Guild Wars 2

I was not around for the original flanking strike (I primarily played ranger then), but I will say the current one is very inconsistent on its after casts.

For example if you flank strike and try and follow it with the larcenous strike there is huge after cast on flanking strike. This also applies to bound, cloaking dagger and tactical strike. However, if you dash, auto attack, or throw dancing dagger there is no after cast component to the skill. It makes certain interactions feel really clunky and bad.

Flanking strike feels pretty clunky (this feels odd to say a s/p player). Thematically I love the weapon set, but it functionally does not work. Flanking strike is one of the reasons I avoid this set. I would have to guess the much like the difference between rangers stalker strike traited and untraited when it had that functionality would be much similar to the old and new flanking strike?

Lettuce.2945:

3: The only other time I use vault is to get some distance to stealth with d/p from a zerg or a group of chasers. And that’s usually 1-2 vaults with bounds combined in and bandit’s defense for ranged attacks.

I just wanted to comment on this bit. And add to my above post.

Vault range and land speed is very similar to short bow. For those that complain about being forced into shortbow, staff is a very viable alternative because of the range on vault, because of the similarity of evades with debilitating arc and the range blind pressure.

A few above requested increasing the cost on vault. Doing so effectively takes this alternative away from thief. In addition it also forces staff thief into two lines. Both trickery and daredevil. I think the only way an increase would be fair is if they made preparedness baseline.

In all honestly I ask that if anyone reading this thinks staff is an easy forgiving weapon and that you can just vault people death; to go play staff thief and then come back with an informed opinion.

Vaults only saving graces are it can be ground targeted at range, and it does aoe damage. It has 1/4 second precast and after cast animations that are both easily interruptible. Comparatively its about the same damage as every single other duel wield skill so I personally think the damage is fine for the cost. Same goes for utility.

Vault/bound spam only really works against lower skilled opponents who dont understand the difference between the bound animation and the vault animation. Just about anything but rev will interrupt vault given the chance.

Most of the higher skilled theives you will notice they use debilitating arc over vault in many cases because its a better skill and has more controllable nuisances. The only time vaults really spammed is on downs for cleave. Nerfing it only takes away staffs ability to pressure downs.

Bound dodge damage is a little high on damage and the leap finisher is extremely useful. Dashes range and movement cc clear is really strong. The reduction on dash is also insane tied with other traits and food thief out of the gate can have a 80% damage reduction. The lotus dodge is really the only underwhelming one of the three.

From a numbers standpoint I would normally agree to nerfing the bound dodge damage to be in line with warriors reckless dodge. However I question nerfing the damage on bound because other classes got complete new mechanics that offer extra damage. Where as we got just got our dodges enhanced.

For example do you think bound dodge is out of line when compared to warriors burst skills in berserker? Or mesmers ability to re shatter clones? etc I think no.

These videos are some of the most interesting game play I have seen yet from gw2.

this guide

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/revenant/Guide-DPS-Revenant-for-PVE/

Has basically the only relevant revenant guide for condi/pve. The biggest problem with mace is most things are dead before you ramp up to maximum dps.

The issue with balance has always been the same with exception of the june 2015 patch. All patches have been low quality and quantity. The current frequency of the patches only makes it clear how little they change.

There is minimal effort to make anything that isnt viable, viable. On top of that absolutely no effort to reign in abuse case builds. There is no dicussion about healthy gameplay and rarely anything on counterplay. For over a year people have complained about some pretty basic issues. Certain classes having to much invuln and sustain, or low counter play in certain areas. Those aren’t the things aren’t ever addressed.

Instead we get guided more and more into specific ways to play a class, even if its not healthy gameplay or solves any of the classes issues. Dagger dagger condi thief is a prime example of what I am talking about. None of the changes promote skillful gameplay, counterplay or help thief with any of its problems. It just opens a new route to play the same thing but different.

They could patch every single day and it wouldn’t matter, because to be frank they aren’t addressing the right problems.

BlaqueFyre.5678:

They should have alternate legendary armor for each gamemode but I don’t see that happening anytime soon, given Anets Track record of ignoring most feedback on anything meaningful for WvW and so on.

Or rather different avenues to go about crafting it in each game mode.

Just taking the insights requirement as an example:

• PvE could stay as is and require you to beat a boss to get insights.
• PvP could rely on tickets to buy parts that you upgrade through winning matches to create an equivalent. Something like a win streak of three matches.
• WvW could do the same with proofs as well buy an item require a task. Could be something like build up a structure, or capture tier 3 structure.

In order of priority

Legendary Insights
Vision Crystals
Petrified Wood & Blood Rubies
Mystic forge stones
Anthologies of heroes
Philosophers’ stones
Mystic Crystals
Mystic Forge stones
Icy runestones

The following would be a nice QoL bonus but to be frank I don’t expect them to be added:
Amalgamated Gemstones
Reclaimed Metal Plates
Legendary gifts

fluidmonolith.3584:

Jack Skywalker.5674:

Malyx without the Demonic Defiance trait from Coruption is very bad.

Unfortunately this has been my experience as well. And if you need Demonic Defiance then you need Corruption. And Corruption is not very good with power builds either.

Why couldn’t it be?

Corruption gives some extra resistance, some good boon rip and the ability to copy back conditions with pulsating pestilence. All of these things help a power build.

I do think that jallis is way superior in dealing with conditions though, the heal cleanses and there are two other skills that reduce the damage of conditions.

First thing is we need our bugs squashed. We have a number of skills that even prevent certain weapons from being viable. Almost every single weapon has bugs or interactions that the community views as unintended.

On top of that revenant needs some improvements:

• All stances need a stunbreak. Currently at most you can only ever have 3 stun breaks. One from traits and the other two from skills. If you don’t pick either shiro or glint, you forsake your ability to break stun. The same goes for not picking up invocation. Every single other class has access to multiple different stunbreaks with a variety of additional effects. The fact that if you don’t take one of those three leaves you with nothing. Jallis does have a stunbreak, but it very costly and I believe thats fine given the rest of its effects, it is not a reliable stunbreak.

• Jallis absolutely needs inspiring reinforcement reworked. Every single component of this skill is vastly underwhelming compared to other classes. For the cost there is simply never a good time to use this in combat. Aside from that this stance could be competitive.

• Mallyx biggest problem is that unless it can keep resistance up it blows it self up. The stance only has immunity, and no reductions for taking condi’s. This makes the entire mechanic of keeping conditions on you binary. You either have enough people around you to keep permanent resistance up or you can’t get any meaningful amount of resistance die. Mallyx and corruption need to have better support with dealing with conditions.

• Traits outside of the herald, invocation and devastation lines are all really underwhelming. Many traits are completely useless you use the legend associated with them. In many cases the traits do not improve the class, but make the legend functionally work. Skills should functionally work on their own, traits should further enhance them. We need more traits that enhance our weapons and our ability to manage our resources.

Edit: I totally agree with the post below. Revenant is totally spread too thin trying to be good at too many things but fails at almost every single point. It is simply the most inflexible class I have ever played. The only thing that is solid is the all out offensive support the class has for sword main hand. Literally if anet took away main hand sword, we’d be screaming for a CDI.

I will front all of what I am about to say, with most of what I am suggesting works in wvw and I am not the greatest rev. I don’t exactly know if any of this advice will work for pvp. That and most of this will be advice for condi rev.

I’ve been running a lot jalis over glint.

For a bit I was running salvation for the blinds while you cast heals to prevent interrupts, but I found that the rest of the line to be really underwhelming.

For fighting power thieves I’ve been poping rite great dwarf and vengeful hammers when I know a thief is about to spike. I find if I can live through the initial spike, I can either force them to back off too condi cleanse with searing fissure which gives me room to heal, or trade with them in melee alternating between embrace the darkness and vengeful hammers. Most thiefs cannot handle that kind of pressure and have to back off which again gives you room.

Confusion has become one of my best friends for punishing dodge spam, banish enchantment and trait that procs it can really overwhelm lower skilled players.

The thing I’ve found with mallax / jalis build is you can get a lot out of hardening resistance from your up keep skills increasing your stats and giving you 280 toughness. On top of that the heals are much more reliable when they don’t get interrupted. This comes at a cost of being immobile, but condi rev was already pretty immobile to begin with.

Jalis is great for taunt is great for catching thieves trying to stealth much like you try to with glint elite. Not a lot of them are familiar with the skill and it catches a lot people off guard.

For condi cancer, I’ve been simply just standing in my own searing fissures, and either try to catch em with a jalis taunt, staff 5/sword 5 or load them up with banish enchantment. Then watch them spin to their deaths.

I’ve found thief’s mostly to be a coin toss honestly. Most of the time it’s dumb personal mistakes that cause me to throw fights because I am not used to running jalis. The changes really have made the class pretty unreliable.

Obindo.6802:

Estimated IQ of 150-180, Eidetic memory, all A’s in the most demanding/“difficult” alignment in sweden, skipped a grade ahead of my age (17) and my self esteem is good thank you, it’s not shaken because a random no name on the internet gets seemingly triggered.

If your that intelligent why are spending time on a video game board arguing with people when you already know there is no point getting through. Seriously go do so something productive with that big brain of yours.

Even if you are somewhat good at rev and have people that think your good; no body gives a flying spaghetti monster amount of cares. No matter how good or how good you think revenant is, it still does not change the fact that the changes were bad for build diversity. Not everyone wants to play or cares for power invo glint rev.

So with the changes the old meta build for condi rev is no longer reliable. I wanted to start a thread to get people thinking about new ways to play the setup. I know it will be ultimately be subpar to power, but I really don’t care for the power build.

I have been theory crafting and testing some builds out recently.

This is what I’ve found too be the most reliable so far.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vlAQNApcmnXNeNSqJvJR/kHlsgykS4Q5SJYrsrklTFhNZzrrxu9LNQiFA-TZhAQBSsMQHOEABa/hPcEAAwDAAA

Now before you flame me. I ask you try it.

I am finding more and more jallis allows the condition build to set up bursts with the taunt and sustain and survive burst as well. It does however suffer from not having glint tho.

Despite its slowness I am finding it to be really sustainable, and hard to lock down. The blind potential is also very high, as we have multiple blinds from fields and on heals. lots of blocks, some decent cc and lots of setup potential for searing fissure.

For burst in case your wondering there is multiple ways to go about it, taunt into searing fisher is great. Another are the two roots into the same skill.

The only thing that I’ve come to struggle with is ranged burst, in particular longbow & staff on ranger… and p/p. The fight is easy if I can manage to get the torment on them and keep it on them but that is something I am struggling with the our lack of condition diversity.

morrolan.9608:

Eval.2371:

@kefro, what is your time zone play window for wvw?

Once could ask the same of you given you apparently think JQ has a strong EU.

I have an erratic schedule, but I’ve been on as early as 8 am est and have played anywhere in between that time and 12am usually in 2-3 hour chunks.

morrolan.9608:

Some facts as revealed by this thread, yes JQ still has a quite lot of SEA (despite some movement of sea players off the server) but they are inconsistent, they are only out together maybe 1 day a week. TC has won the majority of skirmishes during SEA this week and this is not an odd week. This inconsistency is a problem for the server in terms of its status, hopefully from a JQ POV this will be taken into account (or not depending on your POV) in determining links.

My experience with TC is there might be one organized guild in eb leading the pugs on TC. There is the odd clump of 2-3 kazoku but aside from that it’s usually all just disorganized roamers till about 5pm. During this time slot we get steamrolled. I’ve heard from a lot of other people that 12am-8ish is mostly the same which is why I assumed you guys had a good EU presence.

I am not going to argue about something we both can’t prove with facts unless anet can cold hard give us the numbers. My opinion still is JQ has decent pop, its just all in off hours, and that is why it’s still labeled as full and locked. Your perception more than likely varies from that, and whom I am to say that’s wrong without proof either.

It’s sad how this thread has degraded to kittening contest rather than something productive, like… idk a set of changes that could help make other parts of rev better. Literally anything other than stroking your egos on the forums would be productive… and to think the biggest ego of the all in here is someone who “quit” months ago.

If a moderator happens to see this, it might be an idea to just close this.

@kefro, what is your time zone play window for wvw?

I ask this because, my experience does not line up with yours. From a TC standpoint you guys dominate from 12am est to about 5pm the next day. It’s always been like that in matches vs you guys.

During the day JQ full ques bl’s and ktrains all day, however once their strong SEA and EU presence go to bed/work TC shines. You guys have a lot of players. I would argue as much as us with a link-up. JQ problem honestly has always been 80% of the player base is SEA.

I don’t think this week is much of an indicator of anything as a lot of people are doing halloween stuff.

@OP I get that your upset about Revenant changes, but attempting to direct your unfound rage at thief is not the right direction.

Thief is barely viable outside of d/p in any competitive context and just barely too. I don’t think the op understands the state thief is in, and is living in this idea of what thief was over a year ago.

Literally aside from condi d/d, cheesy traps changes and pistol main hand upgrades we’ve received nerfs continously. We only have one chance for stealth attacks. No survivability aside of spamming dodges and no capacity to support any other role other than +1. Anet has watered the class down to mobility and encouraged spam. If you take away either then thief has nothing.

Like anything that you think is OP or broken, pick it up. Chances are you’ll learn its not that broken pretty fast, or it is and you walk all over people. Win Win.

Cyn.4901:

Then there’s the game mechanic that thief entirely ruins, what’s the point of a waypoint on a t3 keep if a thief just has to poke guards to contest? It’s next to impossible to kill a keep tap thief since the distance they can cover while in stealth is insane, and open field means they have anywhere to go. You can have 5 people hunting the thief down and it still isn’t enough.

Theif is not the only class that people do this on, I’ve seen people do the exact same thing on ranger, guardian, mesmer, and elementalist. Your point that someone can do this on thief is moot.

@Burtnik.5218 This is the second thread I’ve read today that your just attacking other classes because yours got adjusted. Yesterday it was ranger and today its thief. Nothing productive will come of it.

this thread again….

Ok. Let me put it this way, legendaries require you to play at a minimum 5 hours of wvw playtime excluding dailies, which can shave off 40 minutes.

Now I get that some people find this grueling to afk for 5-8 hours (depending on booster use) but to be frank that’s your own dam fault. Forcing your self to just keep participation and not even give the game mode a go is setting your self up for an unenjoyable experience. Go out get in some fights, or hop in a zerg and play open world pve. You know actually play the game, who knows you might even enjoy some of it.

I will say this, none of the other requirements for a legendary can you afk for. None of them take less than 8 hours. Many of them require days to complete. Be it material sinks, dungeon token requirements, Map exploration, it is all one package. All of it requires a tremendous amount of effort.

Chokolata.1870:

Honestly guys, the druid is still the best healer in the game. It is just that now you actually need Healing Power.

Our issue is that our dps is bad. Both condi and power. That is the next item on the fix list i suppose.

In pve pre patch base ranger had (might have changed with sb changes) the highest condi dps builds. Mind you your target had to be as dumb as a sack of potatoes and stand in your fields.

Our burst in pvp context is pretty good if you build for it. We had tones of bunker attrition play, but that may change with the WHaO + SoTP changes.

These revenant changes suck. We’d be better off if they just made f3 Phase Traversal and f4 be Riposting Shadows scrap the line.

I have still yet to see bug fixes on mace, hammer, sword, or axe offhand.
We still dont have attractive trait linens other than hearld.
We still don’t have usable stun breaks each legend.

Will all these nerfs, we have glint and what ever gimmick your choice from base rev. It’s really sad to see this class go where it’s gone, it’s weapons actually supper fun to play. That’s about the only thing they nailed.

Buran.3796:

Meanwhile take a look at the Ranger…
The ArenaNet balancing team needs some internal coherence…

I get that your frustrated and need something to attack, but to be frank, shortbow is still useless outside of pve. Anything you can do with short bow, is much easier with longbow. Longbow is still the better hybrid weapon. Ranger also took a slew of nerfs in druid, anet tried to make up for it with random shortbow buffs and buff to maul. I wish they had of taken that direction with rev as well.

Reaper Alim.4176:

Roamers and Solo players gain little to no rewards compared to the zerg. Yet has to utilize the most skill and tactics to even be viable. (Super high risk – Super low reward playstyle.) I personally think that is a huge problem. More so then the match ups.

As someone who scouts and roams, I can safely say doing so has never been so rewarding. Sure it is nowhere near the zerg train loot, but reward tracks have done wonders for my own income in this game mode.

Reaper Alim.4176:

We are to the point where servers are lobbying and paying for other people and guild to transfer to their servers, just because how overpowered the zerg tactic is in this game.

This has has been going on since the dawn of wvw. It will never change.

Reaper Alim.4176:

Some ways that come to my mind on how to solve this.

A.)
Nerf rewards gain based off of numbers. The more players you show up to hit a structure or player. The less reward track and rewards you get.

B.)
The less people you have the killing players or taking objectives. The more reward track progression, and rewards you get…

Can’t do that it’s against anets design philosophy.

Honestly if you want to nerf zerg gameplay make it less rewarding and reward skillful cordination.

The easiest way to do both is nerf everything aoe format. Most of the radii on skills are about the size of 2 char cars. TWO WHOLE CHARR CARS. Smaller radii mean less tags, less damage all around, and more precision and skillful play.

Will it stop mindless zerging? no. It never will because people enjoy being lazy.

Ohoni.6057:

It’s not just the existing meta but a design in how the profession works such that it’s the only thing it has going for it. There’s a reason almost every pro team dropped thief for rev; the mobility wasn’t good enough and its +1’s are worse. Teams need a decap player, and ANet balances the thief to be capable of that role.

Sure, in vanilla, in Daredevil, but there’s absolutely no reason that Sniper couldn’t be balanced towards a different role, nor that one of the other classes couldn’t get an elite spec that was designed to be capable of decapping. It’s kind of lame when either a class can only do one think well no matter how you build it, OR that there is a task that one class does way better than anyone else, much less both at once.

Again, the buffs/debuffs would occur as part of the Spec design, so people that love to play Thieves as they are could continue to do so as a vanilla or DD Thief, but the new spec would open up a completely different option. I think that if they try to make anything that just does what the DD does, it will fail or be OP.

The problem with thief, and elite specs is no matter what you add to class from an elite spec, your still left with 2/3 of base class. The entirety of thief so far, including dare devil is based around +1 support and mobility in a pvp context. No matter what anet introduces, you cannot escape base thief. Anet has decided that thief is fine in its current roll which put up a road block on any kind of role change. Simply put rolls for thief will not change until rest of base thief changes, as we don’t have the support to play any other roll other than our current one.

cpchow.7416:

I spent 1000+G on my boonsharing mesmer yesterday and you are going to nerf it to the ground? It is stupid as they don’t care what we want and just destroy our dreams. In addition, i have to farm for another 100 hours in the ember bay and bloodstone Fen for my berserker trinkets.

The game isnt just about what you want. It’s much bigger than pve raids. If you have season 3 trinkets you can re-spec them at will for 100 map currency. Ascended armor can also be re-spec for a cost that is much lower than creating a single piece of armor. I agree with the other poster, don’t spend large amounts of gold gearing right before a balance pass. We’ve known this was coming since about January that balance changes would be quarterly. It is no ones fault but your own.

cpchow.7416:

I remember there was a game i have spent about USD 300 on my equipments. They were powerful and work perfectly with my build. But three months later, a troll patch come out and make all my stuff become completely useless. The build isn’t work anymore, if you want to play the game please prepare another 300 USD. They lose half of their players after that and i think anet is following their step.

First, just because you spent money on the game does not mean your entitled to anything. You bought pixels. Anet is free to do what ever they want with the game. It’s their game.

The meta fluxes it always has with every balance pass. We don’t even know what the whole picture looks like yet your jumping to conclusions. Do you self a favor learn to adapt to change and embrace it. Also wait and see what the end result is. It may mean doubling the frequency of mesmer to get the same result as before, which makes the need for mesmers even higher. The thing is we don’t know anything until we see the patch notes.

BlaqueFyre.5678:

Mikhael.2391:

Before u go apesh.t try a proper daredevil spec without stealth.

Oh you mean the staff build evade spam or the D/D DB spam? I have tried those They don’t have all other options they have no burst heals, no invulns, 1 block skill granted on a low CD, so go ahead and when the new elite spec comes out guess what no third dodge no staff and so on, D/P still uses stealth pretty heavily, and the core of Thief designs is based on stealth. So unless they give Thieves a lot more sustain through Heals and invulnerables/Blocks and everything else that all the other classes had you can’t take away Thief Stealth, and it would require a complete overhaul of the Thief since 1 traitline is based soley on Stealth and 2 others have stealth traits, 1 heal 2 utilities apply stealth and every weapon has a stealth attack.

I don’t think people understand what removing stealth entails. Now the issues people have with stealth is 1 an exploit that allows ridiculous amounts of stealth stacking and classes that have stealth that shouldn’t i.e. Druid and scrapper and to an extent Mesmer.

So yes if they remove stealth completely they should remove all the passives and invulnerables from all the other classes it is equivalent.

You can play with limited to no stealth on very easily on s/d, p/d, staff and s/p very easily. Bad players will spam dodge. All of these sets have burst potential, and any set that is lacking can pick up fist flurry very easily.

I don’t agree that gutting by giving out tones of reveals is the answer either. I think what a lot of people realize is that stealth attacks in the current form are not worth the effort, from there you can deduct why even have stealth, if our mechanic based around it is pointless.

Jana.6831:

Did you edit your post because I just found that video now – very exhausting to watch and sorry, but I can’t read your bubbles.
Why did you even make that video if you already said in this post that 4 leaps are possible? A bit unneccessary to make all of this, no?
I’m using WASD additionally to my mouse.
So, even with the camera “exploit” how can it be an exploit if it is already possible without shortening anything?

Note that I don’t play D/P. Better get gut, guys!

Yes I did edit my post to add the video link and the comment below the line.
Yea, the video is kitten quality, GW2 bottlenecks my ancient cpu so its low quality & terribly fragmented, despite being constant 63 fps and not fragmented in game.

Why did I make a video?

• To point out the two things you mentioned, one of which was that leaping back in is automatically a leap finisher which is not unless you couple it with movement.
• To show that heartseeker shortening (which I agree your not doing & agree that I suck at doing b/c I normally use action cam) makes a 4 leap inside black powder trivial, which you cannot do on action camera.

I don’t play d/p much either, I’m primary s/x.

A lot of you are jumping to conclusions. Especially OP.

First of all its 80% agree to try solo que for a season. It can only become a permanent thing if its voted on to keep it that way after the next season.

Second, they have not ruled out ranked team & solo que running side by side. They stated they want to try solo que as its own for a season because it’s been a common request. At one point we had both types of ranked que. It’s entirely possible that could be in the future.

Also, lot of people are tired of team and solo players being lumped together. I know I sure as hell am. There is absolutely no point in 4 rando’s and I vs a premade of 5 on TS. It wastes 7mins + que time of my time and a pip. I’ve heard a lot of other people echo this sediment.

If this goes through the only thing that can happen is anet can learn from it make a better experience further down the road. Not trying it is simply a missed opportunity.

Edit: clarity.

Jana.6831:

Already told you that no matter what you do you will always be able to leap more than 3 times into BP, even with full leaps as the second full leap will bring you back to your starting position which is your BP field.

Making a video right now, but this is false, you have to move in order for the second leap finisher to count. You can get 3 leaps, 4 is impossible much harder without looking top down(Which is what causes the shorting bug) or using bound.

Jana.6831:

ETA: First person view or action camera (not using any of them) might shorten the span – but the limiting factors are: Duration of the BP field and your initative, not so much the distance of your leap.

Action camera cannot do this mechanic. It simply is not possible. In order to get a 4 stack you have to use bound or flawlessly about face. Otherwise you run out of time to do 4 leaps on action camera. On normal camera it works perfectly fine for most because most people play top down to see more. Top down shortens the distance of heartseeker on normal camera.

Edit: https://vid.me/SOC2 when its done uploading… I have the upload speed of a dying camel. So it may be a bit.

The first clip I am not using any movement keys to prove that leaping back does put you back into your original position. However it does not count as a leap finisher. You have to move forward or to the side to get it to count. Moving takes up time, which reduces the window to leap finisher multiple times. At full range you barely have time to leap 4 times. It can be done tho.

Second part is showing the shortening mechanic (which I’ll admit I suck at as someone who plays purely action cam/combat mode mod) that a lot of theifs rely on. Aiming top down shortens heartseeker range. I’m still going to go out say you probably play top down normally to see more, as most people do, I don’t think you realize that this shortens all leap finishers. That said it is possible to 4 leap without this, but for the majority of the base this is their bread and butter and it’s considered a bug.

Jana.6831:

Exploits would be 5, maybe 6 HS max anyway and 4 is plenty already – I guess the problem is more on OH pistol than the camera.

ETA: No matter what the camera “exploit” is: D/P has got too much access to stealth – but that doesn’t mean thief is the only culprit when it comes to stealth.

Just for context this quote is from a thread about complains with action cam. One of them was the inconsistencies between action camera and normal camera with heart seeker in particular but any leap in general can be shortened using this method described below.

Joel Helmich.7398:

pointing the camera down does not shorten the Heartseeker’s leap, making it much more difficult to jump inside Black Powder multiple times.

The behavior you want is almost certainly a bug in the first place, so I’m not sure what to tell you.

So as far as anets concerned short leaping in black powder to get more than 2 leaps is a bug. At least according to this dev. This is what blaq is trying to get across and what I am talking about in regards to d/p. I would not at all be surprised that they force all leaps to go full distance, in which case d/p will have a large reduction in stealth (2 leaps instead of 4). It’s more than likely where they will hit next.

I understand it has almost 0 impact on d/d so you don’t care. That’s fine.

maddoctor.2738:

The question is what kind of support can a Thief provide? Might? We have PS Warriors. Quickness? We have Chronos.

Here is where I chime and point out thief is the only class that does not have a passive aura. Thief is also a class that has been struggling with party support and sustain. I honestly think a siphon as a aura, or siphon as a group mechanic would be an interesting and relevant way to make thief more attractive for groups and help out in other game modes.

BlaqueFyre.5678:

Now they do need to address how Stealth does interact with conditions, and with Stealth Stacking.

The first one is simple, don’t allow conditions to affect an enemies while you are in stealth or an invuln state.

The second one anet’s hinted at, and wouldn’t be surprised to see if they force all skills to jump their full range rather than the camera being able to reduce it. Simply put the majority of theifs would only be able to get 2 stacks of stealth.

The first is more than likely not going to happen the second probably will tho.

I agree with what some people are stating in here for the most part, and thats coming from someone who abuses stealth on both ranger and thief. Sadly. on both theses classes its really the only way to combat the majority of opponents currently is to leverage your stealth access. With all the immunities and aimless aoe spam as single target classes you have to abuse these or you melt.

In the same note I can see how frustrating it can be to fight people that just reset the fight endlessly when things don’t go their way with stealth. It’s smart tactical play from their end but there is very little counter play other then unskilled taunt traits sucking people in. Another thing that can be frustrating is the type of people that refuse to engage unless they “bomb” an individual from stealth as group (maguma does this a lot). That also offers little to no counter play.

For the most part I have little to no problems with thief or ranger stealth access because I understand how people would play them and get how to counter them. However, I do not like how engineer or mesmer interact with stealth sometimes.

I feel the game would be a whole lot healthier if stealth on every skill except shadow refuge could not stack longer than 3 seconds and leaving stealth in any format applied reveal. However that’s just my opinion. Which is worth a grain of salt.

Channeled, hold to channel, what ever way they decide to implement what you people say you want from a rifle, it wont work out in the long run unless rifle spec is either completely stealth-less, has no high single hit burst skills and is sustained or rapid attack based, or give every single other class low cooldown reveals. Flat out Stealth + high burst at range will make the masses cry for nerfs and anet will respond with the usual sweeping nerfs that they do this class already. So at best after the first balance pass we’d have a better version of p/d or a much weaker version of warrior rifle from a rifle spec.

I like your idea, very original.

This actually very close to something I was working on. Like scary close. I went shadow priest with a stronger magic theme. With virtues and “dark” arcane utilites.

I had shadow form as the defensive active virtue(f3), I went for a 25% outgoing, 40%incoming reduction as there is already a lot of damage reduction running rampant.

A lot of your skill duel ideas were similar. One major differences was applying a mark on dual skills, that was part of another virtue. Marks were detonated after having 5 attacks hit on them before they expire rewarding the thief and the person that landed the final blow with added damage + traited effects.

Sword + focus was a block, with a counter attack that applied a mark.
Skill 5 being a channeled group movement skill.

I went for “dark” arcane skills.

Oaahbm.7046:

Eval.2371:

In all honestly thief really lacks group support. I’d be a lot happier if we got something like focus, and some party support other than stealth, which were not even good at for groups compared to other classes.

Anyone automatically assume “Sniper” for some reason. What about “Combat medic” or “Guerilla squad leader”? It is possible that rifle thief will be a support spec. Something in terms of:
- “Marked target” (unique debuff that increases incoming damage on top of vulnerability);
- Combo fields on utility skills. Something like “Fortified positions” (stability + something);
- Lots of CC, blast finishers etc;
- Maybe even shouts. “Get To The Choppa!” (swiftness + fury).
Could be fun.

Totally agree that it could become a support spec. I really doubt that they will take that kinda of direction.

DeceiverX.8361:

Like I said, the only way to provide thief with a form of 1200 ranged damage that’s even remotely balanced in small-scale is what I proposed via the Deadeye.

Disagree there are multiple different directions they could go but I do agree that with the following:

DeceiverX.8361:

If they offer any amount of ranged burst and stealth, it’s pretty much GG for the class since it’ll have to be nerfed so grossly it’ll be unplayable.

Which is why I am afraid of rifle spec, anet will try to appease the masses creating an unbalanced low counter play stealth sniper. Which in turn will have to be gutted.

Lonewolf Kai.3682:

So the rumor is that thief is getting the rifle for their elite spec. Anyone else NOT excited about this?

Not in the slightest.

Thief has tones of different burst specs.
Warrior rifle is as bursty as it comes.

Riffle on Thief can only be a worse version of warrior for power, or different in a condi version.

In all honestly thief really lacks group support. I’d be a lot happier if we got something like focus, and some party support other than stealth, which were not even good at for groups compared to other classes.

Jana.6831:

I started as a clicker and still am running around in blobs. We had a very short time in which the mouse cursor was always centered on the screen – I so wish that was an option.

Uh you do know about action camera right?

Look in your keybinds and the action cam toggle keybind. When active, action cam places a dot in the middle of the screen that is functionally your cursor. When running action cam right click is select/deselect target at the dot. left click is your 1 skill.

I can’t play the game any other way. Mouse wheel click is a perfect place for the toggle imho. Hope it helps.

RodOfDeath.5247:

No.

I’m checking out other mmos and the writing is on the wall with anet, they are sloppy and disorganized compared to other establishments. I’m seeing much more organization and communication with the player base in the competitors forums in addition to attention to bugs/PM/future goals.

Look around, you’ll be surprised….seriously.

I’ve been looking around my self, incase the 4th just does not cut it for me, any recommendations other than black desert and FFXIV?

Gunner Morton.8340:

Eval.2371:

I don’t think how many people realize how much a 1 month relink will discourage band wagoning. It will cost to much to do for the usual wvw player. Band wagoning in some form will always be a thing, because people always try to game the system.

Changing to 1 month relinking wont change much as transfering to a medium population server only costs 500 gems, which is currently roughly 81 gold. You can get that amount by farming PvE for 1 or 2 hours.

Yea for a low tier server its 500 gems, high which is usually the more attractive bandwagon choice, is 1000 gems, and the remaining very high is 1800 gems. Your talking 125g, 250g and almost 450g per each transfer tier. your avg pve grind is only about 20g per hour. So were talking 6-23 hours of grinding which is a lot of game time to be playing just to be able to transfer in another game mode.

Doubling the frequency of the the relinks doubles the costs to always be on the bandwagon servers. Your avg wvw player isnt making that much bank a month nor has the time to grind that out have it be worthwhile, unless they literally have no other goals to put money towards.

McKenna Berdrow.2759:

Hey everyone,

I wanted to address the idea of moving world linking to monthly instead of every 2 months, since it is being brought up more and more frequently.

The team isn’t opposed to this idea; we actually think it would be beneficial to move to monthly because it would allow us to iterate faster on how we are calculating which worlds should be linked.

I don’t think how many people realize how much a 1 month relink will discourage band wagoning. It will cost to much to do for the usual wvw player. Band wagoning in some form will always be a thing, because people always try to game the system.

You are never going to stop these kinds of movements, and taking options away from the player base is only going to be met with backlash. You want to stop server server stacking?, then give players incentives to stay on their server. It could be as simple as giving wvw reward tickets for staying on a server every month after being there longer than 2 months.

Imbalances will not have 2 months to widen, instead they will have half the time which will result in better linkings and match ups.

Lastly, I get your from EU, it the linkings may not be working there. Here in NA it’s a totally different story (aside from the same bandwagon problem). WvW has not been this lively in a long time.

Define learn.

If you want to just get around have a grand ole time, then what is suggested here is you best bet. If you want to actually learn to play the class where it is expected to be by others than zerk/scholar with either d/d or staff.

AWSUMSAUCE.4372:

Ho thieves!

Would just appreciate some advice as to which thief builds are most competitive currently in WvW and PvP game modes?

Used to run D/D but I see that no-longer really viable? Why is D/P seemingly so good? I’m familiar only with the powder/heartseeker/backstab combo. What other builds are worthwhile?

Would appreciate seeing your builds as well so long as they are current.

PvP and WvW builds will look nothing alike, however for the whole what are people running look at metabattle for some ideas.

D/D is a weak set right now because of the amount of passive defenses going around, reveals, other classes having better access to stealth and the lack of utility and reliability of the set. The whole stealth attacks mechanic is pretty butchered in its current iteration.

In contrast, d/p is a much more reliable set and has way more utility. It can fight without having to rely on stealth attacks.

I will warn you there is no best build. There are build that are considered meta and not. I stray far from the meta in my own effective niche. With the right stats you can make a lot of different things viable, or good at a specific thing, but not the “best”.

My build for wvw can be found in this thread .

babazhook.6805:

P/P is used to generate might and do damage at range as I close.

It then that I swap with a full 15 percent off lead attacks and generally high might pushing power over 3700 and spike damage with the intell sigil. I then kick in my haste through one of two sources and boost the sheer number of AA attacks via quickness. The theory is even if only half crit I am still getting more hits in due to quickness at max power.

I’ve explained above in some detail how sigil of intel uptime value works out. Basically the way use use sigil of intel makes the effective value of it less with quickness and you’d be better off with sigil of accuracy. The same would apply for daredevil rune, you’d be better off with a rune of strength, furry, or even scholar, assuming your crit chance is somewhat reasonable (30% before furry).

babazhook.6805:

This would not show on those damage charts. It also might not be doable but the only valid way of making such a build work would be via multi hit type attacks the theory being , get this multi hit type attacks doing as many things as possible.

What your trying to compare is a burst situation to effective power. Two completely different things. Effective power, is the offensive value of your stats, completely separate from your rotation.

Those numbers can show in those damage charts, but it is unrealistic to add them to it. Doing so would require you to calculate them out properly, which people will be skeptical about; especially when the value of sigil of intelligence is anywhere between 12.5%-100% Crit chance without quickness per 9 seconds on a single target, assuming you swap exactly every 9 seconds. It’s much like how sigil of air and fire will never show up on these charts, even tho they do add damage.

Divinorium.8952:

Just gave up in the game. The powercreep is ridiculous. Not fun trying to fight classes that have 8 buffs up without doing kitten, while you struggle to, try to, do something.

No wonders even with the links and Megaserver the game is a ghosttown, anet is sure doing a hell of kittenty job.

I guess legion here i go.

Enjoy your break! (which is what I’m on until I see how oct 4th patch plays out)

kash.9213:

Evals build is winding up like a ten speed bicycle gear, once it gets going it’s maintained pretty much nonstop by weapon skills alone (Like Diablo 3 Monks Sweeping Wind skill).

Eh the ramp up is simply how I decide furry is applied… so when ever I steal or proc unrelenting strikes. Which persists until I have no target to hit, or have the boon ripped.

babazhook.6805:

Question on that effective power chart.

When looking at the Damage modifier does this include only the permanent modifiers such as Sigil of force which would count as compared to a executioner which would not?

So if two builds have the same damage modifer I don’t bother to include them in the extra’s section. EG both builds have havok mastery. Single hit traits or low uptime I often don’t bother with either.

As for extra modifiers in total, you multiply them by each other. So sigil of force(1.05), and havok mastery(1.07) for are both persisting modifiers. So combined they would add a value of 1.1235. You can see I’ve manually calculated out the combined modifier values on kashes build for seaweed salad and swindlers and put them in the damage modifier box where there are differences between to two.

I typically do not factor in traits like executioner other than to quickly glance at them, as they are erratic on uptime. Which is hard to factor out and I’ll get into an example of below.

babazhook.6805:

How are things like DD runes and Sigil of intell factored in? I can use these to more or less generate a crit or crits at will so get away with a lower crit rate yet this will not be reflected in “effective power”.

Given a Thief does a lot of hit and run having a Crit rate that is not ALWAYS at 80 percent as example does not mean you have that much less effective power as one is not always attacking.

Umm something like that you would be terribly complex to factor out. In the past I have abused both those runes in question, the issue with them is you have terribly low uptime and its really complex to factor that out into a extra % chance gain.

On the build calc you add any kind of bonus from sigil or rune affects for crit chance into the extra crit chance field. A common one for thief would be side strike.

babazhook.6805:

I disagree that the solution to nerf. If the other sets all lacking then no amount of nerf on d/p will fix them.

When nerfing a weapon set the only valid question IMHO is it OP as compared to other professions. If no then you should not ask for a nerf just because other weapon sets in that profession not up to snuff.

The only way I could see a nerf to d/p as happening is if a whole pile of other specs and traits are nerfed across all professions. If that does not happen then a nerf to d/p short sighted and accomplishes nothing.

if d/p barely competitive now and it made less competitve and you bring all other sets up to the new D/P level than every set is not competitive.

Normally, and logically I would agree with you 1000%. However, anets balance pattern has rarely ever been sensible. If I learned anything from my days of playing ranger prior to thief; that you have to be basically gutted before anet even starts throwing your class a bone (unless your guardian, but that’s an exception)…

Hopefully, (and I’m not holding my breath) the balance changes oct 4th prove me wrong. As I remember somewhere in the ama for this patch that the changes are supposed to be wvw centralized. So they might stray from their usual pattern.

Cynz.9437:

I am playing d/p right now w/o HoT in pvp and that is everything but “easy”, go try it out before screaming OMG dp OP and calling other clueless. I play in legend, do some research before you talk crap to other people. The fact that you have to resort to personal attacks just shows how much weight your opinion and arguments have.

I wouldn’t say d/p is easy, most of thief isn’t really that forgiving. Aside from thief v thief match ups d/p is all around the most viable set because it has better utility and the most reliable damage. As such d/p is one the few sets you can do a lot without understanding much about the set. Thus it is one of our lowest skill floor sets(next to p/p and condi d/d), and you can do a lot with it playing at a low skill level, but it also does have a very high skill cap. Which can allow for all kinds of picks and plays.

I am not trying to attack you personally, but I don’t think you realize how unrewarding or how harsh the rest of thief is in a pvp/wvw context outside of d/p is, and how lacking all the other weapon sets are: in damage, consistency and utility compared to d/p. Thief outside of power d/p is limited to gimmick spam and even when played well it often falls short.

A lot of people see thief as a class has some major issues, that will never get fixed because people go “theif is fine, I used d/p and got to legend”, yes that’s nice, d/p is fine, the rest of thief is pretty lacking. There is a lot of people that share the view that until d/p get’s nerfed, the rest of thief will remain near useless.

DeceiverX.8361:

On my actual DA/CS/Tr stacked thief built for damage which does actually run close to 4k power and 261 critical damage + 70% damage modifiers, the damage would calculate well over 8k per bound in WvW on 2500 armor.

I have no idea what you’re talking about in terms of bound dealing low damage. Sounds to me like you’re not actually playing for damage in your build… like at all.

Dude. You have to remember you run an abuse case build. The avg power thief is running marauder/pack runes. Which his numbers are in line with. Even running an offensive lines.

Straegen.2938:

The strangeness was the 2275 crit average which should be very high with a 210 ferocity. Not sure what is going on there. I need to check the math against the wiki since 210 ferocity should be a 1.74 additive not 2.15.

Nope. crit damage is multiplicative. Ferocity to crit damage is simply divide by 15 add 150.

As for my own build, I run about 2456 power before bloodlust. With furry up, 262.5% crit damage.

((690 <-min weap str + 762) /2 * 2456<-power * 1.75 <-coefficient) * (1.1 <-bound * 1.07 <-havok mastery * 1.1 <-ferocious strikes * 1.07 <-flawless strike * 2.625 <- crit multiplier) / (2500 <-armor)

= 4539 damage and I left out lead attacks. I also don’t run force.

I hit the amount above regularly and that’s more on the low side. Maxing out bloodlust is roughly another 500 damage. Maxing out on might on top of bloodlust brings it up to 7k per bound on a 2500 armor target. Sounds Insane right? Before you say I am pure glass, I have 1601vit but base armor because you can get more effective health out of vit than toughness on thief. Anyways…

The thing to take away from this is none of the numbers matter for the most part. Yes they are high in wvw and pve, but neither of those matter because they are not actively balanced. Almost everything in wvw can become an abuse case optimization.

In contrast if you were to even attempt to run full glass in spvp (zerker scholar), you might get 3k bounds because stats are so much lower thus all our percentile scalers mean next nothing. Just because of stat discrepancies we hit like a wet noodle and it accounts for many skills hitting twice as much on thief in wvw than they would in spvp.

Jeknar.6184:

The problem is that if you leave tomes out, people who only play WvW cannot level up as WvW no longer award exp…

Three things. Some people may not agree with some of this…

• All the f2p is barred from wvw till lvl 60. They wouldn’t be doing leveling in wvw to begin with.
• If your under 80 and not geared in at least exotics, your doing your server a disservice. In EoTM that’s fine.
• Tomes of knowledge are kinda redundant beccause the majoirty of the base is already 80, and sitting on a stack of them. At this point they have very little use other than spirit shards.

Why don’t they make the tracks reward proofs of heroics in place of tomes, and then make the option to purchase tomes as part of the vendor. That way everyone gets something useful.

Edit they could in turn also eliminate the rank up chest tome as well, and just turn up the proofs that already come with rank up.

darkaheart.4265:

anyways, i ran into this s/p thief earlier. it was my first counter vs s/p so i was kind of surprised. im not sure how good he was or what do you guys think about his build. i didnt ask him for his build but i did put most of the pieces together after i review the videos. tbh i feel kind of cheated and annoyed about the build, especially since i wasnt expecting him to be using runes of the defender. ill let you guys be the judge.
feedback is also appreciated since i didnt really know how to deal with him, even though he won 4/7 fights.

check it out
https://youtu.be/-bKl9ipWqXA

From what I see hes running gimicks and does not really understand the set. He gets that impact->uppercut or bandits defense-> kick allows him a free pw. I didn’t see a single precast shadowstep of any form with pistol whip as well there was numerous times he watched you expend all your init pool and then let you stand in his face auto attacking instead of fighting back.

So, I wouldn’t say he was he was good or really knew what he was doing, or really knew what he was trying to do with his build as he didn’t really hit hard (my p/w are usually more than double his usual, he also didnt make use of stealth at all it seemed, he also had very little access to it as well (no bound, no blinding powder, very little use of sb).

Some tips to counter someone at this level are:

• Try keeping black powder underneath them and auto attacking them to death when p/w isnt active.
• You can also just interrupt pistol whip, it as a pretty long pre evade window where you can shut it down.
• One other thing is if your going to go in for backstab, and hes casting p/w or you think hes going to… attack from the sides, not directly behind him, as P/W hit area is like a triangle: think of the one of the points of the trangle behind him and the two other points out in front of him. If you end up in that triangle you get cleaved.

darkaheart.4265:

so i notice most of the builds here have very high crits. like above the average high lol
not saying its bad but i personality would never go above 80% with fury included. instead, i would invest in power, ferocity or even vitality, less vitality the more fun it is

i modified my build to the armor, weapons and trinkets i have access to. it still has the life steal signature because i feel like it gives it sustains. well at least for me since i still feel kind of new to thief and i do make mistakes. plus it by passes armor and its still consider damage.

check the image below and let me know what stat set you would prefer.

Everything I am posting, and to extent what blaq is posting are builds optimized for multi hit skills. He runs p/p frequently where as I run s/p. From our weapon sets perspective having 7/8 hits crit is more damage than 4/8 even if the base stats are lower. In contrast I’m pretty sure DeceiverX’s build which is d/d focused doesn’t have much more than 30% crit chance before furry. Everyones got their own preferences & different weapons work better with different stat setups.

Which leads me to your two images. I would run the one the right for d/p, d/d or s/d.
The one of the left would be better for s/p, p/p and staff if you don’t primarily focus vault. Honestly, for your vamp build the higher power build gives you larger siphon returns, and its a dagger main hand build, so it’s def the better stats for your setup.

kash.9213:

Eval.2371:

Nope I run the exact same thing. Damage isn’t really lacking even in acro with the setup I run. 10-12k pistol whips in acro are very easily attainable. However, in contrast backstabs when I do run d/p only land for about 8k.

I wouldn’t recommend what I am running for a d/d or a normal s/d build. A P/P or multi hit setup most definitely.

I’m an idiot, my eyes were seeing s/d but you’re talking about s/p and it makes perfect sense. The feedback is still helps though, really appreciate it.

Effective power wise here is a comparison . They are both very close, in fact I wouldn’t lose sleep over it.

Wargameur.6950:

Straegen.2938:

Not really a trick but something I see newbs not doing is priming a steal. So many thieves steal then attack rather than start an attack and steal. Doesn’t work on all weapon sets but most targeted attacks with a wind up are prime candidates. Pistol Whip is probably the best example.

Is that also recommended for AA-chain ? I already do it with “special-skills”

Depends on the situation and the chain.

For example, I would do this on the end of a sword auto attack combo if I felt I needed to secure the kill. I might be tempted to do this on staff as well on the end. In contrast I wouldn’t do this on staff my target was ranged (because I could abuse the double cast for reflects) or on dagger because there is better skills to use with steal. I would never do this on sb or p/x