Guild Wars 2

ykyk.2740:

This “we can’t talk about it until it’s ready” only works if you have a track record of delivering anything at all.

Sadly have to agree with this.

I know that you don’t want to say anything for fear of changes/not being able to please everyone, but surely you see that if you never tell us anything about what you’re doing, you’re guaranteed to never please anyone at all.

@CrimsonNeonite:

You’re very right actually, blobby was the wrong word. I originally came from Whiteside Ridge, so being propelled to T2 with Gandara was quite a shift. That being said, I’d sooner be chased by 10+ people looking for the easy lootbag (which often seems to happen to me) than be alone in a borderland for hours on end.

I do miss the social aspect of my old guild, but honestly I’m not sure I care enough to invest in getting involved with a new one at this point. Don’t take that as an insult or an argument against guilds, it’s just how I feel about the game as a whole really.

I’ve been lurking in the thief forums for quite a bit longer than I’ve been actively posting, probably from about May last year, and your posts are usually spot on Zacchary. Keep it up

Stale. My entire guild has left the game, essentially because the balance updates are too few and far between, the LS is the same rehashed content, and WvW has only gotten more unstable at lower tiers and blobby at higher tiers.

I get that it takes time to develop stuff and implement changes, I really do. But there’s only so long you can ask us to trust you that you’re working on cool stuff, when for over a year you’ve been saying that and people are still asking for the same QoL changes. A little more communication and more frequent balancing to all aspects of PvP (sPvP, WvW) would go a really long way to restoring some of that faith.

Seriously though, the main reason I’m still here is because I can’t afford the other MMO’s my friends are playing atm. When my new job starts, or when archeage comes out properly, we’ll see.

ANet – Please feel free to prove me wrong and introduce some awesome changes for WvW and class balance (like those new weapons we’ve been hearing about since forever). Seriously, do it. But be warned that if the best you have is a couple new masteries and another pointless armour skin tonic, you WILL lose players. Hell, you already have.

Delta Blues.8507:

Also I might take advantage of this discussion to ask people who they find more annoying to fight against? cause i have to say my toughest opponents are usually burst thieves (d/d or mainly d/p for the blind abuse) and good d/d eles that can just heal/disrupt through the damage while keeping costant pressure

^ pretty much, they’re both hard to land damage on and both can get some nasty damage in if they catch you out.

To the OP: Practice evades and shadowstep combos, basically. The advice that’s already been given is good, and tbh you get miles better when you don’t really think about what combo to use and just make stuff up as you go along, makes you less predictable. That’s just experience though.

Don’t give up though: it took me ages to work out how to get the damage in instead of just buzzing around annoying everyone, but it’s so much fun when it starts to come together ^^

Power would usually be better, as with the way the equations are set up, power is the base stat whereas ferocity is a multiplier.

So, assuming 2k power and 200% crit damage (because maths), and assuming that the strike is always a crit:

You would need 20 power for a 1% increase in total damage assuming 2k power as a base. This would suffer from diminishing returns, so at 3k power you’d need 30 power added for that 1% damage increase.

You need 15 ferocity for a 1% increase in critical damage, but that’s applied to the base damage which is determined by power. As you already have 200% of your regular damage, that 1% extra crit damage is an overall 0.5% damage increase, so you’d need to increase ferocity by 30 to achieve the same damage increase (1%) as an extra 20 power. Again, this suffers diminishing returns as your crit damage increases.

The % increase in damage would only be the same if you had 3k power, 200% crit damage and a guaranteed crit, which is only realistically achievable with a hidden killer backstab build. So unless you fit these specific conditions, increase power over ferocity.

This is how things are as I understand them, by the way. If I’m wrong, please feel free to point it out

TLDR: at 2k power, 100% crit chance and 200% crit damage, 1% increased damage = 20 power OR 30 ferocity. Increase power until you hit 3k, at which point 1 power =1 ferocity in terms of damage.

Xae Isareth.1364:

yolo swaggins.2570:

Greatsword does not fit the quick and agile nature of a rouge type class. So i’ll have to disagree.

I’d think a thief with a GS would be more…. Devil May Cry than the warrior’s Dynasty Warriors.

The over-the-top and ridiculously flashy way that Dante uses his greatsword would be pretty perfect for a thief actually.

Either that or a 3 piece staff. Anything that means I can fight like Ikkaku Madarame is a win in my book.

@ OP:

As it turns out, I actually joined your guild yesterday (I knew I knew your account name from somewhere :P ). If you still need a hand with the withdraw trick or anything else thief related, feel free to pester me in game ^^

Could have hard to catch make you do a barrel roll away from the enemy instead of porting, but only if there’s a suitable sound effect :P

Either that or give me a job and I’ll do it lol :P

But seriously, I appreciate that there’s a lot of posts/stuff to do etc, but we hardly ever see a dev down here. The most recent post I can see by a dev was on the increased ini cost pistol whip 3 months ago.

If you are here more often, just wave in a chat somewhere every now and then or something, remind us you exist :P

frans.8092:

Mhh, it’s still -20% duration, you never have enough cleansing to remove everything all the time, so you have to choose when to cleanse and this will reduce some damage. It also stacks with the -40% food and with those two you might not need any cleansing at all.

Yeah, fair enough. I haven’t met a condi build I couldn’t outrun, so I guess we have different solutions to that problem :P

I want to be able to solo arah p2 at some point, so this is a pretty handy resource, thanks! ^^

FZeroWing.2098:

Jugglemonkey.8741:

Nice vid, real nice comeback on the fight with the ele, assassin’s reward saves the day! lol

I use pain response instead of assassin’s reward, but that’s mainly because of my lack of hoelbrak runes, I’m still not sure which is the better option tbh. Pain response is one of those traits that you never notice working until you try fighting without it, and I didn’t like the idea of having to buy – condi food to make the runes worth it. I use shortbow offhand though, for P/D you’re probably better as you are with the extra might :P

Thank you! Ha-ha, yeah, I might have undermined Assassins reward before, but it’s saved my life on several occasions. I do use pain response if I know I’ll be dealing with condi heavy opponents, however, I still try to fight with AR simply due to how well it synergizes with blood sigil and life steal food. Don’t get me wrong, I think Pain Response is kitten good, I just seem to have better survival with AR most of the time.

If you don’t mind me asking, what rune set do you run?

That makes sense, I remember one time being chased around bay multiple times by a warrior and mesmer that just wouldn’t let me res my mesmer friend (it was their keep, minor detail), assassin’s reward was the main thing that kept me alive lol.

You’re welcome to ask ^^ I use pack runes atm. This is what I run, to save typing it:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZUQNAsYVl0Mp0pdPx3JsPNBNB5dY+SZ0KAdHl+GEA-T1CBABVqqyZKBl4UAglyLvUiAwDAwS1KyTTQR7PkieAGOCABAQACJOxATciTciTciNxJOxJOxJWKgnmAA-w

I like the idea of might stacking but that means using power of inertia over either pain response or hard to catch, another trait that has randomly saved my life numerous times despite the hate it gets on the forums.

From my testing with hoelbrak runes in PvP I seem to average 6 (max 7) might stacks with power of inertia and signet of agility whilst dodging whenever possible, so an extra 210 power & condi damage, and thrill of the crime gives you 59% fury uptime. With pack runes I get potentially permanent fury uptime and an extra 100 precision. You do use signet of agility which gives an extra 180 precision though, whereas I don’t tend to. So you will beat me for DPS while you have fury and the signet’s passive is up, not sure about when it’s on cooldown though.

You get the extra – condi duration on hoelbrak runes which I like, but since almost everything heavily condi focussed runs +40% condi duration food and is slower than me, I’m not really sure it’s much of a benefit. That’s my two cents anyway.

I dunno, maybe I’m just too stingy to pay 60g for a set of runes lol. Sorry about the long post too, I have a propensity for unnecessary verbosity :P

Witchdoctor Dan.3814:

Jugglemonkey.8741:

I run this atm:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZUQNAsYVl0Mp0plPx3JsPNBNB5dY+SZ0KAdHl+GEA-T1CBABVqqyZKBl4UAglyLvUiAwDAwS1KyTTQR7PkieAGOCABAQACJOxATciTciTciNxJOxJOxJWKgnmAA-w

I find it’s a nice balance, and if I run SA I get 2.6k armor with borderlands bloodlust, which is more than enough for me. You could proba have your PVT rings and have more aggressive armor choices than me to make it up.

If you can keep your base power at 2.2k and a crit chance of 40% before fury as a minimum, you can have more defensive gear without too much of a drop in DPS. Don’t try to go too defensive though, I have a couple of cavalier’s rings from before the ferocity update but there’s too much of a DPS drop to justify them post patch, at least with my build.

I don’t use the critical strikes line though, so I need all the precision I can get. If you invested in CS you could probably afford a little more PVT without too much of a DPS drop, provided you’re still stacking enough power.

This is a really intriguing build. Do you get good results from it?

It’s pretty strong all round tbh, it’s basically the PvP meta build so it’s great for duelling. The armor choice was from reading Wish’s comments on soldier/zerk vs valk armor:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/WvW-Thief-looking-for-some-insight/first#post2674725

(It’s pretty wordy, but it’s worth a read if you have the patience)

It’s weaker 1vX than a shadow arts build would be, but you’ve got tons of mobility, boon steal and dodges, so you can get away with some outrageously silly things if you’re careful. Just avoid the melee train of the enemy zerg as you won’t last 3 seconds if you’re caught :P

Dakota.4591:

Hoelbrak is worth looking into. Now has the same might duration as Strength runes. You lose the 5% damage buff, but get a nice duration reduction on conditions hitting you, which is probably more valueable in wvw/pvp.

Actually, strength still gives you 15% more might duration, just checked the two runes in the TP. If you want the extra – condi duration then hoelbrak runes are great, but honestly if something’s gonna try to condi you to death then it’ll likely have +40% condi duration food on top of stats so more cleanse is still a better option IMO.

I have, it’s a lot better than it was. Frankly I don’t expect it to be changed back to how it was before they messed with it, I’m just happy it feels better in combat now.

You don’t backpedal anywhere near as much as you did before the patch, there’s still a slight window where you can’t do anything tho. I’m actually fine with it like this.

By slight window, I mean an absolute fraction of a second, so you can’t chain dodge by spamming 3. Which kinda makes sense, really.

No, it doesn’t, just direct damage.

Rome.3192:

messiah.1908:

step by step

1. press left click
2. press about face (bound key to it)
3. use withraw
4. press right click to get back 180

If have a left mouse pressed, my about face doesn’t work. The way I do it now is about face -> withdraw -> reposition camera after right clicking. I’m sure there’s a way to make you face forward again. That’s what I’m looking for. Maybe some other settings are causing different results for me and you?

You don’t have to hold it, you just press it to enable free camera, you need to have that ticked in your options menu (first tab, under camera). You’ll know when it’s right if you use the left mouse button to swivel the camera 90 degrees, and you keep running to the side when you press w after releasing the left mouse button.

So:

1) Draw the camera off centre with left mouse button, then release left mouse button
2) Press about face
3) Press withdraw, and mid animation press right mouse button to recenter the camera and leave free cam mode

messiah.1908:

step by step

1. press left click
2. press about face (bound key to it)
3. use withraw
4. press right click to get back 180

practice it few times. even i sometime mistake it with fast clicking.

also you can bound the keys all together to 1 key.

look in youtube you will found it. if not i will put some short clip

You can bind them to one key, but technically that’s a violation of the ToS so I wouldn’t go around saying that :P

I remember fighting 2v1 against a medi guard and a staff ele, I kited out, waited for the guard to blow his ports to chase me then stole to the ele to burst him. I did that until I downed the ele, and while they did get me eventually, the point is that the guard lacked the range and movement to catch me as the above poster said. As long as I kept an eye on him I could avoid the majority of his damage, and after he’d used the ports he was a sitting duck.

It’s hard though, I’ve struggled a lot with them in the past, and if they’re wise to the typical thief tactics you’re in for a hell of a fight.

Nice vid, real nice comeback on the fight with the ele, assassin’s reward saves the day! lol

I use pain response instead of assassin’s reward, but that’s mainly because of my lack of hoelbrak runes, I’m still not sure which is the better option tbh. Pain response is one of those traits that you never notice working until you try fighting without it, and I didn’t like the idea of having to buy – condi food to make the runes worth it. I use shortbow offhand though, for P/D you’re probably better as you are with the extra might :P

I’m glad they fixed the shortbow 3 bug, that thing was awful. I’m also glad I didn’t bother with strength runes now ^^

Hey there ^^

I don’t know if this is the ‘standard’ technique, but what I do is move the camera off centre with the left mouse button (I think free cam needs to be enabled for this), then press about face then a split second later press withdraw. I have about face bound as caps lock and withdraw bound to q so I can time it right, there might be an easier way, this one just works for me ^^

I still have my mouse on a high sensitivity so I can just swivel the camera to choose the direction too, I find both options helpful depending on the situation.

I hope that helps! ^^

My ranger would very much appreciate the shiny.

Also, kudos for doing this, it’s pretty cool.

What Splatter Paw said really. Thieves’ ranged options are limited to 900 range to balance their melee capability, so when you use shortbow it’s more of a close range skirmish type weapon than a long range weapon if you see what I mean. That’s not to say it isn’t good, I almost always use it for the utility it brings, but the range and the way cluster bomb works do mean you have to get up close and personal to get the most out of it.

I have a ranger on a longbow build for when I want to troll people coming out of bay etc, 2.5k auto attacks at close to 2k range is amazing it you position yourself right, and that’s with knights gear. Honestly if you want an archer type it’s the closest you’ll get in this game. Sorry :/

Same for me.

The traits in the build the other guy posted will work, although his crit chance is a bit low for not using hidden killer IMO. As he said though, whatever works for him.

D/D is harder to use in PvP compared to other sets due to being utterly reliant on landing CnD, having less things to stealth off of and the inherent low mobility of the set. D/P gives you more stealth and gap closers, and S/D makes you feel like Errol Flynn. D/P is probably the easiest one to use, I’d play around with all of them and see what you like though. Get yourself a duelling buddy, that also helps massively.

I run this atm:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZUQNAsYVl0Mp0plPx3JsPNBNB5dY+SZ0KAdHl+GEA-T1CBABVqqyZKBl4UAglyLvUiAwDAwS1KyTTQR7PkieAGOCABAQACJOxATciTciTciNxJOxJOxJWKgnmAA-w

I find it’s a nice balance, and if I run SA I get 2.6k armor with borderlands bloodlust, which is more than enough for me. You could proba have your PVT rings and have more aggressive armor choices than me to make it up.

If you can keep your base power at 2.2k and a crit chance of 40% before fury as a minimum, you can have more defensive gear without too much of a drop in DPS. Don’t try to go too defensive though, I have a couple of cavalier’s rings from before the ferocity update but there’s too much of a DPS drop to justify them post patch, at least with my build.

I don’t use the critical strikes line though, so I need all the precision I can get. If you invested in CS you could probably afford a little more PVT without too much of a DPS drop, provided you’re still stacking enough power.

It kinda depends on the game mode, on their build, and whether you actually have to kill them. In WvW the tanky zerg builds you usually see are a pain in the kitten to kill, and there’s normally something squishier nearby that’s more of a threat, so I usually kill those while letting the heavies chase me in circles.

If you do have to kill them though, there’s three things that will make them cry: high poison uptime, stealing their stability and CC’ing them, and proper use of the items you steal from them. I use S/D with shortbow because those sets give me a lot of flexibility, so a lot of what I’m writing is from that perspective.

Against both warriors and guardians, you want to try to steal any might stacks and stability they have. Thieves with stability are stupidly strong, and it’ll help you maintain pressure if you can CC them as much as they can you. On S/D, using the sneak attack on a warrior to trigger last stand can give you a good opportunity for some free stability, and it wastes a 90s cooldown.

Warriors lack active healing because 90% of them run healing signet, but the sustain and huge health pools they have mean you’re going to need to maintain damage pressure at all times. Keep poison on them at all times if possible, be it through steal, dagger mainhand or shortbow. They have highly telegraphed moves, so you might want to see what weapons they’re using before charging in so you know what to avoid. If they have a bow in particular, wait for them to swap to it before using the stolen item so you can reflect their shots back at them. Remember that you can dodge without breaking the whirl animation so stay on top of them to maximise the damage.

Guardians on the other hand rely heavily on active healing (due to their low health pool) and have a lot more condi cleanse, so they’re much more susceptible to burst. While poison is always handy if you time it right, stopping the heals through stuns/dazes is better IMO. The issue with this is getting past their stability: save the stolen item and whatever other CC you can chain until their shouts are on cooldown, and make sure it lands. If you’re S/D, remember that larcenous strike is unblockable, so use it liberally if they’re planning on blocking you all day.

Other than that, it’s the usual stuff really. Try to remember when they’ve popped their defensive cooldowns and hammer them when they’re down. Play to your strengths too: I build for silly mobility, so I can often whittle something to half health with my bow whilst kiting in circles. Know the limits of your build, and only push when you’ve got a few defensive options in case things go sideways. Good luck! ^^

Wow, that’s an essay. TLDR: read the second paragraph.

Yeah, it really is zerg or nothing it seems, at least for my server anyways. At least we always have a zerg to float near, that can’t be said for some servers.

Just wondering, does anyone know if it’s any better on the lower tier servers these days? I came from Whiteside Ridge originally, and I might be looking at things with rose tinted spectacles but I remember the roaming being much better there before the WvW population up and left last year.

Peow peow.2189:

Emi.4152:

waow Oo

1. negate the entire purpose of stealth by adding footfalls. (don’t get the point, it would take God’s most holy decree to land a backstab, you realize that right? you probably do… oh…)

2. nerf weapon evade killing the last viable thief weaponset in pvp…

3. nerf damage by half…

4. nerf the already nerfed vigor resulting in even less survivablity and buff swiftness “because we need it more”

5. give thieves more traps.

okay… so basically, make sure thieves do not have burst, nor sustain, nor survivablity in the name of “raising the skill cap”. in return thieves should be massively buffed with a new trap skill.

I agree with this and hope they implement just so people like… this… would stop posting. and i will still kill you with my mines

(2 months later) nerf mines!!! blehhh!!!!!!?!?!

Great post, I will add you to the supporters list.

I don’t think you understand how to read, or how to sarcasm. The guy’s clearly disagreeing with you.

I’ve had a ranger for years but still pretty new to the class PvP wise, I learned a lot from reading this & have bookmarked it for later use. Great resource, very well written. Thanks to the OP and all posters ^^

Gandara is pretty good for WvW atm, provided they don’t do the same thing that Ruins of Surmia did in January and lose the vast majority of their people post season. Desolation and Seafarers Rest are both strong from my experience fighting them, you can’t go too far wrong with either.

The WvW populations and rankings are still settling atm, so it might be worth waiting to see how things pan out. Either way, I wish you the best of luck ^^

Fluffball.8307:

If a third pet dies underwater, I think you’ll swap to a dead pet when you’re on land. I’m not exactly sure what the specifics are, but were you underwater shortly before this?

Only when passing the underwater gate of bay, crossing by swimming on the surface. I didn’t actually fight anything underwater so if a pet died then that was extra special of me :P Thanks for letting me know, I’ll remember that one though.

My route was from the south east spawn, capping the south west camp, crossing the water by bay, capping north west camp then dying at north camp. I was trying a different build and there was a thief hanging around up there who killed me a couple of times, hence why I remember the route. Either way, I didn’t do anything out of the ordinary as far as I could see :/

Sevans.4619:

You forgot to feed it.

Thanks for the sour persimmons, cousin :P

Is anyone else getting the problem of their secondary pet coming in to the fight downed for no particular reason?

I know this isn’t a pet management issue as the whistle for the pet swap and the comment your character makes when you pet is downed play at the same time when I swap pets. The first pet is alive, I swap to wolf for the fear, it’s dead for no apparent reason and pet swap is on 20 sec cooldown.

Is it just me? Because randomly not having a pet at all has cost me a couple of fights now, so I’d really like to know if I’m causing this somehow.

Now I think of it, my pet has also swapped in on low health several times today, 4k for example. Might be connected, might not.

Cufufalating.8479:

Offair.2563:

Roll ranger, hardly anyone will run away from you.

So true is hurts xD

snip

Then theres also people who spec for certain fights, like many thieves, who will happily fight people they know they are geared to beat but will run within 10s of fighting someone they know wont be easy.

snip

I’m guilty of that to an extent, but given there’s no reward for fighting and killing a class/build that’s problematic for you, that’s actually the logical thing to do in WvW. There’s no requirement to fight everything you see. So yeah, I pick my fights, and as long as it’s not a duel I’ll run if necessary.

The only things I don’t really bother with are mesmers, engis and thieves that have the +40 condi duration food, because the fights go on too long and are too heavily tipped in their favour to justify it. Likewise, I fully expect rangers to try getting away from me if possible, I’ve been playing ranger a lot recently and it’s a flipping thief magnet. Some matchups just aren’t in your favour.

Frankly, if I see a PU mesmer defending dolyaks, I go for the dolyak. It’s got more chance of outrunning me :P

Edit: I realise that your post wasn’t a jab, and upon rereading my post seems kinda defensive, it’s not meant that way ^^

I refuse to let someone stomp me out of principle, but with the thief downed skills only classes that can port can stomp me before I die to AoE or otherwise. Frankly tho, if someone kills me 1v1 they deserve the kill, and it’s not like you can avoid the fact that you lost when you’re bleeding out.

Pretty much what other people have said, you pick your fights based on what your build strengths are. If I see an engi leeroying at me when I’m on my thief, I know he’s prob a 1v1 specced condi build that will have a serious advantage over me and I know that he knows that too, so why would I stay?

Other possibilities are that if you’re using sigil of air/fire the damage is proccing before the CnD, that’s a known issue apparently. Is it definitely not the visual bug, so you have the stealth buff but the game doesn’t render the stealth effect on your char?

Like others have said, it’s hard to tell without video since it could easily be a combination of any of the suggestions thus far.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZUQNAsYVl0Mp0pdPx3JsPRBNBxVN8OMfpMaFgOjSfB-T1CBABVqqyZKBl4UAglyLvUiAwDAwS1KyTTQR7PkieAGOCABAQACJOxATciTciTciNxJOxJOxJWKgnmAA-w

This is what I use in WvW, I tried other armor sets but I keep coming back to this eventually since it gives the defence I like. Sure, it’s not optimal for DPS, but I tend to live more this way. The general rule of thumb is build the minimum defence that you feel you need, then dump everything else into offence, which for thief means zerker normally.

So yeah, it’s personal preference. You won’t go wrong with either valk or zerk armor really, you just swap crit chance for health. For that reason, valk tends to work better on dagger builds with hidden killer, zerk works for everything but is more risky. 

Your best bet is to get a WvW set of both and try them both out, see what you think.

wingclip.6182:

Hello,

Oh noes hes not playing meta and actually goes a different approach!

People here said that venomshare is a waste because of condicleanse spam in a Blob.

Solution: dont Blawb

In a 15-20ish guild grp that condition bomb can eat trough those cleanses. Especially since the condis are not applied all at once but on every hit. Instant cleanse spam will fail If the timing is good i can imagine some viability there. Maybe even in a party with a condi necro.

Trying new ways is the way those awsome metas get created that will then be copypasted by exactly the same people that conkitten players that take a different approach.

Those Pros that are prolly running S/D 20066 or perma builds atm.

Keep trying and dont let the mob of simpleminded copycats drag you down.

Bonvy

Unfortunately, originality matters less than effectiveness in this game, as whichever way you look at it there’s a reason that meta builds are the meta. It’s because they are simply the most effective at what they do. That’s also why the meta tends to shift with balance patches more than in the time between them.

Incidentally, the problem of excess condi cleanse in a blob is not fixed by not blobbing, considering the other side will blob whether you like it or not. If anything you’re just reinforcing the point that it would be less effective in general group play than it would be in a specific havoc group/roaming situation.

Like I said, this build requires co-ordination to be useful in a group. There’s nothing wrong with that, I just like my effectiveness to be less dependant on whether 4 other guys are actually listening. If it works for the OP, more power to him.

The equipment’s almost identical to mine, I just have the ascended zerk trinkets and soldiers where you have valk armor. I use sword, so different traits, but that equipment will work with almost any direct damage build.

The only thing I’d change is to swap the bloodlust sigil on the pistol for either fire or force, since you only need one for stacking. Other than that, it’s a strong build.

Nice to see a vid where the enemy are trying to counterplay by dazing you in the smoke fields too, good vid ^^

To be honest, I wouldn’t complain if you just took the PvE maps, threw in a bunch of objectives to cap and just have the edge of the map be like edge of the mists, a floating chunk of an alternate reality.

Fair enough, I didn’t mean to imply groups/zergs in my comment so sorry if it read that way. I also don’t mean any of my comments to be argumentative, flaming or disrespectful, just for the record.

Thing is if you stealth res, you not only know where the downed guy is, you also know where the guy ressing is. Smart players will hit backstab/eviscerate/enough autos and finish you while you’re trying to res in stealth, I remember one shotting a thief who was trying to res a dude by just using skull crack/hundred blades on the downed guy. Since the resser is likely a thief (very squishy) or a mesmer (low duration stealth, and often squishy to boot), a power based roamer or a havoc group should be able to down stuff in the refuge easy.

Condi builds might struggle with doing that when roaming solo, but there you have a potential downside of using condi over power. Instead of trying to interrupt the stomp you could try downing more than one guy at once so the thief has to choose who to refuge, then stomp the other guy. Then go after the thief since his refuge is on cooldown.

I dunno, I just don’t see it as much of a problem in small scale. Sure it’s annoying, but it has counters and is a necessary mechanic to counter invuln stomps. If you couldn’t stealth the downed, how would you stop that mesmer using the F4 shatter to stomp your friend?

X T D.6458:

Lol sorry but I cant help but laugh at some of these replies, some of you dont seem to understand, and some dont seem to realize, not everyone runs in a blob, I have stated several times the point of my post. So all of you that main thieves please stop flaming on here.

I don’t see how whether one runs in a blob or not is relevant to a discussion of whether you should be able to stealth a downed player to stop a stomp.

If you frame things in terms of work and pay then you’ll always be frustrated with things in some way, because working for something fosters feelings of entitlement and expectation.

Just play because you enjoy it, and enjoy the shiny things when they come. Thanks ANet for making sure everyone got shinies ^^

I’d be willing to bet that everyone who’s complaining about this has benefited from being stealth ressed at some point or another. There’s a reason almost every thief runs refuge, it can swing a fight.

That being said, almost every time I try to res someone with refuge against smart players I get downed and killed myself, to the point where I almost refuse to do it in WvW unless there’s no-one in sight. Sure, you have to stomp again, but if you react fast enough with CC and AoE pressure you can often bag another kill.

And as for the ‘I shouldn’t have to lose a kill I worked for’ argument, I have lost kills to it and to a plethora of other methods of preventing a stomp. At least with stealth there’s counterplay, you ever tried to stomp someone who’s got that sanctuary bubble consecration on their head?