Guild Wars 2

Merry. This video is old. This is from before Eles discovered bunkering.

I find my S/D SB thief does pretty well in PvE soloing. S/D’s fine apart from the whole flanking strike thing, and SB can be amazing when used correctly, especially if you make full used of Cluster Bomb’s blast finisher. And Shadow Refuge is godly. Especially if you want to gather crafting supplies and do communing skill challenges without dealing with the mobs. Ideal for gathering Mithril and Orichalcum in Orre.

heh. My one friend goes on about how he wrecks thieves all the time. Particularly with his Hammer Warrior. Know’s they’re going for a BS, rolls and hits them with Hammer Shock then proceeds to stunlock them to death. (says the only thing that could trouble him is a Guardian or a good Necro.)

What if skills like Banish incorporated impact damage when the victim sent flying hit a wall? (I’d imagine Gaurdian Hammer would become quite terrifying if the put don’t their Ring of Warding.)

I’m thinking no considering what you’ve gotta go through in PvE to get those. Such as Dungeon Exotics.

If you’re talking about ones like Banish (Hammer Guardian’s Golf Swing) that send you flying, it’s because you can’t skill in the air. So you need to make sure you’re firmly on the ground before you Stun Break.

CakeOrDeath.4859:

I just wanted to add one thing. I haven’t read the entire thread but I did read a good chunk and I think it’s absolutely hilarious that nearly everyone in defence of the current state of thieves states the same thing: you should have run with build X or you should have run with skill Y.

Let’s get one thing clear here: if you have to tailor your build away from the one you want to play simply because every time you join a game there are 3-4 thieves running the same build on each team and it’s literally the only way you can avoid being continuously stomped, something is wrong.

That’s not fun. That’s not good balance and it’s not good gameplay. Every other class should not have to adjust to one ridiculously overpowered spec. That absolutely ruins PvP.

It’s broken.

By that logic, they should nerf condition damage and cc’s too because you’ll be wrecked by those builds if you aren’t carrying a stun break or condition removal. Not saying BS combo isn’t in need of adjustment. I just see flaws in your arguement.

Luigio.3265:

tOss.9024:

Navzar.2938:

Yes, but hopefully that next OP build doesn’t can’t do its whole chain in 1/2 a second.

A particular class that utilizes player awareness, and high, fast damage isn’t a new thing. Why are we acting like it is? If you avoid that 2-3 second burst tor average thief is an easy kill. A good thief can still put up a fight, though.

yes pray do tell how do i avoid that 2 second burst if i cant even see him coming?

after the first hit m either stunned, knocked down, blinded, or otherwise halfway dead, so pray do tell how exactly do i avoid something thats coming from a stealthed ganker that i wont even see coming?

NO CLASS should be able to global another class while incapacitated in 3 seconds, period, and thats not even mentioning they can reset the fight as many kittenimes as they want too

globalling was a problem in wow arenas, tot he point where they had to put resilience stat in and the dmg scaling has gone up so much that even resilience wont stop you from getting globaled

Stuned -Stun break
Knocked Down – How does a thief knock down? Also Stun Break.
Blind – Blind impedes movement now?
Half-Dead – Stragglers and lone wolves are a Thief’s primary targets.

Also, BS Thieves can’t stealth before they do thier combo, so they meld their CnD with their Steal. And Shadow Steps don’t let you cross gaps or steep inclines, so unless the thief targetted you and hid around a corner, they should be visible before they strike. A good BS’er can apparently do it in one second or less, but since you said 2-3 seconds, I’m sorry, that’s kinda bad. Really bad. (Talking Warrior doesn’t need to Bull Rush you to land all his Hundred Blades bad.)

@instantcoffee: Not every build on thief is easy. You don’t hear anyone talking about Sword/Dagger, well except to complain that Flanking Strike misses all the time.

shaolin.9716:

The number of replies in a thread with such a title is a pretty strong indication of the extent of the thief burst problem. They need to change thieves so that they take some sort of strategy to play. Right now, even a monkey could get some kills while playing a thief and mashing some buttons.

Um last I checked, Thief isn’t Akuma. It’s one combo that lets you possibly “instagib” so you can’t just mash anything. It’s not the whole class that’s “OP” it’s just a particular build. I get the feeling people are forgetting that.

Zsymon.8457:

The whole point of the mesmer is irl confusion, so you don’t know which is real.. why would you want to remove that when the entire profession is based on that confusion aspect.

Playing against mesmers is a matter of skill, in itself a mesmer isn’t overpowered when moa is on cooldown (moa makes mesmer win any fight, but it has such a long cooldown that I don’t mind), it just takes experience to beat them, new players will never defeat a skilled mesmer, and they shouldn’t.

I think that’s why Thief and Mesmer gets a lot of guff (aside from Theives BS spike, that most people seem to think every Thief uses and a few other stand out skills both classes have). They both employ tactics to fool their opponents irl. It must be pretty jarring for some players who are used to hits or misses being by statistical equations instead of hit boxes.

Yeah Paid is for serious teams. Solo’s would get flat out roflstomped there.

I think it has to do with the nature of Trick Shot. Its bounce makes it different from a standard projectile. Also not sure how they managed to get up a small building unless you can walk up it. Shadowstep doesn’t jump gaps.

Hot Join is full of Thieves you say. Sounds like a great place to break faces with my Warrior. I run an S/? condition survival build. Thieves may as well holding pillows when they try to HS me down. Haven’t run into backstabbers but I imagine all they’d need is a good Fear bomb.

Try some AoEs and bouncing skills. Illusions are for the most part pretty fragile so with AoEs you can wipe the field of the Illusions, defend against being shattered (if you destoy the illusion before they can shatter) and possibly hit the real mesmer while doing it.

Think it may be because you can’t use skills when jumping.

phaeris.7604:

Oh thieves…what a lot of bs.

You have the ability to dissapear+do damage at will using c+d on basically 0 cooldown (oh no..it’s so SO hard to get initiative back, please tell me how difficult it is…).

So you risk absolutely nothing in a fight. I just watched a thief video of him spamming button 1 for his pistol and c+d inbetween as soon as he was targetted, then back to button 1 on his pistol and killing multiples in WvW. He honestly used 2 buttons the entire video.

Tell me again how hard it is being a thief….

Of course he only uses his auto attack. Have you seen P/D’s skill set? 1 is P/D’s main damage dealer. 2’s Body Shot which is used to inflict vulerability, 3’s Shadow Strike, which is a melee attck that shadowsteps you back on hit, 4’s Dancing Dagger which is bouncing cripple that hits up to 3 targets and 5’s CnD which is an on hit stealth. In otherwords Auto-Attack is P/D’s only spammable attack skill. Also, WvW is a poor place to gauge balance and talk is cheap. So if you reply to this why not post said video.

True, though on the counter point, even good ideas should be tested. So it’s also good to constructively critic the critisism, comprento compadre? (Sorry, just had to add more C words)

Waffler.1257:

Personally, I don’t see much of a problem with thief damage, but I do think that stealth needs a rework. As GW1 vets will know, the thief is based on the GW1 assassin class which had similar skills and could very well kill light armored classes in a matter of seconds if they set up their combo correctly. The difference is that in GW1 assassins did not have stealth and instead relied heavily on positioning and shadow stepping to take out opponents. Now if a thief didn’t have stealth, players would be able to predict when they are going to attack and from what angle, and with a few well timed dodges would most likely be able to avoid 99% of their burst damage. I think there either needs to be some type of stealth detection skills in the game, or thieves still need to be detectable in some indirect manner when they stealth (like the little light distortion that cloaked units in Starcraft make). For the record I play a guardian, so take my opinion as you will.

Dunno about that making stealth always minutely visible. In my experience, making stealth slightly visible is all it takes to make ineffective who’s not completely tunnel visioned. In Lost Saga, the hero Shadow Assassin has a stealth ablility that leaves him visible on the minimap and had him still kick up dust clouds when he jumped. This caused most of the players to abandon Sin, save for the players looking for a challenging main or to goof off. As it stands in the game now, stealth is only effective on extremely tunnel visioned players. Another game would be Halo, no one really got the drop on me with the cloak in that.

I’m not opposed to skills that cause burning or skills that spray substances (like glue shot) making them visible for say half a second. Or they could just add a bright flash to Assassin Signet’s telegraph that shows up even with stealth. Be like the flash before the thunder.

In the bottom right corner? Yeah that’s your trident. Eles like Engies are restricted to having one weapon set at a time as thier swap gives them access to 20 as opposed to the standard 5. And it should be noted that attunement swapping is recognized by the game as weapon swapping. So all those on swap effects are activated by attunement swapping too.

Judas.5432:

Pyroatheist.9031:

The steal/cnd/backstab combo is a massive problem for sure. The damage on that combo needs to be nerfed such that it is no longer viable, because while thieves are about front-loaded damage, that sort of burst should not exist.

There’s the problem right there. It’s not a combo, it’s a bug. You can activate C&D before steal and steal will proc first, allowing you to C&D instantly and remove any chance for reaction….especially with B-Venom.

ANet doesn’t need to nerf anything, guys, they need to fix Steal so it queues up like a normal skill instead of just working on a different timer altogether. This would allow everyone a full second or so of reaction time between steal and the crazy backstab combo hit.

I don’t know why it currently works like this but I can only assume they overlooked it’s functionality. Hopefully we will see a fix instead of a pointless nerf…..with a fix later anyway :-P

Wonder if the complaining would continue if made the change to steal and the BS combo became Basilisk Venom+Assassin Signet+Hidden Thief Mug+Backstab.

@Tesq: I’m assuming you only play sPvP, which is a disorganized mess. Pit a zerg against an organized team from tPvP and I can assure you the Zerg will lose. That’s why pub stomping exists.

Also, what you said about Guardian shows you have little understanding of how to play guardian.

“In case of the absense of a tank and healer” . No they deliberately abolished them, and here’s why.
Take a look at any gamer with some idea of what a metagame is. Heck let’s go even broader and include and gamer who has rudimentary knowledge of the “Holy Trinity”. Put a healer in a game and 9 times out of 10, they aren’t going to want to do anything without a healer to support to support them. Sure you could probably get through the easy areas without one, but anywhere with actual difficulty would make a healer go from a suggestion to a requirement. And there in returns all whats wrong with a healer, the queing times, the stress on the healer, the blame games and other dramas. Instead of making another game like that, Anet set out to make a game where everyone is self sufficient. Instead of a game which forces teamwork that forces teamwork by making everyone depend on eachother, they made a game where you can depend on yourself and encourages teamwork with abilities that help those around you.

As for you point of regen vs condition damage. Condition Removal says “hi”.

Also, if everyone in GW2 is dps, doesn’t that make no one a dps and just normal?

And sorry your point of healing output vs damage output is just flawed. Why? Because everyone’s thier own healer and own dps. Thus players have to depend on themselves to survive. It’s not healer vs dps, it’s player vs player. Players fighting with nothing but their personal skills to keep them alive. No depending on someone to fight for you, no playing recklessly because someone else is keeping you alive.

Excuse the redundancy of my post. I’m writing this on my phone.

Look at it this way. If healing and support was strong in GW2, players would start to want healers to depend on, just because they’d make things so much easier having them around. That in turn would bring back holy trinity that they tried to remove. (Assuming Bunkers become the tanks)

As things stand now, everyone can fight on the front or back lines and everyone can lend a little helping hand to thier fellow player in some way or another.

As stated it’s a strategy. Want to beat it? Have someone keep watch. Just like fighting dragon in LoL.

Noctred.6732:

Dual.8953:

@Noctred: So they found a counter to your counter. Get back to the drawing board and find a new counter. Overcoming onstacles is how metas grow. Much like how overcoming obstacles makes us grow as people.

It’s not a counter to anything. I don’t think you understand what is being said.

The current meta typically involves a mesmer on home point who can leave a portal and then go team fight mid. If anybody is seen going for a backcap, the mesmer ports back home and stops the neut. However, it’s also possible to have other classes fill this role if your team’s map vision is good enough.

With shadow refuge granting as much stealth as it does, thieves can avoid all vision and simply show up on the enemy team’s home point completely unannounced. This effectively makes mesmers the ONLY valid home point defenders who can also assist in other areas of the map, because they’re the only ones who can make it back in time to stop the neut on home. If you place another class on your home while the opposing team has a mesmer on their home, then your team will be fighting 4v5 because your home point defender will need to sit there 24/7.

This effectively reinforces the already existing meta of putting a portal mesmer on your home point. It prevents the meta from evolving.

Does that make more sense?

Yes, it means your new strategy failed to beat the old one and you need new method to counter the current strategy. Perhaps something so out of left field it’ll break the current flow of battle. Basically, find any way to win. It doesn’t need to hinge on a single class or role, think broader, where you stand, where your enemy stands, how moving your guys will force them to move.

@Noctred: So they found a counter to your counter. Get back to the drawing board and find a new counter. Overcoming onstacles is how metas grow. Much like how overcoming obstacles makes us grow as people.

I love the Mad Realm added in Act 2. Wish I could do Act 3 but don’t really know enough people and aren’t quiet up to level.

Though I fancy this idea, I’ve gotta point out one thing. The skill only deals massive damage from the back, akin to Spy’s Backstab in TF2 (minus the garunteed insta-kill), so in theory, one could spin to make it harder to line the skill up.

DS is easy to handle. Stop shooting, move away, find cover if available. The projectiles radiate away from the theif on a linear path, thus the farther away you are, the more dispersed they become.

This is thief hate is devolving into straight up prejudice.
Soon it won’t matter what they do to thieves, they could nerf them to unusability and people would still rail on them.

@Merciless: Locked animation, below average damage when misused, slower than auto attack when spammed.

On my warrior, HS is just fluff.

Imo I think half the reason people have trouble with Thieves is because they rely on tricks and deception over conventional tactics.
In my experience with games, most NA players, at least the ones I’ve played with, are not so good at thinking outside the box, and Thief and Mesmer primarily operate from outside the box.

Moxrox.2496:

How is downed state perfect if one class can revive and play, but the other one cant….

If you’re talking about Warrior’s 3, when they use that they have committed to dying and will drop dead in a few seconds.

blackgoat.5172:

Stin.9781:

Go read Assasins signet 15% topic.
We arent stronger, the overal damage is tottaly same. However the damage from first 3 hits lower 15% in backstab build. Meaning people got more time to react.
Yet now signet can go in many builds not just backstab.

Technically we are a little stronger, pre “nerf” The signet Was one time 150% dmg now at 5 times 115% is equal to 175% dmg boost. So over all the signet got a 25% dmg bump.

My lord, does no one know how percentages work? The 15% doesn’t stack, it applies 15% individually. To better illustrate, I’ll use this a set of numbers to represent the infamous BS combo with 2 HS.
Lets say it goes 4000 (Mug), 8000 (CnD), 10000 (BS), 4000 (HS), 4000 (HS).

Now under the old setup AS would be applied right before BS so the equation is.

4000+8000+(10000*1.5)+4000+4000=35000

Now the new AS

1.15(4000+8000+10000+4000+4000)=34500
(4000*1.15)(8000*1.15)(10000*1.15)(4000*1.15)(4000*1.15)=34500 (just to prove I’m calculating correctly)

Now here’s another curve.
The strength of the BS combo was being able to dish out high damage in supposedly 1 second. So lets remove the HS from the equation as they’re easier to evade.

The old:
4000+8000+(10000*1.5)=27000

and the new:

1.15(4000+8000+10000)=25300

So to sum it all up, the new BS combo is approximately 13% weaker
The new AS with 2 HS is 1.4% weaker.

Sorry if this feels like I’m singling you out. I’ve just seen so many people with the misconception that percentage values add up.

MrBig in 3,2,1

Jokes aside, D/D is best for singular targets and S/D is more for groups. If you need something to bug out with, I recommend keeping a shortbow on hand to gain some distance with Infiltrator’s Arrow, and a Signet of Shadows for the 25% speed buff.

@Daendur: To add to what Devildoc said, a 15% increase is less then a 15% increase, since the increase is tied to a smaller number then the decrease.

Dancing Dagger huh? Well seems players still haven’t learned to evade.

The way I see it, downed is what keeps lone wolf “heroes” in their place. It takes skill to 1v2. It takes skill and strategy to finish them both. This game is built on team synergy, so if you want be the most effective, buddy up.

I see where your coming from. And I follow a similar philosophy in this game. (And, pretty much every game I play.) Leave balance to the devs (with the exception of bugs, but even then I don’t rant about it bugs I find, I just report them) focus on learning the intricacies of the game. Getting destroyed by build? Analyze it until you understand it and its weaknesses. Don’t want to change your build to counter it? Then accept the weaknesses of your build and change your approach. Want to learn an unpopular build? Examine its strengths and limitation, and play according to those factors. And heck, you may discover something new.

Shukran.4851:

Dual.8953:

Yes. In my experience using BS (in PvE) as with all stealth skills, they have a no harm, no foul kind of execution. If you miss, you didn’t attack, so you don’t lose stealth. (AS is more strict, but now 2-4 more chances, albeit at 15% instead of 50%) so you can try again before you lose stealth, especially now with the AS fix.

if the thief was fixed so attacking air still reveal stealth, you have only 1 chance to hit with backstab, hence my question about mindfull thief.

right now yeah, if you miss you can try again

It’s mindful because you have to be sure you’ll hit or you’ll suffer grave consequences. Puts more pressure on the thief.

Yes. In my experience using BS (in PvE) as with all stealth skills, they have a no harm, no foul kind of execution. If you miss, you didn’t attack, so you don’t lose stealth. (AS is more strict, but now 2-4 more chances, albeit at 15% instead of 50%) so you can try again before you lose stealth, especially now with the AS fix.

I don’t mind the idea of adding a risk factor to BS. It’d force BS thieves to be much more mindful when they strike.

It might work on the 5v5 scale. But I still fear it might backfire make the Bunkers fall into disuse in favour of burst builds to quickly gain an advantage in player numbers, and encourage teams to group up into zerg, to maximize their effectiveness in confrontations.

I’m hoping for a good CTF myself.

spoonfoy.7315:

this is amazing, and is mathematically every bit of a buff. this literally just made things worse. cannot WAIT for the tears to flow.,.,.,

It’s interesting really, it’s a nerf Mug+CnD+BS (by about 13% by my calculations, also assuming you’ll dodge or CC after BS) and like combos yet a buff to everything else.
I’ll test my calculations further later.

I find it hilarious how quickly someone complained about Ele’s Downed state. Anyways, I don’t think there should be any be all and end all method to finishing enemies off. Downed skills that negate Stab/Stealth/Invul stomps shake things up nicely imo.

@Moxrox: A 15% increase isn’t equivalent to a 15% decrease. An AS charged PW should perform at 92.083% of its former state. Assuming all 9 hits of PW count as a separate attack.

I crunched the numbers and Mug+CnD+BS is definitely weaker by a noticeable margin. Depending on how effective the Thief is at executing the combo, they will have 0, 1 or 2 remaining attacks. I’d assume they’d use HS after that but on the plus side, the target has more time to react to those attacks.
Another plus/minus is AS is now more useful to other builds, encouraging thieves to explore more. (However, if they clue into this is up to them.)

They made AS into something I’d consider using beyond a passive buff. (S/D Thief)

CnD was always kinda pricey at 6 init. As for BS 700 frontal sounds about what I saw it at.