number of infinite size multiplied by any non-zero positive scalar will still be infinite in size.

Multiplicative:
(x infinitely-sized base damage * (0 * .07)) will result still in zero, as the multiplication of an infinite value times zero times any number will still result in zero.

Back to the original formula, because I only reverse-calculated non-critical damage, and all subsequent modifiers would be identical, they can be cancelled across the board and are irrelevant. Re-multiplying with additive and multiplicative modifiers of the .07 only creates a comparison between the expected results of the addition vs multiplication when operating on the same modifiers.

As long as the damage modifier is consistent in the divisor and does not change when calculating non-critical damage, the above calculation I made will remain accurate for any value placed in the critical damage modifier spot.

Hope that clarifies things.

It shouldn’t be about rotating every skill.

If you want to rotate skills, play an ele. Initiative as a mechanic is designed to let the thief make an instantaneous decision about which skill is best to activate at any given time. Managing this resource is just as much of a factor in determining the skill level of the thief as making these decisions as well. If anything, the disparity between total cost vs maximum initiative is preferable as it makes build strategies have more depth to them. The unfortunate reality is Trickery is simply too good to pass up when making these kinds of decisions, so the depth in builds is reduced.

My newly-suggested ES concept focuses on pushing the need away from trickery and letting players choose almost any mixture of trait lines to make an equally-viable build focusing on some feature of the class. I’ve mentioned it in the past and I’ll say it again; there needs to be more overlap between the trait lines to reduce the dependencies we currently have on a lot of them. Daredevil did this for some trait lines, but it also conceptually gutted acrobatics and didn’t cover the base for Trickery, which honestly should have been prioritized for being replaceable or as an alternative.

WC gets two hits if starting at around 200 units. Stealing mid-charge during the second strike will also make the third hit.

muscarine.5136:

Relying on impacting disruption for your burst is a good idea on paper, but live it becomes very unreliable, which is a shame since there are quite a few ways to pack a decent amount of interrupts on a thief build.

There are a number via offhand pistol using Head Shot, but it depends heavily on the matchup. In WvW it’s more doable than in sPvP at the moment, but stacking stability is definitely a concern.

Honestly, I’d probably just play P/P in soldier’s if I were going to use Impacting Disruption. It looks really strong, but because it can’t crit, and with the cleanse being overall more useful particularly for a build like this, I’d probably stray away from it. I’m not sure if the OP plans to roam alone or travel with a small group, play periph in a blob, etc. I will say a majority of solo players in WvW play dire conditions, though, and this build will struggle immensely against that.

The build seems to be trying to do a lot. It’s an interesting approach – CC and lock down the enemy for PW with some bonuses from interrupts – but I think it’d probably just be functionally better using EA, dropping HiS for Withdraw or CV, and replacing SR with Shadowstep as there’s no stun break or method for curing confusion, slow, torment, weakness for hitting the ranger, or DoT chill on a reaper. SR shouldn’t matter as if you’re really assassinating, you shouldn’t need the stealth or should be out of the fight entirely once you finish them. Bound and black powder should also cover stealth needs for most encounters, with Sword 2 + steal covering engage and in-combat disengage with Shadowstep on the OOC disengage if things go bad. Especially now, I’m finding SR much less useful than Shadowstep; Reaper knows to spiral or scythe inside and can fear/GS 5 you out, Scrapper pretty much has passive reveal and heavy AoE damage. Most tempest abilities ignore stealthed targets and hit them anyways, Rev has a reveal, DH places a trap on SR and you die… the list goes on.

Interesting approach, though. I’ve been trying to make use of interrupts for a while, but it all falls short and the investment doesn’t really seem worth it in practice. Tankier builds just do better with it. Actually, I bet Viper perplexity is bonkers due to Confusion + Torment + Pulm impact o.o

Omnomberry ghosts aren’t very good. The heal/damage effect has an ICD of 2 seconds and it’s like 400 damage. I think they’re overrated and prefer raw power. If you’re not taking a cleanse, grab Steak Frittes; more damage, more durability for conditions, albeit only slightly, any bit helps.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

DeceiverX.8361:

Except it doesn’t. I tested it this morning in-game. The critical strike damage stat is also not affected by it.

Well let’s take a look at one formula you have;

(7016 / 1.94) * (1.94 + .07) * 1.1 (Ferocious Strikes) = 7996.07

We’re off by a large amount of the range between the two. Ferocious Strikes absolutely must be an external modifier.

You arrived at your conclusion only because the Math is wrong.

If you calculate it like this;
(7016/0.94) * (0.94+0.07+0.1) = 8284.85

Which is even closer to your initial range of values.

What exactly is it you’re doing, there? If you’re trying to undo the effects of crit damage like I did above, you’re dividing by a positive number and making a non-crit backstab deal more damage than a crit. You’re then re-multiyplying the value except additing the .07 and .01 before doing so, putting the decimal over 1 which makes the value increase more, except this is completely arbitrary. If the critical damage at hand was 150%, your math would indicate:

7016 (crit) / .5 = 14032 (non-critical damage) * (.5 + .07 + .1) (stacked modifiers) = 9401

You’d then be mysteriously dealing more damage with lower critical damage and lower damage without critting.

Also, Ferocious Strikes would be multiplied after the re-addition, not added. I verified the .1 is an exterior modifier above, and the wiki says so (which was also interestingly updated today stating Flawless Strikes applies additive damage that modifies the character menu, which is completely false).

@Caed: I understand the skepticism with my blunder prior to the testing :P. I’m like 99.99% sure my recordings above were done correctly and prior to posting I even re-did everything to make sure I got the same results. All of the speculated calculations were done in a much clearer mind than in our previous discussion (it’s been a rough past few days), so I don’t think there are any errors. I only say this because getting a dev in here is never going to happen, particularly for answering questions like this.

Except it doesn’t. I tested it this morning in-game. The critical strike damage stat is also not affected by it.

Narcarsis.5739:

Ensign.2189:

Narcarsis.5739:

Seems like I’ll explain this again as people still fail to discern the difference between Critical Damage and Damage modifiers.

Relatively minor nit – the ferocity changes from Practiced Tolerance and No Quarter behave exactly as described (they stack additively with your base ferocity / critical damage) but the multipliers from Flawless Strike and Ferocious Strikes work multiplicatively like other damage modifiers (except only on critical hits).

The critical damage multiplier (while above 90% health and target above 50% health) you want to use (sPvP, marauder amulet) is thus 256.2% (1.1*1.07*(150+(560+205+250)/15)).

You may now return to discussing whether or not critical strikes is good for dumpstering mouth-breathers in hotjoins.

That’s not how critical damage modifiers work – those included despite the ambiguous wording. They are additive to your critical damage regardless of whether you see the change in your stats our not (because you won’t, they’re conditional bonuses. Quite simply, I don’t think you are correct but there is no way to prove either theory after the removal of steady weapons. If a dev could comment with the answer it would be appreciated.

As a side note, the following data was performed on the Light sPvP golem using Marauder + Scholar runes with Force + Accuracy Sigils.

I could have sworn it also worked this way based on some I did testing a while ago. I should have re-done by homework; according to the wiki, Ferocious Strikes is actually a external damage modifier. Flawless strike had no such info on the wiki, so I also decided to go in-game and re-test my data from years’ past. I figured Caed being the thief he is might have been more informed than me about any potential numbers or mechanics changes to the CS line. It doesn’t seem to be the case.

I tested my initial backstab damage running DA/Acro (No traits)/Tr 50 times
To test Ferocious, I traited the last two traits in CS for HK to make the test faster 50 times.
To test Flawless, I traited it and left the middle tier empty, also 50 times.

Ferocious Strikes is absolutely an external damage modifier applied after crit damage. It took a lot of backstabs for what I deemed a consistent damage value after crit (a lot of them didn’t crit annoyingly). Without FS, stab damage doing absolutely nothing except CnD, I gathered the following results:
Minimum: 6812
Maximum: 7367
Average: 7016

7k (I had Assassin’s signet’s passive 180 power on during this test). We could then expect the following results within maybe a 1-2% tolerance from potentially not hitting the global maximum or minimum damage from the dagger (based on the number of tests per the potential variance), so up to around +/- 80-160.

The expected result then of using the Crit Strikes line using Ferocious + Flawless if they were both external modifiers would be:

~7k * 1.1 (Ferocious) = ~7.7k * 1.07 (Flawless) = ~8.23k

I tested Ferocious Strikes first.

The result: Minimum damage range: 7567, maximum 8342 (the stars aligned it seems on this one, or I potentially didn’t notice a random stack or two of might thrown on me by another player). This fits the constraints nicely, and my overall average was hovering around 7817. There’s no questioning it: Ferocious Strikes absolutely is an external damage modifier, just only applied to critical hits. The data aligns almost perfectly with the expected calculations. Deriving the initial crit from the modifiers at play, we can re-calculate what should have been Ferocious Strikes if it was a ferocity-style modifier:

We can cancel everything out by dividing and re-multiplying by just the ferocity and Ferocious Strikes adjustments.

7016 (Non-CS crit at Marauder + Scholar) / 1.94.0 (Scholar Runes + Marauder) = 3616.49
3616.49 * (1.94 + .1) = 7377.63

We’re off by a large amount of the range between the two. Ferocious Strikes absolutely must be an external modifier.

Next was Flawless Strikes.
50 more tests later:
8046 minimum (6.812 * 1.1 * 1.07) = 8017 which checks out from the initial minimum
Maximum: 8524
Average: 8339.58

Again, almost a perfect match to the expected. Re-calculated if ferocity:
(7016 / 1.94) * (1.94 + .07) * 1.1 (Ferocious Strikes) = 7996.07

This is even lower than the minimum. No way is Flawless Strikes a ferocity-based damage modifier, either.

End result? CS directly competes with the damage coefficients from DD and then some, given PT and NQ applying even more ferocity-based damage.

I also tested a bunch with the DD as well for a comparison, but I didn’t record my results. Overall, the data seems fairly consistent. I didn’t record my findings, but was just looking for a general comparison. Overall the average numbers seemed to hover around 8.1k or so (I didn’t do as many), which is consistent enough with my CS tests given a few percent margin of error to verify that Ferocious Strikes and Flawless Strikes are not calculated with Ferocity in an additive fashion, which was my initial hunch after doing the work and much heavier number-crunching a long time ago.

After re-doing the calculations, I have no idea what I left off. Forgetting the 1.1 as I wrote to summarize would have left me with much lower numbers than I initially got. Clearly not my brightest moment lol. Genuinely no idea what I was doing to get those numbers.

Re-done calculations re-redone to assure correctness indicate:

DA/CS/Tr: 23988.9
DA/Tr/DD: 22974.53

Which matches closer to what you’re saying. Definitely a closer margin for sPvP. Much closer than I was expecting. Not the case for WvW, though.

Narcarsis.5739:

DeceiverX.8361:

(2604 + 5000) * 234.6 * 1.1 * 1.1 + 1986.56 = 23571.73064

((2604 + 5000) * 187.3 * 1.1) + 1986) * 1.17 = 20653.449804

Yes, if you remove a multiplier to suit your argument. But in reality that number you removed is only used to inflate your math. If you decide to use the real numbers you come back down to a difference of around 800. Not sure why you’re attempting to manipulate the results but if you’re that intent on running the build feel free.
As for Cloak and Dagger, D/D has been inferior to D/P since 2012 – however I speak both from sPvP and a place where the utility of D/P outdoes the marginal instant damage increase from D/D.

Again, I am not talking about the benefits of D/D, just the sentence stating a build like extreme D/D burst will face net losses from using DD. D/P isn’t capable of building such burst because it lacks CnD. Yes, I am aware D/D is considered bad in sPvP. It isn’t in WvW, and that’s again where my expertise lays. From a sheer numbers perspective, however, all I’m arguing is that DA/CS/Tr offers more damage than DD.

Please go re-read my initial post. This conversation is about D/D. You argued with me about the damage for D/D. I genuinely do not care D/P is better. I already know it is. I’ve beaten an overwhelming majority of thieves using Shadow Shot alone and frankly think the set is boring and overly-forgiving in mechanics. But that’s another topic entirely.

As for missing the damage increase on mug – honest mistake. I assume this is what you’re referring to by “manipulating the data”. Either way, the math checks out to D/D dealing more damage with CS than DD. You’re talking margins less than your original statement through the modifications..

There’s a bug going on last I knew where the game was randomly changing peoples’ settings. Not sure if it got fixed yet, so it could have been that.

You’re not remembering how critical damage modifiers are still modified by other damage modifiers. I know how GW2’s damage works.

You’re not factoring in CnD. Assuming CnD crits, the damage would be 2604.
We’ll also derive mug from the 5k backstab, which would be 1986.56

DA/CS/Tr vs DA/Tr/DD:
We’ll assume for the sake of PvP reasons Mug/CnD doesn’t take a target below 50%. With Executioner in the mix, the added modifier favors CS even more.

DA/CS/Tr:
DA: 10% Exposed Weakness
CS: 234.6% critical damage modifier.
Tr: Assume 10% damage from LA

DA/Tr/DD:
187.3% critical damage
DA: 10% Exposed Weakness
DD: 17.7% damage assuming Bound
Tr: 10% from LA

Total of multiplicative stats based on a 5k backstab; Mug/CnD damage derived:
1986.56 mug, even favoring DD
2604 CnD
5000 backstab

We’ll also assume both builds are lucky and crit on their needed skills. CS favors reliability here as well due to the increased critical hit chance it innately provides over DD.

(2604 + 5000) * 234.6 * 1.1 * 1.1 + 1986.56 = 23571.73064

((2604 + 5000) * 187.3 * 1.1) + 1986) * 1.17 = 20653.449804

DD is dealing almost 15% less on a combo than CS. 500 damage turns into 3k, almost making the difference between someone geared in full berserker vs marauder. On might this scales bigger towards CS. On Executioner this gap is further increased. On signets, this value scales way out of control and you end up dealing massively more damage to the point where the DD starts failing to compete even with bound.

I’m not disagreeing with you saying DD isn’t almost always a better option. Frankly, I said that in my first post. It does however, scale worse with burst builds, and the damage difference is substantially higher in WvW, which the OP never specified (and which I play primarily where my experience comes from).

Vault spam will hit harder than backstab any day of the week given the DD is specced for it with staff mastery. I can’t argue that and it’s a null argument to do so, because the skill has an overtuned coefficient because the rest of the staff is imho a horrible and clunky weapon with low damage, and that’s also arguing semantics over what constitutes a “D/D backstab build”. Frankly, I assume CnD as implicit.

PoF Announcement Edit: Cool they took the name, the weapon, and some skills, but a lot of the important overarching implementation ideas didn’t make it. Oh well, maybe the ranger’s elite will offer similar playstyle ¯\(?)/¯

7/26 Patch Edit: The suggestion is suspended because the changes to baseline thief have borked several build paths available with the profession by removing the option of efficacy from all core trait lines. I am likely not sticking around to play the thief so long as they stay in-game, and will subsequently not be making changes to this proposal unless I have faith restored in ANet’s profession design decisions.

I’ve taken a while to work on a concept for a suggestion for the next Elite Specialization for the Thief. Ultimately, my goal is to get some dev attention to help inspire some creativity for the developers working on the next spec. I feel the Daredevil didn’t really change much for the thief thematically or playstyle-wise, so I’m trying to push the envelope to try and get something great to happen for our spec on the next go-around, since we’ve already been told another expansion is in development.

This is a really serious suggestion, and is fully fleshed-out including all of the nitty-gritty details. Therefore, there is a lot to read. I’m sorry, but that’s just how things work when the entire thing is developed.

What I’m looking for is feedback and discussion. This ES tries to deliver on a lot of high-demand and very low-demand concepts in attempts to make a really bad-cat (hehe) suggestion that could push the thief into completely new territory. I’m trying to make the concept work with as many traits and skills as possible, and would love to see some feedback and discussion regarding my decisions.

The Daredevil didn’t really deliver much to the thief conceptually. I’d like to change this.

So without further ado, I present my idea on what I consider as a solid, lore-friendly foundation for the next ES: The Deadeye.

IN WITH A BANG!
Out with a whisper~

- I’m pretty sure RT didn’t exist when the might from SA did. Also, RT-stabbing is/was borderline impossible/overly-risky and something people only did for montage videos. Executioner and even Panic Strike were considered better; particularly for Heartseeker Heroes. Remember that Executioner was also in the CS line. DA’s only damage modifiers used to be Exposed Weakness and Dagger Training, and those damage modifiers like I said were offset similarly to the 120 extra might depending on the build. With endgame gear not being a prominent, either, the power was substantially better as well.

- Most people building one-shot builds actually did run SA because it gave more damage than DA. It’s effectively the same thing as signets without needing to cast signets. Damage wasn’t over the top because CS didn’t get the damage buffs until later, and executioner was usually not taken over HK unless like in my previous build which relied on a sigil of intelligence, but this had huge escape problems, which is why I dropped it for HK and moved to an offhand sword for pre-casted IS’s for a return point after the burst is over.

Edit: Nope, HA did exist during RT. It was the next balancing iteration that removed HA. That said, at the release of RT, HA applied might for 15s and not 10, and was later nerfed because of even bigger discrepancies.

Narcarsis.5739:

DeceiverX.8361:

DD is only a true downgrade for extremely burst-oriented D/D builds, in which case it neither supplies the damage from DA, the crit chance from CS, or the utility from Trickery to be replaceable without substantial damage or reliability losses.

From an sPvP standpoint DD > CS for burst. The 17% damage modifier will outdo the critical damage modifiers from Critical Strikes. You don’t gain additional critical chance in the form of stats anymore.

By “extremely burst-oriented D/D builds” I’m pretty much referring to signets or NQ stab. 17% from DD is better on builds which do not put such emphasis on critting, such as the D/P meta which builds closer to sustain and pressure +1’s. NQ itself is a 16.67 damage gain on crits, and PT on marauder is an additional 14%. Daredevil absolutely can’t compete damage-wise with CS assuming the CS build is played and built for burst damage (like it should be; it’s crit strikes). Even without NQ for HK, Ferocious Strikes pushes another 10% modifier on targets over 50%, which again, will be a lot of people in the regard of sPvP due to lower power and overall higher defenses on average than WvW due to the nature of the format.

You’re also not performing the modifiers correctly. DD gives a 17.7% increase by how the scaling works whereas CS would provide a 25.5% modifier without NQ, and a 46.3% modifier with it.

Paired with SoP and Assassin’s Signet, CS wins by miles, pushing out what’s almost a 70% damage modifier on 10-15 stacks of might, which estimates around another 20% more damage pre-calculating.

Like I said, DD has massive support gains and yea is definitely an upgrade from most other build paths, but a burst-based D/D backstab build will see damage downgrades by a large margin trading out CS for DD due to the lack of crit support. DD offers less damage potential than DA (albeit this is close and potentially can favor the DD given a bound crit offsetting Mug if ignoring Executioner’s benefits for a stab execution), less crit support and subsequently damage from CS, and the utility from Trickery isn’t replaceable.

Zoel.9154:

Neutering the rally cap mechanic itself completely removes the incentive to run fewer people and reduces the amount of influence one person can have on a fight, positively or negatively. It’s always been the rally mechanic that helps me when I’m running a smaller group against a larger one. There are obviously fights where I get run over without it helping, but that isn’t the rally mechanic’s fault.

The rally mechanic only helps the smaller group unless the smaller group has no coordination, in which case I don’t know what you could really do for that group.

So much this.

When you’re 8v20, it’s honestly very likely that two or more players may simultaneously reach downed states. Coordinating for a critical rally was at times a huge part of the strategy that made going up against larger groups possible. The same is said about hard-resurrecting during a fight.

I completely understand the intent of this change as it makes blob fighting faster and victories more decisive, but I suspect a better intention would be to reduce the rally starting health/chances while in combat to two instead of four in WvW, and remove the cap on when players can rally from a kill; this way repeated-downed-state scenarios are punished such that blob fighting ends up moving faster, but small groups can still benefit from critical spikes and get up and fight again.

I’d also suggest keeping hard-resurrection while in combat. Long-ranged siege and plague signet as someone mentioned above could really cause some issues, and again this change hurts small groups more than blobs, as blobs will usually just tell dead players to respawn/those players will normally respawn, anyways.

Jana.6831:

DeceiverX.8361:

SA was giving more damage than DA while camping invisibility and defensive bonuses.

No, unless it has been nerfed before I started thief.
The max stacks I could get with runes of strength on my own – and with Hide in Shadows and Blinding Powder was 14 for a split second – the usual after stealth camping was 12. When I wasn’t stealthed for a longer time I had around 6-8 stacks of might.
I was at ~400 power less than someone who traited full DA, I was running 06620 – even someone with 26600 wouldn’t be as strong or even stronger than a DA thief.
I think that calculation was from before might was nerfed. But it should still be possible to find the max power a DA and a SA thief could have on their own.

ETA: Screenshot – That was the max power my thief could have. The screen is from November 14th 2014. Food was usually Plate of Truffle Steak, utility: Superior Sharpening Stone – the 25 stacks are Bloodlust and also the guard stacks, of course.
Build, like I said: 06620, Armor Valk, Rune of Strength, 2 trinkets valk+ zerker, rest zerker, all weapons zerker – everything Ascended.
Edit²: He’s still got an exotic zerker backpiece at that point – so I was wrong about “everything ascended”
Edit³: I can remember that I got into an argument with someone who claimed that SA thieves are kitten and that was when I calculated all that might gives a SA thief- the ~400 is what I remember – but I might remember it wrong and I can’t remember the former traits in DA as I never really used that traitline.

You’re comparing DA and SA vs CS and SA. SA given the might had objectively more power than DA.
12 stacks of might equates to what would have been 420 power. DA itself granted 300 from the trait line and no more, as DA had no source of might, and this was before DA had executioner as a bonus damage modifier, and Dagger Training was made baseline/removed, pitting 120 power vs 10% damage. Unless building signets, the might gain would scale better against both squishier and tankier targets. SA was factually dealing more damage than DA while not considering the damage from mug.

Now, with the 300 power gone from traits, SA given such reverts would provide an even bigger advantage in terms of raw damage. A DA/CS/SA thief could be easily capable of reaching backstabs well over 30k while retaining almost all the defensive benefits a thief has now as DA/CS/TR.

A lot of these changes were warranted is the thing.

Big problem is the rest of the classes in the game are just completely busted and the thief’s design doesn’t pair well with them.

Mug critting, Dancing Dagger’s old damage, IoS’s initiative gain, wall-CnD’s, SA’s might gain, and infinite return/long duration on the trap caused huge problems. Mug was one-shotting people. Dancing Dagger was one-shotting groups of two players, IoS provided infinite heartseekers. Wall-based CnD made it absurdly frustrating to maintain a WP on a keep and a good thief could maintain it permanently. SA was giving more damage than DA while camping invisibility and defensive bonuses. Dagger storm… someone above posted a video. Even infiltrator’s return was really broken because it could still be used while stunned while also removing a condition. An immob + stun lockdown combo made by another player was potentially instantly negated on a weapon skill that would run a lot of builds two utilities.

IReturn could be made with no cast if the skill couldn’t be activated while stunned like it used to be.

A lot of these were extremely abusable/abused. I’m not saying that the thief should stay weak, but I don’t agree these are the mechanics the thief should be pushed into for the sake of arbitrary buffs in the name of balance. The thief needs a lot of reworking across the board to make its build options much more solid while not being overbearing.

I agree with the OP and have made remarks in the past. Shadow Shot on D/P is also keeping the mainhand dagger from being buffed, and the Death Blossom “fix” made to D/D will now forever hurt the weapon from being used more effectively.

The sad part is they will likely never get the balance done correctly to warrant such a change.

There are a lot of major issues with the thief that can’t be solved by tuning numbers. Unfortunately that is all ANet is willing to do.

People demanded a trinity where roles would be required by certain classes.
ANet provided with raids.

This is how trinities work.

The mesmer is lucky that it has something to bring to the table in such a way.

I’m sorry but being untargetable does absolutely nothing to mitigate damage, especially now with reworked projectiles/action camera/similar alternatives. Dash is a full evade. You can’t take damage while using it. You can absolutely still take damage while in stealth. Only a few abilities in the game cannot hit stealthed targets, and those are numbered (pretty much just mesmer ranged weapons and shatter skills).

The only true damage avoidance mechanism is evasion. Otherwise you’re basing damage “immunity” on sheer player ineptitude or completely leaving the fight via teleports and mobility rather than stealth, paired with a definite lack of AOE damage.

Jana.6831:

reikken.4961:

Daredevil provides excellent condition removal though

Try it against a condi necro.

ETA: (note to self – never post when a patch is happening)
I’m a D/D thief – that is a problem – I have to be close on my enemy = what is enough for a staff or D/P thief isn’t enough for me.
And: I’m still a power thief – no fan of D/D condi.

D/D is arguably better for the condition removal on DD than D/P. Death Blossom being buffed so massively in terms of the evade allows it to be a free evade to trigger Escapist’s Absolution quite frequently without needing to burn a normal/“special” dodge. The removal is just a lot less passive and subsequently doesn’t auto-prioritize DoT conditions like SE does. Arguably, dash makes D/D much more slippery than it is on SA from the condition cleansing and high mobility.

DD is only a true downgrade for extremely burst-oriented D/D builds, in which case it neither supplies the damage from DA, the crit chance from CS, or the utility from Trickery to be replaceable without substantial damage or reliability losses.

Kaiser.9873:

Okay so merge the low end servers. Then all is good again, no? Bottom line is we have way too many servers for the number of players we have.

This isn’t a sustainable model and reflects poorly on the health of the game to stockholders/investors and to potential prospective players.

WvW is in the state it is in for a variety of reasons. Those reasons will continue to perpetuate until a lot of core issues are resolved, many of which are an extension of the current server vs server model through population stacking and time-zone imbalances.

Glad we’re seeing some understanding of different cultures and an understanding overall that something needs to change.

I’ll let my summation of my proposal and ideology sit here for reference. I don’t want to summarize the summary of this idea, for it was initially posted in another thread in a much more organized fashion that was deleted.

Yes, it’s a lot of text. But so far it’s the best “middle ground” I’ve seen or devised. Not to discredit other peoples’ labor or thoughts, but I genuinely think many other proposals are not as thorough from a mechanics perspective regarding resolution to the underlying problems with WvW, and instead focus too heavily on randomizing the population more or simply ignore the entirety of the scope of the problems which have resulted in the state of WvW now.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Much-like-ESO/page/2#post5822613

Caliburn.1845:

There are a lot of assumptions being made about the megaserver or alliance system that are frankly silly. We don’t know the details of what Anet is planning.

This makes many quite fearful, frankly. Particularly due to their detachment from WvW and those communities in general.

Caliburn.1845:

All the loyalties tied to servers should be able to be moved to an alliance without too much effort, because all a server is, is a group of people tied together by a name they picked at server selection.

I stand by this logic; community is arbitrary and is but a mere name of a collection of people with a common interest. I can definitely understand concerns mechanically to preserve this or concerns towards the uncertainty of the future. Jayne and I have had extensive discussion of the subject in the past. Implementing such a system would require a lot of effort to do correctly, and not doing so correctly would have potentially devastating consequences.

EoTM-style strictly isn’t good enough. And if that’s what ANet is planning on doing, they will be dealing more damage to the format than good in regards to good match-ups and pleasing players.

Quite frankly, it also seems that even within WvW, there are vastly different community differences just between NA and EU.

Caliburn.1845:

And Anet isn’t stupid, they’re not going to destroy the server communities without setting something up to replace it.

Many would beg to differ; particularly with what we’ve seen in or around the release of HoT.

Caliburn.1845:

You might have to become Darkhaven Alliance instead of just Darkhaven or something, but adding a word shouldn’t be a big deal to a tightly knit community.

I think the argument stems from the sense of shared collateral for losing.

That said, the only scope of that should be the feeling of not winning. Players should strive to play and win WvW because it’s fun, not because of some arbitrary name or necessary sense of duty to server said name.

The sense of loss should come only from being upset at the fact a loss occurred; something trivial which can easily be forgotten about with no real consequence of substance.

It shouldn’t be about community representation, but fun. If it’s not fun, the community doesn’t matter, because then nobody will be there to actually make and distinguish a community.

As far as the philosophy on the OP; they’re incomparable. The scale, money, and influence of the sport is so vastly difference on the everyday compared to GW2’s WvW.

These athletes are often role models (unfortunately in many cases) for our youth, they shape the lives of kids as they grow up, ranging from recreational fun to college scholarships to get a better education and job. Such sports have long-standing cultural significance in a population that doesn’t undergo dramatic loyalty shifts and changes externally.

Many watch and cheer because the teams represent a region or sub-culture; their livelihood. Yet many also watch and cheer for the team that represents them now.
Contemplate the man who moves from one region to another in his early adult life. He may still cheer for his original team for a while. But over his life, he’ll lose touch with his old home and garner the respect of his new one and his new culture. A man constantly moving may not route for one team, but the underdog. And the Superbowl only represents two teams; why then do so many people watch, when they are not being represented? Because they care about the game itself, not who is what or where necessarily. Passion is what drives the success of anything. Passion for a community will, but only when the community in its entirety is going to have such similar devotion.

Passion for a game makes for people passionate about those who partake in it. We do not even have passion for the game [mode] yet. There is no way to build such strong passion for its sub-communities until the initial is created.

There was passion for no-names in old gladiatorial pits. People were passionate because of the game, not because of who was necessarily fighting.

Even if easily traversed, the map is difficult to fight on.

That and small groups get punished with over-buffed PvE elements.

SR was honestly pretty bad to begin with for sPvP. It just offered some downed state safety to prevent stomps, but DPS’ing the invsible corpse isn’t prevented this way. Otherwise it largely acts as a “Here I am come AOE me” indicator for the enemy team.

I always use other utilities for PvP/WvW because someone who knows how to deal with SR/stealth should be able to kill the thief and whatever he’s trying to hide without issues.

The best use of SR when playing against skilled players is using it while already stealthed away from you such that it forces enemies to be baited into blowing AOE’s/cooldowns within it in an attempt to kill you, and then just waltzing up and killing them when they have no further access to damage.