Guild Wars 2

i dont think so daze, is super powerful as it is, lets be honest would you really want off hand pistol thieves spamming a 1/4 sec daze and absolutely *insert swear word"ing you over. think how many people would be crying because they just had all there best skills cancelled.. and then put on a like a minute cooldown cos i can just spam a 1/4 second daze. i think it would disrupt the class balance making dazes far more powerful then they really need to be. seriously sword/pistol thives or sword dagger thieves or pistol pistol, or dagger pistol, have so much daze u would cry urself to sleep. tactical strike thieves are annoying already with that 2 sec daze out of stealth, u really want that to also ruin ur most useful spells that ur trying to cast.

i dont think its quite that simple generally the skills with longer cast times and more risk/reward have a harsher interupt penalty? im pretty sure ive canceled and been interupted on churning earth before, and other long channel spells and been given the full cooldown.

sorry my mistake ill remove the fear immediately.. obviously as a thief i have to explain why i have this… because it was totally my decision. personally i dont like steal at all. its just a useful gap closer, that gives you occasionally useful abilities depending on the situation/build u use. granted a aoe fear is nice, but its not always that useful. and while ur holding onto it to try to find some use for it, you could be actually using steal. it does make me laugh that necros dont get the best fears though, personally i think its justified to reduce the lenght on this 1, but lets get one thing straight, thiefs are not the most op class in the game, neither are they the easiest to play, or most annoying to deal with. they are just probably the most common glass cannon build.

alot of skills are brainless.. or at least require very little effort apart from the initial strategic placement of the skill. however.. 14second, and 30 second cooldown, unless traited, just for a comparison rangers have the muddy terrain skill which is a 20second immobilise field that cripples on pule is 30 second cooldown and 24 traited (and lots of good survival spells), having long duration aoes isnt just thieves.. not to mention that caltrops are only useful for condition thieves, who are a spec built around attrition and stalling. its a perfect weapon for them that fits into there playstyle.. just how guardian knockbacks are piss annoying when used by guardians who can just stand about and tank a super saiyan.. and necros who can spam well which are in many ways far more annoying then caltrops. caltrops is a awesome skill dont get me wrong. but i wouldnt call it broken. just useful.

as a condition thief using 45% bleed duration, dodge caltrops are extremely small range, and short lived but can supply 6 stacks for a few seconds, utility caltrops can do about 14stacks in total for a longer time, however 20 stacks or so is easy coupled with sneak atk, vital shot, etc, that being said, it does last a long time but, there are the only point defence skill thief has, and its not targetable, and most points are actually larger, so unless ur a bunker guardian QQing cos u cant just stand on the exact centre of the point like you usually do, i dont see the problem. and since other classes can deny entry via ridiculous force fields, knockbacks,fears,push backs, i think thief having an aoe cripple which can be walked out of at any point??? is it really that bad.. if your getting hit by caltrops. it was basically your choice to stand in them..

i know lol. i did mention in the vid i was surprised how terribly the necros handled me. most games in spvp go something like this tbh, about 5 noobs on each team and 3 average or sometimes a random hero haha. i feel regardless of “lvl of opponents” which i have no control over it was sufficent as a proof of concept/gameplay of anyone trying out condition based thief. and obviously i didnt know anyone on either team. its just randoms. i do use this build in tourneys, generally dont record tourney matches as actually sitting on a point uninterupted for 1min can be abit lousy viewing :P

heres a little bit of gameplay on my bleeds thief, its a point defender/stall/attrition build that i use in tourneys sometimes the video is just random spvp but i hope you get an idea and enjoy it.

its good but its sitational i like to use it while stealthed when they less likely to move off point, they do about 2 stack per tick and can easyily get 6 stacks they dont last long tohugh but u can do 2-3 dodges and its pretty good.

yeah theres not much “on crit” effects on thief so really no point using crit rate builds for conditions, it also gives you opportunity to use weapon swap sigils etc which in a way are more reliable. also the extra vitality on thief combined with stealth synergises nicely whereas the extra toughness is nice but i feel the loss of hp is crappy.

it might be more useful in other situations. plus im sure alot of people are sick of seeing 2 bunker guardians in most teams then watching them play a simple game plan with tedius inevitability.

i bet most of these “speedhacks” are just thieves using shortbow5 to teleport onto platforms. never seen an actual speedhacker, in spvp and in tpvp sure it happened in wvw. in terms of builds being pigeon holded. yes that somewhat true, most classes only have 1-2 decent builds with a little variation between skills. this happens in every game, obviously certain combinations are gonna work better than others. doesnt mean u cant come up with your own build which is similarly effective, but one of the thing the anet balancing team are working on is more build variation. update i think is 6th of december?

personally id say may shortbow auto could do with a bleed also, but meh.. as a main condition thief who plays wvw,pvp,tpvp id say we have a nice bag of situation use toys.. theres and the good thing is theres always a situation! though we cant just spam 1 for condition build like some classes, we can certainly have no trouble stacking bleed and keeping poisons up.

id say the main choices are venoms for a poison uptime.
or personally i use caltrops,shadowstep,blindingpowder

caltrops is amazing situationally, shadowstep is a must have or any stun breaker for tpvp. shadowstep is just my fav. and having a safe on demand stealth can be usefull. personally i think sneak atk is awesome, body shot is pointless, 3rd skill the retreat i think shadow shot, is ok, but tbh most the time u wanna be closing in to stealth not retreating so i barely get much use

http://www.gw2build.com/builds/simulator.php#1.7.6.10.13.13.29.29.11.33.154.169.173.174.177.9.9.1.0.0.0.0.0.0.486.484.481.497.503.0.513.517.0.0.0.30.20.20
thats what condition build i use,

lots of survivablity and bleed stacking, my philosophy is stack bleed faster than they can remove bleed, since my bleed tend to only last about 5seconds, getting 20 stacks up fast even if they are removed causes huge dmg. i use 3x 15% bleed duration runes also.

personally id love to see a buff to it, as it can seem abit lack luster, but actually bleeds on thief… super easy

heres a nice combo…

cloak and dagger steal or any stealth skill,

walk onto point, throw cantrips, do some dodges for extra cantrips if they are immobile or point defending, distance, sneak atk… i play tpvp with condition dmg thief, one thing i love doing is taking out bunker guardians before they get to points, or taking out the nooby 100b warrior with a single caltrop.. just had a final where i had 40sec of cripple on a warrior and was just lol’ing sohard. personally i use 3c 15% bleed duration runes, and can extremely quickly get 20 stacks of bleeding on anyone.. the auto atk isnt the main source, neither is it particularly great but its ok as a gap filler between ur other combos. consider using poison field clusterbomb combo.

what is unique about thieves? stealth and the initiative system…

complaints here…

stealth and the initiative system.. if anet follow ur suggestions thief would just be warrior.. a camel is a horse designed by comitee. if you try to let everyone have there say. you will end up with something that doesnt make sense just leave it for the devs to balance over time.

yeah i know the phrase “top player” is abit meaningless at the moment, but you would expect players from competitive teams to have a decent idea of the metagame.

in all seriousness though from listening to the chat yesterday between some of the top tourney teams and johnathan sharp, it seems the will be trying to make more viable builds, and small changes per patch in order to not mess with us too much, the last patch wasnt really like tht but you get the idea :P, one thing we can be fairly sure of a nerf however is the downed state we have.. seems like alot of qq about that.

you gotta remember that classes are normally balanced for top end play mostly, and ele is a hard charachter to learn. i can understand why its so hard to balance when its such a complex class.

now thats funny lordbyran…

noone complains about ele but they will nerf it because of “tradition” that made me lol for real :P

im sure they are being looked at, in case of stomps it does seem abit weird, as far as im aware deathshroud stomp no longer works, stealth stomp does work, mist form stomp? im pretty sure that still works, engis have that elixr that gives them either stealth or stability for stomps, i suggest using “quickness on pet swap” for stomps if finishing it quickly is an issue.

yeah its frustrating but it seems that almost all evades, stealths,invulnerables count as not on the point.. a fairly silly decision in my point of view in spvp, since it basically promotes standing like a lemon and using screen type spells for defence rather then trying to evade and skillfully keep a point or stop a point being taking just for a few seconds by using invulnerables or stealths.. i dunno though.. seems like a random “fix” to simplify the game.

any plans to improve the “pointing” system in spvp and tpvp, just gaining points for killing etc seems abit “kiddie” surely certain actions should make you lose points such as dying? something like overall kills and kill death ratio is much more accurate a standard of skill rather then how many points, though i appreciate this isnt teamdeath match you must admit that simply “playing more = better rank” is a flawed system.

hes a very good ranger player i can vouch for that as ive vsed him before on many classes. nice bit of daft punk in the background! good stuff!

i wouldnt say theres no strategy in spvp, and i certainly wouldnt say spvp’ers are crap etc, but obviously the average level of tourney players is higher, some people however dont have active clans to tpvp with.

empathic bond yeah.. i know its ok, but 10 seconds is much longer than the lenght of most conditions.. its useful but also incredibly unreliable.

too the guy who said condition thiefs wouldnt have an advantage vs ranger.. because cloak and dagger can be easily dodged… pets find it very hard to dodge it so yeah a pretty safe infinite source of cloak and dagger. not to mention rangers condition removal is poor at best.

the real offensive classes for ranger to 1vs1 are confusion stacker, e.g condition engi’s and mesmers, condition thiefs have the advantage simply due to the rangers lack of reliable options against a kiting invisible person.. (no need to go into trap distance or stay conally infront when you can get free stealths from the pets.

short answer: Teamwork is OP!

Long answer: tPvP uses a different skill set then spvp.. in spvp you cannot rely on other people and most people play for points

in tpvp teams try to synergise with each other and are more likely to play some lvl of support in their builds. that normally means spvp= everyone trying to kill eachother.

tpvp= builds get pigeon holed into “bunkers” “roamers” “team support” im simplifying of course but it is kinda like this, having extra gaming modes would probably make people play some more all around builds and rely on situational awareness rather than.. im a tank i should just stand here mentality :P

yeah was gonna say.. greatsword nay.. KATANA!! rawrrrrr

pretty cool, must say it sounds more reminiscent of fable1 then gw2. in my personal opinion good job though.

1. elementalist
2. engineer
3. necro
4.thief
5.mesmer
6.ranger
7.guardian
8.warrior

too be honest im looking at skill management mostly, but taking in to account how easy it is to get a desired effect. the only ones im about iffy on here are the thief and mesmer positions, in certain situations its posible to do well with absolutely no skill on a thief, and same with mesmer, however to actually play these classes well amougst good players it suddenly requires alot of co-ordination and judgement.

elementalist is easy once you have mastered it, but actually takes you a longer time then other classes just becoming accustomed to the skill set and the changes that seem to be made every patch. playing correctly for your build super important on ele

necros are very useful situationally and require thoughtful use of skills on many builds and clever use of deathshroud to mitigate dmg, engis its totally build dependant, if your getting good results by juggling between kits that can require alot of concentration and timing.

ranger id say.. isnt a difficult class to play at all you just have to have alot of common sense to survive.

for guardian i just feel you dont really need to put alot of time or effort into doing well, that being said of course there are some guardians who are awesome players.

for warriors of course they going to be a pretty straight foward charachter, obviously this doesnt anyone can just pick up a warrior and rule, its just that theres not much to learn, you just gotta get it under your fingers and away you go.

tbh i feel “hardest class” is abit unrepresentitive, certain builds on different classes, provide much more results but also much more depth and learning curve, i would say judge the build not the class :P

yeah its fine, its only really a problem if your laggy since it adds an extra 1sec or so to your reaction time. which it has been recently all the time. not sure if thats my fault or what lol..

got one in my tpvp team, they useful for defending the close point, good dmg over time and good healing, have trouble defeating them with certain classes but my condition thief has a massive advantage. if you enjoy playing ranger theres no reason u cant use a surivivability build as a point defender however most people dont like playing bunker style in 8v8 spvp since its lets be honest quite boring and people only do it in tourneys because it “works”

tbh i feel like the actual main problem is that conquest is the only game mode.. if it switch between other modes, in a random fashion that would stop people from playing such stand on the spot only point control builds and would hopefully make people play in a more adaptable way.

no it is as you say , i very much use basilisk venom-chocking gas,caltrops,dodge caltrops, sneak atk, huge stacks of bleeding, its just obviously i need to stealth to utilise sneak atks and stop the guardians summon hammers from just smashing me about, i dont have problem killing them in the long run, but the problem is everytime i stealth i lose some ground on them.. doesnt seem right. im not abusing the stealth… you cant anyways.. if people are stupid enough to allow you to keep cnd every 5 sec or so whatever the stealth immune cooldown is. thats there problem.

the guardians knockback wall spells dont count i suppose as they are techicallly not invulnerable are just behind a screen, but still i dont think that a valid arguement, shadows refuge is less than the size of most aoes, and u know where they will definately be for the next 6 seconds or so, not only that but its completely ruined by knockbacks. i agree in wvw its a problem but in tpvp its a shame, i like playing my attrition build as i get tired of it being bunker/cannon paradise, but if i cant actually maintain a point while stealthed it makes my play very disadvantageous.

ok i play thief,ele,engi,necro,ranger.. basically everything heres some simple rules

1. when someone stealths dont simply stop attacking. try to apply some cripples/immobilises.. alot of thiefs waste cooldown stealths if they are stunned or stuck, keep hitting that point, specially if you have a front atk aoe weapon like swords/hammers etc

2. how did they stealth? was it cloak and dagger? shadow refuge or was it a blind combo field or blinding powder?

shadow refuge= they will be inside that thing for quite a while but will receive a long stealth time on exit, if you can knock them out before its over. then they wasted it

cnd= can only do this on close contact , they are probably trying to set up a backstab or sneak atk depending on what spec they are, try no to show ur back to them, you can always keep atking, spinning or use some teleports to get out of the immediate danger safe the knowledge that most stealths last 3-4 seconds (however activating another stealth skill whilst stealth will increase stealth time.

blinding powder= used mostly as a fight opener, kinda a sneak stealth or as an oh kitten moment and they will be escaping, its not allways obvious where they are going to escape but use your judgement.

3. aoe is your friend. they are invisible but they are still there.. if you have any blast area type atks such as most of the dd mage skills, engi with bombs or grenades, or large conal atks such as rangers= no.2 axe skill which is like an aoe bleed use them.. u wont see the dmg but they will take it,

4. what type of build are they? try to tell, a glass cannon thief will typically die if caught off guard after a initial burst, are they a condition attrition build, in which case they are likely to be trying to wear u down with bleeds, these types of thief are actually harder to deal with but will likely try to stay close and on point, where they can continue to kite you..

5. personally i find mesmer stealths harder to deal with as they have so many clones, you can occasionally get fooled by them. a general tip is too call target on the mesmer, and also pay attention to the hp bars, also dont randomly atk the clones, i find its best to either use aoe to take everything out, use the clones too stealth is my personal tactic, dodge there atks , mesmers are usually squishy if you can avoid taking too much clone dmg and just focus on the mesmer,

just noticed that whenever i turn invisible the game doesnt count me as on the point.. say im defending a point vs a bunker guardian. which you will be.. since theres are about 2 per tournament game guaranteed… why should i when i stealth (which im gonna have to do.. ) count as not on the point.. it just means he can just stand there shielding and doing knockbacks, i assumed and im fairly sure i used to be able to stay stealth to heal myself lay down some poison fields and hold the point while invisible.. if guadians can basically be invulnerable half the time, shouldnt i be able to stealth and move around the node? is this intentional. or was it to fix thiefs in wvw?

just had it after getting killed by cata, no stomp, think i looked at the score board (nothing else to do in that 15secs) so that might be the cause, seriously annoying..

on a side note.. invisible thiefs no longer can hold or take points? ive just noticed that during this last match.. kinda annoying.. completely ruins my attrition build in tpvp i can understand why it would be annoying in wvw but really was this neccessary?

recently in tpvp ive been playing condition builds, pistol/dagger, shortbow, my build is generally a roamer but i basically use conditions to GTFO people on the points, its one of those situations where alot of people dont run too much condition removal because they assume people wont be using it, the amount of bunker guardians who ive been able to take out fast because they got low hp good healing great defence and great condition removal over time.. but yeah.. my bleeds only last 4-5 seconds and i can do 20 stacks in about 5 seconds..

basically go invisible use shortbow poison field,caltrops on point.. use 2xdodge caltrops on them whilst invis, use sneak atk,

using caltrops and poison field or venoms etc whilst invisible will not break ur invisibility easy for me to suddently get like 15-20 stacks of bleed and poison on them pretty kitten fast. not to mension i can just re-stealth cure conditions, regen and keep the points, the guardians will occasionally knock you off points, but will get super annoyed ikitteneep cloak and daggering from there summoned hammer and just circle the points while invisble. anyways heres the build i currently use, its very good for group fights where u can put those conditions on multi enemys, but good for attrition vs, u cant really burst someone super fast but its ok anyways

the caltrops are a fairly large aoe bleed/cripple that keeps reappling for 14 seconds, the dodge caltrops are very small aoe u need to basically dodge on top of them, best used vs stationary targets and dont last aslong, but do 4-6 bleeds each and a short cripple.

i use bleed duration runes 3sets of 2 for 45% extra

http://www.gw2build.com/builds/simulator.php#1.7.6.10.13.13.29.33.11.33.154.169.173.174.178.9.2.6.0.0.0.0.0.0.486.488.481.497.503.0.513.517.0.0.0.30.20.20

i occasionally change my traits abit, shadows protector can work nice for the regens instead of master of deception, and shadows embrace for extra condition removal instead of blind on stealth. lots of good traits there!

last time i checked the most common glasscannon build in tpvp that actually causes problems would be 100b warriors haste,bullscharge,100b,spin off into the distance like 15k dmg too everyone in the area… personally i think people need to learn to adapt and change, theres always gonna be people playing glass cannons and bunkers

9.5k heartseeker and backstab is mad, but i bet ur a light armour class with absolutely nothing in toughness i very rarely get hit over 5-6k by the thiefs and im a thief myself (no toughness just vit i play a condition build) i agree with you that bursts like that are stupidly frustrating specially if there was literally no time too react, but those guys are always die in 2 hits types themselves, and they rarely do well in actual games unless they are genuinely quite good. that thief was probably using signets to grant 5x might poped all his utilites then spanked u, if he missed or got interupted or if you had some toughness he would have been made completely useless would have tried to escape or just died. however i do feel bad when this happens to people but we cant just simply keep nerfing thief as far as im aware they have already nerfed heartseeker. and backstab is only deadly on those super high crit dmg builds.

What’s next? “Let’s gather 10 million to help Microsoft iron out the bugs in Windows 8”?

haha i like ur idea :P maybe we can do some crowd funding.. windows8 bring back the start menu!! for us not using tablets like kitten !

personally ive been having “sudden onset lag” in tpvp much more than spvp seem slike 80% of tpvp matches have been extremely laggy (laggy for both teams i suppose so we still won, but it makes it less fun anyways) aswell as having way more “stuck on loading screen” bugs and having to restart gw2 in the middle of final round of tournament, kinda annoying.. though im looking forward to some more spvp content, ill just deal with the lag for the time being.

yes i loved the arrows vid, i been doing some of those teleports myself, but you had a few i never found, was fun to watch and the short bow is really such an awesome weapon :P, personally with the stomps.. i have dagger offhand so.. stealth stomp or an occasionaly shadowstep stomp is really as fancy as i get haha

rank 26 i think i play most pistol/dagger shortbow thief, d/d elementalist boonstacking build (happy to go aura share) and also i can play condition engi pretty nicely with pistol/pistol bombs build.

really wanna get back into tourneys, did alot with my old clan at beginning, but now stick to spvp cos i dont feel like tpvp with randoms. feel free to pm ingame add as friend or whatever i also have a youtube channel, if you wanna see my playstyle just type “gw2zetsu” thats my username on youtube

going between unload and sneak atk is very good, sneak atk is actually very good even on a power build (how i use it) just because how fast it is shot, using the initiative gain on steal, sneak atk then unload is a pretty good combo, however i opt for pistol/dagger simply as the cloak and dagger means you can pretty much perma stealth against some of the more annoying classes by using necro minions, mesmer clones, rock dogs etc to get easy hits. cloak and dagger stomping is also super effective

shortbow= best secondary and best primary… shortbow in right hands is just horrifically awesome.

well, what he means is you can switch the skills but the cooldown rolls over, so if you just casted haste for example you could switch out haste too shadowstep, but the cooldown would still be there. so no real advantage in that situation its just so you can swap out utilitys in battle really.. which is ok i dont care either way, it would make people mayb exploit passive effects more

for wvw just put a lower cap on critical dmg, since the fact people (of all classes not just thief) can get like 118% crit dmg is too much really messes up balance for wvw, instead of trying to address individual skills. putting a 75% max on crit dmg might help.

pvp.. alot of crying but thiefs arent that bad, i think just focus on making some of the other weapon sets more useable, and maybe dancing dagger needs to be adjusted again, since its very bad now, i think some condition builds need work, like venoms. i wouldnt say backstab is too overpowered in spvp just maybe the animation should be longer. giving a slight reaction time between mug/cnd/backstab combo.

pvp.. alot of crying but thiefs arent that bad, i think just focus on making some of the other weapon sets more useable, and maybe dancing dagger needs to be adjusted again, since its very bad now, i think some condition builds need work, like venoms. i wouldnt say backstab is too overpowered in spvp just maybe the animation should be longer. giving a slight reaction time between mug/cnd/backstab combo.unless its intended the steal not breaking skill animations is part of what makes these combos happen. its fun. but i can see why people QQ about it.

pvp.. alot of crying but thiefs arent that bad, i think just focus on making some of the other weapon sets more useable, and maybe dancing dagger needs to be adjusted again, since its very bad now, i think some condition builds need work, like venoms. i wouldnt say backstab is too overpowered in spvp just maybe the animation should be longer. giving a slight reaction time between mug/cnd/backstab combo.unless its intended the steal not breaking skill animations is part of what makes these combos happen. its fun. but i can see why people QQ about it.for pve i think make sure pvp changes are separate.. thats all pve thiefs are weak, and dont have too much group utility.. i cope, but people do complain, maybe venom share should be more effective and maybe a bleed venom, since all the other venoms do not stack. and since they are normally multi aplication it makes sence to have one that stacks.

ok so tried a slightly different build out, a beserker style build with abit of vit, using pistol/dagger and shortbow, its mainly using the shortbow and just pistol/dagger on 1 vs1 situations, i know its normally for condition dmg builds, but i kinda like it for power much more then double dagger and im so used to have cloak and dagger for stomps and general mischief that i wouldnt wanna get rid of it, heres a video, would like any feedback,advice, build suggestions, or maybe you think i should just try sword/dagger shortbow thats fair enough too lol.

build

http://www.gw2build.com/builds/simulator.php#1.7.6.10.13.13.20.22.17.33.154.169.168.174.178.2.2.6.0.0.0.468.472.0.486.488.481.497.503.0.0.0.0.0.20.30.20.0

for engi’s it could be exploited massively i could also be exploited for signets, maintaining passive effects until you need to use a specific utility in battle, id personally be fine with that, but would need to fix the engi issue

normally on mmo’s the “rogue” require huge tech skill either that or are just spammers plain and simple. i wish they were abit more towards the “tech skill” end here but i still enjoy pistol/dagger and shortbow.