I don’t think it’s satire, Daecollo is starting (with starting I mean he started loooooong ago) to get known for posting completly overpowered sugestions like they were completly balanced… Seriously you should stop doing that before no one takes anything you sugest seriously.
Aditionally some of those doesn’t make sense at all like Black Powder being Smoke AND Fire combo field… do you know the game mechanics? You can only trigger one field at the same time so having 2 combo fields in the same place has the same effect as just one so that’s completly pointless.
That’s why I’m not sure if he’s being serious or not. If he is, the idea is so ridiculously overpowered it would not be the product of a rational mind.
If he wasn’t serious, that means he’s mocking himself since he’s the very person making all these incredibly overpowered suggestions.
Steal.
Shadowsteps are the real key to unleashing big unexpected burst on people. Assassins in GW1 didn’t even have stealth; it was all about shadowstepping.
Final Rest isn’t legendary, that’s just a unique staff skin.
I’m hoping this isn’t a serious post. I’d say it was satire, but mocking yourself seems strange.
I’m hoping new legendary weapons are already being worked on, but there’s been no information on that as far as I know.
Thieves and Necromancers in particular don’t have any fitting legendaries right now, and I’d love to see some sort of grim and jagged looking dagger with poison and shadow pouring from it.
Well “Shadow Arts.” is basicly Deception. Leeching Venoms and other things are in Shadow Arts. What if Life-Stealing is also a “Shadow Art?”
Deception also has shadow-step, which isn’t stealth.
When you use Shadow Refuge, a necromancers scythe comes out of your arm. Necromancers steal life, so you could say or argue that maybe “Shadow Arts.” the Art of Shadow (Deception.) also has some necromancy in it? It also heals you as well.
In my opinion, it makes sense that Shadow Arts has a Life-stealing trait in it.
Not good reasons…
You obviously haven’t tried the build I’m currently running.
Two of the mandatory Minor traits and over half the Major traits rely completely on entering Stealth to get their effect, and the other Minor trait puts you into stealth.
If you go into Shadow Arts without focusing on Stealth, you’re wasting a hell of a lot of traits, and there’ll always be better ways you could be doing it.
And if you’re taking a dagger off-hand on top of it without using much stealth, that’s just full-blown insane.
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Not good reasons…
What if your not a stealth thief? Should non-stealth thieves just be ignored?
…So you’re trying to advocate a build that goes into Shadow Arts WITHOUT using stealth? Why don’t you put 30 points into Trickery and never use Steal while you’re at it.
It really is not looking good.
They hinted strongly at a great number of buffs before the last patch, but we got nothing but some pretty hardcore nerfs without any warning or real justification.
They did warn us of one nerf which was frankly quite justified, but they didn’t even go with that one.
You might think we’ll be getting those buffs next month, but they’re already talking about nerfing us yet again.
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Do any other classes by this point really have nearly so bad a downed state as the Thief?
I’ve known for a while that the #3 skill was terrible for literally anything but stopping a stomp in PvP (compare that to the Warrior or Ranger’s self rez), and the #1 attack does terrible damage. But I’ve recently realized just how bad the #2 is as well. First of all, the only thing it’ll do for you AT ALL in PvE is get you out of a boss’ AoE so you take a little less damage (you don’t even move far). But in PvP, at least a quarter of the time it fails to even let me avoid a stomp.
Why? Because one of two things will usually happen; either the botched up downed-state camera will prevent me from targeting a spot on the ground far enough away in time (since it has a very low range, leaving a somewhat small viable target between being too close to actually avoid the stomp and too far to successfully trigger it), or it will just straight up fail to move me where it should have because I get stuck on a bump in the terrain and I get stomped anyway.
These abilities seriously need to be looked at.
I think a simple and elegant change might be something more like granting a couple seconds of Protection whenever you stealth. Wouldn’t even need to change the name.
mug at 20 pt wouldn’t fix the problem at all nor would 30 pt mug. You would still have 30 30 0 0 10 thieves globalling people and have them come to complain about heartseeker spam. I’d also argue that people don’t take into account overkill that mug provides for the standard all in bv cnd steal backstab on glass cannons and removing mug would just do little to nothing for the newer players starting out since they’d die anyways.
Someone came from Warcraft XD
Little tip, this game doesn’t have “globals”.
I’m not talking about how effective it may or may not be; the effect itself is just kinda lame by comparison. We have other shadowsteps, on shorter cooldowns in most cases, and the stolen skill is just… meh.
Compare that to a second health bar + transformation, 4 extra utilities, 2 extra weapon sets, extra resource for a special finishing attack, a controllable pet etc.
P/D was popular a month or so ago, but this recent patch has thoroughly wrecked it. It relies almost entirely on Sneak Attack for damage, which can now be used much less often.
Also, mostly since the Revealed nerf, D/P has drastically risen in popularity and is now basically the primary direct damage set. Another large piece of this rise was the buff to Shadowshot, so it no longer roots you in place. I don’t know if you could do it before, I don’t think you could, but you can now also interrupt the slash portion of Shadowshot, allowing you to use it to shadowstep to someone while in stealth and immediately Backstab simply by hammering the Backstab key after firing.
Also, I should mention, it’s not just a simple blog. I’m hosting my own full website for it.
I will be welcoming as much help on content for the site as I can get, so I’d welcome your help as well.
My ambitions for the level of information available on the site are much too great for me to collect all the necessary information all on my own.
I’m already in the process of making one. Have been for a little while.
I even have an associated in-game Thieves Guild with the upgrades coming along smoothly. Art of War 3, Architecture and Economy 2 plus the guild bank.
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My idea of support is very similar to being a force multiplier: in other sense, being a buffer or a debuffer. So I am interested in builds that makes the team or any one around me better.
So based on that premise, is thief still a good class?
You have plenty of ability to weaken enemies as a Thief. Between blinds and venoms.
Well, admittedly, Thieves have it far easier than any others. With the ability to stealth past enemies and all.
Pff, the Thief class skill is by far the least interesting anyway. I wish they’d just replace it all together.
It’ll stop CnD from stealthing you, since it won’t hit.
The one and only downside is the lack of AoE
Oh, god… That’s not it.
Downside is speed of performing the “killing move” and having 7+ ini (10% damage) while doing it.
Well yeah, you can’t do the usual Mug+CnD+BS insta-kill against weak targets. That’s gimicky and unreliable anyway and close to getting nerfed even more.
Hi,
I’m wondering why people rave over D/P builds.
Well, look at it this way. Many people know the merits of D/D.
D/P is like D/D, except you have a cheap on demand shadowstep + blind instead of garbage Death Blossom, an awesome interrupt for heals/stomps/100b etc instead of garbage Dancing Dagger, a pulsing AoE blind for destroying melee as pure bonus, and although your method of stealthing costs 3 extra Initiative, it also deals significantly more initial damage, blinds anyone around you, and can be used freely without having to hit someone.
Basically, as far as I know, its better in every way. The one and only downside is the lack of AoE, but D/D AoE is only good with condition damage anyway which clashes with every other skill in the set.
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I don’t know, considering 90% of them would just as likely kill you on sight, JP or no, I’d have a hard time feeling bad about it. You’re just being more efficient XD
First of all, Toughness is ALWAYS better than Healing Power for Thieves. Healing Power is only useful for improving heals to teammates, and Thieves have jack for group heals.
Second, Vitality is not better than Toughness for large heals either. Even with the base 10k health you won’t over heal unless you do something stupid like popping the heal with over ~60-70% health still left.
It doesn’t just let teammates apply extra conditions, that would be terrible. The whole point of the build is that you also spread the benefits of the venom traits to teammates, like stacks of Might and life stealing.
The only real way to build a support Thief is to go with a venom sharing build. Basically take 30 in Shadow Arts, 30 in Deadly Arts, take Leaching Venoms, Venomous Aura, Venomous Might, Quick Venoms, residual Venom and maybe Shadow Protector.
Take a couple Venom utilities, including Spider Venom, plus Shadow Refuge.
that is one of the best trait in the game.
…For your enemy.
I don’t care even if it USUALLY works in your favor; a trait, let alone a required one, should not be detrimental.
John Sharp:
“So with the Thief, we feel like their straight burst with some sets is too good as it is (Mug/C &D/BS/heartseeker”
Urghblrghlblrgh! Brain melting from ears
“while also improving their mobility with all weapon sets (since Shortbow is already strong at that, but it overpowers other options).”
How can people say that? S/x is way better because of Infiltrator’s Strike.
Infiltrator’s Arrow is only good for bypassing terrain or fleeing in stealth. It costs 6 initiative for Christ’s sake.
Ah, yeah. I forgot that you should take enough Vitality to survive the initial burst regardless. It doesn’t take a lot.
I was thinking that very thing before, Vigor on stealth would be awesome.
If you’ve invested in Shadow Arts, go Toughness all the way. If you have some self healing and a reasonable amount of condition removal then Toughness becomes the better option.
Otherwise, choose Vitality.
You should only stack both if you want to trade offense for extra defense, simply because you can’t choose double of one of those stats instead. Same reason direct-damage builds take Power/Precision/Crit instead of just stacking the crap out of Power.
One will always be better than the other based on your traits and skills.
I have absolutely no idea what would make anyone say Vitality is better in dungeons. Between the extra heals coming from your party members and the general lack of heavy condition damage, Toughness should be a far better option.
CoF’s burning, specifically, can get ugly, but Shadow’s Embrace will let you just laugh that off completely.
As for trinkets/jewelry. If you want any critical damage, get it on the trinkets. It is inexplicably granted far better itemization value on trinkets than anything else. The two accessories grant the least, so if you have to skip critical damage on any trinkets it should be those.
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Every time the Ele went to stomp someone, they just sat still and took it like an idiot.
Enough said.
I actually had to keep checking for Stability as the only rational explanation, but I never saw it.
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Thanks for the buff to greatsword (‘cause I’m going to play melee in medium armor, lol).
Comments like this really do show up who the bad rangers are. It wouldn’t matter so much if you didn’t then act like the problem isn’t with you.
A man is starving and has no shoes. He needs food, he needs shoes. You give him a pair of Adidas, ’cause he needs shoes. Then he dies of starvation. Ask yourself: what did he need most?
It’s freaking ridiculous, from ANY POINT OF VIEW, that a ranged class – probably THE ranged class – receives buff on melee skills when its prior mechanic (Pets) still lack of control/ways to survive. I may be a bad ranger, but if you miss to notice this simple thing you live in a world of fairies and unicorns for sure.
It’s ridiculous to you b/c you choose not to play melee. You don’t speak for everyone as some rangers do appreciate the melee playstyle. No one is saying that our ranged builds don’t need some help and that our pet AI is still atrocious, but do recognize that some of us actually want a buffed GS also.
I think the difference is, EVERYONE has pets. Pet buffs would be helpful to EVERYONE. It’s only rational, and it’s selfish as hell to say everything is fine just because you happened to be helped by it,
When you do the Steal > CnD combo, it’s easy for the game to screw up and not actually display the stealth effect on your character, but you’ll still be invisible to others.
It normally happens when you shadowstep inside stealth, but simply shadowstepping very close to the time you enter stealth seems to do it as well.
Everything revolves around the dagger eh?
Of course it does; they balanced the whole class around the assumption that you’ll have a dagger off-hand.
You think Shadow Arts would be anything more than a morbid joke if you had to rely on utilities for stealth?
Ooooh, I can gain 2 initiative and remove a condition three times a minute, and all it cost me was two Major traits, two utility slots and nearly a third of my trait points!
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The issue isn’t necessarily that a bit-by-bit approach won’t work at all, but rather that you CANNOT combine that with once a month changes.
They should be putting out class balancing patches every week, like they did early on, if they want to make only minor tweaks.
At this rate it’ll easily take them a year to manage what most other games do in a month with the class balancing.
It does explain why, half the time when I use it, the marked person is nowhere to be found.
That old Fractals issue, which they fixed ages ago, in which a brief loss of connection to the server will kick you from the instance and force you start all over, seems to be back for the Super Adventure Box.
Maybe it was because I was playing solo, but it happens none the less.
The place is long, and any tiny hiccup in connection causes you to lose progress and have to start all over. Luckily you keep your Baubles at least.
I don’t think the disconnects are entirely an issue on my end either; twice in a row now I’ve lost my connection at exactly the same spot, as I first encounter the Bee Dogs and they start fleeing. And I don’t often get disconnected from this game in the first place.
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Fire is almost always better than Air; that’s why it’s so expensive. The damage difference is not nearly as big as you may think, but Fire has AoE. Which is everything in PvE, and still fairly useful in PvP.
…The possibility didn’t even occur to me that it might work like an ordinary shadowstep. I just assumed it was a proper teleport, and I suppose by coincidence that assumption was never proven wrong.
That has to be changed.
All I know is that Anet doesn’t have a QA team. Oh wait they do….we are……..
If we were the QA team, they’d actually be tempted to listen when the player base starts shouting en mass “Whoa, wait, that was a terrible idea. You have to fix it.”
Not the first time they’ve done something as short-sighted as this. Certainly not the last.
Guild Wars 1, throughout the entire life of the game, has never been known to be well balanced. In fact, the old head of skill balance Izzy was quite infamous among players for his lack of competence.
The only reason it worked out well was that the game was very heavily build focused, and the builds were spectacularly versatile.
When an overpowered build cropped up for whatever reason, it would become popular, and in turn everyone could easily create their own builds designed to hard-counter that broken and overused build.
Guild Wars 2, for better or worse, has no such ability in place to save it.
I’m glad the game is now more about skill and not 99% what build you’re using and what build your opponent is using, but it’s no longer possible for the players to cover the incompetence of the devs.
More than that, if a particular skill/mechanic is garbage, you cannot in many cases simply not use it.
For those old-school GW1 players, imagine what it would be like if every Ranger were forced to devote a skill slot to the original Otyugh’s Cry.
That’s the situation we’re in right now.
Their greatest balancing fall-back was also to OFTEN take a skill that was overpowered, and literally nerf it so bad that no one would ever be tempted to use it again. Instead of, you know, actually TRYING to balance it.
Doing something like doubling the cooldown on Shadow Refuge, or reducing the damage of Backstab by 70% would have been normal, simply because you had the option of taking something else instead and their objective was to FORCE you to.
This is what we’re dealing with here.
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I almost never dodge attacks with it. 90% of the time, if I had actually managed to avoid an attack it’s because I flipped behind the person and went out of range, not because of the Evasion effect.
Even if you manage to spam the skill literally non-stop, you’re only evading less than half the time. It lasts for half the animation itself right in the middle (so you can’t even time it effectively), and there’s a noticeable pause between uses.
Full Berserker armor plus the Critical Strikes trait line, even without anything else should be enough to take you around 45% or more, assuming you have Exotic gear.
…I think. I can’t really verify that right now.
I’m pretty sure this was fixed months ago and this hasn’t been happening ’till recently, but it seems that whenever ANYONE leaves a group while performing an instance, such as a Dungeon, the whole instance will reset and kick everyone else out.
This has been happening to me all day where my group will finish a dungeon, and as soon as the first jerk loots the final chest he quits and everyone else loses out on it.
Wait, so are you saying the Shadow Shot won’t remove you from stealth as long as you interrupt the stab that follows?
There’s one thing I could really use help with at the moment. Rather than giving various parts of the site conventional labels like “Guides” or “Builds,” I wanted to give everything a Thief/Assassin theme while remaining legible. Like labeling the “Donate” button as “Give Tribute,” etc.
So ideas on what various things could be labeled as would be great.
At the moment I’m working on the Guides section, with various sub-categories like Techniques, Attributes/Equipment, Builds, PvP/PvE Strategies etc (not a complete/accurate list).