Guild Wars 2

Confusion only ticks once I believe, though admittedly it’s hard to pay serious attention in battle. You’re right, though, that condition mesmer is a pretty good counter to this build. I almost lost a 1v1 against a condition mesmer last time I played this spec – but I just ran off, flipped on a bit more condition removal and in better terrain, and then it was nothing again.

Really, the short is that this is a tough to kill build that lacks a bit in killing power against anyone that knows to get off caltrops and has some condition removal. It is a great build for sPvP/tPvP from the nature that you can keep the point coated in your caltrops, and if they group on the circle, it’s beautiful for your DB too. If they don’t, you can usually hold them long enough for your group to come (though GG if it’s hotjoin).

Note to others – this is an extreme example showing how thief can reach infinite dodges/evades. Take this, and start applying it in a controlled manner (meaning you don’t need to rune/double sigil your way), and you have a class that is far more untouchable than any other class. Because of this, I can take on any number of mobs with my zerker thief. Because of this I can dodge every incoming attack from a champion/boss. Because of this I almost never lose a 1v1 even against a stealth spamming x/D thief. And this is not even touching all of the thieves access to blinds and CC.

Really, I look forward to the reveal debuff hitting no matter what. The “Shadow Arts” tree is ignored by many stealth builds for two reasons – Last Refuge interrupted their perma-stealth run away attempts, and 1-sec on your stealth is needless when you can just permastealth with CnD and refuge/HiS filling gaps. And really, this ONLY really stops CnD stealth spamming. You can still stealth stack and stealth yourself long periods, but traits become more important for those goals.

I don’t see this as a true nerf to stealth, but finally eliminating cheap low-skill brainless crutch gamplay of the no-downside perma-stealth x/D that so many relied on. Stealth will still be OP – you still gain the ability to break targeting and unpredictably place yourself on the field – but you now have a time limit to do so. And maybe, just maybe, you’ll learn of your dozen other survival tools that thieves have instead of just stealth.

I am curious, though, what do you think are these “counters” to stealth? Melee swing blindly, and if your second auto attack triggers, swing more hoping the thief just stands there? Random AoE hoping the thief doesn’t know what red circles mean? There is a reason you can 1v5 or solo entire zergs, and ‘losing’ that is not breaking anything, it’s fixing an imbalance.

No, you can’t use your full burst D/D in PvE and have the survivability needed. Ever since the off the stealth = magic aggro control, people are realizing they can’t use their PvP builds in PvE. Some are crying that they suck in PvE now, some are actually looking and realize they can kick kitten Really, any weapon set can be extremely effective in PvE, all depending on skill and playstyle. I personally lean towards high evasion builds that can take on a dozen mobs (current record is 4 vets and 12 infinitely spawning (as they were instant spawn vet adds) standard mobs) and solo champions in it’s sleep. You can do this as both condition or DPS. Condition builds can afford to go tank, and thus are even harder to kill, but you’re faced with the fact bleeds stack horribly in parties, so I lean towards DPS evasion.

If you consider yourself a master of dungeons/fractals and boss tells, a backstab build is indeed one of the highest DPSers in the entire game, though it’s still a twitch build of survival/death, and should be built differently than the 25/30/0/0/10 burst squish.

You didn’t copy the whole link then Rhoellan. But to make life easier for the masses, here is his build shortened. I avoided the temptation to make my changes. :p

http://tinyurl.com/ah9o7r9

RedKhus.7546:

This is exactly correct in my experience. Whether I’m running between objectives in WvW (and what kind of resistance we expect) or mob/boss types in a dungeon or even just roaming in PvE, I’m always changing at least one of my weapon loadouts on the way.

I happen to run your exact 25/30/0/15/0 build in your other post, because Unload is just amazing, plus I happen to enjoy the play style. The only difference is I slot Power of Inertia instead of Vigorous Recovery, because I’m dodging constantly (especially with Feline Grace) and so Unload hits even harder. With PoI I use it as basically a burst-loader, dodging on my way in just to start stacking power for my first couple unloads. I always total somewhere between 12k-15k and with a decent amount of crits it’s not unusual to top 20k. It hurts an enemy bad, and if they are not running by then I can close the gap switching to D/P and Shadow Shot, then Heartseeker spam. I slot Shadow Refuge or Hide in Shadows to get away if needed.

Thieves don’t need to be chain-stealthers or dagger reliant to be a lethal class and very fun to play. But I think that’s the point of GW2 design—many viable options that are effective if you figure it out. I’m just glad the Thief is so kitten fun.

Thank you for your build input as well; I’m always looking for new things to try.

The only thing is I find the vigor for extra dodges to be a bigger deal than an extra 100 attack power. Of course any situation where you wont need all of those dodges to avoid damage, you should switch to inertia… but I find part of the key to success is high evasion to go with this type of build.

Void.4239:

Yeah the speed signet can be swapped for whatever people like to use really :P .
Its a free to chose slot depending the situation your are in.

I mostly change it to either :

- roll of ini or infiltrator signet : when i need more stun breaks ( 1 is more offensive / other defensive)

- signet of agility : when i face a really good conditioner ( or multiple conditioners)

I use the speed signet , just to reduce the unneeded dodge out of combat.
Without the weapon swap its rather hard to get swiffness stacked out of combat and i hate being slow even out of combat .
Once in combat yeah its useless , but most of the time i don’t need the other skills really

Shadow refuge looks great to for getting that extra heals in the fights .
But i would risk relapsing into using it for the stealth , and this build is mend to cure stealth users .

ty for the nice constructive info , pretty sure a lot of folks will appreciate it

Pfft – you can dodge/swift run infinitely with your setup. Flipping the camera round 180 to slip in a withdraw (which is also great for movement) gives energy and vigor. It’s a bit more active than holding the W key, but you’ll be moving faster than speed signet ever would have you, leaving that spot free for true combat options. I see that signet (at least on dodge swift spammers) as only useful for lazy town runs.

I will agree with Loading, however, that Quick Pockets is a better option. As long as you swap weapons in less than 15 second intervals, you’re coming out ahead. If you find yourself able to go longer than that, then it means that you actually have room to have a swap for initiative. So really, it’s a win for a build like this.

Why not swap your signet of shadows for a signet of agility? Speed does not stack, and with that many dodges, you have plenty of swiftness, so it serves no real purpose other than as a blind. By using a signet of agility, you also gain access to a condition removal as well as yet another energy boost. Other options would be Roll for Initiative to give you a move that removes all mobility/stun conditions (saving your shadow step for damaging ones) on top of the additional initiative recovery. Scorpion wire to pull people back onto your caltrops. Or Shadow Refuge – your 3 spam suddenly becomes leeching on top of a healing field on top of a being an “oh kitten” reset option. Short story, you can do better than Signet of Shadows for a utility. Heck, I use dodge to move around towns too.

I would also suggest loading up on Skale Venom. You want to load as many debuffs as possible to make it difficult for them to remove your bleeds/cripples.

I’ve done a build similar to this (though not quite as energy stacked), and it’s fun.

Authority.6145:

And why would I enjoy it for 2 weeks?

Also why are you sharing your tears as a glass cannon warrior to a glass cannon thief? What happend? Couldn’t kill a thief in 1.5 seconds? Life is hard?

Nope, I was simply giving an example of the damage potential. No need to go all troll.

As for the comment of the “2 weeks”, that is when culling is turned off. 2 seconds is a big kitten deal. Much easier to react to a thief appearing behind you than your health dropping when you’re already fighting other people. So when people have a direct object to react to, that thief likely WILL die in that “1.5 seconds” as he is now a no def 10k HP single shot for my Warrior that I can actually target and use an attack in time before he stealths again. Or any of my other classes for that matter (including my thief).

Culling eating up to 2 seconds of a 3 second reveal leaves only 1 second (which is often barely a flash after fade animations) to target someone that you’re not positive where they are, and trigger an attack assuming you’re already facing them (which is something the thief actively works against). With a full 3 seconds, I DO have time to react before your finish your combo, so you’ll likely not 3-hit combo me, thus shooting off the main point of the build. Plus I now have time to counter attack before you can stealth. This means you now have to use tools to survive in those attacks. Dodge twice and hope I don’t land a CC before stealth? Shadow step if I do? Though in that case you now can’t undo my CC for another 50 seconds. That means if your next burst attempts fails (which I’d be more ready for), I can kill you. Or you run away (which is what most thieves do).

And if we’re talking sPvP/tPvP – I find stealth spam thieves to be entertaining. If we’re dueling a point, I’m capturing the point you can’t while stealthed, so more points for us. And as I generally do sPvP/tPvP with my own thief, I have more than enough dodges and shorter cooldowns on my breaks than your holds that you’re not going to hit me more than once with your combo unless I screw up. Caltrop drops should keep your heartseekers shorter than my dodges. Pretty much the only dictation of you being killed by me or my holding you until party members come is if culling is acting up in even tPvP or not. The upcoming change means it never will be.

Authority’s post is the classic 3-hit-combo glass cannon thief build. I’ve had a thief do 24k (6.2k steal, 7k CnD, 12k backstab) on my glass cannon Warrior with that build. I wouldn’t use that in PvE, but at this current time it rules supreme in PvP/WvW. When they turn off culling, I do expect that this build made with zero survival options (past the two single target holds) will take some changing since people will finally be able to see them. That’s happening in 2 weeks, so enjoy it while you can.

Durations are fine, and they have tons of ways to increase – I’m talking more than double. Short duration conditions are usually short for a reason – dazes, stuns etcs would be too OP if they could shut down someone for a whole fight. Or the durations are short because of how fast they are applied – moves meant to have a high burst of condition damage rather than low long applications. Any serious condition build can keep 10+ bleeds and perma duration conditions on a target. They do have to keep reapplying, but just like you have to keep attacking to keep doing attack damage, you have to keep applying conditions to do condition damage.

As for combos, anyone that doesn’t try to trigger that combo field is a NOOB. As in needs to L2P. Sucks. Doesn’t know how to play this game. Combo fields are AWESOME. Seriously look at this page:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Combo

Every one of those combo fields is awesome. I cringe when people are not smart enough to trigger the fields. Even the options you consider ‘weaker’ of condition application is still rediculously useful. You now can have the whole party apply it, giving the target high stacks of the condition (yay for thousands of damage from confuse!) or giving minutes of burning/poison (like my thief can apply 40 seconds of poison off the CG poison field alone). How is continuous damage a bad thing?

If you’re dropping combo fields and see people not triggering them, kindly explain the benefits of the field and how to trigger it. Most of the time people not triggering fields is NOT because they don’t think it’s worth it, but because they don’t understand them.

Bassman.9245:

I can’t believe some ppl choose Roll for Initiative over Shadowstep, and call themselves thieves

Really? Roll for initiative also breaks stuns/knockdowns/control moves without my having to port back to remove conditions, and gives me 6 init while doing it. With P/P I want that initiative, and I’m still in range after the roll.

There are situations where Shadowstep is better, and some where Roll for Initiative is better. Both are pretty kitten good utilities.

I guess this would be dictated by what the engine struggles with. Is it drawing the damage numbers? But that would be client side more, and easily solved by simply adding the numbers together before ticking. If it’s calculations, they could simplify the calculation to each stack being a multiple rather than individually decided. This would work for any intensity stacking, and would be more true than any normalized converted buff that wouldn’t be able to handle 12 different peoples condition (thus once again negating the purpose of going condition). Vulns is a flat 1% period, so there is no calculation complexity added by lifting the cap.

The only complex zone I see is duration stacking damaging conditions (non damaging can be set to simple adds to a time stamp) – Burn and Poison (and fear if traited necros). It currently has duration stacked with priority given to the stronger stacks. Having to track the duration string with each player’s value and duration I do see as getting a bit bloated. If the system can’t handle that, I’m fine with this still being limited to 25 stacks global – these are set in such a way the condition builds already get their damage in over others and durations already can hit long enough that you can reapply without losing real damage.

TL;DR – I don’t accept a meager number of 25 set as a technical limitation and washing hands of it. I would want that limit tackled. More basic draws, simplified calculations, taking a deeper look at sources. Admittedly not knowing their coding limits my providing more direct suggestions, but I hope to see this done. This reason alone is why none of my characters are condition builds in PvE.

Lol – ‘ranger range’ is 1200, traited to 1500. Even if thieves had their shorbow increased, they would still fall ‘short’ of Rangers.

Thieves are the only class in the entire game with no 1200 auto-attack range weapon (water doesn’t count) is a serious disadvantage (though Guardians pretty much also are). Ok, so thieves have cluster bomb (their one and only long range move)… which if you use at that range, takes seconds to reach the target negating any hope of it being a real DPS option. This means that they are very ineffective at helping attack people/siege on walls in WvW. Any ranged group tactics the thief doesn’t qualify for as he has 2/3rds the range of everyone else.

So I basically see two options:

1) Thief has a MASTER trait that currently gives only 5% damage. It’s completely pitiful, and justly not even remotely worth it vs other trait options. This could be boosted to increase Shortbow range to 1200 as well.

2) Give thieves a ‘sniper rifle’ or a ‘blow dart’ (if a new weapon is feasible – thrown options also come to mind, but those make sense to be limited to 600-900).

Right now we face a world where condition builds work in PvP or solo, but not in parties. In parties it’s Power and crit damage or bust as stacking limits nullify your effectiveness in the party. While I’m guessing that stacking may prioritize condition/level value over others when applied, I just simply see no balance concerns of having no cap on conditions. There is no limit on how many people can walk up and smack him for 3k+ damage each – why can’t the same number of people walk up and do their condition damage? A condition removal will take every single one of those stacks off. Having 3 condition builds in your party is now no longer a problem – they are just as valid as any other member.

If any ‘limit’ is placed, it should be 25 stacks from a single character (which I actually do think is needed). Ticks and duration is already individually tracked – just take the cap from the global and place it on the individual.

This change is the biggest help I feel condition damage needs in this game

Great suggestion, though I lean towards everyone having 2 dances. 1 race/gender dance, and 1 class/gender dance.

Taking your suggestions point by point:

Weakness
50% of Non Critical hits are glancing blows (50% damage); Lowers the targets Critical Chance by 20%. stacks duration.

Response I’ve always thought weakness should lower criticals that one can deliver. Weakness is almost laughable in PvP as almost everyone builds for crit chance since so much of the game is triggered on crit. Plus it makes sense. Though I think it should be changed to “50% of Critical hits are normal hits”.

Problem of a flat 20% chance subtraction is max crit builds could care less and mid crit builds would have it shut down. In addition those normal shots would be further reduced into glancing blows… so too powerful on the mid to low end, too weak still on the high end.
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Vulnerability
Increases damage the target takes by 2% for each stack. Vulnerabilty stacks up to 25 times. Characters suffering from vulnerability have a shattering shield appear on themselves when the condition is applied.

Response Taking debuffs as a view of a counter to buffs is not necessarily the right way. What is the buff to counter poison’s lowered healing? I do think it should be boosted, but I also think that serious testing to see balance in PvE, WvW and PvP should be investigated before considering.
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Crippled
Endurance regeneration decreased by 50%; Movement speed decreased by 50%; stacks duration.

Response Completely agree that this makes sense. However this is most of the power of Weakness – knocking dodge regen down is strong. Cripple is a common and often spammed debuff while weakness is not. Are you sure you want to be unable to dodge in PvE? Think about the implications of the fact that many classes can keep you perma-crippled… this would change the PvP field greatly. Just think this would make Crippled too powerful.

Fear
Involuntary retreat; unable to act; Deals damage every second; stacks duration.

Response No. This is already a trait of Necromancers, and it’s pretty powerful to boot. Also if fear is unremovable, you suddenly create a broken control move – it already stops your weapon/heal skills. Add in the power it has in mass when used with the environment, and this move is fine.

Blind
Involuntary Dodging; Movement is backwards; Next outgoing attack misses; stacks duration.

Response No. Makes no sense and would make the move OP. Seriously, if you closed your eyes and you tried to walk forward, you would walk backwards instead? Being blind would make you miss, not lose control of your body.

Bleeding
Can stack in intensity up to 25 times and each stack does one pulse of damage per second. If you get 25 stacks of bleeding, all bleeding is removed and replaced with a new uncurable condition called “Open Wound.” which stacks up to 25 times, this lasts as long as the 25 stacks of bleeding was applied for, and does the same amount of damage as 25 stacks of bleeding.

Response The only “concern” with bleed is that it is too common. Every class has massive access to bleed, so the second it’s a party, there is always wasted bleed. The fact that it is unclear how conditions are ‘knocked off’ makes it a bigger pain. Is it first come first out, so new conditions knock off the oldest? Are conditions just not applied? Is there some kind of prioritization (which is possible considering how condition duration stacks trigger)? The solution isn’t odd converting debuffs, but a look at the stacking limits.

The only problem with this suggestion is that I can hit “+1” only once.

Ensign.2189:

It’s an ok build for PvE, particularly dungeon content that is difficult for your group; it’s a pretty strong ranged DPS character, though it offers little else.

hmmm – a spammable near instant interrupt (making it not only easy to twitch interrupt, but keep their big attacks shut down), the ability to singularly bump a target to 25 vuln for a party burst, a blind spam, and one of the best field projectile finishers in the game. It may not be the DPS of backstab spam, but it has other features, and is always reliable dps. But then to be honest, a thief should carry ALL his weapons. Your pistol burst build would work as a dagger backstab burst too. So against a boss that is relatively static and no constant AoE to keep you off him? Use daggers. Have a boss that can 1-shot you or is completely anti-melee? Use pistols.

Every weapon combo is viable for thief – but not for every single situation. P/P is not ok, it rocks socks if used right. Same with any other combo. If there are 20 trash mobs, I’ll think you’re foolish for using D/D. If three warriors are perma-25 stacking bleeds and you step in with P/D, I’ll sigh. If you’re twanging away with SB on the single boss that is already being effectively poisoned/weakened, I’ll be wishing you packed P/P.

TL;DR – If you think any given weapon set sucks for a thief, it’s because you haven’t properly explored it yet. Seriously explore for yourself before you down talk anything. Pick weapons that fit your playstyle, and have fun. Just try to stay flexible as changing to fit the situation is the key to being effective vs just ‘ok’.

P/P works well in PvE. I actually also think it works in PvP/WvW as a ton of dodges give plenty of mobility… but the clincher is that Stealth is so OP that you are handicapping yourself to not have it in PvP/WvW (though you’re perfectly fine in PvE without it). The key to winning is being unpredictable so you can stomp them while they can’t stomp you. Stealth just is an auto win button in that catagory, so if you’re looking to do P/P in PvP/WvW and have it as your best option, you can forget about it. However if you want to do it and still be able to do well, you’re fine. I do it in PvP for fun, and still win most of my battles. Dodges have been enough to keep me alive in 3v1 while I waited for reinforcements to wipe them.

Now for builds. As you don’t have stealth to rely on with P/P, I consider 15 in Acrobatics a requirement. It equates to one free dodge, which is super powerful. Couple that with vigor and signet of agility, and you can pretty much consider your dodges unlimited. I run with Withdraw to add yet another dodge/mobility debuff breaker. Sigil of Generosity + signet of agility has been more than enough for me to handle the non-mobility debuffs. So debuffs = no prob. Mobility = no prob. The only thing left with your P/P is laying in the damage. For this I’ve developed a few builds. This will take some meta crunching to determine the best damage (initiative regain for spamming skills vs how hard those skills hit), which I have not done yet

A 25/30/0/15/0: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAqaVlYmCO3dy8E95Ex2DgqTeqzAnvs/AXB
This is obviously about having unload hit hard as possible. This is also beautiful with shortbow. You have limited initiative regain, but most targets don’t survive the melt so who cares? This is what I use in open world PvE.

A 10/30/0/20/10: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAqaVlYmCO3dy8E9JFx2DgqTe6V4raFwZnCuaVA
This adds a good amount of initiative regain. 2 every 10 seconds and 3 from every steal. On top of this your copious amount of dodges now drop caltrops, making it harder for mobs and people to chase you on top of additional bleeds. I’ve been using this in Dungeons and PvP/WvW (when I decide not to be cheap and go for a stealth spam build). This works well in Dungeons as it makes it easy to run past/controls trash for the whole party with all of your caltrops. Switch traits to this for bosses: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAqaVlYmCO3dy8E9JFx2DguTe6VgsaFwZniraVA. Unless you’re dodge tanking the boss, I’d also switch signet of agility for smoke screen. Helps protect the party from projectiles if the boss has them, and also provides a blind spam field at no initiative cost. The higher initiative gain is because I lean towards that as better long term DPS for bosses, and needed due to the fact people will be dodging/blocking several of your unloads in PvP so having more at your fingertips is more important.

I won’t claim my builds are perfect, but they’ve been working well for me.

This game was designed so that leveling your character to 80 has little bearing, and requires little effort. You take your level 80 to a starter zone where all those sparkling new level 3s and 5s are, and you will ALSO be level 5. True “end game” really can be defined as getting ‘been there done that’. That means you’ve explored every map, done every mission, beat every dungeon. Some take it a step farther to get every achievement. Really, it’s up to you what you want to do – go for that (which is also a requirement for Legendaries)? Concentrate on PvP and WvW? Go for Ascended gear? Level another 80?

Short answer is – this game is not about reaching 80. Heck it’s not even really about then gearing that 80 for stats as any serious play can do that in less than a month. Grind for looks. Go for 100%. Do PvP/WvW. Level another 80 to find a class that you really want to stick too. I simply see no ‘end game’ – it’s a continuous game. And they try to nail in that with their monthly content updates.

It’s extremely common to go 25 Deadly Arts and 30 Critical strikes. Getting the Master Minor in other trees beats out any third option you could get in the Deadly Arts tree. The Grandmaster options – Panic Strikes has too stupidly long of a cooldown, and Residual Venom just doesn’t really shine unless you all out venom and take the Shadows Art tree with your Deadly Arts tree for Venomous Aura.

As TheGuy said, there are a bunch of playstyles, and builds to fit that playstyle. Builds are also different for PvE and PvP. A stealth in, burst target down, stealth out doesn’t really work in PvE, especially since the changes.

My opinions of weapons sets in PvE:
D/D – Backstab is great single target damage, but requires a party with good aggro control. 3 lays in a ton of bleeds and is an evade, but relying on a single attack from a weapon set I find weak. Great in PvP, but weak in PvE

D/P – A blinding gap closer and onto an already nice leap can make this a very mobile build. Added with the interrupt and blinds of an offhand pistol, this can be a build that is untouchable against a single target, but it has ZERO multi-target options unless you trait ricochet, which is just LOL if you go for that on this weapon set.

P/D – An extremely common weapon set. Trait CnD for blinds and you can basically blind/bleed blast your target for a pretty low-effort build. Shadow Strike is a nice get out of danger move if you have no dodges left and it’s a champion where your blind won’t save you. Sadly this also lacks multi-target, but Ricochet becomes useful here.

P/P – The obvious draw of this build is unload. So spammable, stacks combo fields, and fun to use. Ricochet can turn this to a 2 target set, but by the time you’ve gone that deep into the trickery tree, you should question if P/D may be better. The big advantage of this set is you never have to go melee range. You can kite anything in your sleep when you couple this with your copious dodges (if traited)

S/D or S/P – Sword I find to be a bit better in PvE, especially against trash. Sword actually has cleave so it can be both effective single target and multi target. 2 is awesome. Off hand dagger means you already have a built in blind (1) with your CnD spam. Off hand pistol means you have Pistol Whip which is a stun followed by rapid sword attack. This move alone is what allowed for some ‘tank anything’ builds back when crit food was broken… but still very useful.

Shortbow – Most builds use this as their off weapon. Some use it as their main. The thief’s only serious AoE weapon, and that reason alone makes it pretty indispensable. The thing is, it’s pretty epic to boot. No build should ever have a skill that never gets touched on this weapon. Skill 1 as a quick multi target auto attack is self evident. Skill 2 is actually indeed amazing damage – hitting up to 15 targets is seriously awesome. Skill 3 cripples, evades, and is mobility. Skill 4 is a giant poison field – we’re talking 20 seconds of poison for anything you can keep in the field + your projectile triggers = perma poison is guaranteed (and poison is powerful with or without condition damage). Skill 5 is a spammable targeted teleport – need I say more?

So pick your weapons, and how you think you want to build for them, and we can go from there.

Dual.8953:

Better solution. (Or at least what a bunch of us settled on on the Thief boards) But first, culling’s already being removed this month.
Now for the ideas.
-Make Revealed occur no matter what. This will make it so Thieves can’t perform the chained stealth they gain from well timed CnD or HS through Black Powder but still allow stealth builds to maintain their combat up time and keep thieves from being punished for not going burst. I think it should also polarize thieves in the way they play. They’ll either run earlier because their defense is weaker, or become more aggressive and less likely to run. On both ends their escape options are weakened so they have to make a choice.
-adjust Heart seeker. Spamming it may be noobish but it’s still a cheap and effective leap, that is way better then it should be.

I’m not quite holding my breath yet on the fixed culling… but even if they do, I still lean towards a slightly imperfect stealth. I would be perfectly fine with a perfect stealth if it came with penalties, but it comes with bonuses.

I find all of these people that defend the stealth in this game to be amusing. Not one solid post of the counter to stealth… just a bunch of drivel that equates to “l2p”

Let’s examine the counters to stealth:

1) Swing melee (most ranged weapons don’t have combos) wildly in front of yourself. If part 2 triggers, continue to spam auto attack. All you need is the thief to nicely stand in your auto attack like mobs do in PvE, and you win!

2) Spam AOEs: Assuming the thief is color blind, he will not see the red ring and will continue to stand there until he dies admidst the fire. If you’re a necro with instant wells, hope the thief isn’t traited to drop all your conditions in seconds anyways. And even if all of that is not the case, this is still the obvious counter – generically attacking in an area less than that of a single dodge and guess against a plane a thief can reach in 2 seconds that you can cover less than 5% of is pretty much guaranteed success.

3) Play with pets – once the thief is visible again, it will tell you where he is. Yay! Oh wait… he’s back stabbing you or 2500+ units away?

4) Play as a mesmer – your clones seem to have an extra half second of targeting to shatter with. This very well may be what is needed to down a glass cannon thief. As long as the thief stealths when you’re on top of him instead of porting/dodging out of your shatter before stealthing, you have a solid chance! Assuming that ~50% of thieves make this mistake and never learn, this has to be considered a “counter”.

TL;DR – You get an uncounterable defense (as everything I listed are not counters – just crap that would only kill a thief that needs to L2P) that is brokenly compounded in WvW. You get a state with massive bonuses – fastest movement in the game, huge condition removal access, healing – all spammable. There is ZERO downsides to stealth. To build a thief without constant access to stealth is to comparatively kitten yourself – if you were to lose stealth completely, you lose GODMODE for a class that can only have measly access to the highest amount of dodges/evasion in the game on top of paltry spammable blinds, interrupts, and high DPS moves. It would suck to have to work to continue being one of the top WvW/PvP classes in the game. It amuses me to be told my non-stealth build sucks because people can actually see me and dodge my moves when I can dodge/blind every else’s moves much better.

Now for the constructive part of my post. I think the following changes need to be made to stealth and it’s traits:

- Add a slight transparency. Don’t care if it’s a struggle for eagles to see, but it has the character drawn so that fixes culling. Plus it gives a counter to those playing close attention… stealth gives plenty of advantages that it does not need ‘impossible to see/counter’ on top of its list.

- Change “Shadow’s Embrace” to only cure a condition AFTER 3 seconds. To take advantage of this powerful move, you actually need to stay stealthed.

- Change “Infusion of Shadow” to not trigger with Cloak and Dagger. Steal + HiS + powder + refuge already gives plenty of tools to make this a very useful trait. As it is, it’s a CnD spam win button.

- Swap “Fleet Shadow” and “Power Shots” between their trees and tiers. Fleet shadow should be a master trait as it is powerful. It should also rightly belong in the Shadow tree forcing a choice on the powers of stealth rather than making stealth so omni-powerful.

I’m curious as to whom will think such changes will break thieves. My thief is my favorite of all my 80s so far, and will become my main. It will still be my main no matter what they do to stealth.

I’ve always seen Ele as the class in the game that can carry an entire party. Give everyone heals, might, protection, extra DPS, have teleports for dungeon traps, etc. A good ele improves the survival and DPS of the whole party. On top of that, they get conjured weapons.

Conjured weapons are more than just standard weapon skills to swap to for fun or DPS (as they indeed hit harder than standard weapons) – they all have roles. Targeted AoE, CC, gap closers. Have a boss that takes a lot of chasing and a slow melee party member? Drop him a fiery sword. Have barrows to kill? Give an Ice Bow. Need to reign in a chunk of trash with some CC? Pop that hammer/shield. I do see fiery axe as a bit of a watered down Fiery GS (as it is also a gap closer and aoe provider), but the fact that it has 1/3rd the cooldown it would win if not for the fact Eles can spare an Elite slot more easily than a utility.

I personally love the conjures as they are. And if you happen to love using them for your standard attack over your standard attacks (though I would advise against this at higher levels as you lose overall flexibility and survivability), the trait Conjurer with no one picking up your secondary is more than enough to spam skills and have the cooldown off when your second one vanishes. Extensions are not needed. The ability to insta pick up the other to double charges/duration would be too OP as at that point you might as well just double the weapon (not to mention a bit greedy).

The only reason why you don’t see conjures everywhere in WvW/PvP is that cantrips are so much better for survival (which is why most people load 2 or 3), and arcanes are better for DPS without giving up the flexibility of your root attack skills. I still use them in dungeons. If anything needs improvement on Ele, it’s the glyphs. So pretty on paper, but so meh when trying to use them.

I seriously think they need to change CoF 1 – this singular dungeon is too quick and easy creating a gold influx that allows for massive inflation. To be able to compete and afford items, people also have to get on this treadmill. If you don’t, inflation from easy money paths will outpace general pay.

CoF 1 is full of hard hitting tough to kill trash that you need to kill a grand total 0 of (though the two at the start turrets usually are taken out as they just go down with the aoe – acolytes are mission one-shot-kills). Don’t have the trash despawn in the acolyte room. Make the bridge a required fight (flamewall the tunnel). Heck, make flame spewing lame champion in the torch room required. Simple solutions to make this dungeon a bit tougher and longer. Path 2 is also too short, but p1 is the biggest issue. Any dungeon that can be PUGed under 15 minutes is a problem – unless all dungeons are that way. An option may also be diminishing returns on money/loot dropped by bosses/chests/etc in each dungeon path instance.

When attempting to balance an economy and limit inflation, not only do gold sinks need to be looked at, but ways that gold is made. When you have aspects so disproportionate on income rate that they become your only serious option, that is a problem. I know you’re looking at dungeons, so please make CoF next.

Sorry, but 3.5s to retrait is not the issue. Killing 1 boss in 1 dungeon will give you more than that. The only ‘barrier’ is either people not realizing you can retrait so cheaply (as that’s never explained anywhere), or the fact that you actually have to go out and do that. I have characters that I have multiple sets (like my Warrior has 9 exotic weapons to cover all of my builds), and I reclass according to what I’m about to do. Being able to do that in the field would allow me to actively counter anyone in WvW or PvP by simply running away and coming back. My Mesmer would be in love. I see that as both good and bad – flexibility and dynamics are good. However it would also mean less need of parties to support each other if you can just step back and fill any gap yourself. I’m fine with the way it is now.

Eh, I’ve been consistently getting over 200 in sPvP and have won all but one 1v1s (and over half my 2vMEs) I’ve had (unless you count those that ran away) in both sPvP and WvW. Haven’t done any tPvP which is a more proper test, but I still need to learn people’s tells better (so my copious amount of dodges allow me to never be touched) before I feel ready to step out of the noob zone. Issues connecting with unloads have not been a problem. I can spam them more often than anyone can dodge + block + reflect: Init on crit (70 crit chance) + 3 init every 10 secs + roll for initiative just gives so much that I’ve rarely found myself click “too low” before the target is downed.

So no, you’re not raining on my setup.

Once they fix culling, won’t be so easy to ‘pick’ people off.

Personally I’ve not been using stealth spamming builds in WvW on principle (so no d/d burst or p/d condition). Been having fun with a P/P + SB hybrid. A quick SB intro puts enough poison for the duration of the fight – and even if they remove it after you switch to pistols, a steal puts it right back on. Caltrop spam with clusters/pistol/dancing daggers keeps bleeds over 10. Full crit line + zerker gear (though I plan on swapping to ascended all-stats accessories for more condition + healing + hit taking) means I hit hard. It’s true I’ll never be able to walk into the middle of zergs and pick people off one by one like stealth spam thieves can, but I find it effective and fun to play.

Lol Ruggan – combining separate subjects into one so they sound contradictory. First is higher survivability =/= invincible. So stating that something has the ability to nearly kill in no way contradicts anything. Using stealth to instantly drop aggro is what people used to rely on for survival. Without that, thieves still have plenty of tools at their disposal to avoid/negate damage.

Also those short 3 second stealth actions are not your party stealths – they are personal stealths. Shadow Refuge indeed can stack ~10 seconds of stealth on the whole party. Blinding Powder is a 5 second stealth. Both of those numbers untraited, applying to everyone. If your party needs the ability to stealth past sections, revive party members, etc, that is an additional support role that thieves can provide. A thief can provide a party those stealths, blinds to increase party survival, tons of cripples, access to constant poisons for healing bosses/mobs, potential venom shares to give the whole party CC and might… all on top of great DPS. Thieves are GREAT at PvE. I would gladly take one in a party, and a party would never regret taking mine. So you don’t want to play a thief just because he has the additional ability to safely revive your party on a tough boss where anyone else would have the boss walk up and punch them in the face? Well, play a class you do want to play. Any combination of classes can easily complete any PvE content if played right. As long as you listen to directions and don’t suck, that’s 99% of what a dungeon needs to succeed.

If you want to break out metas, you can even look at CoF path 1. Is 4xWarrior and 1 Mesmer truly the fastest way? Switch 1 warrior for thief, and suddenly you switch that 3 stacks of might (likely useless if they’re GS warriors anyways) for a party member that do just as good DPS; get your party past the bridge in complete safety; mass cripple (caltrops EVERYWHERES!) + kite + dps the entire mob in the acolyte room; can run a rock quickly if the mesmer fails as he has teleport; can stealth hold a torch in his sleep if you don’t want him using his higher evasion to avoid the champion to kill the room torch; and can perma-poison the final boss automatically negating 33% of it’s heal making it that much quicker on top of the fact poison is a unique DoT adding that DPS. No, I definitely do not think the meta (or at least the forum meta), has everything 100% pinned down, as I can see by people questioning Thieves in PvE.

Personally I steal banners for home decoration.

A restriction may be that it forces unique items, so you can’t steal the same thing again until you use it. The ability to steal multiple axes or multiple feathers is where I see the biggest balance concerns.

Trying to see what is the bigger problem here: The fact that blinding powder reveals you (which I don’t think it should), or the fact someone can daggerstorm while stealthed (which I think you should not ever be able to do, or the very least the next thrown dagger to reveal you)

I proposed an idea similar, but simpler, than this in the Devs post about thieves here. But 1000 posts gets it lost.

I think the solution should be that when you steal, you still get the one time use items as is. When you steal an item, it slots into your F2, F3 and F4 buttons – meaning you can steal up to 3 items. If you steal more than that without using an item, it is handled as a ‘first in, first out’ – so the oldest stolen item is replaced with the new stolen. Using an item triggers a 3 second global c/d on F2 – F4 (subject to balancing, but stops axe stacking bursts, etc)

Doing this will allow people to prepare their thieves for battles, adding a much deeper level of tactics. Doing this will allow thieves to set up tools without losing access to steal. Doing this is pretty much all I think is needed to bring thieves complexity level to where it needs to be to allow a high skill-level/curve balance. Plus I don’t think it would be a difficult task to code – the hardest part is figuring where to put 3 squares in a bar that is already crowded by the initiative.

You would be well ‘covered’ if you were a female thief – Human medium cultural is some of the most revealing in the game. As is their light armor for that matter. Male armor, medium armor doesn’t have too many options. Best you can get is uncovered arms unless you count the v-neck of TA/Nightmare. Ironically it’s male HEAVY armor that is the skimpiest in the game for guys. If you want a char that has the ability to run around with his male mammaries and/or rippling abs showing, warrior/guardian is what you need to roll.

Small feet means a small…

Cryostrike.2948:

Fred Fargone.3127:

Well, I’m sure nobody meant to discourage you, but I think you understand that the gold sinks are there for a pretty good reason: to reduce inflation.

its not working..

And for this you want to add more gold? That would only create inflation. If anything, a 15% loss of gold every day is what would make things more affordable. Poor people lose 15s. Rich lose 1500 gold. Once everyone is at a state that they can’t earn more than the daily tax, you now have a market roof.

In all seriousness though, it’s just a matter of having a firm grip against ill gotten gold – people that exploit/bot for gold and a way for GMs to quickly remove that gold from the market. That’s what we really need.

Right now thief has some very useful pistol traits aaaand… that’s it. Bow and Dagger is a MASTER trait for only 5% damage. Spear and sword have no traits. Short is, there is no traits worth taking (or existing) other than for pistol.

Due to limited trait lists, adding ‘new’ ones doesn’t apply too well, so I would look at existing ones.

Suggestions:
Dagger Training: This should become “Blade Training” and apply to Daggers, Swords, and Spears.

Power Shots: Two things – switch it with “Fleet Shadow” and have it boost Bow range to 1200. The swap is because I think stealth should keep in shadow tree, and force more selection over traiting everything into it. In addition I see ranged weapons as a better fit in the Acrobatics (mobility) tree. Having it add to bow range would make it a serious consideration for taking, giving the thief much needed access to an option for long range.

You realize that not everyone plays 4 warrior 1 mesmer CoF path 1 runs 24/7. If you find that as the center of the game, then I feel sorry for how you think the game must be played.

My thief can take on more than my warrior ever could. Yes, I have to move more than my warrior needs to, but I have many more tools than he does for survival. My Warrior sometimes can’t avoid that hit, but he can survive it most of the time. My thief never has to, but can’t take that hit. But if I never take that hit, “most of the time” of the warrior becomes “all of the time” for the thief. So more potential DPS and more potential survivability. It’s difficult to miss a dodge in PvE when you can spam two dodges and still have another dodge at the ready, and mobs tells are obvious. Ever since hitting 40 on my thief, not once have I found myself without a dodge ready.

Now for your two reasons:
1) Already talked of the other two points (I still hold mobility > tough/vit). “Dishing out party buffs” = FGJ for 100% of warriors. Can’t deny how amazing that is, and am waiting for that thing to be put on at least a 35 second cooldown. If 100% of a class uses a utility, there is a balance concern. FGJ spam is a valid reason to take a warrior over any other class.

2) I wouldn’t want to be in a pug that wouldn’t invite my thief anyways. If they think ‘x’ class is the factor if they succeed or fail, that’s most likely a party I would have to carry. I don’t need to listen to the warrior whine that his build is now useless because they made omnom pies/ghosts ‘useless’ as I res him.

A thief that has multiple AoE stealths that allow your party to easily pass sequences or objectives. A thief that has some of the easiest access to blinds to help negate damage your party takes. A thief that MORE DPS potential than a warrior if built right. A thief that has MORE survivability than a warrior if played right.

So why would you want a warrior over a thief again? Only two reasons: 1) You don’t know how to play a thief, and thus don’t know their potential. 2) You don’t trust a pug to play a thief. If it’s the second reason, is the problem the thief, or the fact that the Warrior is too shallow that any noob can play one and has little skill curve for improvement?

Personally I still think that Thief is one of the better designed classes with some of the most room for skill to make it the best. Stealth has just made it where that skill was not needed. This change helps as people can use their stealth bonuses without having to start over on killing a mob, and it also teaches them to treat PvE slightly more realistically. It’s no longer an instant “oh kitten” that tells the mob to shrug his shoulders and walk away from it’s enemy that was nearly destroyed. The mob actually realizes that a puff of smoke doesn’t cause that little thief to stop existing – he’s actually still a threat.

Let’s see:

Thieves can dodge almost infinitely. Vigor + dodge roll trait + sigil of agility = close to no cooldown on dodge rolls (coincidentally enough to keep you rolling 6 stacks of might for fun, 3-4 in actual fight/dodge mode). Heal dodge roll. Utility dodge roll (though I never bothered with that). I can P/P or SB champions or any number of mobs in my sleep and never get touched (or mob zerg, nothing my heal dodge can’t handle – especially since the buff). I personally find it a blast to be a flipping ninja/yoda Asura, and only ever set stealth for WvW or PvP. I place a sigil of generosity/purity on pistols as a condition remover. That + sigil of agility is enough to keep me condition free against everything but a necro (as their wells hit to quickly to avoid). Shadow step is enough to cover you when you know when you’re at risk of condition stacking.

Then you can add in timing evasion moves and blinds. Those have the advantage of allowing you to keep going without ‘breaking’ dps – but honestly I have always considered correctly used dodging to be factored in DPS, thieves just have ways to not run out or lay consistent blinds. Heck, I’ve allowed many people to face tank because of blind spam surmounting the 10% effectiveness limits (I personally dodge/evade tank when aggroed, help others tank with blinds).

Short answer: I don’t even use stealth in PvE unless I plan on never engaging the target (aka run through a map/objective)

Rain in an Ark seems counter productive, no? Plus I feel sorry for those animals trapped with an Asura! Fun name though.

My Thief’s name is Shrinky Dink

It’s based on a first come first serve basis. Booting guests already loaded is a gray area – I know I would be frustrated if I was off playing with friends on a map that happened to have a boss and got booted randomly because a bunch of other guests also hopped in – it would have to be last in first out logic. But I also see potential server looping or hang issues for players on any kind of forced unexpected boot.

What I think should happen: Map thresholds for guests are set much lower than normal players – say 70%. Once a server hits that, guests can’t touch the server unless one of two things:

- They’re in a party with home world friends – they would then load on the instance of their party (in this case the home world rather than overflow if the friend loaded first).

- The map population dips back below 70% (obviously)

My biggest problem is too much of it is perspective logic. This usually correlates within their concepts of reading comprehension and pattern recognition.

Reading is a realm that I’ve always loved because it’s open to personal interpretation within your own mind. Two people can look at the same passage, and glean completely different conclusions. In IQ tests, it’s not taking your personal assessment, but trying to place a quantitative value against your ability to guess what the test maker derived from the passage.

As for pattern recognition – the aspect that is supposed to be the classic test of your logic is sometimes the least logical. The problem is sometimes the samples they provide can have multiple logic patterns applied, creating the annoying endeavor of trying to continue to hunt for THEIR logic.

While I’ve generally found accredited IQ tests to be a bit better than assessment tests like SATs and ACTs, that doesn’t break from the fact that I find them all fundamentally a ‘guessing game’ rather than a true assessment of intelligence. By taking the viewpoint not what I always think is ‘best’ but more ‘common denominator’ – the answer that I think they think is most likely the answer rather than the best in my viewpoint – I’ve been able to score extremely high on such tests. But could an Asura? To be frank, I doubt it. It’s guesswork of another human’s logic, and not pure logic. They would most likely look at their score of 42, and use that to prove that Humans are not properly sentient and round us up for experiments.

Kal Spiro.9745:

I’d rather dyes just unlock account wide.

This please. k thanks.

Two reasons:

Main reason: Off hand dagger is generally seen as much better than offhand focus… pretty much in every way. And as off hand dagger is a close range weapon, the advantage of scepter’s range is lost.

Second reason: Scepter has too many attacks with a cast delay, making it harder to connect. So while it has a bit higher burst potential than mh dagger, these delays regulate pretty much to PvE. Add in mh dagger handing you two more mobility moves for your close range fighting, and you can see why.

Focus’ gale needs some deep love to allow people to use scepters skills more reliably, and this will help make it a much more likely option. Until then you’ll pretty much see:
- Staff for dungeons or WvW zergs where people can nuke from safety
- Scepter when mobs won’t move from DT/etc
- Focus when defending a hold point from trebuchets/catapaults
- D/D for everything else ever until the previous are unnerfed or daggers are nerfed to oblivion

Yes, there is absolutely no difference. Get the cheapest of the two. People that unpack and sell for higher are just trying to rip off the ignorant, and I hope they lose their listing gold.

I got zerkers for my own Warrior. I hold the point still that of all classes, Warrior needs defense stats the least. You get 20k HP and heavy armor for just being a Warrior. Anything more is because you have difficulty timing your dodges/blocks/evades or completely wasted DPS opportunities. If you think you need some extra toughness, slot some Soldier runes to get it and some extra condition removal (as you’ll inevitably always have at least FGJ on) or Divinity Runes before ever considering stepping away from berserkers on Warrior.

Often repeated suggestion, but one change: Account bound on ACQUIRE. This should never have been a sellable item.

A ‘skin’ is not an equippable item – it is an item you put on a piece of equipment to give it a certain look. In this case, the quaggan is a skin that equips on a back piece of equipment.

There are two versions of the pink quaggan backpack – one is one that is a pack – you double click it, and it gives you the skin AND a no-stat back piece (so you can put the skin on it to equip it at any level). The other is where someone already double clicked, and they are selling only the skin. You will need your own back piece to attach the skin to.

Adding the skin is done in the same manner (just like transfusions) – double click the skin, and drag the piece of equipment you want the skin on (be it the level 0 back piece or your own back piece). Hit OK, and you are now helping support saving the frog/salamander/thingies!

Personally I would just be happy if all the shoes were customized to Asura so their whole foot was covered rather than lazily having their side toes clip through.