Guild Wars 2

Lead Attacks, Sigil of Impact/Force, and my apologies, I think you included the bonuses of PT without stating them.

Sparda.9750:

@deceiver: from what? could u explain better?

What are you referring to, exactly? o.o

The act of using the survival skills actually procs confusion. The conditions are also cleansed at the end of the cast/on a delay rather than the beginning as well. All stealth also completely breaks entangle, without a condition cleanse. Any thief/mesmer/ranger/engi/soon guardian can completely negate this effect altogether by entering stealth and moving. You’re actually able to break the immobilize this way.

Dire PU condi mes really doesn’t have much of a counter aside from stealth traps.

Sparda.9750:

anyway.. if u have scholar and u are full hp (10%), if u attack someone above 50% (10% CD), if the target has at least one condition (10%), if u use just one BPHS (+ 5% dmg), if u use assassin’s signet (+15%), u have :
2.4 ( coefficient of BS) X 1.5 ( bonus dmg by all those things above)X 2.5 ( zerk amulet with no quarters X 3225 ( power by 2555 zerk + 450 by 15 stacks of might due to 3 active signets + 250 due to bloodlust) X 900 ( dmg of pvp dagger ) = 26122500

this one has to be divided bby target ’s armor
armor 2600= 10047 dmg
armor 2000 = 13061 dmg
armor 1900 ( light marauder build ) = 13800 dmg

to reach 19k dmg u should have 40 stacks of vulnerability,
because, reaching 25 stacks of might plus 25 stacks of bloodlust with zerk is the highest power that you can reach ( 3525 )
so, against armor 2600 = 11k dmg
against 1900 armor = 15k dmg
with 25 stacks of vulnerability we reach 19k dmg, more or less

so, in the end, 25 stacks of might plus 25 stacks of bloodlust + 25 stacks of vulnerability+ zerk.. against marauder light.. 19k dmg

Your math isn’t quite right and is missing almost 40% (additive) in damage modifiers.

Kocoff.7582:

LOL. Let me give you a hint: I pulled a 11k Backstab in WvW the other day I had 15 stacks of Might.

If you got hit by 19k Backstab, the thief had at least 20 stacks, you must have had a few stacks (maybe 5 or 10) of vulnerability.

but kitten . my condolences. lel

I can do 11k to the heavy golems in sPvP on 16 stacks. Also remember CnD applies 3 stacks of vuln, stackable up to two times if you’re quick. I frequently do 12-14k on light amor targets in sPvP with Marauder and not Impact/Night/Force and not using NQ. Berserker obviously bumps this considerably.

For obvious reasons, this is why I strongly stand against the [Teef] guild’s suggestions on buffing HK to provide a 50% damage bonus on backstabs. Builds that even spec lightly into this kind of damage would be one-shotting tanks, lol. That’s just unfun.

A proper build for sheer damage can get to 19k on a glass light armor target via 25 bloodlust using Impact/Night or Impact/Force sigils. A signet build is also very capable of packing 20 stacks of might, with a trapper signet build easily getting 25 stacks of might + 13 vuln without doubling up on CnD.

The damage is huge, but frankly, you’re looking at a thief with no utilities, heals, or condition cleanses anywhere in its build.

As far as my WvW crits go (since I was referenced), they have gone higher. I’ve managed up to almost 27k once, and 23/24k a few times, and it’s still theoretically possible, however I rarely get the chance to screen cap bigger stabs as combat is typically pretty demanding without having access to extended stealth or resets once I commit.

Edit: Guy above me beat me to the benefits of Shadow Trap paired with a signets build lol. I’ve tried this in WvW but had limited success due to the difficulty of getting the trap to be useful in open field. ST has some very good potential in sPvP and PvE, though, due to the predictability of foes’ movements via stacking or putting them on points/common objectives.

Weo weo.6378:

Several questions really.

1. How do you guys deal with condition damage builds? (most namely, burn guards and condi engineers)
2. In the case where you are forced to fight and win an essential 1v1 (as in the person has seen you and is coming for you on point), what is usually the best way to engage them (especially classes with stealth and huge burst like engineer/ mesmer)?

3. How well does Sword/dagger perform against pistol dagger?

I’m not complaining that thief is essentially a +1 role at the moment, but the inability for an inexperienced player to challenge against the current meta is a bit disheartening.

1.) You don’t at all/don’t alone. You bring an ally with AOE cleanses. Though you should probably be doing your job and looking for open points instead of fighting.

2.) You don’t. No 1v1’s are essential. If you’re forced into a 1v1, either you or your team is slacking. You are there to cap points that are not defended and 2v1/gank when outnumbering your enemy if it’s necessary if all points are being defended, and your allies can sustain the damage. Pretty much boils down to not attacking and hoping they blow cooldowns once you leave stealth every few seconds (if you can afford the risk/are not on point), and then stealthing up again.

3.) Eh. I’d argue it’s a skill matchup this way. S/D has enough mobility and evades to not die and let the S/P gut burn all of his initiative, but lacks a lot of the offense needed to take down someone playing S/P without running them dry of initiative first. Assuming both keep up with their stunbreaks/withdraws and IS/IR’s, with the amount of time spent baiting initiative/skills from each other, someone else is likely to enter the fray and tip the scales. S/P might have a very slight advantage, but again, it’s still pretty slight, as it pretty much would depend on the S/D player screwing up more than once.

It’s not you/your skill level. The class itself is just straight up bad at fighting in sPvP, and currently based on the WvW meta, even pretty weak there. You look at the best thieves in the game, and they pretty much skip the fighting and just take points, because they also know they’re not going to win if the opponent is any good.

That said, spamming D/P 3 is a pretty good way to kill isolated targets. A constant blind/gap-closing/high damage/unblockable skill at 4 initiative is pretty good. Mathematically better than trying to backstab if you’re just looking for damage.

Yea… unfortunately the parallel to the old bearbow isn’t quite adequate.

Mesmers are actually useful in 2/3 formats whereas the old bearbow wasn’t useful in any.

PU condi is just a faceroll build and pretty much always has been. It’s just now even stronger and even more facerolly than it was because it’s that much stronger.

Maybe if they just removed dire gear from WvW it’d be a bit more fair, but as it is in dire gear, it’s pretty much invincible. A lot of the PU condi mesmers now are previous P/D condi thieves who did just as much facerolling and played basically the same way. Except PU condi mesmer is just straight up better at everything in every way.

Don’t even get me started on PU Condi Chronomancer. I pray they make some tweaks because that build was absolutely stupid to play against.

OneKlicKill.4285:

Sylent.3165:

OneKlicKill.4285:

Have you seen the ele forums today? You guys were blessed by the 6, the pale tree, supported by the char legions, gifted the patents of the asura, and declared legends by the norn.

Truthfully the ele forum made me kinda sick. Elementalist in my opinion was already one of the strongest classes in game that could do more then any other class already. Yet people are in an uproar because now was added to the class. I personally enjoyed it in beta.

The tempest mechanics are trash though, mechanically they are bad, as a trait line they are bad, what the spec brings to the table is nothing we couldn’t do. the elite is god tier bad.

The devs took no input from weeks of feedback and an overwhelming amount of suggestions and improvements/alteration ideas of improving the tempest, all aspects.

Its appalling that they can disregard an entire community like that, its no wonder everyone hates the devs over there, I completely support them in that.

See, eles have it good.

The same dev who’s responsible for them is the same guy who does the thief.
Except he still pays more attention to the Ele, because he’s openly admitted to not playing the thief, forgot the skill names and changes he made during the 23’rd patch, and mentioned building a “strong concept” of a condi build in a weapon combination that literally does not have any DoT access. It’s like saying someone’s come up with a great new condi build based solely on the air attunement… what?

P.S. A variety of the thief’s skills/traits are still not fixed or changed yet from the 6/23 patch. Most notably, the heal getting a 20% cooldown increase with a proposed 10% healing increase and healing power ratio increase to compensate. The healing still hasn’t been bumped up on either of the two.

Cygnus.6903:

DeceiverX.8361:

I fear that an over-abuse of burning is going to make the class overpowered.

This made me laugh a bit buddy.

To be fair, what class do you mean here?

Anything given enough burning becomes pretty OP. That’s my fear; they’ll nerf the warrior after giving it too much burning instead of nerfing the condition itself like everyone is asking them to.

Kocoff.7582:

That’s an interesting topic. Daredevil do extremely reckless things. Steal is pretty reckless but not Daredevil Reckless. I am going to say our new F#3 skill will be disarming the opponent. That would take Stealing to another level. At that point, not amount of reveal could make them more dangerous, it should be like 5 seconds.

I would like to see slide tackles that causes knockdowns, or very dirty tricks like throw sand or Quicksand trap.

Nah. Steal now makes the thief unarmed to provide a better show by giving its gear and strength to the enemy for +100% magic find when you kill the foe.

Dude, he didn’t know what the new traits were.

Expect nothing good to come from this reveal.

Mathematically, tankier specs have always had the best damage dealt per damage taken. From a sheer numbers perspective, even on optimized builds, it is always superior to run soldier’s gear to any kind of optimized berserker’s/assassin’s/valkyrie setup in regards to this ratio. Condition sets, especially dire, throw this way out of whack by getting the ability to minimize damage taken while retaining high offensive capabilities. This is and has been universal to all formats, and why the berserker amulet has never been used aside from on the thief in sPvP (as they get fewer gains from using defensive gear/physically cannot fight on the level of other professions on a point and are thus better used as bursty +1’ers/non-combat point flippers).

This is even further apparent in sPvP since the damage taken is also inherently lower due to the gains coming from berserker gear actually just being straight up bad while the defensive gains are quite large as compared to their PvP counterparts. Berserker gear and similar setups only truly shine when there are a lot of other modifiers at play and stats are able to scale much higher like they can in PvE and WvW.

You’re seeing more durable builds be more successful now in WvW because berserker is only truly good against other glass specs. With condi builds on the rise (dire gear and defensive traits due to a lack of need of three offensive stats, and how conditions ignore armor values altogether), paired with the incredible cheese that are currently the ranger/mesmer/ele builds in roaming, there is an increased focus on being durable enough to withstand substantial burst damage coming from multiple lower-hitting attacks and increased condition cleansing from the completely imbalanced and atrocious condi roaming builds. A lot of these specs are also extremely durable and directly counter pretty much anything playing glassier and offer next to no counterplay opportunities.

PvE-wise, DPS is everything considering the mobs are unintelligent and people just like to clear content faster. In no way is there a “best” gear set or “optimal” method of doing things, except for when time is considered a factor. For unskilled groups and new players, though, again, durability has mathematically always out-performed offense in regards to ease of content and the damage dealt vs damage taken ratio.

Roaming at the moment in WvW is the worst it’s ever been due to the blatant imbalances with a lot of the “meta” builds. I’ve given up on it mostly on my thief, and have had better luck frontlining zergs as a glass cannon recently.

Pridedemon.3041:

I don’t know what you mean by even bigger damage, do you mean more dps for pve?
Because if so then that’s simply not correct. From what i understand after reading the latest update, the berserker elite specialization is focused around torch and burning build (so in other words, its a condi heavy build) and we all know that Condi is just inferior to pure ppf build, so no its not even bigger damage for pve.

Where does it make warrior stand in spvp, we will have to wait until we can actually get the hands on experience during beta.

This is just strictly not true. The ranger has a condition build option that is some of the best DPS in the game and are strictly better than all of its power variants, even when factoring in group support.

I fear that an over-abuse of burning is going to make the class overpowered. I’m hoping we can expect some burning tweaks in then near future since the condition as it stands right now is wildly overpowered on all of the builds it shouldn’t be strong on, and feels too limited on the builds that are designed around it.

Admittedly, minions would be a lot more fun to play if they looked less… gross.

Linfang.1087:

Per forum codes of conduct:

Do not engage in staff call-outs. Using the words “ArenaNet” or any staff member’s name will not expedite the answer to your query.

Cya

He’ll probably be okay considering the subject matter. I did it once to CJ and it became one of my highest rated posts of all time and I suffered no consequences, and even my post was a bit more… suggestive than this one.

I think it’s largely about keeping it civil. This “callout” is more or less a compliment to Roy for listening and just telling him to inspire the other devs to work like him (though Robert Gee is my new favorite, sorry Roy :p)

Ele’s, assuming you’re referring to D/D cele-ele for the most part are a nightmare as typically the best way to deal with them involves either condition use through chill, poison, or weakness (which get cleansed instantly) or trying to wait through portions of their rotation, which ultimately just lets them sustain better.

Boon stripping is good, but access is limited. Timing bountiful theft (if you’re traited for it) is pretty big as to snag might and protection if possible.

I’ve found that bombarding them with CC/interrupts on their major combo finishers/the heal through Sleight of Hand and Tactical Strike (Headshot if you play offhand pistol is the best) is the best way to really mitigate them. That said, it requires a lot of pressure and in/out from the sword to cleanse the burning you’ll be taking as they get huge amounts of it.

Girbilcannon.8259:

Anet is like a hardcore feminist extremist…They accept the P/P, but will do anything in their power to make it less powerful.

I lol’d

lol’d again

and lol’d some more.

Nice one. 3punny

Maugetarr.6823:

DeceiverX.8361:

Maugetarr.6823:

reinforever.8902:

AikijinX.6258:

Yeah, well all power to you. You are 1 in a million. A thief that can successfully run a trapper spec. I would be interested in seeing a montage video, but thank you.

You’re righto on that, everyone I’ve tried to convince that the build is good says it sucks. But good idea, I think I will make a short montage vid!

Edit: Suggest me some decent free recording software. Does the built in windows 10 stuff actually work?

Nvidia shadowplay. Windows 10 isn’t bad as Zero Day suggested, but I haven’t tried the capture software because shadowplay already does such a great job for me.

This thread appeared in the PvP forums asking the same thing recently

Was just about to recommend Shadowplay if he has an nVidia GPU. That software is absolutely amazing and it really upsets me I run a card on older architecture currently that isn’t supported, but the weaker card in the same series does.

Yeah, I love it too. I’m running on a 770 and it has no noticeable effect on framerate. I uploaded a raw video in that to show the video capture quality.

Yea, it shouldn’t have an effect on framerate at all because Shadowplay works on the hardware level- the GPU effectively just hands off the results of the rendering to a hard drive. The processing done here is completely minimized and is all done entirely in perfectly-optimized ways on already-fast/optimized hardware. Goes to show just how far optimized software gets you, and how abstraction in coding ultimately comes at huge performance costs despite making API’s easier for programmers.

+/- duration food should be removed altogether. This way the ticks are more consistent and the skills themselves can be used as they were balanced, and if numbers are too high/low on these effects, the balancing is normalized. This also lets condi users bump their damage per tick if things prove to be too weak and get buffed via +damage food.

As far as coglin’s comment about people squeezing every ounce of power out of a build, it wouldn’t be an issue where some sacrifices would need to be made. Unfortunately the real culprit here comes from dire gear. You’re looking at a stat setup designed to counter burst when condi builds thrive on sustained fights. You’re looking at power players needing to sacrifice their food utilities to counteract conditions on top of maximizing cleanses (costing damage). The problem here is that because dire is so tanky, and condi builds thrive on longer fights, being incapable of bursting down a condi build before they can stack large ticks (as per how to counter condition players on a multitude of classes which strictly do not have good enough condition cleansing as an entire class) creates poorly-designed encounters that prohibit counterplay.

Regarding evidence of condi DPS > berserker DPS, the ranger’s axe/torch condi swap build offers the best DPS available to the ranger/parties, and has substantially faster build-up than most other condition builds. While this does mean that it uses sinister gear, and is subsequently just as squishy as its berserker counterpart, the primary form of its damage by far and large comes from its condi ticks, which of course remain with dire gear, if not improve in WvW due to food.

Of course, that’s just from a DPS perspective. In PvP formats, where it’s fairly common to be found not constantly attacking and rotating damage, condi builds can offer strictly better DPS values (class dependent) as the damage can remain ticking while performing defensive maneuvers, resetting positions, etc, due to innately higher damage per skill use on condition skills.

For a bit of history, GWEN/lack of use of conditions in blobs was established as a ZvZ method due to the fact that AOE condition application via control conditions (not even DoTs) such as poison’s heal cuts which are/were previously much more readily available to spam on groups of players were regarded as being the deciding factor in group fights in WvW, and as such, a structure was designed to create a direct counter to battlefield control as a whole and in doing so make it much more difficult for zerg members to be killed/rallybot. Initially, guardians were seen as good support/damage hybrids, but the primary focus in blobs was ele/warrior/thief for support, initiation, and control, respectively, with necros and mesmers playing as more or less sideline control players and unique support options, and guards being more of a niche support/damage role.

I think ANet needs to redirect its developer funding to just cloning Robert to handle all of the classes. These changes look really reasonable/were asked for and all seem like proper incremental changes for the specs to undergo. Most importantly, the feedback was obviously taken into account, and you’re keeping us up to date with what you’re doing.

Seriously. PLEASE go distract Karl to something shiny and look at the thief’s completely broken dynamic.

Maugetarr.6823:

reinforever.8902:

AikijinX.6258:

Yeah, well all power to you. You are 1 in a million. A thief that can successfully run a trapper spec. I would be interested in seeing a montage video, but thank you.

You’re righto on that, everyone I’ve tried to convince that the build is good says it sucks. But good idea, I think I will make a short montage vid!

Edit: Suggest me some decent free recording software. Does the built in windows 10 stuff actually work?

Nvidia shadowplay. Windows 10 isn’t bad as Zero Day suggested, but I haven’t tried the capture software because shadowplay already does such a great job for me.

This thread appeared in the PvP forums asking the same thing recently

Was just about to recommend Shadowplay if he has an nVidia GPU. That software is absolutely amazing and it really upsets me I run a card on older architecture currently that isn’t supported, but the weaker card in the same series does.

YB and the “GvG” on T3 were why I transferred down to T4/T5. You don’t get map queues, but NA prime has some pretty huge blobs and there’s plenty of opportunity to roam with meaningful impact more than just taking a camp or two and ganking some random pug.

Jayden Ennok.3687:

gennyt.3428:

Nothing but shame induced salt.

I carry [Packet of Salt] to ping to that type of players when they start whispering me.

I typically mail out pepper to them to go with their salt.

+1. Really annoying concept that honestly should be done away with and just replaced as skins.

What the intentions are, I don’t know, but what the intentions should be, I do agree with the OP.

The way I see it, dagger, axe, and scepter all need some substantial changes, and a big rework while bumping up the visuals like how they did for the reaper would be really sweet.

Consider dagger MH as a mid-range sustain set, swapping most of its range increments with axe. Midrange sustain allows for some good damage numbers and the whole blood magic/rituals theme could be explored a lot for midrange aesthetics while better-pushing the non-shroud sustain options due to a lower auto-chain.

Axe could become the melee DPS option with a focus on quicker hits and life force gains. I’ve always thought the axe looked clunky and the animations felt pretty silly, and its role as a single-target midrange burst just never sat well with me aesthetically. Getting some of the assets from Reaper’s Touch (Focus 4) and applying those sprites/particles to the axe while wielded to let them take on more of a sickle/scythe form would add a lot of flavor to the axe as a weapon and to the necromancer and its ties to the reaper specialization.

Scepter I think feels good as an expected midrange condi option, but could probably just get a bit more flavor through more diversified conditions and the use of torment as a means of better synergy with feast of corruption and also playing with the whole flavor of the condi necro being focused around agonizing the enemy and inflicting pain more than just straight-up bleeding injuries.

The GS needs to be a burst weapon. RS is focused a lot on DPS with its burst being primarily a finishing blow. DS offers substantially better burst per hit, so the GS needs to fill this gap to get the enemy there to begin with.

A correction Kocoff, a thief can “attack” while invisible. Just not on a power build. Condi builds with Uncatchable + Pressure Striking/Perplexity/Sleight of Hand or Bewildering Ambush can fairly easily rack up kills while never breaking stealth.

As far as the thief go, the thief only deserves to get the durability out of stealth it desires if it doesn’t have obscene durability in stealth. Being able to shrug off revealed should imply that the gains from stealth should be negligible, as then you have just an extremely durable high-hitting high mobility spec with extended stealth for mind games.

Would just be better if they made AC’s not deal damage to siege or deal very minimal damage to siege.

Seriously, why is an AC dealing substantial structural damage to a massive battering ram? They were designed as anti-personnel and should stay that way.

hazenvirus.8154:

nicknamenick.2437:

So your SLI with also the more expensive 980 is a huge waste for atleast gw2.
(why not sli 970.. For real the 980 is just a marketing stunt)

The card might be wasted on gw2, but the 970 is more of a joke than the 980. The 970 suffers from performance issues when it uses over 3.5gb of its available memory.

http://wccftech.com/nvidia-geforce-gtx-970-memory-issue-fully-explained/

Not quite. Almost all of the concern regarding the whole VRAM issue came from driver-related problems, not hardware ones, and the issue only really persists now if you run games in MSAA which brings every GPU out there to its knees by cutting performance numbers by 30-70% even on 1080p.

The 970 is a fantastic card if you configure your game settings properly and understand where and why there even may be a bottleneck and how it compares to the rest of the competition (I.E., extremely well).

The unfortunate truth pertaining to the OP is that GW2 is very CPU-bound and doesn’t utilize CPU hardware fully due to the way the code for the game is designed. I recall one of the engine programmers debunked a DX12/optimization thread once regarding this issue by going through the technicalities of everything and why the game is pretty much never going to see better optimization because based on the way the engine works, it’s just not possible without running the risk of some pretty substantial stability risks.

That said, do also look at your cooling configuration. PC components will throttle performance based on heat generation, and your computer as a whole, especially in regards to gaming, is only as fast as your slowest part in use. If your temps are too high, no amount of code optimization or faster hardware will make the game run better.

fluffdragon.1523:

Arewn.2368:

Non-thief player chiming in.
I actually think they should increase the revealed time, and buff other forms of thief survivability to compensate.
To be frank, stealth shouldn’t be the default state you fall back to as soon as you’re not attacking. But thieves are so squishy and lacking in other forms of survivability that it seems they don’t have much of a choice but to do exactly that.
Revealing yourself should be something you commit to in combat, and stealth should be a precious resource you occasionally go into (“occasional” in the context of GW2 combat, is perhaps something to the effect of every 15 to 20 seconds on average). Forms of perma-stealth playstyles are just too unfun to play against and as such are unsuitable for an MMO.
You have to have very well developed stealth mechanics for them to be fun for all involved parties, which is necessary for any sort of multiplayer environment. But GW2 doesn’t have that, GW2 just has straight up invisibility on a cooldown.

I agree wholeheartedly, as both someone who has been playing other classes and a huge advocate for Thief.

The core problem with our class is that the stealth mechanics are our life-blood, so to speak. Too much of our survival is based around breaking PvE enemy aggro by entering stealth and using it to recoup initiative, health, and cool-down.

It’s also our means of usurping opportunity, which, in the vanilla game and PvE realms, has always felt like Thief’s purpose. Even our skill mechanic, Initiative, gives an opportunistic feel.

Right now Arena Net has two options:

• Reformulate Stealth: Scrub the stealth mechanics and start over, giving Thief a more solid baseline of combat potential and survivability and re-imagining Stealth as it should be: a combination of diversion and clever positioning to seize the upper hand and beguile your foes.
  -or-
• Add Reveal Counter-play: Dial up the effectiveness of Stealth and provide more access to Revealed whilst also making the latter a true condition that can be removed (such as by reworking some of the redundant skills into Diversions* to act as a counter-counter-play methodology).

As things stand, our biggest problem is PvP, where it’s no longer breaking aggro but visibility. Humans don’t just turn around after 3 seconds and wander back to their patrol area, they hammer the vicinity in AoEs. And because PvP likes to complain very vocally, a vast portion of the game has been changing to accommodate (after the decision was made not to split the two); this means that the second option would be a moot point. Improving Stealth would only anger people further, and the last thing we need is more “teef op wah” threads.

So frankly, it makes sense to redesign Stealth mechanics entirely, as that seems to be what most everyone complains about. Not to mention Stealth, to enemy players, should be that “oh kitten!” moment, rather than a “not again …”

*: To explain the Diversion rationale, Revealed is one of the only player-invocable, non-removable debuffs I can think of. While it serves a purpose, it feels designed to counteract stealth mechanics on NPCs … which are almost nonexistent outside of Skelk. Keeping it universal as a holdover from maintaining a more simplistic design instead placed the burden upon the PCs; Thief has a debuff almost unique to them which, when active, severely limits their survivability and combat potential. Since ArenaNet seems to be very into “counter-play” of late, especially with the Boon/Condition pairing, it would seem logical to add a counter-play to the Revealed debuff by literally creating a diversion to remove it.

Edit:
In the reworking of Stealth, I would say this could well maintain the status quo inasmuch that it has been viewed for some time as our main form of burst/spike damage. Backstab and Sneak Attack can devastate foes if done correctly, and Thief is the only class to receive Stealth Attacks.

Consider it as being the analog to Warrior’s adrenal skills.

If these attacks were enhanced alongside a reworking of the Stealth mechanic, and Thief received a much-needed boost to durability, little would ultimately change. We could still maintain a Stealth-focused style of gameplay whilst providing both a reason for Stealth to exist (as something other than our go-to defense) and for Reveal to be as commonplace and potent as it is.

Reveal seems intended as a shut-down or denial. If so, we should restructure Stealth to legitimately warrant such a treatment.

Absolutely.

It’s a rather hypocritical double standard, though. You’re belittling dagger mainhand’s options to provide better support to sword or pistol mainhand which already have strong options in CS through No Quarter and IP. If anything, NQ and IP would still remain better options due to the increased damage NQ has from the ferocity bonus/permanent fury and the lack of dependency on critting its stealth attack, and IP’s much better sustain from sword cleaves and Pistol’s rapid attack capabilities.

You sacrificed more than just one build. You sacrificed an entire mainhand weapon and its two secondary options altogether for negligible gains at best, while completely and utterly removing any kind of viability of one of those particular subsets. You’re “creating” just as many if not fewer builds than you’re removing, and the way these builds play is near-identical to what they currently are whereas the ones your sacrificing have no substitute. You’re also deadlocking gear choices for the subsets of the builds you’re removing even more so than they already are, even further reducing available diversity.

If you’re playing signets, you’re playing for maximum damage. Period. PT will yield similar damage to the might gain from signets based upon the setup you’re creating, thus again destroying the purpose of signets since one could just run PT and free up three utility slots with strictly better utilities. So yes, this fundamentally destroys signet builds by design and makes the entire set of utility skills completely pointless aside from IS because it’s a low-cooldown stunbreak/shadowstep that’s already used on non-signet builds.

These changes genuinely do more harm than good and would offend a lot more thieves than you think P/P thieves trying for 100% crit rate unloads from stealth utilities would appreciate, especially considering NQ still yields better damage and then isn’t dependent on wasting utility skills. P/D power is a joke and wouldn’t gain anything from this trait, and condi builds wouldn’t be in CS to begin with.

More reveal would be fine if the thief as a class had more to compensate for it. Having our class mechanic damage/effects tied to stealth attacks puts us at a bigger innate disadvantage than any other class, even when disregarding the lack of invisibility paired with lower base defenses.

Does that mean we need better base defenses? That’s debatable. Just throwing more HP/armor/baseline cleansing at the problem doesn’t really solve much. You’d then have a case where playing against a non-revealing build would probably offer way too much defense, per the case of how RoS was working during testing (this paired with protection and Rejuv was completely and utterly obscene).

Somehow allowing for the continuation for offensive pressure and revealed defensive trait options could get us to where we need to be, working similarly to RT, or bumping some of the weaker offensive traits to enable less stealth-heavy play with a greater focus on revealed defenses/defenses while not in stealth.

It’s a tough nut to crack. More revealing effects isn’t a solution to the thief as it is without changing a variety of traits and mechanics exclusive to the thief, but more revealing effects is definitely a solution to stealth as a whole assuming access is fairly limited or kept to steeper investment.

Pretty sure a lot of the hate comes from Quick Draw RF builds chewing through people who’ve blown their resources fighting something else that just get ganked and lose all of their health. For the amount of damage it does, it’s a pretty safe spec that typically takes advantage of terrain abuse and ridiculous range to not get hit at all.

I’ve been playing longbow greatsword glass forever, through the thick and thin of ranger’s strengths and weaknesses, and a lot of the hate just stems from how easy our damage is to land, and how difficult it can be to prevent it.

PvE-wise, people complain for being kicked and so on because they’re joining groups that are pretty much attempting to set record run speeds (or for some reason abiding to build guidelines designed to do so when playing with pugs). I’ve never been kicked from a party on my rangers, and neither has anyone in my guild. Just don’t join speed run groups/pay attention to LFG, and if you see elitism in LFG, make your own party. I usually get a full one within a few mins for most dungeon paths. Suggested to switch classes? Absolutely, although in most cases it goes undisputed, as sometimes those high-scale fractal instabilities really favor a particular class or build over the limited support the ranger can provide. I guess if someone is really sucking due to the instabilities and is dragging down the whole party and refuses to work with the rest of the party to finish, I can understand a kick. Although those types of runs are so few and far between and only applicable to the extremely difficult fractals.

This pretty much destroys the entire valkyrie signets concept, and stealth attacks aren’t counted as occurring while revealed, BTW, so HK also becomes nerfed into oblivion.

The intent was good to bring back riccochet, but these changes pretty much kill any possible D/D or signet build attempt.

Only really crappy skills are designed to depend on almost pure RNG.

DB needs either condition cleanses, a gap closer, or a substantial evade.

Of course. Just remind me who you were as I get requests pretty often.

I liked what I saw, though I would like to keep my three vuln on CnD. If anything, the duration can just be cut to 3s to prevent double-stacking like it can be currently. I have but one suggestion I made in another thread that I didn’t think much of at first, but has really grown on me and I don’t think it would break anything, which ties in nicely to what was said above regarding:

-Condition cleanses still feel weak
-HK needs a little bit of… something.

Unblockable is definitely way over the top, but HK for the most part, while awesome, doesn’t really feel fitting for a GM, and CS as a whole is not taken for the most part in competitive PvP builds and HK is considered sub-optimal in the dungeon meta. It enables valkyrie builds, but disables either SA or DA, which are arguably two of the best trait lines available (Trickery aside).

Giving HK a one-condition removal per stealth attack would put CS builds in a much better place, for now they can sacrifice SA’s remaining utility for extra damage/reliability, and still get a cleanse every few seconds, but at the cost of not constant cleansing, initiative regeneration, healing, extended stealth duration, etc.

A SA build then can build into CS for even better condition removal on par with guardians and eles, but at the cost of the damage and utility from DA; mug, Lotus Poison, Panic Strike, EW, Executioner are all very strong traits and would make this a very calculated decision with definite ups and downs.

I do like the general direction of these suggestions, though. Nothing seems out of line but everything looks pick-worthy.

Ranger’s Sic ‘Em, and the yet-released Dragonhunter’s AOE reveal trap.
In WvW, any player can construct a Reveal Trap with 10 supply that reveals the next player that walks through it for 30 seconds.

Otherwise, playing against thief stealth is just learning the thief and how to best counter the class as a whole. This takes a bit of practice but eventually you’ll get it down. The best way to beat a thief is to play as one to learn its tricks, and use that knowledge against it. There are no other direct ways to force players into the revealed status.

As far as stealth as a whole goes, you still need to watch out for rangers, mesmers, and engineers, for these classes also have stealth access.

Just spam 3 on D/P.

I was called out to a duel recently playing D/D signets against D/P. I lost, and with some post-duel words, thought it might be fun to show the guy his winning words were pretty meaningless. I gave him a challenge: beat me when playing D/P, and I’d only use one skill the entire fight – Shadow Shot – no utilities, no heals. He could use his full kit.

I never went under 90%.

Seriously. Being “good” on the thief right now comes to how well you can manage pressing 3 on D/P because Shadow Shot is blatantly overpowered and the entire rest of the class is terrible.

Not like they’re never releasing more specializations It’s really likely we’ll get both in the long run, so why argue/rage? I’ve put in my two cents in the past on how I personally feel, and perhaps why certain concepts aren’t a great idea when the ideas for the specializations were up in the air. There’s no gain to debating or arguing about what it will be, what it looks like, what it should be, should do… etc. Clearly ANet has made up their minds and is willing to do extremely big letdown specs (tempest warhorn). Our input, creativity, or debates aren’t going to influence this round of specializations. There is no point and has been no point in arguing about it. The only discussion that’s meant something is new info about the reveal itself.

I’m looking forward to something new, regardless if it’s even the thief that has me interested.

D/P’s largely better for its mobility and utility via spammable blinds, ranged interrupts, and good burst that s/d largely doesn’t have, all while being able to maintain the best stealth.

reinforever.8902:

DeceiverX.8361:

DA/CS/Trickery offers substantially more damage than CS/SA/Trickery, and substantially more reliable damage than DA/SA/Trickery. This is truly compounded when not playing with builds such as signets, however.

What do you mean it’s truly compounded, please expand?

I think I typo’d and meant to state it’s truly compounded when playing builds like signets.

I mean this in that damage modifiers scale multiplicatively, so the more you stack, the more potent each one also becomes. Example being that if you deal 100 damage, and you have a 50% damage modifier and a 20% one, you’ll end up dealing 100 * 1.5 * 1.2 = 180 damage instead of 100 * (1 + .50 +.20) = 170 damage. The more modifiers, the more the damage compounds. Since DA and CS offer more damage modifiers, combining both yields much higher damage than having just one and comparing them between each other.

A couple of the changes suggested are completely out of line and wouldn’t be balanced if implemented whatsoever.

Permanent protection uptime with the regenation from Rejuv + high evade and blind pressure + mobility would put D/P and P/D into OTT ridiculous-tiers of skirmishing. There’s way too much synergy with the existing burst and stealth rotations and continual 2/3-spam from most of the strong builds to warrant increases in this department.

Stability on stealth doesn’t allow for counterplay. CC’ing thieves out of SR or into a non-stealthed state is part of critical counterplay to stealth-based builds. Stealth builds are already frustrating enough as it is, and there are many ways a thief can safely SR through a variety of movement/blink abilities, evade cancelling, etc. It’s also an important aspect other classes bring to the table for the thief to utilize, just as how the thief can bring permanent AOE stealth and extremely high damage to a group.

Coming from a thief who plays for big backstabs, the proposed changes to HK are not okay. I would be able to one-shot kill or come extremely close (so dead in one CnD/Stab, still) almost any build in the game except for maybe a rampaging sentinal warrior with said change. We’re talking stabs so large that against another thief, one backstab of mine would kill them through their downed state from being up and running. Do you want that to happen to you? Probably not. Further, D/P and backstabs/stealth attacks in general don’t need more damage and doesn’t really use CS as much as D/D. If we were to see any changes in regards to stealth skills/HK, I would suggest making HK remove a condition or two upon successful stealth attack, allowing CS builds not investing in SA to get a small boost in condition clearing that the thief desperately needs, and buffing the viability of CS/SA/Trickery skirmishing builds as a solid performer against condi bunkers, while keeping up the usefulness of Invigorating Precision as a heal for SA builds that don’t feel the need to cleanse more.

Your signet proposition destroys the purpose of signet builds. The might is fine. Your mentionings about Assassin’s signet on activation losing damage is also factually incorrect; it only loses damage after the five-hit buff expires, which in most cases only really occurs in PvE or outnumbered situations, in which case, the signet shouldn’t be activated unless it’s per the player’s analysis that it would be ideal to do so. The signet active, despite a loss of 30 power, leads to absolutely massive damage increases due to the way damage modifiers scale with each other. I think signets just need better activated effects to make them worth using in non-signet builds, or shorter cooldowns since their utility effects aren’t that great compared to the rest of the utility skills. If you really feel the need, just bump SoP to 6 stacks of might to make AS provide equal might.

Shadow Rejuv doesn’t need a buff. Sorry. The initiative regen already allows for permanent stealth uptime. It shouldn’t be made any easier, and 52223333 Shadow Shot Saviors and Heartseeker Heroes don’t need more power. Offhand dagger doesn’t even really benefit from this as it already gets its full initiative back.

I’m hoping you just missed an ICD change to Ankle Shots. It’s bad more because of the fact that it only has 50% uptime for the damage modifier for P/P builds, not because of its limited-availability. If anything, it works best on D/P (surprise surprise) because Shadow Shot spammers get even more reward for spamming 3 by getting 10% more damage and cripple on the skill effect.

Otherwise the rest of the suggestions seem pretty reasonable.

Jana.6831:

(too long to quote)

As far as the wait on removal goes, then they ninja-fixed that problem, which is good news for SA builds. A lot of the complaints stemming from the 6/23 changes were that any cleansing from SE was happening after a 3s period rather than initially + the 3s interval. I only run SA when doing the Mai Trin fractal, and haven’t gotten it/done enough fractals recently to really notice. Otherwise, from a DoT perspective, SE has been improved. Your anecdote earlier implied you died from DoT’s while stealthed; the rate of cleansing hasn’t changed (unless the same patch which ninja-fixed SE also bugged it out, in which case this is a bug problem not a design problem), and due to the lower-number of available conditions it cleanses, it will cleanse said DoT’s faster keeping you alive if being flooded. Part of condi-play strategy is to flood useless conditions like cripple, small vuln, low-duration weekness, and other misc. conditions to cover over the DoT’s to make them require more cleansing skills or simply not be able to be cleansed except my huge clears due to the FIFO limitations. SE ignoring 2 stacks of 5s vuln, 2s of cripple, and 3s of weakness and prioritizing 19 stacks of confusion applied afterwards is so much better in regards to sheer condition-build-countering. Proper use of evades and Withdraw can get you out of most situations and clear the debilitating conditions which SE can cover the DoT’s.

As far as cooldown tracking goes, it’s part of skilled play, and why that term covers a very broad spectrum of abilities in games like these. I come from a game where the class I played had in GW2 terms about the equivalent of 7k hp in light armor with no defensive boons, evades, stealth, or healing. Cooldown tracking was how that class did well— some if its skills had 10+minute cooldowns for only a few seconds of bonuses— and blowing those at the wrong time could cause an instant loss of a fight.

Lamuness.3570:

I’ve never played a full glass D/D in WvW before. I should try it now. I’d love to hit a 20k BS, but I don’t even have enough points to get the atk stat increase from guards, nor do I have WvW infusions because I still play fractals.

Thanks DeceiverX

The build isn’t full glass. It uses a lot of Valkyrie equipment to sustain better against larger-damage strikes and conditions.

Unless you’re running some kind of poison duration/condi duration build, Reaper of Grenth will only maintain one stack of poison/chill if the target isn’t very close, which is still pretty underwhelming considering plague does a better job and applies stability while also giving extra skills/utility.

Bhawb.7408:

DeceiverX.8361:

I disagree with more shout target scaling. I actually found it to be downright frustrating that these utilities were ONLY useful in situations with large numbers of foes.

My thoughts were buff them baseline to still be acceptable, but add in minor effects that ultimately add up with more foes. As it stands, the shouts feal downright weak if not utilizing them against at least three targets. I’d push them more towards the 2/3 target area base, and just add smaller increments per target to still fully reward going up against 5 targets, but not punish the reaper for not doing so.

That’s exactly what I put, raise the baseline on all the shouts so they are useful 1v1, but scale to similar power values as now if you hit 5 enemies.

I must have completely mis-read that, then. I thought you said you wanted increased base cooldowns and potency with increased reductions per target hit.

Jana.6831:

Well, SA is more useless to D/D thieves than to D/P thieves because D/D thieves can’t use the traits they had anymore – I wrote in another thread why the changes of SA are especially bad for D/D.
If you use D/D to primarily one shot people, then you don’t need SA, true, as you’ve got one chance to down them. My playstyle is different from yours – watch nightblades videos to get an idea of how I fight (he’s better than me, though, yes I’m a fangirl). I don’t really want to one shot people, although it can be fun, but I guess I’m more in for the mind games.

SE is good for every weapon set, yes, but all other weapon sets have means to either avoid AoE or to cleanse condis, that’s why SE and the whole SA line as it had been was crucial for D/D thieves. It still works somehow, but I was in Garri today, zerg fight and have been caught in the enemy zerg for a bit, got condis on me, don’t remember if I used withdraw and then SR, guess I did, but I do know that I used SR, stood there for 10 seconds, nothing else happened and I dropped – that’s so depressing, honestly.

Edit: Grammar

Contradictions about D/P’s need for SA being less significant aside, the cleansing capability of SE in regards to DoT’s, which in the case you mentioned above, were assumed to be responsible for your death in garri, has improved substantially since the 6/23 patch. The only direct nerf to SE/SA as a whole is that its stealth effects go into effect after the third second instead of at the beginning of first stealth, i.e., the conditions are cleansed once per three seconds while in stealth, and the timer starts upon entry to cleanse a condition rather than cleansing a condition immediately. Since SE no longer cleanses disabling conditions such as vuln, cripple, weakness, immob, chill, or slow, it will now shed DoT conditions faster, as the previous priority system used to cleanse based on FIFO queue, regardless of their potency or how close to death you were. Your death in garri, if attributed to conditions, would have only been faster given SE before the 6/23 changes, and only may have been avoidable because of the changes. If you died instead from physical damage, you made play mistakes somewhere ranging anything from a misplaced/early evade or shadowstep, improper mobility skill use, poor initiative management, just being in the wrong situation by letting the zerg run over you, hitting a stealth trap and not realizing it, etc.).

As far as Nightblade goes, he’s a good thief. Yes, his and my styles are quite different, and most of the video recording he does involves outnumbered fights and the subsequent use and abuse of the defenses from SA to overcome situations which normally “shouldn’t” occur. A build like mine doesn’t get as much reset flexibility, or must instead rely on learning opponents’ cooldowns and pulling a full OOC reset and striking between critical skills. As such, it kills much faster, meaning that with skilled play, it doesn’t need as much reset potential.

As far as grammar goes, don’t worry too much with me unless it’s really bad or changes the meaning of the post. I likely won’t notice as much/mine probably isn’t as good as normal as I have some substantial abrasion on my right cornea after an accident Monday morning, making parts of my vision rather blurry :P

Jana.6831:

DeceiverX.8361:

Just to make sure I’m not missing something important. If I am, I’d love to incorporate it into my play if it won’t fundamentally change the build.

On the contrary, D/P almost requires SA due to the massive initiative dump that BP+HS is. Blowing the utilities early to avoid needing to do this then also becomes no different than playing something like signets.

When against condition builds, I use Sword/IS + IR a lot, + Trickster on Withdraw so I have much fewer problems with cleansing than previously before the patch, and usually finish off after my burst in S/D to get a bit better sustain and evasion presence while forcing blown mobility effects from my foes, CC’ing, blinding, stealing boons/unblockable attacks, etc. Don’t you also play with Berserker gear? That alone provides much less condition damage tolerance than anything like my setup as it would require substantially faster cleanses on the DoT conditions – something which the changes to SE actually improved upon since the 6/23 patch. Conditions were my initial reasoning behind investing in Valkyrie gear – I formulated extra damage out of it as a side-effect when optimizing in detail one day after the release of Furious Stones.

I usually don’t find myself picking particular targets, no. Usually, I’ll give most people a try, and simply escape via IS/IR, steal, CnD, HS, and Withdraw if I need to. I’ve been avoiding a lot of condi PU mesmers lately, as the confusion stacks deal so much damage that the act of cleansing them will take out half of my health, but I think it goes without saying that said build hard-counters most thief specs that don’t push into aggressive cleansing, and is absolutely a hard-counter to my own. I can always tail and kill them after they engage a camp of meaningful objective, though, as enough of their cooldowns will usually be blown to let me do so quite successfully. Otherwise, if it’s a straggler, I usually engage unless I have good reason not to, such as suspected stealthed enemies or others nearby, and even then that depends on classes.

So? Yes, the patch was okayish for everything but D/D which needed SA the most.
If you want to one shot your opponents they likely don’t really have a chance, but then again I have never seen you fighting, so all I can do is guess, but what I would do if I were running your build was to wait for single targets (if solo roaming).

I have got 4 thieves at 80, all of them D/D one has got P/D as a second set(my condi thief), although all of them have got all weapons availlable to thief anyway.
My main has got valk armor, rest zerker (some valk+ zerker trinkets) with my old and now rather useless runes of strength.
Another is full zerker with runes of the pack.
Another is 20% more valk than my main and has got an assassins dagger with sigil of perception (first ascended dagger I crafted, that’s why) and she’s got runes of hoelbrak.
Fourth thief has got a cavalier/valk/zerker mix with runes of the traveller, rest zerker, some day I’ll get around and change her gear.

There’s no real difference between them in wvw, although I tried DA,SA, T with my full zerker pack thief yesterday. Worked pretty good but then again my game is lagging really bad (has been even worse during the beta weekend), so I can’t really say who won what fight because of what.

I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree, frankly, though I firmly stand by my statement that D/D is less-dependent on SA due to less of a need for initiative refunding from Rejuv. SE is one of the best traits on the thief, and I’d argue all thief builds could benefit immensely from it, as it closes one of the biggest gaps on the class, but I still wouldn’t claim that D/D needs it the most.

DA/CS/Trickery offers substantially more damage than CS/SA/Trickery, and substantially more reliable damage than DA/SA/Trickery. This is truly compounded when not playing with builds such as signets, however.

I disagree with more shout target scaling. I actually found it to be downright frustrating that these utilities were ONLY useful in situations with large numbers of foes.

My thoughts were buff them baseline to still be acceptable, but add in minor effects that ultimately add up with more foes. As it stands, the shouts feal downright weak if not utilizing them against at least three targets. I’d push them more towards the 2/3 target area base, and just add smaller increments per target to still fully reward going up against 5 targets, but not punish the reaper for not doing so.

Nicely done! I didn’t find as much success :P

Just to make sure I’m not missing something important. If I am, I’d love to incorporate it into my play if it won’t fundamentally change the build.

On the contrary, D/P almost requires SA due to the massive initiative dump that BP+HS is. Blowing the utilities early to avoid needing to do this then also becomes no different than playing something like signets.

When against condition builds, I use Sword/IS + IR a lot, + Trickster on Withdraw so I have much fewer problems with cleansing than previously before the patch, and usually finish off after my burst in S/D to get a bit better sustain and evasion presence while forcing blown mobility effects from my foes, CC’ing, blinding, stealing boons/unblockable attacks, etc. Don’t you also play with Berserker gear? That alone provides much less condition damage tolerance than anything like my setup as it would require substantially faster cleanses on the DoT conditions – something which the changes to SE actually improved upon since the 6/23 patch. Conditions were my initial reasoning behind investing in Valkyrie gear – I formulated extra damage out of it as a side-effect when optimizing in detail one day after the release of Furious Stones.

I usually don’t find myself picking particular targets, no. Usually, I’ll give most people a try, and simply escape via IS/IR, steal, CnD, HS, and Withdraw if I need to. I’ve been avoiding a lot of condi PU mesmers lately, as the confusion stacks deal so much damage that the act of cleansing them will take out half of my health, but I think it goes without saying that said build hard-counters most thief specs that don’t push into aggressive cleansing, and is absolutely a hard-counter to my own. I can always tail and kill them after they engage a camp of meaningful objective, though, as enough of their cooldowns will usually be blown to let me do so quite successfully. Otherwise, if it’s a straggler, I usually engage unless I have good reason not to, such as suspected stealthed enemies or others nearby, and even then that depends on classes.

Oh, then yea, 60s if on a 90s CD.