So you’re saying that you can get mobility with a Signet, but Guardians should have to spend a utility trait on the shout (like Thieves for signet, making us even at this point), but then also spend traits to reduce shout time, grab boon duration, give up a weapon set that can give us a symbol that we need to stand on, essentially charging up our move speed like a battery?
Yes, because guardians were specifically designed to have limited mobility. Like, that was stated straight up front.
But it’s worth noting that this is technically better speed anyway, because Swiftness is +33% and the Signet (which is otherwise useless) is only 25%. Retreat is Swiftness and Aegis, never mind Save Yourselves (which is less Swiftness, but total lollerskates). SoS can… blind people in an AOE, and in exchange will lose the speed boost during the recharge time. Someone call a press conference.
Then you’re saying it’s not fair that Guardians should have easier access to vigor? Which is it? Should there be relative equality, or should certain classes do things 100x easier because they’re designed for it? Because if you want to take that stance, then my argument is that Vigor helps you survive, and survivalist abilities are the forte of the Guardian. Thieves should be squishy, glassy, and easy to pop if they don’t burst you out. Here’s the inverse version of what I heard you say:
EDIT: in all seriousness, Thieves are supposed to be survival-limited. You can get perma-Vigor uptime with Traits/Boon duration anyway.
Sounds silly, right? I don’t really subscribe to that train of thought, though.
Thieves are already “survival-limited”. Who is worse off than the Thief, defensively? No access to Protection, Stability is on a channeled Elite, no blocks, lowest health pool in the game, middling medium AR, no Toughness/Armor boosting traits whatsoever. A Guardian in her underwear has better damage mitigation than a Thief.
Evade is basically what we’ve got, and that’s it. We don’t even get augmented evades for free: you need to spend 15 points in a line that may or may not have anything to do with the rest of your build.
So…as a Guardian, regarding our vigor trait, …trade you? On behalf of the Guardian community, we appreciate your time and look forward to doing business with you.
Sure, that’s fair. Let’s do a straight-up Adept swap, to keep the math easy. Give us Vigorous Precision, and you can have Expeditious Dodger. Hell, I’ll even give you FOUR second of Swiftness on evade instead of two. Sold Tyrian!
EDIT: in all seriousness, Guardians are supposed to be mobility-limited. You can get perma-Swiftness uptime with Shouts/staff anyway.
(edited by Interceptor.2653)
That’s plausible enough (although frankly I think it’s a silly design), but doesn’t really explain Guardians. My Guardian can block/aegis/evade all day erry day in full ‘zerkers, largely because of Vigor-on-crit from Vigorous Precision. Which is not only a stupid name for a trait, but it only costs 5 points down a line that I’d want to take anyway.
I’d sure like to hear the reasoning for that one.
Where do you get your damage from in a 30 acro build… what is your build?
10 DA and 30 CS. S/P, revolves around various on-crit effects. It’s enough to go to war with, generally.
Has anyone else been playing with this Adept trait? Pre-patch it was 10s of Swiftness with a 5second ICD; now it gives 20 seconds, and that seems to have made a big difference in its utility.
I’ve been using it on a 30 Acrobatics build; it’s very useful for cruising around in WvW. Even without boon duration from other sources, that’s 26s of Swiftness on kill, and the stacks keep accruing if you maintain it. It’s not uncommon for me to have 2-3 minutes of Swiftness stacked, just from whacking random mobs and moving between camps, especially if I am also making use of Expeditious Dodger in the process.
It’s both faster (33% vs 25%) and more efficient than many other travel options, I think. Signet of Shadows eats a valuable utility slot, and Runes of Traveler/Speed cost an upgrade level and/or gives stats you may not be able to use.
Worth looking into if you run full or partial Acro; I’ve combined them with Runes of Lyssa (the on-elite effect benefits from the boon duration as well), and occasionally throw on a Raspberry Cream for the MF/boon duration when I don’t strictly need a combat edge.
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If you feel that losing control of your character at the whim of another player being a negative effect is a matter of opinion and not one of fact, we have nothing further to discuss on that point.
Possibly, although you altered your phrasing at the last second to drop the “always” from “negative effect”. There’s no way to know for sure if you keep moving the goalposts around, changing your final statement to sound less absolute than your original argument.
When you settle on a stance, let me know, and then we can figure out whether it’s reasonable to consider it a “fact” or not. I’m pretty amazing, but I can’t argue against a shape-shifting statement.
Because that is their specific design – CC is supposed to be a negative effect enacted on another player, so that’s what it does.
Why can’t this be the design case for HtC? No exceptions ever? The other similar traits generally don’t remove the CC either, they just have a retaliatory effect instead (except Warriors, because Warriors). HtC Shadow-steps you away from the source of the effect and gives Swiftness; that can be disorienting, but that goes for the enemy as well, and it can put you out of harm’s way temporarily.
You haven’t really made the case for why that’s the way this has to be, except make various assertions, fallacies, and veiled insults about my intelligence.
And that is the entire point of the original post – the effort was not successful, what are the plans to fix it. That was clearly pointed out in the last section of the original post.
No evidence that this is true. They have access to data that you do not; there is, in fact, a post just before yours that’s pointing out the benefits to their own Acrobatics build. It’s fair to ask the ANet devs for an explanation, although given the way you went about it, seems unlikely that you’ll get one, IMO.
The vigor changes specifically target “thieves who dodge over and over again”. Their intention was to buff the survivability via acrobatics to reward players who are not constantly dodging. It follows that the acro buffs were intended to buffer the fact that thieves are now capable of dodging less often. Your interpretation of the post seems unnecessarily strict just to have a point to argue over.
I am taking their words at face value; you are reading tea leaves. Even in the case where this is true, undeniably they have upgraded builds with Healing Power in them.
There are also cascading effects elsewhere. For example, my “Acrobatics” build is now more survivable post-patch than it was before. Why? Because of the changes to Critical Strikes and Deadly Arts. The ability to leverage on-crit (Sundering Strikes, Critical Haste) and the upgrade to Practiced Tolerance has enabled me to swap out Valkyrie gear for Knight’s gear, at a net increase to my survivability without sacrificing much else. It has little to do with specific changes to Acrobatics (although Assassin’s Retreat is quite nice now), but here I am, with better ability to survive than before.
I hate to use myself as an example, since this song is not actually about me, but it was a point worth making.
It appears as though you’re the only person in the thread who disagrees so completely. When you disagree with a few people, it’s probably just a difference of opinion. When you disagree with everyone, you might want to re-examine your position.
Come now. You’re surely above argumentum ad populum.
(edited by Interceptor.2653)
Fine, lets turn this post into a discussion of just how specifically bad HtC is.
I think that this is already pretty well-traveled territory.
No, it’s not a matter of opinion – losing control and choice is always a negative thing.
… which itself is a matter of opinion. I guess that this is the basic problem of this thread, that you don’t acknowledge the possibility that your assertions could be incorrect. Just saying that something is an undebatable fact, does not make it so.
In any case, the choice with HtC is made when you slot the trait. It does basically what it says that it will, Stability case aside. Once more: HtC offers you a contingency for a control effect, that requires no reaction time on the part of the player. How many other traits do that? Is this not a potentially important factor when someone is deciding whether or not to take it? There are very few traits that do something in this situation, and those are exist are already Master tier or higher.
I mean, you admit that the loss of control is acceptable for CC skills because of their design, so why doesn’t it follow that HtC can do the same thing in exchange for a fairly hard to acquire effect?
Not running HtC was a perfectly valid defense prior to Dec 10th – every class has kittenty traits, nothing will ever be perfect, and no one is forcing thieves to take HtC. Since we’re specifically talking about the Dec 10th patch, where HtC was lauded as a survivability buff intended to allow thieves to continue to survive fights despite all the other nerfs, that line of reasoning no longer fits.
And here comes the hyperbole again. Lauded? Really? They just said “we are trying to improve the survivability of thieves in the Acrobatics line through easier access to the Hard to Catch trait and increased effectiveness of the Assassin’s Reward trait”. There is no high praise here, and in fact they worded it such that it sounds like this is literally an experiment to see if it improves the survivability of Acrobatics Thieves. They have access to all of the data that would support or refute such a thing, after all.
And naturally, “despite all other nerfs” is phrasing entirely of your own construction. What they actually said, was that the intention was to “reward thieves who are actively engaged in the fight rather than those who are just dodging over and over again”. Which you’ll note is quite different from what you said.
I mean, seriously. Putting words in someone’s mouth, or making assumptions about their motives… why would anyone want to participate in a discussion under those conditions?
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Even if the end result has some positive attached to it(which is going to be rare), it’s not a good thing.
Seems like a matter of opinion, to me. HtC is not like Last Refuge; you can avoid it completely if you don’t like the implications of running it. Setting aside the various neutral/bad results, the one nice thing that it offers is a contingency that doesn’t require any reaction time. How many other traits offer something like this for a control effect?
What if [insert any situation where I could just use a stunbreaker and accomplish a goal rather than being teleported away from the situation beyond my control and at the whim of another player].
Just in case it wasn’t already clear, I agree with you that these (and other similar situations) are unfavorable things that happen with HtC, and I don’t like them. So now you can stop belaboring the point, because it’s never been in contention in the first place.
please stop derailing the thread.
My posts are not off-topic. This is a thread about AR/HtC’s interaction with survival, right? I mean, I can stop giving your thread visibility and discussion if you want it to vanish into the Page 2+ graveyard, but I don’t see how that accomplishes anything useful.
By saying that it’s irrelevant, you’re saying that it’s perfectly ok whether there is a benefit or there’s no benefit.
You’ll get into trouble if you tell me what I am saying. What’s “irrelevant” here is 30 in Shadows Arts. What it’s irrelevant TO, is “the point”. I’m not talking about optimal build paths, I’m talking about AR. In a thread about AR.
No. “irrelevant” means " it’s not related."
We don’t live in a world where words have singular definitions; both are valid.
But that’s precisely the point. If the number of times that HtC comes up with bad results for thieves is far greater than the number of times it has good results, then are we really being “so breathless and hyperbolic about it”?
I’d say so (and in fact, I did), particularly since you asked me for a precise estimation of good/bad results but merely submitted “far greater” for your own, which is nearly unquantifiable. What does that even mean? I can come up with a hundred situations where HtC has a horrible end result, but I could do the same for good ones, too.
It’s hard to seem serious without acknowledging the good parts of HtC, however minor you may think that they are, because balance is holistic in this game by its nature. The OP is not bad — I agree with most of it — it’s just incomplete and less likely to get the desired results.
And how, precisely, does that make up for all of the bad results?
Maybe ask someone who said that it did? Acknowledging the good parts of HtC does not imply that the skill is in a good place, or that the negatives don’t matter.
most important post of this thread incoming guys: shortbow used to be great w/ lotus poison.. now its meh
It’s a little better than it used to be, since they made the recharge on Lotus Poison per-target, and reduced it to 15s recast at the same time. We still have the ability to sustain mass Weakness with a 4-2 combo, too.
LOL.
I can’t really be responsible for whatever misconceptions you have about my positions.
I mean, how did you get from “the benefit is irrelevant” to “there is no benefit”? Those two phrases are not even equivalent. The word “irrelevant” means “doesn’t matter”, not “doesn’t exist”. If you want to have any kind of discussion at all, you’ll have to stop putting words in my mouth.
why don’t you mention the positive aspects of HtC
It’s positive when it has a good result, sort of like how Improvisation is good when it recharges something that you needed.
The intent of this thread is to hopefully have Anet come and explain to use their future plan for HtC and AR […]
What difference does it make if people discuss the two skills? You already made your case in the OP, neatly avoiding the positive aspects of HtC and the only other thing to do would be maybe post it in a place where a dev will actually see the thing.
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Then explain to me how putting 30pts into Acro “working together” with SoM when it benefits more if that 30pts is spent in SA?
The benefit is completely irrelevant. Fact of the matter is, SoM and AR do not inhibit each other in any way, shape, or form. They work just fine together when it comes to providing you healing. A reverse example: Residual Venoms doesn’t “work” with Serpent’s Touch, because ST is not a Venom.
These things are normally obvious to people, but somehow, you and I are here.
[…] you’re trying to make us believe.
I actually don’t care whether you believe it or not. As I said: it’s not subject to your approval. I’ll make an attempt to explain it, out of kindness, but I’m perfectly content with you stubbornly misunderstanding the point for the rest of eternity.
I guess saying this doesn’t advocate spending 30pts into Acro worth it;
Well, build are about choices, as they say. I combine SoM with AR occasionally, and it does work.
Correct; I am not advocating spending 30 points in Acrobatics here. I have a personal build that uses it occasionally, but it’s more for the Vitality/Boon duration, and AR can be a random throw-in when the added sustain is worth it.
In a void, AR is not really that good; it’s just better than an empty slot.
Guardians can also get perma-Vigor with a laughably small investment. I guess that maybe they don’t care about Vigor-on-crit.
And if that’s the case, can thieves have it? :P
Of course it is subject to my approval
It is not. SoM and AR working together is a fact; it’s not a matter for discussion. You may as well have said that Caltrops doesn’t apply bleeds, for all the sense that made. It’s fine if you choose not to combine them, but that’s a separate thing entirely from whether they “work” together or not.
you’re trying to make a case that AR is worth spending 30pts on […]
Where? Find it. When you return in shameful failure, because I didn’t actually do that (make a case for AR being worth 30 points), maybe we can get back on topic.
I strongly disagree. SoM and AR together doesn’t work.
Yes they do. It’s not subject to your approval. SoM’s healing and AR don’t over-write, cancel each other, or whatever. AR is just another source of healing you can combine with Blood sigils, food, etc.
You’re better off using Hide in Shadows with Shadow’s Rejuvenation.
Perhaps, but nobody ever said it was better than Shadow’s Rejuv, never mind that SR is isn’t even in Acrobatics.
A Grand master trait should be good enough on its own to merit taking. It shouldn’t just be useful when you take it with 1 specific heal and possibly a certain amount of Healing power.
Goodness gracious:
I’d be happy with AR if they changed it to increase the base heal, rather than the healing scaling […]
Do you suppose this means that I am satisfied with AR as-is?
I don’t feel anyone is being hyperbolic.
Of course you don’t.
HtC occasionally helping is awful […]
Nobody said it was good. It is, however, important to note that it’s not across-the-board horrible, as in “every situation is negative”. Overall it’s definitely bad, even when demoted to Master. I never take it.
Except when you’re running condition removal food when you use a heal, and vigor on heal. I only use SoM in PvE.
Well, build are about choices, as they say. I combine SoM with AR occasionally, and it does work.
Grenth gave us Choking Gas for a reason, folks.
EDIT: by the way, I did something like this yesterday, but the Warrior countered by pulling out a rifle, so it escalated pretty quickly. I just switched back to S/P and fought him straight-up.
Even still, I have 500 healing power and am healed for 490 each pistol whip. I’d like it to be more for sure, but it has kept me alive in swapping to shortbow and spamming cluster bomb/choking gas for a quick 2k health when I get desperate. I can’t stay in a fight at that point though. It’s either break combat or die, and assassin’s reward only allows for an escape mechanic rather than a sustain mechanic.
You really need to combine it with Signet of Malice if you want to use it as a sustain mechanic. With that, now Pistol Whip will give you 1500+ health, and the AOE Shortbow skills can top you off really quickly in a mess.
That trait isn’t very useful in solo PvE, although you can still line up the side/rear strikes using stealth. In groups it can be very handy, particularly in dungeons. Death Blossom won’t let you land back-strikes (mobs will whip around too fast).
I’d be happy with AR if they changed it to increase the base heal, rather than the healing scaling, although I feel badly that people who only specced 20 Acrobatics for it are now shut out.
Hard to Catch is bad, but there’s no need to be so breathless and hyperbolic about it. HtC does actually help occasionally (even when disorienting), the problem is that it 1) “helps” when it shouldn’t, and 2) very often has a bad or neutral result. Pain Response is almost always more useful.
My definition of casual is equal to the whole of GW1’s population’s definition of casual.
Citation needed. This is GW2, and I’ve never met a casual player who would agree with your definition of “casual”. You might as well call it “kittens” for all the relationship that it has to a generally understood meaning. Call it what it is, instead of implying that your style is mainstream (which it is not).
And I realize that life siphons ignore armor but why was it necessary to state it as “true damage” when it was a life siphon?
Six of one, half dozen of the other. You ought to have been able to figure it out from context, since you “realize that life siphons ignore armor”, and we were talking about life siphon sharing.
I’ve never been kicked for being a thief but I rarely, if ever, join a pug.
I’ve never crashed a plane before, but I rarely, if ever, fly one.
Its casual because we take whatever classes we want and aren’t aiming for speed, not might stacking falls under the category of inexperienced, uncaring, or not valuing one’s time
I am now 100% positive that your definition of “casual” is outside the mainstream.
and ty for the explanation although im still not sure why anyone would calculate damage without adding armor to the equation
Because life siphons will ignore Armor, that’s why. It doesn’t matter how much Armor the target has. I’m not sure how much more clear this point can be.
I don’t think you understand how bad that is. For instance, my casual runs have a 100% uptime on 25 stacks of might.
I am not sure that you have a realistic idea of what a “casual” run is.
lolwut is true damage anyway
Damage not mitigated by Armor.
Here’s the problem: You have a 360 range for that might, meaning that you either need a full melee stacked group or you need to make sure that everyone in the group stays very close (Staff eles, Grenade engis, etc.) even though they can hit from farther away.
You have very strong opinions about it, but at the same time it doesn’t seem like you’ve actually done this before. A radius of 360 is fairly large; as big as a Time Warp centered on you. With instant cast venoms, everything other than Basilisk is pretty straightforward to land on people if you have some modicum of positioning awareness. The might is easy to keep going, and Leeching Venoms are quite good.
Granted there are some fights where this is difficult/impossible due to spacing needs, but that’s true of Every Spec Ever™, so it’s not a particularly insightful point.
Why PVT + Knights? S/P has evades on the BnB skill, and you have ready access to Blind in the kit. I don’t get the Toughness overload. I run some Toughness due to Signet of Malice, but it’s a WvW build.
Primary reason for choosing 25 into two lines instead of 30 into critical is because extra dmg from 6+ ini and executioner is not always available, whereas the 2 +10% from condi and <100 endurance should always be available (in theory, since you can control both pretty easily).
You’re not DPSing when you are manually evading, so that ought to be a consideration when you’re trying to boost your damage by pushing V. Easy to keep conditions on for free, though, as you say.
S/P and P/P 30/30/0/10/0
30 DA for 5.5s Immob on 50% or less
30 CS for 20% dmg on 50% or lessStacking Vuln with crits. I get you down to 50% and you are completely screwed. Anyone who uses a stunbreak to dodge the Immob gets hit with 2-3 more. PW and they’re dead. Hitting about 8-10k per PW.
+1 to this. S/P and Shortbow here. My WvW spec is similar, although I go 30/30/0/0/10 for Fury on Thrill of the Crime, and occasionally trade Panic Strike for Residual Venom to combine with Basilisk Venom (and Lyssa runes). I also take Quickness on crit in the CS line.
Knight’s Armor, Zerker trinkets, Blood/Accuracy/Precision sigils, and food is either on-crit lifesteal, power/precision, or power/vitality as need dictates.
PvE I just use the same spec, because lolPvE, and I don’t PvP.
Venoms, unfortunately, are terrible support for dungeons.
You forgot Basilisk Venom (which goes past Defiant on non-bosses), and Leeching Venoms (which is true damage for everyone, plus healing). And healing, by the way, is useful for ambient Agony damage.
For those of us who use S/P, I’d like to know what other builds are usable in soloQ/teamQ
And what other traits do you use in this very common 10/30/0/0/30?P.S. With PW back I went straight 400 positions to #48 in soloQ, so I guess it can indicate how useful it is in solo :P
I don’t play PvP (just WvW), but I run 30/30/0/0/10 with Lyssa runes, Knight armor and Zerker accessories.
Really? Name a set that can outperform berserkers and in what situation.
Not unless you define what you mean by “best”, which can mean anything.
And its indisputable that berserkers is the best gear for all situations in pve and a good majority of all situations in WvW.
Don’t be absurd; that’s easily disputable, if for no other reason than your definition of “best” is probably extremely specific.
Someone who invests hundreds of gold based on the OP of a wish thread, deserves to lose the money, because they haven’t done anywhere near the correct amount of research. Casuals aren’t likely to be making ascended gear, and the ones that are probably don’t care about being suboptimal.
It’s probably a trash build. But what are your weaponsets and traits, out of curiosity? You’ll never be able to bunker like other classes can, but you can probably get to the point where you can stay alive for a while, at the cost of hitting like a feather and being ignorable.
no need to read tool tip. im reading the ACTUAL skill.
Tooltip is part of the skill. They recently did a pass on them, just to clarify things like this.
Putting in a vote for Ruby Orbs if you are power-based, and Rune of the Undead if you are going condition damage. Those are both really cheap options that will hold you over while you experiment. I don’t recommend locking in a set of expensive runes going into something that you are not really familiar with.
Scholar, Travelers, Lyssa, etc might be in your long-term future.
Sounds like you need to read what the tooltip says.
“Conditions Removed: 1
Endurance Gained: 100
Number of Targets: 5”
Dude, the recharge is the least objectionable thing about it. I’d have the same reaction if you had it on a 60s cooldown! What on earth is a target supposed to do against a Thief that is running your new venom? Bend over and grab their ankles? You will destroy everyone except bunkers within the first 3 seconds of every fight.
Some nice specs here; I also like S/P, especially post-patch.
Nobody runs DA though, eh? I have a 30/30/0/0/10 spec, personally, dropping down to 25 DA when I am not using Basilisk Venom. The added power is its own obvious benefit, but the extra condition duration is also helpful, since S/P with a DA spec has access to a lot of non-damaging conditions. I like the new Sundering Strikes with Pistol Whip. You also get Combined Training (for PW) and Exposed Weakness (for everything) as extra damage mods.
I have 10 Trickery for Thrill of the Crime… I find that I really need Fury access, and Furious Retaliation doesn’t cut it for me. Considering getting it from Basilisk/Lyssa so that I can go down Acrobatics, though.
Instant cast, 24s CD, 2s petrify, no stun break? You are out of your tree. Thieves with BV will explode people with no counterplay possible. That’s not good for this game.
S/X has lost a fair amount of its utility and it doesn’t have the burst to make up for it.
Sword/Pistol has decent burst post-patch. The effective DPS of Pistol Whip has gone up as a result of shaving 0.25 off the aftercast of the stun, and you’re now highly likely to activate Quickness during the flurry of 9 hits thanks to Critical Haste’s proc chance going from 10→25% on crit.
Mesmers use the same magic and have very similar mechanics.
Cross-class comparisons are a fool’s errand. Mesmers don’t use an initiative system, for one. Thief needs to be balanced within itself.
You contend that the change to sword was justified. I contend that it wasn’t (especially in the manner they did it). Debate follows as a cause of discussing your view of the matter.
I mean that I’m not trying to change your mind, I am just pointing out that you are very wrong. This is not a debate. You can tell this, by the fact that I’m ignoring/dismissing the vast majority of your posts.
I failed […]
Indeed. There are no “people” making assumptions, here: that’s just you. While we’re giving unsolicited advice, here’s mine: it’s good practice to not make judgments about someone else’s motivations. If you want information, ask for it.
the hallmark of good design is every skill being useful on its own.
A bold assertion. Take a look at this simple chart:
0 Hide in Shadows
3 Signet of Malice
1 Withdraw
25 Skelk Venom
Anything stand out to your eye?
But now, clearly this skill is unable to perform as before, since it gets queued behind many skills, adding its casting time to the completion of the previous skill, and thus, lacking the required responsiveness to use it as a reflex based evasion, like it was before.
What skills does it get queued behind? I’ll settle for one, if that’s all you have.
Your arguments in defense of Skelk venom give me a very clear insight as to what you feel is good design.
They give as much insight into that, as they do in what I like to eat for breakfast. Someone else more aware of context might float the possibility that I was a contrarian making a Devil’s Advocate argument, but you’ve confidently come to the conclusion that we have disparate opinions on a subject that wasn’t even under discussion in the first place.
We probably have disparate opinions on what constitutes a “reasonable extrapolation”, though. Plenty of evidence for that one.
Heart of the Mists is a good place to test things like this. You should be able to tell the difference between 4% and 9% with a large enough sample of attacks on a golem.