Guild Wars 2

Mightymealworm.8409:

Swap, 9 second timer begins. 5 seconds later you can swap to proc the 2nd set, begin 2nd 9 sec timer. First set has 4 sec recharge left with 5 sec till next swap. Each set will go off every 10 seconds, staggered every 5. That’s twice the procs of any other class.

What? Is this how it will work? Shouldn’t they proc at the same time?

Hello, I’d like to have your opinion on what I think is really useless and wrong regarding thieves’ weapon skills.

Dagger/Dagger

The changes I’m proposing aim to both make the D/D viable again in SPVP and to improve one “useless” thief skill. The changes should not make thief OP in any case, since I think that the difficulty needed to play D/D in SPVP would still be a high barrier to the spread of a D/D build. This changes try to promote skillfull play.

• Dancing Dagger: it should really be changed. As it is now, it’s a waste of initiative. I don’t think that a boost in damage would actually help, but it could become something more focused on conditions, in order to let the D/D have more access to conditions rather than just spamming death blossom. Torment + Cripple would be appropriate, since we are talking about thieves. A proper rework is needed, but not a rushed one (for example it is needed to think about the bounces and the torment stacks).

• Cloak and Dagger: [SPVP] the skill damage should be reverted to its previous state, before the 33% damage nerf. That’s self explanatory: it has been nerfed because of the CnD+Steal+Backstab combo which used to “instakill” people. Now there are no more reasons to keep it like it is. CnD should reward people, in fact since it’s very difficult to land and it requires to be at close range (while D/P you have a blind, a leap, the HS damage and you always enter stealth without requiring any hit).

Pistol/Pistol

The changes I’m proposing here are very basic ones: we need to decide wheter this could be a condition damage set, or a power one. Since #4 and #5 doesn’t need a change, all of the focus is on Unload and on Vital Shot.

• Vital shot: I suggest to either convert this to a power based autoattack (leaving sneak attack untouched for what concerns bleeding application but slightly buffed to compensate the “condition nerf” in conditions build of vital shot) or to leave it as it is now.

• Unload: If vital shot has beend converted into a power based autoattack, then there should just be a slightly buff to it: add a very very little % chance for each shots to regain initiative with no cooldown. This should also compensate the critical strikes 15 points minor trait nerf, so that the P/P should see it’s ini regen properly buffed like devs wanted (passing from 0.75 ini/sec to 1 ini/sec). If vital shot has been untouched, then I suggest to completely change unload to a condition based skill (again: % of applying torment per shot could be an idea) in order to make the P/P a condition based set, properly competing with P/D but with less stealth dependence.

These are my thoughts. What do you think? I’m not talking specifically to thieves, also to other classes.

Ghostextechnica.3270:

Yeah I’m not quite sure what this thread is about.

If it’s just a general complaint that Minion Master and Condition specs are unbalanced, Anet have already said in the livestream that:

- Conditionmancer is being nerfed (Dhuumfire changed to proc off DS lifeblast, rather than just any crit)

- Minion Master will have both it’s damage and healing nerfed.

/thread ?

This thread is regarding the fact that it’s too easy to play. Nerfing this or that will not change this basic fact. It should in fact require more active play, that’s what I’m asking for.

Luke.4562:

Yay, this is the thread from the guy who went in the Necromancer forum with bullying attitude declaring “tell me this or I’m gonna check it myself” like if there was an hidden fraud.

Till June 2012 the Necromancer was mocked as a bad class in PVP.
Then Dhuumfire.
Now you declare this?
Yes, Necromancer is strong, but I’m sorry for you, experienced players are going to totally deny you what you mentioned here as a proof.

Epic whine thread, Mr. Angry Inspector.

I did do what you suggested to me. I didn’t believe it, I created a necro by myself and like I said in the OP, you were right.

Cufufalating.8479:

My necro isnt lvl 80 but I have played it in sPvP and its simular.. its easy to just come up and condition bomb someone to all hell, and 75% of the time that kills people easy and anything.. but mastering the proffesion so you can actually win 1v1s you should by rights lose I imagine is as hard as it is on any class.

I am not talking about 1v1 custom arena duels, if you meant that. I have tried condimancer, MM (very briefly though, most booooring build I’ve ever seen), wellomancer and of course the glass cannon dhoomfire. What I mean when I say that it’s too easy is that I can achieve things with necros that would require me a lot more when playing other classes.

• Thieves? Fear. They dodge? Not my spectral wall, dear! They stealth themselves? I’ll just spam marks here and there, to know where he is and to keep damaging him. While I contest the point, of course. If I don’t run condi, MM.

• Engineers? Fear. Some more fear. Did I mention fear? And while they are feared (and since they don’t have enough stability/stunbreaks so we all know they WILL be cc’ed) just apply some random conditions, not even caring which ones, when, or if it will even hit.

• Guardians? LOL, apply random conditions + signet of spite, wait for him to convert his conditions into boon, corrupt boon, GG to me. Spam fear in the meanwhile, just to be sure.

• Elementalists? Melted one in 10 seconds, fear interrupted his/her ether renewal, conditions killed him.

I could go on with the list. The only class which really easily kills necro is the warrior. And very skilled thieves (assuming the necro player is brain dotated, of course).

This is not OP of course, because the necro HAS NO WAY to sustain himself. But in a TPVP optic, where you either cap a point or you usually die, it’s kitten too easy to play and to achieve effectiveness.

Yes, that was sarcasm.

I mean, I’ve alredy asked necromancers in the necromancers forum to help me aknowledge all of the necro weaknesses (link of the discussion is here) and it seems that the principal weakness of the necro is that they either kill fast, or they die.

In the previous discussion I’ve spoken from the pov of a bunker engineer, but after that discussion, not conviced at all by the feedback provided by the other necromancers, I decided to create a necro myself to test wheter it was OP or not.

It turned out that it is NOT OP, but it DOES NOT require skillfull play at all. I tried it in competitive TPVP, of course, and it’s really too easy to master. Classes like thieves, engineers and mesmers, get overwhelmed in what it seems to be 4 or 5 clicks. It is not how it’s supposed to be. THe presence of an extra life bar, also, contributes to the problem.

Before you throw trash at me, take a moment a think about it, thanks.

Thank you for your advice. I just noticed the fire sigil, my bad. Do you really think mirror of Anguish is useless? What about +3% damage reduction for each active illusion (or BI, of course)?

Hello, I’m a new mesmer. I like to play it in SPVP, and I tried a very entertaining Rampager build wich really satisfied me. I am now thinking about switching to a power-based build centered around phantasms and this is what I “created” (it probably existed before I even realized the existence of the mesmer class).

CLICK

Any thoughts? And advice on how to play it effectively?

Thanks to you all guys, you have been very helpful. I have one stunbreak every 37 seconds, which also triggers my regen. I am almost certainly sure I’m not bad (huh huh) and I’m also almost quite as sure that my build is incredibily effective (it caused lots of ragequits and drama both in game and on the forums).

Problem is, without access to stability the necro just has to wait for the wall which causes fear to be ready, then spam it on me one time and then he can fear-lock me. Even if I use a stunbreak, he can fear me again, and I also have to stay like 1 meter away from that wall (which lasts like 3 seconds, I think?) if I want to keep the point contested. I have plenty of blocks, but those don’t work against the wall and are not useful at all, once “feared”. Funny thing is that while under CC I have 20% damage reduction, and that helps me a lot for surviving against CC builds (3300 amor + 20% damage reduction + protection if the enemy hits me critically = hammer warrior neutralized). But if you have both CC and conditions, like I said, I simply melt. While CC’ed, I cannot rely on my multiple methods of healing me back (four differents blasts, 2 waterfields, healing bombs, regen, elixir gun light field, regenerating health while holding a kit, elite).

However you all agree that in order to melt me so fastly (yes, I was hyperbolizing, but you still are able to kill me within 3-10 seconds) you must “throw at me everything”. SO I’m wondering, what’s the usual skill order when you throw everything at me? What should I doge? What should I block? What animations are the most predictable? Should I play very aggressively and CC-lock him (Pull, Launch x2)?

Thanks again.

Hello necros. I’ve never played a necro, but I’m very tempted to create a necro alt right now. I play a bunker engineer, I am able to hold off multiple opponents, even 3 simultaneously, wether they are condition damage oriented or not, all of this while holding a point, of course.

But when one of you guys come contesting my points I just melt. Pretty literally. Even if it’s just me vs one of you. You are able to kill me within 3 seconds from 18k hp to 0. I’ve got no stability, so your fears+terror surely hit like a truck, and I’ve got no condition removal aside from 2 condis removed every 20 seconds (roughly) and some light field projectile combos but this has never been a problem against any other condition oriented class I’ve ever fought against (and I’ve fought many) since I have the almighty Automated Response at my disposal and tons of way to heal myself back.

Question is: how do you melt me? Surely not corrupted boons, I’ve always have very very few boons (swiftness up 100%, vigor up 66%, regen up 50%, retaliation up 33%, stop) on me. And you are not even glass cannons, because my bunker build, like every bunker build, can kill glass cannons. This really bothers me, because to effectively play a bunker engineer you have to be really skilled (yes, I’m not modest, and yes, I do think some classes require skills in order to be effectively played) and all you have to do is just press like 2-3 buttons? That’s all the time you need to melt me.

I need your help, or I’ll just create a necro by myself to check if what I’ve said is true or not.

I’m a serial far point assaulter, do I risk something? :P

Hello. I myself played all those condition damage burst builds and I do think that condition damage needs a revamp.
The problem is that it can either be useless, if the enemy has enough condition cleanses or incredibily powerful if he hasn’t enough.

Case 1: enough condi removals
This is the case in which you are fighting against a warrior with both lyssa, berserker stance, signet of stamina and cleansing ire, or AR engineers. Well, congratulations: your build has just become useless like if you were fighting against a bunker (while for example warriors can still be very very DPS focused even with that setup).

Case 2: NOT enough condi removals
Well, you are now, to quote the game, a “God walking amongst mere mortals”. You can burst someone down in very few seconds without even requiring to much effort! Spam conditions on your targe -> wait for them to die.

As you can see, conditions are either too much powerful while not requiring skill at all (I remember when I used to play a HGH engineer, it was incredibly easy to melt opponents with AoE condition based skills with no possibilty for my enemy to counter that) or not enough effective. While power damage can be still avoided by, for example, dodging particular skills or moving out of the melee/ranged range, condition damage, once taken, cannot be removed and will kill you wether you outplay your opponent by clever positioning/dodging or not.
At the same time, if someone has enough condition removals, conditions become completely useless. While in order to avoid dying because of raw power attacks you have to trait somewhat bunkerish, to not to die because of conditions you just have to carry enough condition removals (and this can be argued a lot since some classes, like thieves/mesmers, simply cannot bring enough).

“Fine, Frenk, and now what?”
Legit question. I said that condition damage is both OP and UP, what nonsense is this? The problem is that in the case when “condition damage is OP”, it does not require skill and it’s very kind of a passive play, and instead when it’s the other case (UP), it can be too much easily countered with passive play like berserker stance/AR/Diamond skin.

Do you guys think Condition damage needs a revamp or am I alone in thinking this?

Thanks for your advice! I’d like to keep it as much hybrid as possible, though, but I will consider your suggestions. I’ll try a 0 30 20 0 20 build today, slightly different from yours, though. I have still few questions: why warrior’s sprint? I already have swiftness for 30 seconds out of 48, more if I used Balanced Stance. And since you use 4 signet, why not to go for Deep Strikes?

Hello. I would like you to give me some advice regarding my double sword/longbow build. This is meant for competitive tournaments, not for Hot Joins, so feel free to criticize it as much as you humanly can.

CLICK

Wait, what!?
Yes, you probably noticed FGJ. I like it since it boost both my power and my condition damage (3xMight which are up 100% of time) + it gives me 8 seconds of Fury which is something I really need in my build. As you probably noticed my main damage output comes from condition damage but raw power is also a very important part of the build. I have enough condition cleansers (Lyssa+Berserker Stance+Cleansing Ire) to stand against condi-spammers.
another peculliarity is “sigil of doom”, 5 sec of poison on swap. Probably you’re wondering why did I choose that. Well, it’s simple: I need to spam as many conditions as possible (that’s why I took vulnerability on crit) in order to prevent my real conditions to be cleansed too fast (burning, bleeding).

Well, time for you to insult my build Give me your thoughts!

Lupanic.6502:

Yes sure, Engi bunker is nice. But why should a team take a Engi as bunker if guardian, warrior or ranger are better?

Because they are not, if you are skilled enough. Also, engi bunker can actually kill people.

Play Vox’s Bunker build: high risk, high reward. The more skilled you are, the better it is. Everybody can play a bunker guardian, but a bunker engineer is something else: better if you are capable of playing properly, worse if you are not.

Hi, would you please explain me where the second water field is?

It won’t work against roamers. Sure, you can kill random people in WvW, but you do realize that 1 single condi removal can complete neutralize your build, right? It could work better if you used spider venom and sneak attack before activating your burst, but still if the enemy is clever enough (and everyone knows that roamers these days HAVE to be clever) he will just pop Lyssa Runes, or use two condi cleansers.

I’m gonna put this thread in my sig, in order to not to lose it in the mist of the forums!

Basically Vox’s build with bombs. I dislike the lack of vigor, keep in mind that you already have a 20% damage reduction while disabled, so protection on disable is redundant. One of two has to go.

It’s interesting your choice of bombs, though, but healing from bombs forces you to use THAT kit instead of elixir/tool/Pistol-shield. I prefer to have a reliable “out of jail” utility like elixir S, which is also a team utility (stealth for interrupting stomps).

Surely worth to give it a try, of course

Actually, I really hoped they introduced new changes with the 10 december patch, not only a copy/paste of the november preview. I have written a 2 post lenght “essay” speaking about useless and never used traits/builds (assassin’s retreat, hard to catch, venoms’ problems) and I’ve not even been taken into consideration.

Do you really think S/P will be played? It’s basically the same as before, PW DPS output it’s like a full chain of autoattack from the sword, plus it roots you. Gonna try it, though.

Azraelle.1683:

p/d/sb + 5 venoms.

With or without Venom Sharing and venom traiting? 20 0 30 20 0? 20 0 30 0 20?

Greetings, fellow thieves! Keep calm and help me thinking about our builds after the 10 December patch.

Sword/Dagger
Is S/D still viable? I think yes. I tried it in SPVP and yes, that cast time is super annoying but the build is STILL viable. I also think that there are a few changes that might be done for the build, like swapping “Signet Use” for “Practiced Tolerance” if you used to run that, and maybe leaving “Quick Recovery” for something else (not Assassin’s Reward for sure, it would just heal 350 HP every flanking strike+larcenous strike) but might on dodge trait could be an option.

Dagger/Dagger
For some reason, I seriously think that it might be very useful for WvWvW roaming, since we can now swap the “infusion of shadow” trait for Condi Cleanse and/or Blind on stealth. I would like to try it in SPVP too, maybe something like 10 30 10 20 0, or 0 30 20 20 0. I think that it is still relies too much on CnD to be usable in SPVP but meh, let’s try.

Dagger/Pistol
It hasn’t changed. If you didn’t enjoy permastealth, you have been buffed. My 0 10 30 30 0 D/P build has been greatly enhanced, since I can now swap Quick Recovery for Pain Response and Assassin’s reward has been buffed. Other D/P builds, maybe more offensive, can now avoid going more than 15 in acrobatics (maybe stopping at 20 for Pain response could be good) to get more DPS, which really lacks in SPVP.

Pistol/Dagger
It has been greatly buffed. I used to run a 0 0 30 20 20 P/D build, I can now, maybe, drop “Infusion of Shadow” for Blind on stealth/Condi removal, or keep it and spam #3 some more. I don’t think venoms can be implemented in this build. Caltrops/Shadow Refuge/Shadowstep seem much better.

What do you think about venom-share, Sword/Pistol and (lol) Pistol/Pistol?

Dual.8953:

I did some testing with the code, it seems the skill may have a higher heal potential then any of our other heals. This is assuming the heal in the spec is a single hit instead of overall.
Skelk Venom
6332 overall if per hit
1583 if overall
Withdraw
4683
Hide in Shadow
5805
Signet of Malice
3275
Anti-Toxin Spray
4275
This was on my Cleric’s set (you may ask why a thief has a Cleric’s set, short answer, experimenting. I have a Knight’s, Valkyrie’s, Berserker’s, Carrion and Soldier’s set too)

It’s the worst healing. You don’t have to judge only on healing effectiveness, you also have to base your conclusion depending on both the CD of the skill and on other benefits.

Withdraw, with a 15 sec CD and about a 4500 healing effeciveness is by far the most effective healing skill we have. In 45 seconds (the CD on skelk venom) it heals you up to 13500 hp, plus it cures immobilize, cripple and chill three times, it has an evade in it and it’s instant.

CLICK

It’s the one taken from the blog post of Decembre 3rd.

1. Allow commanders to hide their commander tag. This would help guilds which just want to raid by themselves. As it is right now, they have to CTRL+T the leader in order to “create” an invisible commander tag.

2. Allow commanders to choose the color of their commander tag. Also, make it so when a player hover the mouse over the commander tag on the map, it shows a short message that could be like “guild raid, everyone welcome” or “Map jumping commander” or something like that (written by the commander himself, of course).

3. Greatly increase the range of /supplyinfo command. Also, create more commands. They could be something like /classcheck (to let the commander understand which classes he has in his warband).

4. Allow the commander to write in the whole zone, just like when a “scarlet minion blablabla” event is coming. Put some limits, in order to avoid an abuse of this power.

5. Allow the commander to place PERMANENT marks on the map, in order to better cooperate with other groups in the map, or to let people help understand what he’s gonna do and when. Of course, like in point 2, when people hover with the mouse over these marks, let a small message pop up (written by the commander).

A lot more can be done, I’ll wait to see what other people will suggest before writing something else

Everyone be realistic, come on: the only support build we have is venom-share. To use it properly, though, you have to become a rally bot. Venomshare is a great concept, but the traits placement and the poor design of venoms make it unplayable.

The very funny thing about this topic is that it has been created by a Vizunian, for Vizunah, speaking about Vizunah and 90% of the posts here are from Vizunians (self celebrating, of course :P) regarding Vizunah.
I wonder if Piken knows that there’s an official forum!

Jokes aside, I wish you all a plaesant week, wether you are from Vizunah or Seafarer or Piken

With D/D? Nearly impossible. With S/D is much easier. With D/P, it’s nearly impossible to LOSE.

Imho, something ascended.

DeeSystm.1256:

Ikaros.7812:

I’m sure they’ll start working on it right after they fix kicking offline party members.

It’s been 2 months, any current plan about this?

Yep, a greyed name would be very much better for our gameplay. Is it so hard to implement? No sarcasm intended, I really don’t know.

Sifu.6527:

Frenk.5917:

Bazzoong.7145:

I can permastealth with d/d without CnD…

I’m sorry sir, but could you please enlight me about how can you do that?

Smoke Screen + HS = 15 secs of stealth
Then use blindin powder or health for more stealth
Then use Shadow Refuge
By this time smoke screen should be off cooldown and repeat the above

A part from the fact that is not perma unless you run master of deception, you need 3 utlity skills.. while D/P only needs its initiative. It’s like saying “I can have more dps than a thief without being a thief!” and reroll a warrior.

Bazzoong.7145:

I can permastealth with d/d without CnD…

I’m sorry sir, but could you please enlight me about how can you do that?

My warrior build is untouched, aside from the hammer damage. But I don’t care about the damage nerf, I think that most of mine DPS comes from the autoattack. I will still be able to be a “wanted” player in both sPvP and WvWvW.

Frigid.6027:

Frenk.5917:

Check my video. I can achieve permastealth very easily, allowing me to not to lose a duel, an encounter or a fight, ever.

you aren’t even permastealthing in your video.

Of course I’m not, my point was to show how with that trait combination I can achieve permastealth and still not sacrifice too much DPS.

RodrigoZV.9852:

I would like to make a few sugestions for the thief’s Venom Share build.

1st proposal: Leeching Venoms with a new stack system.

Current scenario: This trait limits the amount of life steal, applied simultaneously, to only one per attack. However, in a Venom Share build is common to use two or more venoms skills, in the utility slots, punishing the Thief with the loss of life steal because it counts only 1 venom, not both.

Change: Create a new stack system, equal to the venom charges, that shows how many strikes you still have with that utility. For example, by using two venom skills that grants you 2 charges each, instead of activating 2 times the life steal, i would accumulate and you would have 04 stacks of life steal.

2ndt proposal: Residual Venom and Venomous Aura – traits- when used together activate an unique effect.

Current Scenario: The classic Venom Share build has very little space for customization, usually follows with 30 in deadly arts and 30 in shadow arts. Costing the Thief lot of their traits designed to survival and direct damage.

Change: Starting from the assumption that developers do not want to relocate the traits I propose an extra skill activated when residual venom and venomous aura are simultaneously active in the same build. Considering that most venoms intended for crowd controll, I suggest a 10% bonus on condition duration. This would release the thief of using one of his weapons with the attribute giver, runes or food that give bonus cond. duration to reach 50%. This would be especially good when using the short bow. What would allow the thief using these resources to increase their survival or damage.

Why not just melt venomous aura with residual venoms and move leeching venoms from master to adept? Assuming this scenario a venom/support thief would have 30 points in deadly arts and 10 points in shadow arts, and the 30 points left out could be spent into different trees depending if you want a condition damage offensive build or a true support build.

Aesthetic Quietus.5346:

You can only chain 2 sets of 3 heartseekers and powder(unless you run quick recovery).

THAT’S precisely the point. I run both quick recovery and infiltrator’s signet. I can achieve permastealth where I want, for a limitless amount of times. I am basically immortal. That’s why it needed to be reworked, and I perfectly agree with the changes they are going to implement.

Note that I will still be able to chain 2 or even 3 heartseekers on a smoke field BUT I will not be able to continue doing that eternally.

Charak.9761:

Aesthetic Quietus.5346:

Frenk.5917:

Check my video. I can achieve permastealth very easily, allowing me to not to lose a duel, an encounter or a fight, ever.

Most of those fights were against VERY inexperienced pvpers. None of those players used any strategy to stop you from using stealth.

how do you block a leap finish tho?

It’s actually pretty easy. You don’t have necessarly to run interrupts you just need to step inside the black powder field, in order to prevent the thief from doing the second leap finisher. If he did it, he would trigger revelead.

RedStar.4218:

urdriel.8496:

i know how to play WvW, but blob VS blob / zerg VS zerg is boring, i have 80 you have 20, your towers/keeps are mine, we can run TROUGH you, you cant defend your gates because we can run TROUGH you, you cant hold a place because we can runTROUGH you.

I don’t see how body blocking, even if it’s just enemies, is going to change that too much. And honestly, if 20 people can’t hold 80 people, then learn how to plan accordingly and use siege correctly.

Body blocking only enemies would improve those kind of situation. Right now, in an hypotetical 80 vs 20, the 80 can just run past the 20 and kill their siege weapons with which they are trying to stop the enemy blob. If there was body blocking, the whole 80 blob would have to stand in a precise point (assuming the 20 guys know what they are doing and they are holding the wave) without having the chance to kill enemy siege weapons AND being attacked by them.

If there was friendly body blocking too, then 80 vs 20 would be much more equilibrated. Think about it, why does an 80 vs 20 fight is unbalanced? Because the 80 can all attack the 20. If there was friendly body blocking not all the 80 could attack the 20, because of body blocking of course. The melee train would see its effectiveness cut in at least an half. The 80 vs 20 in a choke point would become a 20 vs 20 + the ranged guys.

Aesthetic Quietus.5346:

Frenk.5917:

Check my video. I can achieve permastealth very easily, allowing me to not to lose a duel, an encounter or a fight, ever.

Most of those fights were against VERY inexperienced pvpers. None of those players used any strategy to stop you from using stealth.

Yes, you are right. Nevertheless even against expert duelers I can’t fail to run away and permastealth. I can always use shadowstep, or infiltrator’s signet, or steal, or even withdraw, to open a wide gap from my opponent and then vanish into stealth, forever. Standing in my blinding powder won’t help. I use the combo only when I have at least 9 ini, by the time I have done the combo 1 time and stealth disappear I still have enough ini to start another black powder combo, but this time I’ll just be in a random and unpredictable position (since I was already stealthed).

Check my video. I can achieve permastealth very easily, allowing me to not to lose a duel, an encounter or a fight, ever.

DO NOT buy divinity runes! They are terrible for thieves. Think about your build and buy the runes that fit it.

Maugetarr.6823:

Frenk.5917:

Dekk.3459:

I haven’t seen a post noting a change to SA IV would you mind linking that? Since that would be nail in the class coffin IMO.

That change has ALREADY been done several weeks ago.

That was a tooltip error at the time the last patch hit. The tooltip has since been fixed, but it was not noted in the last bug fixing patch.

My ingame thief Shadow Embrace trait has 10 second of internal cooldown. Tested in the mist, it has a 10 seconds CD. Maybe I should test it again? It’s been a while since I did it.

Dekk.3459:

I haven’t seen a post noting a change to SA IV would you mind linking that? Since that would be nail in the class coffin IMO.

That change has ALREADY been done several weeks ago.

Traits

• Panic strike: this trait is not worth of the grandmaster trait. A single 4 seconds immobilize (that now can be achieved with Bodyshot whenever we want!) is redundant. Make it a 4 seconds daze with 36 seconds of CD. If thieves wanted to take this trait they would either give up feline grace or Hidden killer/Executioner. This would also open up a new CC build, making S/P viable, alongside with the trickery daze on steal (sleight of hand) option. It can also open a new way for a daze/interrupt build with S/D, which is currently mostly used for flanking strike, infiltrator’s strike and larcenous strike and NOT for Cloak and Dagger —> Tactical strike.

• Shadow Arts: I feel like Shadow’s Embrace has been overnerfed, passing from a 3 seconds CD to a 10 seconds CD. Moreover, now that people can’t achieve “permastealth” anymore it should be changed into a 6 seconds CD trait. Also I don’t understand why venom traits have been put here, please consider switching them into another tree or melting them with deadly arts venom traits.

• Hard to Catch: yes, even if lots of words have been spent discussing about this trait I would like to say that, in my opinion, it’s too much random. Swapping stealth with swiftness could help people thinking about it, but there would still be too many useful traits out there instead of that.

Thanks, Jon, for reading our feedback. I hope I’ve been useful to you, and not too much boring.

Frenk.

JonPeters.5630:

snip

Hello Jon, I would like you to read my feedback about what could be done for the thief class.

Weapons Skills

• Dancing dagger: it’s a good skill, but it doesn’t worth 3 initiative, even if you think it’s a low initiative cost. Why? Because it’s a 5 second cripple with no damage at all and that can be cleared very easily. Forget about the fact that it can bounce to up to 4 targets, thieves usually don’t engage in such fights and they also have much better gap closer than that, both in SPVP and in WvWvW. In my opinion you can make this an immobilize that can not bounce more than 3 times and that, of course, last less than 5.5 seconds. You can also remove the damage, it’s irrilevant as it is now.
• Cluster bomb: nothing really to do here, I would like it to be at 1200 range again but I can see why you changed that. I would just like you to speed up the projectle speed.
• P/P set: It needs a complete overhaul. Is it a condition set? Is it a power? Can be a mixed one? What do you want the P/P to be?

Utilies

• Traps: In a few words, they are incomplete. A good idea would be to add a condition damage applier to them, and adding to the trait “Master trapper” the ability of being able of ground targeting with traps. This would really help condition damage build BUT these kind of builds would still be thorn between survivability (shadow refuge, blinding power, shadowstep), venoms (of which I’ll speak in the next point) and traps (which would improve the condition damage pressure but without providing any survivability).

• Venoms: I used to run both a venomshare build in WvWvW and a Condition damage venom build in SPVP. Like you (or another dev, I don’t remember) said, the ability of putting more than 1 condition is what makes a condition build viable. Thieves can, at the moment, apply bleeding and torment (the way we apply poison is so tricky that I won’t even consider that as an appliable condition). Right now applying torment can be a huge mistake if done in the wrong situation with the P/D build because you’d just run out of initiative too fast (because of that I think that P/D will see a huge buff with the initiative base regeneration increased, allowing us to apply torment in a much more forgivable way). So why not using venoms to improve our condition damage and make a condition damage build viable for both SPVP and WvWvW? Ice drake venom is too underpowered, the chill duration is very low considering it’s CD. I propose to increase the chill duration of 1 second, for a total of 2 second and to add a 2 attacks to the venom effect. That way you could apply 10 seconds of chill. This is still not very good, considering the CD and the fact that all those seconds can be neutralized by a single condition removal.

And here is what I think would be perfect for venoms:
Simply, instead of removing all our venom stacks in the next few attacks, let us trigger the venom each time we want to apply it. Let me explain better (english isn’t my mother tongue as you probably have noticed): we could be able to: 1) activate the venom on time (it still doesn’t go on CD!), 2) inflict the venom on our next attack, 3) activate again the venom every time we want to use it for a maximum of times that is the maximum of actual attacks (for example, 5 times for spider venom), 4) once we activated the venom all the times we could, the venom goes on CD.
I also think that lowering the Venom CD by 5 seconds could improve us. All of this would be awesome both for WvWvW venomshare builds, since the thief gains more control on when and how activate the venoms, and for the conditions builds, since it would allow us to inflict poison and other conditions in a more predictable (for us, not for the enemy!) way.

• Signet of Agility: why does it only increase our precision by 90 instead of by 180 like it was 2 weeks ago?

- continues in part 2 -

A part from the fact that this is a very nice and welcome (and NEW!) thing I would like to thank them for their work in reading our feedback. And please, thieves out there, be polite. With politeness you will be listened

(oh, and think about a rework of hard to catch, P/P, venoms, and traps)

Straegen.2938:

No idea how they do in sPvP.

I don’t support the OP idea, but rangers are very much effective in tPvP.

Well, it sure is a good video but it’s also pretty disappointing. I mean, you always outnumber the enemis WITH an organized group! How’s that challenging? Everyone is able to kill clueless pugs with his buddies on TS. AND you have numbers on your side. Really really disappointing.