Guild Wars 2

Hype.8032:

Trickery is not the right traitline for s/d. s/p can use it because it evades while doing damage. S/D needs the extra dodges to survive long enough to win a fight.

How does this make Trickery inappropriate? Bountiful Theft gives better Vigor uptime than even Vigorous Recovery does, and the deeper you go down the line, the more often it’s available.

caveman.5840:

the smart thief uses the mouse…….

You’re preaching to the preacher. I’ve been using K&M since before Guild Wars 2 even existed as a concept, and keep Steal/Dodge/breaker mapped to side buttons for ease of access. It has nothing to do with anything in this thread. No matter what your setup is, RFI is always going to be faster, because instant beats ground-targeting every time.

I’ll assume that since you’re spouting nonsense and changing the subject, that you’ve decided to concede the point about RFI.

caveman.5840:

ya right … i would not call RFI amazing. compared to shadow step …

RFI is the lazy mans SS …4 people who do not care to use mouse control in a fight.

mouse control is king

Spare us the “lazy man” bravado. The smart Thief is the one who uses the best tool for the job, not the one who goes Hard Mode™ in exchange for zero tactical advantage.

RFI is objectively better than SS as the first-option stunbreaker for the cleanse constrained S/D Thief. If you disagree, come up with an argument for it, instead of random insults for the people who called you out.

RFI is not just “nice”, it is freaking amazing. Stunbreaker, auto-evade, instant cast, cleans mobility-impairing conditions, restores init, bakes cookies. For everyday use, it is the clearly superior choice over Shadowstep for stuffing control effects.

It can “fail” in the circumstance where it takes you into an effect that you cannot evade, like Static field from a staff Elementalist. This is why I said you only want to use SS as your breaker when in “dire straits”, like if you just got smashed by the Hammer Train and you’re surrounded by nonsense. In that case, feel free to use SS to make a quick exit from the premises.

But that weird edge case is NOT a reason to use SS over RFI for stun-breaking purposes. Shadowstep is for condition removal and mobility first; the stun-break on it is for emergency use only as an S/D Thief.

Stop spreading baloney. S/D is hard enough to play without handicapping yourself by making lousy decisions about utility use.

RFI is a far better stunbreaker than Shadowstep, since it comes out instantly and auto-evades. SS should be used primarily for the condi clear and mobility if you are an S/D Thief. Even using Blinding Powder can be better here, since while it is not a stunbreaker technically, it’s usable while stunned and blinds in an AOE (plus cleans conditions, in this build).

If you’re using Shadowstep as a breaker, you are either in dire straits or you are making poor decisions.

Oh please. He’s using Withdraw. That means the food is probably going to clear a damaging condition, if there’s one there, because the heal takes off cripple/chill/immob first. Coupled with IS and CnD, that’s a decent amount of everyday condition removal.

Without Lyssa, condi-bombs have to be taken care of with utilities.

No way to know. We need to wait and see what’s coming in terms of changes to other runesets.

Lyssa will still be “OK”, but something you may want to consider is swapping your food to Saffron-scented Poultry Soup, and then combining that with a more offensive set of Runes than Lyssa.

This is the Thief forums. Spitballing or trying to be creative is frowned upon.

Seems like maybe there’s a role in here for Instinctual Response, but you’re giving up some damage for that no matter what, and I know the DPS threshold can be touchy in PvP given limited access to crit.

Been on this since Day One, at least for WvW. AE is right in the wheelhouse of the S/D Thief that has 10 points down Shadow Arts right now. Since you’re already looking at having Pain Response or Fluid Strikes, it’s only going to involve moving around 5-10 points from elsewhere.

Phantom Master.9582:

This is quite bad, since I’m playing S/D I don’t have access to the blind field, so the stability and the protection would help me cause serious damage to hammer warriors, and was a great way to ’’survive’’ signet of spite from the necromancer. Now… The build will be incredibly unforgiving, no room for any mistakes.

Let’s wait and see what they do for Sigils, and the other Rune sets. If Stability/Protection is accessible elsewhere, you’ll have to go there. The condition removal loss from having Lyssa available can be replaced by other things, like Poultry + Withdraw, Shadowstep, etc.

You can also run Blinding Powder. Which you should already, but now here’s your chance. It works well with Shadow’s Embrace, in addition to being a blind with no casting time (which you can use while stunned by a Hammer Warrior, FYI).

If BV wasn’t a big part of your build, you can also compensate somewhat by using DS, which is fairly good anyway.

NinjaEd.3946:

Now thief can never get stability outside of dagger storm and steal/LS. Yes, I left out assassin’s equilibrium for a reason.

It has been duly noted that you don’t value accuracy.

Lyssa’s will still be “OK”, depending on how long the duration of the converted conditions ends up being. Five to five is still the best answer we have for a condi-bomb.

NinjaEd.3946:

Interceptor is known for his crusades to change the minds of those on the forums. Believe me, I KNOW, and it isn’t worth the trouble.

In other words, known for being ahead of the curve.

Lyssa Runes on us have been stupid OP forever, and just now they are getting around to addressing them. Unfortunately they are getting nerfed with respect to this particular usage, since the #6 skill is losing all-boons and just becoming a condition convert now. No more Stability. It was a fun 6+ months, though.

They say they don’t want traits to compete but they forget that you can only pick 1 GM trait from a tree at a time, and the severe loss in dps greatly outweighs the futile heal you get from Critical infusion or w/e they called it.

This is small-time thinking. Heal on crit just carved out a bigger niche for Thieves in large group combat. Executioner hardly matters in this situation — where you have little control of the health level who you are hitting — but in a group, you have a target-rich environment to AOE for healing.

Thieves were already better than people generally expect in group combat, but now there’s a new sustain option. People are going to combine this with crit food, sigils, Sundering Strikes, and possibly SoM.

Even if you don’t like it.

Travlane.5948:

i think he might be trolling…. idk. just for giggles….(i know its a sure bet) but lets make a bet with him. and anet can hold me to this. lets bet 50g each to his 100g. so he gets 50g each from us (100g total) and we split his 100g (50g each of us) depending on who wins.

BET: show us withing a 10 minute CONTINUOUS time frame in random SPVP (has to be shown random) that you can use it 3 times and have it actually counter a CC.

you might get ONE…out of pure luck. but according to you… you should get ATLEAST 2 per match.

if you dont take that very generous and conservative bet….. then you should just stop debating its good. everyone else things its insulting to give us a 30 point trait for 1 sec of stability on a non stealth trait line that only affects AFTER you drop stealth. really. if the guy with the girly hair on ANET team really played thief…he would never have said this is a high skill cap kind of trait. . . unless he mean AI level of high as in our reaction time could never use it outside of pure luck99.9% of the time.

I figured you would have been a little more shy about this after that Grenth/Guardian embarrassment, but I guess that there’s no helping it.

You seem to think thief plays like a Warrior – getting into the thick of things, absorbing hits and damage, etc etc etc…

Uhh, no. Deep Acrobatics with weapon evades is all about dodging damage entirely, not passively mitigating it with Armor and high Health.

Thief relies on avoidance rather than mitigation to survive.

Oh hey, looks like you knew that already. So why did you just presume that wasn’t what I was talking about, then? You are a silly person.

The only thief specs that are going to be under constant fire from multiple targets are the kinds that evade alot like S/P or S/D. They gain very little from stability because their goal is to not be hit at all.

You know what really screws over a Thief that relies on evading hits via dodges and weapon skills?

1. Immobilize (for dodges).
2. Control effects like stun, knockdown, fear, etc.
3. Dazes (for weapon evades).

Oh hey look, Stability shuts down dang near everything. Except Immobilize, but that’s what Withdraw is for.

Should I maximize the uptime of Stability, in order to cover the vulnerable windows between evades, or cover up a mistake I made, or protect me from something I couldn’t react to in time? NO WAY. Because the “goal” is to not get hit. Because “elite”.

Attempting to extend an existing stability using it is also generally a wash, since being in stealth helps reduce the need for stability in the first place

Please do both of us a favor and get some experience in WvW.

I’d rather stop at fluid strikes and take Serpents touch, since poison is a strong debuff and it can be used intuitively, tactically, and skillfully.

And sometimes you will. I tend to give up AR these days for Lotus Poison. But the nice thing about the new traits, is that they are coming with a new system that encourages frequently swapping out trait sets.

Well, at least for those of us that aren’t playing a small subset of the real game, anyway.

evilapprentice.6379:

I’m super confused as to why you keep saying this.

The reason is pretty straightforward: because it’s true.

Our sources of stability are a stolen ability, stealing it with Bountiful/LS, Lyssa’s, and Daggerstorm.

Of those, only Lyssa and Dagger Storm really matter. The others are too situational. Useful when you can leverage them, but not worth bringing up in an argument except as a tiebreaker or something.

We can throw daggerstorm right out – no one is running a serious PvP build that dodges out of a 90s elite for 8s of stability, and it clashes with Lyssa’s.

This is basically you not knowing what you are talking about. Let’s take these in turn.

1. “PvP” – not even a plurality of the people who play this game participate in PvP, never mind a majority.
2. “But elite” – There are a lot of useless Elites in this game, and/or ones with long cooldowns. An “elite” is just another button on the skill bar. They are not intrinsically superior to other utilities.
3. “But clash” – DS has excellent synergy with Lyssa. Lyssa does not activate until the channel is over, and the nature of DS will protect the proc (many people don’t know this, but you can interrupt the on-Elite potion of the Lyssa runes: especially noticeable with Basilisk Venom since it is telegraphed). DS comes out instantly. These two things were made for each other, and the 90s cooldown — which is not that long — is the only real downside, to the extent that there even IS one.

Popping DS preemptively in a large fight is something that is already defensible for fighting in medium-to-large scale combat in WvW. I guess that your myopic view of the game, based solely on PvP content, keeps you from seeing where this comes into play. When I am making a push with a group that knows we’re coming, you’d better believe that I am slotting DS if I can, to avoid getting stun-locked and wrecked out.

what good is an additional One second with such an odd use case?

So, we’re back now pretending that boon duration doesn’t work on AE? I find that pretty unlikely. Durations are stated as their bases, generally. It will probably be 1.3s (or more) in a realistic situation.

To even have the opportunity to extend an existing stability, you have to be in stealth first

This is criminally easy to do. CnD gets you there, and it’s a move you’re going to be using anyway as an S/D Thief (for condition cleanse if nothing else). You’ll also get it randomly from Last Refuge, and likely to see it from Blinding Powder as well (since it’s a great utility for S/D). And also whenever you run through a Veil on an initiation.

If you plan on granting yourself stability after you’ve come out of stealth, congratulations, you wasted most of the stability granted by this trait casting the ability to grant you more stability. If you’re having trouble seeing how silly that is, there’s not much else I can do to help.

In other words, because you have a warped view of Stability’s usefulness, that’s somehow a mental failure on my part.

Stealth is really just a means to an end on S/D. It’s your reliable condition clear, disruptive to the opponent, and a way to enable Tac Strike or Surprise Shot, but it doesn’t have the same function that it does for a deep Shadows Arts Thief that also uses it for healing, and stays stealthed for long duration.

Extra time on Stability will be nice.

Travlane.5948:

anything im missing here?

A bunch of things, but here’s two important ones:

1) We have other sources of Stability, and they stack.
2) Fights don’t take place in the Danger Room. Real combat is kinda chaotic.

Travlane.5948:

he means its better under no circumstance. which means it sux. and i agree. the only time i see it work is when a zerg hits you with aoe….even when thathappens you are usually dead anyway.

No, it means you’re not thinking it through. This new SA trait means that I can throw down a Shadow Refuge on top of a bunch of Ram masters at a door, and they will just huehuehue at the Arrow Cart damage for 19+ seconds since it’s going to be reduced by 75% or more. And it can be combined with Shadow Protector, which is going to see more use now.

It also means that I can blast a smoke field with Cluster Bomb and get my group past the a blob’s front line relatively unscathed.

This trait is going to be huge in coordinated WvW. Thieves were already better than people expected in group combat, now they will be even moreso.

caveman.5840:

lyssa is like the only choice for sword thieves in acro. :S
pain response if far from a reliable condi remove

Pain Response’s condition removal is usually a nice bonus when it happens; the lack of reliability isn’t an issue, because nobody is relying on it for condition removal. Lyssa’s condition removal is just for bombs: your everyday condi removal with this spec is Shadow’s Embrace, Withdraw + Poultry, Infiltrator’s Return, and utilities like Shadowstep or Signet of Agility.

The real nice thing about Pain Response is the Regeneration buff. It lasts at least 12 seconds, or 13s if you are full Acrobatics. The full duration is worth nearly 1700 health, and all you have to do to activate it is to get struck while <75% health.

Assassin’s Equilibrium if it was in a dif trait line . u would not even need to worry about stability stacking through Assassin’s Equilibrium.

Sure, let’s put it in Critical Strikes and make it proc off a crit. That option isn’t on the table, though. We’re getting it at 30 Acro.

^ It seems relevant to bring up a spec that would actually consider taking Assassin’s Equilibrium, if we’re talking about whether the trait is useful or not. It is literally the second thing I thought of when I first heard the news.

Lyssa is a pretty popular choice for Acro-based Thieves using swords, because of the condition removal problems in that line.

^ Problem there are the venom utility cooldowns. I think it might make more sense to load up one or two strong venoms (like Devourer or Spider, which don’t need condition damage to be effective), and then switch to the new damage reduction on stealth trait, since it’s in the same slot. There are multiple options for granting stealth to party members, and 50% reduction is absurdly powerful for an initial push. It’s basically an AOE Iron Hide that isn’t limited to a tiny AOE around a ram.

^ And and even more fun way to look at it, is to consider that you still get the bonus when you are maxed-out on Might stacks, so it’s even better for Power than you think.

As a thief, you don’t generally want to be mixing it up in big ol group fights, but it does occasionally happen. Does it happen enough to justify a 30 point trait? Is 1.3 seconds long enough to really matter? Spoiler Alert: No.

Speak for yourself. Thieves do quite well in group fights, particularly ones with Swords. It’s rational for the wombo-combo glass backstabbers to eschew taking part in a rough-and-tumble. But as you know, evasion is the best defense, and Acro-spec Thieves with weapon-evades are like ninjas.

I included the other bullet points just for completeness (a word I use lightly, because surely I have not detailed all possible advantages): every sliver, no matter how tiny, undermines your hyperbolic assertions. But the best case for random Stability is just the chaos of combat. Even the best of us can get blindsided by a Hammer from an angle we didn’t see, and considering how deadly that control effects are to us, this is a real consideration. As I mentioned earlier: AE is not a 30-point investment, it’s more like an extra 5-10 on top of a sunk cost, that still gives you things you’re using anyway.

ArenaNet’s stated intention for this trait is obviously ridiculous, we can both agree there (note that I never defended this specific thing), but the actual use of a trait is not limited to those stated intentions.

If you really want to argue semantics

I don’t want to argue semantics. I’m just saying that if you change the words that I use, you’re changing the meaning. This isn’t a problem in polite conversation, where reasonable people can see what the intended meaning was, but you are needlessly combative, so nitpicking suddenly becomes an issue.

You can help, by not putting words in my mouth. Or you can NOT do that, and I’ll just correct you constantly. Either way is fine with me. I have plenty of endurance, and perma-Vigor access.

Which is your opinion

This is a stretch, even with the most favorable interpretation of “opinion”. “[Near] worthless” is not supported by the facts, here.

We’ve discussed this as well – HtC is garbage, regardless how you feel. The fact that it can occasionally be helpful does nothing to fix the fact that another player changing your positioning at a time of their choosing would be defined as a crowd control effect in their favor in any other scenario.

Bolded the part where you just conceded the argument. I brought up HtC for this one specific reason, not to re-litigate the entire throw-down. AE doesn’t really have many downsides as such, except for vanilla opportunity cost.

That 1.3 seconds of stability has very little value for the S/D spec you’ve listed above, when you consider it cost a GM slot to get it.

This is basically nonsense, for reasons already spelled out in this post. Granted, this is a niche spec, but trait flexibility is intended for people to carve out niches in the first place.

Finally, something we can agree on

There is probably a lot of this, but since you seem to be keen on making assumptions about what I do or do not think without any evidence, maybe that’s clouding your perception.

Edit: And then there’s Stof’s point below. This is not a trait you can really time, or use skillfully with any reliability. It’s there to cover 1 desperate heartseeker after a backstab – note i said 1 heartseeker, because that’s all 1.3 seconds of stability will cover.

It seems like this note was intended for someone other than me. I’ll quote it in this post to raise visibility for it.

evilapprentice.6379:

1.3 seconds for 30 points in a tree is pathetic.

It’s all about opportunity cost. Acrobatics isn’t a windswept wasteland of a trait line, where all the punch is at the end: it offers strong benefits at every stop on the train. Feline Grace speaks for itself, Pain Response is an extremely useful trait (which only gets better with more investment into the line), and Fluid Strikes is as good as First Strikes and only a bit worse than Exposed Weakness. AE is only 5 points for someone already at Fluid Strikes, and you’re also getting health and boon duration out of it.

It’s all doom and gloom when you frame AE as costing 30 points, but in reality it comes down to something considerably less significant, like “do I have Lotus Poison in my build”?

In addition, if you’re using Dagger storm purely for the stability, you’re doing it wrong. I don’t care how many niche scenario’s you can conjure up, it’s beyond silly to blow a 90s CD for 8s (base) stability, especially considering the fact that it also costs you your elite slot.

Nobody uses Dagger Storm solely for the Stability all of the time, but it’s a useful option for anyone who has high Acrobatics and Lyssa runes, since you can evade-cancel the channel. Basilisk Venom is strictly superior for recycle time and CC, but DS reflects projectiles and gives you its Whirl finisher in addition to the daggers thrown, so it’s no surprise to see it available on someone’s bar. Never mind that 90 seconds is still pretty short: just what do you think that a typical Elite cooldown is? Eles, Rangers, and Engies just read the subtext of your post and did a spit-take.

So, you don’t care for the scenarios, but reality isn’t subject to your approval. Since you cleverly hand-waved DS’s Stability as 8s “base”, let’s call it what it really is: 10.4 seconds for a full Acrobatics Thief. This is a fairly absurd amount of time to be effectively immune to control effects, and AE is going to let you squeeze an extra one or three seconds out of it, with something you were using anyway. It’s not something you will use every time, but it’s always in your toolkit when DS is slotted.

Its gets really silly for a Lyssa Thief, since you get an additional 6.5 seconds of Stability after the channel is over/cancelled. Hey, let’s ignore CC for nearly 17 seconds. Also, Aegis/Prot/Regen/Vigor etc, because why not. It’s a fun way to make Warriors sweat. AE works here too, although you have to be careful not to go too crazy on the front-end because of the stack limit on Stability.

Naturally, a straight-up Basilisk Venom with 6.5s Stability is also fine as a base. The timing would be too tight to get more than one AE off during this duration, but c’est la vie, this is the trade-off for having your Elite available more often.

Blocked = No revealed = No stability, but I’m the one having trouble connecting the dots, so what do I know?

Because the only option after a stuffed Tac is to use it again, right? I can drop Stealth with either of Mug or Infiltrator’s, right in the middle of an auto-animation.

You’ve got that mighty 1.3 second window, so reduced duration doesn’t really play, and even with a removal, you better hope they’re using a low casting time CC if you want that stability to actually come in handy.

Sure, if you consider everything in a void, independent of everything that came before or after it. Condition duration reduction comes into play when you are stacking Stability, and removal always a factor (very unlikely that you can account for all of the ways conditions can be removed, especially in a real melee).

But when it comes to stunbreakers, you bring up a good point. Nobody is ever going to expect a control effect from a Thief that just stealthed right in front of them. The very concept is absurd

Oh hey, it’s you again. Hi there!

evilapprentice.6379:

That 1.3 seconds of stability is sure going to help against that blinded/dazed opponent.

I think I see what the problem is, here. I didn’t go into details, and thus you weren’t able to connect the dots on your own. Here’s a few bullets for you as a starting point (and in honor of you, I made two of them passive-aggressive… see if you can figure out which ones):

1. AE as a Stability-extender (stacks up to three sources, and we have our own access via Lyssa and/or Dagger Storm, which naturally does not include boons from others).
2. Blind and Daze cannot be removed, blocked, or reduced in duration.
3. All fights take place as one-one-one duels.

And the CnD doesn’t give you stability, using an attack and becoming revealed does – good luck timing that against incoming CC.

Here’s what I actually said: “…turns CnD into a source of 1.3 seconds of Stability”. Notice how changing someone’s words, also changes the meaning? CnD is undeniably a source of Stability in this instance; it is not giving it to you, and nobody ever said that it did.

But of course you’re here to argue the other side, it’s what you do – at first I was surprised at how consistently and often your understanding of the game was incorrect, but at this point I’m onto your schtick.

Sure, if people are gushing over something or going too far in the other direction, I’ll speak up if I have something to say about it. As a counterpoint, I am frequently unsurprised at how often your opinion on a particular subject encompasses only a very myopic PvP viewpoint, as if it represented even a plurality (never mind a majority) of what people do in this game.

People are not going overboard with their criticism – it’s a nigh worthless GM trait

“People are not going overboard”, followed by you giving a perfect example of someone going overboard. AE is not a strong GM trait, but calling it “nigh worthless” says more about your valuation methods than it does about the trait.

It’s a lot like Hard to Catch, in that it does have positive uses, but unlike HtC in that it has no downside if you’re already that far down the tree.

Remember: x/x/10/25-30/x is a spec that exists in real life. Acrobatics lacks condition removal, but 10 SA with CnD is pretty strong for that job. If you’re S/D with Lyssa runes and can’t really leverage Quick Pockets in your spec (maybe because of a Shortbow secondary set), you’d think about taking this trait over AR or stopping at Fluid Strikes.

and it for some reason works on revealed while sitting in the “non-stealth survival” tree.

This is definitely kind of curious, and I’d like an explanation for it, but ANet’s motivations don’t really have anything to do with usefulness.

It probably just means that someone reported the post, and the moderators agreed that it was in violation. They aren’t trolling this thread, in all likelihood.

Dee Jay.2460:

On average I’d estimate this ensures me 2 additional Might stacks in most situations. So 70 Power + 10 Power and 2% additional damage.

How does this compensate for my Critical Damage dropping from 100% to 75%?

I’m not maths geek but I just don’t see it.

The base damage on a critical hit is 150%, so the damage on crits drops from 250% → 225% for you. This is only a 10% drop. And now consider that you don’t crit on every hit, so your total DPS drop is something less than 10% (probably closer to 7-8%).

I don’t know how much Power you have, but if you are around ~2000 or so, +80 Power is about 4% extra damage. Add on the extra 2% damage over what you are normally getting with your Runes, and… your worst-case damage drop isn’t really that bad.

^ We’ve had things behaving like this since Day One: stat bonuses from Signets. Please drop this silly argument, for the sake of everyone’s sanity.

It’s good, but you need a disciplined group to take advantage of it. In addition to running Venom share, you also need to make sure that you have:

1. Venomous Might
2. Leeching Venoms
3. condition clear from your group (because yours will be limited)

So now you’re giving away venoms, stacks of might, and life leech (true damage + healing) to everyone. Some mix of Carrion and Dire is desirable here, and the spec works well with either P/D or D/D as your main weaponset. Works well even in small groups of 3-4.

This is not a strong Grandmaster trait, but I think people around here are going a little overboard with their criticism of it.

The natural constituency of Assassins’s Equilibrium is going to be the S/D Thief who has 10 in Shadow Arts, 30 Acrobatics, and 30 <whatever> (probably Trickery). There are at least three really strong SA Adept traits that work in that slot, and this new GM trait turns CnD into a source of 1.3 seconds of Stability on a move that you’re already using to damage an enemy while either blinding them or removing conditions from yourself.

Don’t forget that boon duration works on all boons granted by this set. Thieves with deep Acrobatics can easily get 6-6.5 seconds out of the elite bonus. If you want to know what it feels like to be a Warrior for 6 seconds, enjoy your Protection/Regen/Stability with bonus Aegis. It can be disconcerting to duel with a Thief who isn’t going to lose a health trade in a straight-up face-to-face fight.

Raap.9065:

Edit: Poster above me mention it possibly stacking with Ironhide for 100% direct damage reduction, that might be quite useful.

Undoubtedly those things are going to stack multiplicatively, i.e. 75% total damage reduction between them both, or 83.25% reduction if you also add Protection.

Lucky Shot.7650:

I’m talking about pve. 60% (base crit chance+)8% (singet of agility)+ 20% (fury)+8% (banner of discipline)=96%. +7% (Side Strike)= 101%. Now come and tell me I don’t crit every hit. Of course I’m talking pve, not wvw.

OK, sure: you don’t crit every hit. Much of your chance is situational and relies on things outside of your control.

Edit: got it, since my crit damage is actually 256% and I’ll drop to 222, I’m in fact suffering a 13,2% damage reduction.

Which is pretty close to the 10% that they mentioned. I think it would be closer if you had more balance in the tripod. I am not accustomed to seeing so much crit chance in a build that’s not using on-crit effects.

glaphen.5230:

Those are the only skills useful in PvE

What does this have to do with what I said? I was just pointing out that surely PvP players must be cognizant of the fact that every new trait/skill isn’t designed specifically for their little sandbox, unless they just joined today. It’s pretty clear that ANet designs things that can be used by different kinds of people.

Lucky Shot.7650:

I have 106% critical damage. With the new stat, I’ll have 72%, so I’ll suffer a total 34% damage nerf.

No, your damage is dropping by less than 13%. You need to remember to 1) add the base damage boost, 2) calculate your damage relative to the old value, and 3) understand that you are not going to “crit every hit”.

Classes with Precision and Ferocity in the same traitline will suffer more for this change.

You might have overkill Precision in your build. I have Lyssa runes, for kitten’s sake, and not even I have as much base crit as you do.

I have no idea why a PvP player would approach the analysis of every new feature as if it were intended for him or her. PvP is already the real game, but with less stuff. You figure you’d be used to not finding everything useful.

Can you explain what the kitten you are talking about for the benefit of the people who aren’t watching the stream?

Three of them are legit solid. One is situational. One is kind of a troll.

^ I feel like the Acrobatics GM trait is a nod to the S/D players.

It’s an insulting nod, but a nod nonetheless.

Some good ones there, especially DA’s. Kinda laughing at how silly the Acrobatics GM trait is, though.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Yup nerfed to make other build shines instead of improving other builds.

“Put simply, if critical damage-stacked builds are more effective than other approaches, the build diversity decreases.”

A sad day indeed.

Buffing without ever nerfing, results in power creep. Which is very bad.

I’ll be going from about 211% crit damage to 178%. Raw crit damage dropping by about 15.6%, overall DPS by considerably less than that since my crit rate is only about 65-70% most of the time. Difference is probably the same as whether or not First Strikes is active.

Having a hard time getting mad. Anyone got some tips?

That’s about a 21.8% nerf, but only at a 100% crit rate. Don’t forget that your DPS includes non-crits.

kornfanxxx.9143:

I just tried out those suggestions, and tried fighting a condi warrior friend of mine. I kinda felt like that removing burning @ 75% trait didnt really help me much, since it was reapplied literally 10 seconds later and i didnt have the burst or sustained dps to down him since I dropped CS.

Pain Response is not just about condition removal: it also gives you at least 12s of Regeneration, which is restoring about 40% of the damage you’re taking from a re-applied Burning. Even more if you have boon duration or healing power elsewhere in your build.

About CS, the only thing that you are really losing is Precision/CritDMG and a few traits. You can make up most of the loss by adjusting some of the stats on your gear/food to compensate.

Another thought to give you burst damage cheaply: drop your CS to 10 (take it from Trickery), put a bunch of Signets on your bar, and use Signets of Power. You should be able to give yourself 10-15 stacks of Might easily in a fight this way, which will give you a window to break someone down with Power-based damage.

Rest of it is probably L2P like you said, and in general we don’t match up super-well against Warriors anyway, although Poison/Weakness and such help a lot. Sword’s autoattack chain can be devastating to a Warrior if you land the third hit. Pistol Whip is not necessarily the best thing to be using.

One final bit: Saffron-scented Poultry Soup is a really good way to get condition removal on your build. Withdraw removes the movement-based conditions first, and the food gets one of whatever is left (which is usually a damaging condition). You can switch foods in combat, so maybe keep a couple of these around in case you are up against someone where the Power food is not helping you deal with them.

I feel like i can kite around the power built people with the interrupts and blinds, as well as using my teleports defensively. but yeah condi built bunkers are an issue

Bountiful Theft helps with the bunkers that are boon-based. Hard for them to function properly when you keep stealing everything.

The criticism of the new trait in this thread is just a liiiitle bit breathless.

If you’re a Thief who likes large-scale combat in WvW, this sounds like a pretty decent pick, because you have tons of targets to crit on, and long-term sustain is a real issue in these battles. I’d combine it with Sundering Strikes, Lotus Poison, Critical Haste, and perhaps Furious Retaliation. Add some post-patch on-crit Sigils, and you’ve got yourself a solid on-crit build that has 25 points left over for survival or some other utility (maybe 15 Acro and 10 Trickery).

You also have a lot of impact on the outcome of a fight. Perfectly defensible as a spec.

Carpboy.7145:

Im assuming WvW? Trickery is meh there.

You are out of your tree. Thrill of the Crime is kitten-near required for a Sword build. Deep Trickery is debatable, 10 Trickery is not.

kornfanxxx.9143:

my first question is: How would you guys adapt this to a stealthing build throughout the traits and utility slots? I kinda wanna give stealth a try but i feel like i’ll fail really hard at timing revealed off the cuff haha.

You don’t. Sword/Pistol and stealth do not get along. If you feel like you need a little bit of stealth, feel free to add Blinding Powder to your utility bar. It can act as a ghetto stun-breaker in a duel, and you can use the Blast finisher on it to combo with Black Powder as well.

and my second question: as the build sits by itself, what changes would you make? are any of the stats redundant or need to be higher?

Get some condition removal and survival. You will get destroyed by condi-users. I’d suggest the following:

- Drop 30 CS, put 25 points into Acro, and get DA to 15.
- Take Vigorous Recovery and Pain Response in Acro.
- Long Reach in Trickery is fine, but consider using Bountiful Theft occasionally.
- Consider using Lyssa Runes instead of Traveler’s. You get a free condi removal and all boons on elite, a random useful boon on heal, plus enough Precision that you can drop some Berserker’s for defensive power-based armor (like Soldier’s) and use a different nourishment (like a Stone instead of an Oil). You won’t miss the +25% movespeed if you also make the above trait changes (you will have perma +33% from Thrill and Expeditious Dodger).
- Assassin’s Signet is a good way to add some punch if you have a spare slot for it.

There’s more you can do, but I’d start with a couple of those things.

Not like we didn’t already have sustain out of stealth…?

That’s a weird place to put this trait, at GM Critical Strikes. I guess it’s to keep us from stacking too many healing effects on top of each other.

Might be good for a high-Precision build that uses on-crit Sigils and runs 10 DA and 30 CS.

^ That’s not a glitch; that’s how AR is supposed to work. They intentionally doubled the duration of the Swiftness buff on that trait back in the Dec 10th patch. How you use it now, is precisely how it’s intended to be.

Don’t assume that you need DA and CS both. My build looks something like this, and I have zero problems burning things down. Although my setup is more geared for WvW, it’s perfectly serviceable for any open world PvE, because most of my damage stats come from gear and food.

While you can go with a max-damage 25/30/x/x/x build with Sword/Pistol, you’d better not make a mistake, because a sneeze means you die.

You don’t need Trickery, but it’s extremely strong for a Sword/Pistol build, and it will train you to use Steal more often (I map mine to a side mouse button, BTW). Strongly consider getting to at least 10 for Thrill of the Crime: Fury access is really powerful, especially at your level.

Yes, you will eventually wean yourself off of SoS, if you are any good. People who have SoS as permanently on their bar are either bad or lazy. Speed boosts do NOT stack. If you have any Swiftness at all (+33% movement speed), Signet of Shadows is literally doing nothing, since that boost is only +25%. As you are using Assassin’s Retreat, I’d suggest dropping SoS entirely if you can keep the Swiftness stacks going.

I’ll bet with 10 Acrobatics and 10 Trickery, and well-timed dodges, you can keep Swiftness up 100% of the time with a little bit of effort. Every Steal will be 11 seconds of Swiftness, every kill is 22 seconds, and you can have up to nine stacks of Swiftness going at once (so it’s not out of the question to have 2-3 minutes of Swiftness). That will allow you to replace SoS with something like Assassin’s Signet, which by level 40 will be passively giving you +100 Power.

Don’t get hung up on the stat boosts from traitlines. You can get stats anywhere (armor, trinkets, weapons, food, utilities, nourishments), but the slottable trait bonuses provide stuff you can’t get anywhere else.

Signet of Shadows is like a pair of training wheels on a bicycle. You might think you need it, but it just holds you back. Trickery to 10 (for Thrill of the Crime) and deep Acrobatics will give you high uptime access to Swiftness, which is better than the 25% boost from SoS. Eventually you’ll drop this signet.

I’d suggest going 10 Deadly Arts for Mug, 10 Trickery for Thrill of the Crime, and get used to pushing F1 whenever it is off cooldown. Synergies are cool, and it’s best to start taking advantage early.

Sword/Pistol works really well with Signet of Malice. Hide in Shadows has its moments, but the nine hits of Pistol Whip (along with its cleave property) make SoM much stronger in general. If you need the condition removal and stealth that HiS provides, you’re better off getting it from utilities like Blinding Powder, Shadowstep, etc.

Ultimately, everything works well with Sword/Pistol except Shadow Arts. I’d recommend not getting attached to anything in particular. Traits were meant to be switched (that’s why they make it so cheap to reset them, and let you change the slottables out of combat freely), so don’t be afraid to experiment and find stuff that suits your style.