Guild Wars 2

Sir Vincent III.1286:

The numbers speaks for themselves.

Probably a daft question, but what are the numbers supposed to be speaking about? Player population? Number of thieves in game? Llama attacks in Moscow?

ANet needs to have a science teacher yell at them about the importance of axis titles haha xD

Sir Vincent III.1286:

What they need to do is nerf DD. Yes, that’s right, DD needs to be nerfed despite the fact that Thief is perceived to be the weakest profession. It is necessary in order to fix the profession. Lotus Dodge is obviously meant for DA, Dash is obviously made for Acro in addition to 3rd dodge, and Bound can easily be in CS. Staff can be unbound from DD. So after all these changes, we’ll have a strong Core traitlines and DD as an Elite that grant access to Physical skills. This way, no matter what Elite spec they come up with, it will simply by a flavor spec rather than a stapled spec.

I can see where you’re going with that, but what happens if bound was in CS and dash in acro and you took both at once? As much as I dislike having grandmaster slots for that, from a coding perspective they need to be in the same tier of the same spec, or in none of them like ranger pets are.

Unfortunately, I don’t think nerfing DD will actually help at this point. Adding more options to do the same thing (defense, dodge, whatever) through subsequent elite specs just means we either get a more potent version of the original thing each time stuff is added (by combining like traits from two specs, see acro/DD dodge specs), a ton of unused skills, or both.

They could easily avoid this issue by doing what they promised and giving us something new with each elite spec, not just another evade focused line like they did with HoT. Reaper is a good example of doing it right, nerfing acro to give the three dodge functionality back with DD is doing it wrong.

That said, I still think there’s not much you could add to the thief without breaking it in some way, and as they seem to be only balancing around one or two sets currently the situation is going to get worse with each expac. I honestly think that the specialisation design is the single worst thing they did to their game for this reason.

Straegen.2938:

To be “balanced” it needs to be restored to its 1v1, dueling strength in skilled play. To me that means reducing AA damage and improving most initiative based skills across the board. This also means reducing passive defensive skills/traits in the game.

This. So much this. The burst should come from timing a backstab/pistol whip perfectly, not from porting to someone then spamming autos with quickness.

If you use the condi dodge then thorns runes would be better, but trapper runes opens up a pretty interesting playstyle with P/D and shortbow. I still have 100% poison duration, and baiting people into traps to then immob them for 10s plus while spamming choking gas on them is pretty hilarious.

I used to play this before the plex rune changes:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQNAoYVn0MBFOhlOB2OBkmiFqia+67+wvrnCgg07CShtD-T1hHABLq+Tb6DoTJYAPBAAOFAGp8D39HIEgi5A-w

It had enough cleanse to fight a trapper thief and a condi mesmer at the same time and win, so trait/cleanse wise it works ^^

To be honest, this is one of the reasons I stopped playing with stealth some time ago.

If you’re running heal on hit, consider running mad king runes. They give a lot of healing with the signet heal and daggerstorm vs packs of mobs.

Also, you’d find Trickery an alternative to acro, as the caltrops on dodge proc the signet heal per pulse. Same for the caltrops utility.

Awesome, just what I was looking for, thanks guys ^^

So, pretty much the title. I get the feeling I should +1 and gank more often than not, but when 1v1’s happen, which classes/builds should I win against, which should I avoid and why? Thinking for the PvP meta build (devastation/invocation/herald on mara ammy).

saerni.2584:

I would change the condition removal to a five second internal cooldown. Condition builds should not be forced to stop attacking to avoid having all their damage negated 100%. If you fix that then people will not stop attacking and you can clear conditions more. Against players who stop attacking, you should be taking other condition clears than just DD, so just use those. Daredevil is a lazy crutch as far as condition removal is concerned.

To be honest, outside of a teamfight if the enemy doesn’t know enough about thief to stop attacking after the condi bomb, they actually deserve to have their condis cleansed imo.

If I have to learn other classes’ mechanics to be effective, I don’t see why they shouldn’t.

rennlc.7346:

Replace Pistol Whip’s rooting effect with a 75% movement reduction for the duration of the attack.

I’m probably odd, but I like the root on pistol whip, as it forces me to play well to land it properly. For the amount of damage it does, and the evade as well, it’s a fair skill. I’d say stuff like vault and shadow shot are more out of balance than pistol whip, but again, that’s just my opinion.

Thief in and of itself is fine I think, it’s the other classes that need defensive nerfs from all the power creep we got with HoT, which to ANet’s credit, that’s generally what they’ve been doing albeit slowly. Giving thief more damage won’t fix anything, and giving us more ways to bypass defences or more tankiness will just make us broken with the mobility and damage we already have.

Probably not tbh, as that would make steal and headshot ludicrously OP since the daze would then interrupt the block, returning you to dealing full damage on subsequent hits.

Now more classes have reveal then don’t, I think that would be fair. Although it largely dropped out of the meta because of being unable to dodge within the ring with daredevil as much as anything, so I’d say it depends on what the next elite spec brings.

Vasdamas Anklast.1607:

I don’t usually have a problem with thieves, even with DA art kitteny teabaggers once I swap to axe off hand (secondary sword is still good too). Usually taims their kite-o-mancer hubris instantly. Just need to keep cold head, show them that they are not the only class that can easily disengage acting like they no longer care and countdown their steal CD (essence sap hurt plus most rev abilities go nuts because of slow condition, ugh), almost all of them spam it by CD. Of course it requires one to turn their brain on but same applies to thieves playing against you. Never underestimate thief mains.

Oh and yeah, I PERSONALLY find it easier to fight thieves with dev+invocation+herald instead of retribution because stability revenant is easily countered by Bountiful Thief (first thief steals your stability and then they apply daze to you). Rev’s main instrument is burst, one mistake from thief’s side should be enough with good burst.

I’ve duelled Vas quite a bit on my thief, axe offhand is indeed a massive pita if you can time it with your burst properly. Retribution stopped headshot spam but it’s just as easy to alternate shadowshot and essence sap instead, so the most important thing is to get the thief on the back foot straight away.

Hammer also hurts a lot, as thief relies on being out of range for most of it’s attacks. Like was said above, don’t bother with anything other than 4 to block headshot, get quickness and spam autos and the thief will have to stealth or totally disengage if it doesn’t have steal ready.

The stab nerf was excessive imo, it was annoying for me having most of my interrupts negated but when that was your only source of stab then you really should have had compensation elsewhere.

I used to use Lyssa runes during the soldier rifle meta, they work nicely with sneak gyro to cleanse an entire condi burst. Also, if you manage to reflect his venoms with either the turret reflect trait in inventions or bulwark gyro toolbelt you’ll hurt him pretty badly too ^^

Tbh they only made three changes, besides bugfixes. Venom cooldowns, dancing dagger damage buff and vital shot damage buff. If you play D/P or staff then quite frankly nothing has changed to test.

The biggest thing that determines this matchup is your condi transfers. You’re likely running axe/dagger with staff, so you have dagger 4 and staff 4, plus possibly plague signet.

Let him condi you to a degree while you land some damage, time your immob/elite shout/whatever for the end of the dagger dodge animation then hit him with plague signet. If he’s at 50% when the transfer lands you can then stop attacking and heal up (this is important as he cleanses when he evades your attacks) and his own condis will melt him. Obviously, don’t try this without consume conditions or something to deal with the condis if you miss.

Condi necro has an easier time with this as there’s an on crit plague signet trait in the condi line (I forget names, but the line you’d take instead of spite), since it’s automated you just have to let him spike you, wait for the proc on crit then stop attacking basically. I’ve been on the receiving end of this a few times and it’s very difficult for the thief to recover from their own condi bomb plus your spike on top.

Only issue with swapping places on steal is that it would make trapper thieves insanely more annoying. Two trapper thieves could then not only spike from stealth, but move the target 2400 units from their group at the same time. Pretty funny to commander snipe for a while maybe, but trust me, that will get old REAL fast xD

Also, it doesn’t fit the theme of keeping someone in the dark as to your position, since if they get randomly ported they know the thief is where they were just a second ago.

See, this sort of silliness is why I started playing S/P in the first place.

I made a set of viper/carrion gear for P/D recently, good timing I guess ^^

Venoms are what Anet buff/nerf when they don’t fully know what to do next with thief, so all told I’m just glad nothing got nerfed.

TwiceDead.1963:

My build is very similar to the Metabattle ones, except I run trickery as opposed to Deadly Arts.

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQNAW6an8lCFOhFmCOOBkmiFqiaO73+yvrnCgGYLHHsqD-TxBBQBnUJoCV/RjK/My+DA4iAEgnAg+0NQKABVGB-e

It’s super squishy, and not at all solo-friendly, and relies on interrupts and the evasion during pistol-whip, but since you can literally dodge out of the constant dodge you get from pistol whip, you can just dive in and out of an encounter.

Since you are super squishy, you are relying on positioning and evades.

My usual rotation:
Auto-attack -> Pistol-Whip(interrupt) -> Steal(interrupt) -> Pistol-Whip -> Dodge(Disengange) -> Get an overview, pick a target and repeat.

Pulmonary impact usually leaves most mobs dead at this point, and if they aren’t, one or two auto-attacks usually finish veterans off. If they can’t be interrupted, oh well.

It’s not very survivable, but it’s super fun to play risky and keeps you on your toes since you have to be reactive with your playstyle and cannot afford to stay at all passive.

+1 for S/P, it’s a very fun set

I found P/D viper weapons and armor with krait runes and carrion trinkets works well for solo play, DA Trickery DD. You can stay at a safe distance and just spam sneak attacks, venoms/needle traps/impairing daggers and autos, and kite with 3 and dash while your condis tick. SA over Trickery would give more sustain, honestly I like having the caltrops on dodge more but it depends what you’re comfortable with. You’ll have up to 18k health and around 85% duration on bleeds, so you shouldn’t need toughness if you know what to dodge already. It’s fun, and a more relaxing approach than staff imo.

Ohoni.6057:

For the auto-attack, I’m thinking you could still move, sure, but the other skills would likely have high grade effects in exchange for making you stop moving while the attack animation goes off – risky business for a thief, but potentially valuable if the attacks are good enough.

But remember that it has to go beyond just the rifle weapon. That’s the flexibility, positive and negative, that elite specs allow over just handing the rifle to a vanilla build. If all the Rifle does is root you while firing or something, then a player could just go Rifle/Shortbow, fight until they’re at risk, swap, and start dashing and #5-ing, and using Shadowstep utilities, and dropping stealths, and things like that to get out of dodge.

To make Snipers strong without being OP, they may have to actively reduce the Theif’s innate movement options, like giving some penalty to any shadowstepping, or applying a temporary debuff in which you cannot shadowstep, applying reveal to prevent Stealth, things like that. It would mean that you couldn’t engage in the usual tactics while playing as a Sniper.

That may not be the only route available, but it’s one that might work.

Of course the class would need to offer benefits to all builds, not just rifle builds, but these benefits would be in making thieves stronger somehow in a direct fight, so they would less need to scurry off. One thing I’ve been playing around with is the ability to “steal ammo.” Instead of shadowstepping to a target and picking up a bundle to use, Steal would be changed to leave you in place, reducing mobility, and not create a “stolen” bundle, but would instead create a “pack of initiative,” perhaps 5 Ini that you can activate at will. This would allow Snipers to burn Initiative much faster than other classes, especially when paired with other traits.

No matter the GF visual tell, if you’re not paying attention to the warrior you gonna get shot. Same thing with any one-shot build. If you’re focused on something/someone else you will get killed no matter how long they wind up their attack.

That’s why the overhead tell would be good, you don’t need to be paying attention to the Thief, you don’t even have to know where he is, you’d just see the target and could react accordingly.

Just something to note, having stealth and a long range damage skill could be more balanced than you realise, simply because taking this elite spec locks you out of daredevil. So what you should be thinking about is what would core thief look like with a rifle. This has several repercussions:

1) Mobility and evades will be significantly lower than what most thieves are probably used to by now.
2) Reveals are probably going to mean death for this spec, which combined with the lack of defenses on core thief means any druid with sic ‘em will likely hard counter this build.
3) You can’t play pulmonary impact for interrupt damage, so if the spec is CC/support based it loses that damage source.
4) This build will have zero condi cleanse outside of stealth, due to not being able to take EA from daredevil and core thief being too reliant on SA for cleanse. See 2 on reveals.
5) Rifle thieves will have to take that spec, leaving a choice of two from DA, SA and trickery. So it’s either going to be glass or lose significant damage modifiers to gain condi cleanse and minimal damage reduction.
6) I’m assuming that the ICD on stealth attacks was implemented with this elite spec in mind (think of the acro nerfs while daredevil was in development). So if we have a long range sniper, I’d bet that it’s boon steal will be deliberately limited, making aegis/blocks/protection/reflects much more useful vs this build.

So, if they make the rifle DPS based, they simply have to avoid giving evades, mobility or massive damage modifiers in the elite spec traits. Making the traits support/CC based (with both a power and condi line) but the weapon DPS based would be an interesting way to introduce more builds, while leaving limits on the power of a glass rifle spec.

I just remembered I have the Predator rifle sat on my engi unused atm, so I’m now fully in favour of thief rifle. Hopefully they don’t fluff it up.

To be honest, I hope that they take the opportunity to introduce totally new weapons if they’re gonna do it. Give us something like a crossbow, that way we could on long range, but with smaller, rapid attacks with lots of soft/hard cc, and lock the big damage behind criteria like having to immob an enemy with skill 3 to get access to the big damage skill (for example). That way, since a prerequisite attack is needed the spike can’t come with absolutely zero tell. Much more interesting than a sniper rifle imo.

I reckon they’re tight lipped about it because it was necessary due to whatever elite spec they’re cooking up, but they don’t want to give that away yet. There’s literally no other reason why they wouldn’t justify the change, the same thing happened to acro before HoT, and the only reason we assume it was because of rending shade is simply timing and a lack of any other information.

BlaqueFyre.5678:

Jugglemonkey.8741:

Cygnus.6903:

Napo.1230:

I’m already feeling the rage from a rifle thief. Pew pew massive crits from range and all that stealth and gap creation you can do, ouch.
Be a real good opportunity for anet to bring a new dimension to thief, if your gonna range you forfeit your slippery ness.

How would thief ever forfeit that, though? Our class mechanic, our utilities, hell, even a lot of weapon skills will always remain slippery. Unless they add something like ‘with this elite you can no longer shadowstep’, thieves will Always be slippery. That’s without even talking about stealth. For sure, the rifle won’t get an option to enter stealth by itself. If it does, the damage will be pathetic to compensate.

I actually like the idea of rifle for thief.

Even if the rifle doesn’t have stealth so it does good damage, there’s trapper runes and stealth utilities to consider. I’m pretty sure SA is going to get reworked/nerfed to the floor to make way for the elite spec, simply because there’s not many more things you can add to thief while keeping it thiefy.

That said, 1200 range does sound nice. Although they could just as easily make pistols 1200 range when traited again, and not bother with the spec at all lol

If they need another Trailine and try to repackage it as an Elite Spec I am pretty sure would be my last straw with the dev team, and there are a few things they can do to make and elite spec and keep the thief feel but ES are supposed to be a different way to play a class not highly improve an aspect of the original class.

I agree with you completely, although you’ll forgive me for being sceptical after what happened to acro just before HoT dropped. I’d love to be wrong about this, but I’m not hopeful.

Also: the Devs were very tight lipped about why they introduced the icd for sneak attacks, and the assumption that it was because of the introduction of rending shade is more or less based on the timing of the changes. That’s something else that makes me think that stealth/SA is going to get a work over.

Cygnus.6903:

Napo.1230:

I’m already feeling the rage from a rifle thief. Pew pew massive crits from range and all that stealth and gap creation you can do, ouch.
Be a real good opportunity for anet to bring a new dimension to thief, if your gonna range you forfeit your slippery ness.

How would thief ever forfeit that, though? Our class mechanic, our utilities, hell, even a lot of weapon skills will always remain slippery. Unless they add something like ‘with this elite you can no longer shadowstep’, thieves will Always be slippery. That’s without even talking about stealth. For sure, the rifle won’t get an option to enter stealth by itself. If it does, the damage will be pathetic to compensate.

I actually like the idea of rifle for thief.

Even if the rifle doesn’t have stealth so it does good damage, there’s trapper runes and stealth utilities to consider. I’m pretty sure SA is going to get reworked/nerfed to the floor to make way for the elite spec, simply because there’s not many more things you can add to thief while keeping it thiefy.

That said, 1200 range does sound nice. Although they could just as easily make pistols 1200 range when traited again, and not bother with the spec at all lol

Lonewolf Kai.3682:

Jugglemonkey.8741:

They’re not seriously considering another expansion now, are they? It’s only been a year since the last one, and it’s taken this long to fins some semblance of balance.

On topic: the positive part of getting rifle as an elite spec is that they can’t nerf something we already have in order to force us to buy it back. Yes, I am still bitter about that.

You do know they’ve been working on a new expansion for awhile now, right?

I didn’t know, but I’m usually out of the loop. Quite honestly, I’d rather they just introduced new weapons, no elite specs, and then focussed on more like LS or WvW/PvE skill splits. Elite specs are probably the worst thing to happen to the game imo.

They’re not seriously considering another expansion now, are they? It’s only been a year since the last one, and it’s taken this long to fins some semblance of balance.

On topic: the positive part of getting rifle as an elite spec is that they can’t nerf something we already have in order to force us to buy it back. Yes, I am still bitter about that.

So I’ve been playing more pvp recently, and was wondering if people had any advice about rotations since it’s such an important part of the game mode. I’m pretty low rank as I haven’t played much pvp since before HoT, so bear that in mind.

At the moment, I tend to full cap close then stealth to decap far when whatever capped it moves to mid, then I move to mid and gank something squishy. By that point home is normally in trouble, so I plus 1 then decap far after the first round of respawns, and continue to +1 while decapping far after the respawns. Is this the right sort of thinking?

I know not to duel 1v1 although I don’t have many problems with matchups at this rank (I duel/roam quite a bit), I decap with stealth after they leave the point and after a plus one I normally move to the next fight once the one I’m in is in our favour. What kinds of things should I be looking for after the first couple of teamfights? And if my team can’t hold the points while I decap, should I teamfight with them and ignore decaps for that game?

Any advice is appreciated ^^

Yup. I used larcenous strike on two targets earlier, the power mesmer got hit for 7k and the warrior got hit for 2.7k, both crit. I’ve seen scrappers solo that I’ve hit for 2-3k on pistol whip, which I’ve seen hit for 10-12k on other targets on the same build. Add group buffs, food etc. and some classes just get silly hard to kill.

It’s a bit better since they changed the 50% mitigation skills to 33% though. In general, both defences and damage needs toning down across the board though.

BlaqueFyre.5678:

Acro isn’t needed you can but it cuts into your damage by quite a bit

Depends how you play it really. If you camp D/D and engage with heal>steal>sheathe weapon for the needle trap proc and poison on steal then spam 3, DA is better damage hands down. What acro lets you do is apply condis almost constantly at the cost of having more of a build up to your damage. Use the condi dodge in poison fields on shortbow for extra poison stacks, save ini when on shortbow and dodges when on D/D, and use geomancy/energy sigils on both sets. I’ve had 20-25 stacks of bleeding on people without krait runes, plus poison, confusion and torment ticks, it’s still a lot of damage (4k tick combined easily) and I get the extra sustain from acro to boot. Using shortbow more actively makes the build a lot more mobile too.

That said I haven’t played it since the last balance patch, I don’t know precisely why but it stopped being as effective as it used to be. I used to like scorpion wire with plex runes on that build tho, so maybe it’s just less fun to me after the rune changes.

I don’t think it needs a change tbh. There’s two approaches to fighting condi builds:

1) Taking every cleanse you have and then removing them one by one til you find what is essential for your playstyle. I remember fighting and winning vs a condi mes and trapper thief at the same time on a condi dodge build, taking EA, pain response, don’t stop, traited withdraw, shadow step and signet of agility and using the stolen item from the mesmer for resistance. I could cleanse whatever they threw at me, so I don’t think EA would need a change based on that.

2) Kill the other guy dead before he has chance to use condis, and know when to disengage. If you’re doing this then odds are you’re using impacting disruption over EA anyway, so changing it wouldn’t help a lot. Someone on these forums made a brilliant analogy a while back; fighting condi builds is like fighting a lightly armored guy with a small razor when you’re naked with a sword. You can either waste time trying to stop the bleeds as he cuts you to pieces, or you can cut him the @!$% in half and worry about the bleeds afterwards.

EA isn’t meant to be a burst cleanse remember, it’s one of many. We have a lot of cleanses, but we have to take a combination of them to fight condi effectively, otherwise we have another diamond skin situation where one trait counters an entire playstyle. Try running acro/trickery/DD with all the cleanse traits, dash, shadowstep and signet of agility. Then cut down on the cleanse gradually til you find out out what your minimum is.

TLDR: EA doesn’t need a change, as thief doesn’t lack cleanses if built for it. EA isn’t a burst cleanse, it’s one of many, and is really strong given that.

Yup, DeceiverX is definitely the one to talk to about D/D ^^ Although if Jana is lurking she will probably have something good to add too.

It’s a hard set atm, but if you were running the full glass signet build before you probably already know what you’re letting yourself in for. Just more autoprocs and random cc now than there was, an instant kill is still an instant kill if you’re built for it.

Marauder is fully worth getting at least a few pieces. I have mara weapons, zerker armor with scholar runes, marauder amulet and zerk/valk trinkets and that sits me on 15k health pretty happily while not losing much damage from full zerk. I’d see what DeceiverX has tho, since he has more health and still hits like a truck.

Well, some do because I do, and I’m not the only thief I’ve seen running bound like this. I used to play with blinding powder and SA with S/P between the June patch and HoT, honestly bound is much better. I can understand your point about bound not being considered an essential part of offhand pistol’s kit, but if the next elite spec gave something different that made those sets viable in a different way, that would also be fine with me. If I wanted stealth on S/P I could use daredevil, and I’d use the new elite spec for the new mechanic. Assuming they actually give us a new mechanic this time, and don’t just nerf one of our existing traitlines in order to resell it to us.

I honestly don’t have a problem with being tied to particular traits for a particular playstyle though. If anything, I think we have a lack of such meaningful traits what with critical strikes only really offering damage etc. And as far as defending bound goes, I’d sooner lose the damage than the leap finisher, since the leap finisher enables new playstyles while the damage is straight up power creep.

DeceiverX.8361:

No.

1.) All dodges by default go backwards. Pointless to change that as that’s a core game mechanic and keeping character behavior control between classes and specs constant should be considered important.

2.) 1.75 is an insane coefficient and it would need to get massively nerfed if given weapon damage scaling. It already hits ridiculously hard at an upwards of 5k regularly, and in a build like mine, closer to 8k, which is ridiculous.

It shouldn’t have a leap finisher imho. It provides so much unnecesarry extra utility to OH pistol and rewards spamming for no reason, often rewarding thieves who can’t manage their initiative by still giving them stealth access and extra damage instead of punishing them for misplaying. Daredevil as a whole is stupidly easy-mode. There’s no reason to further buff the dodges when it’s the dodges and EA alone that make Daredevil as low-skill and easy as it is. S/P and P/P either should be re-examined if stealth access is essential, or more support given to builds which do not feature stealth access in general. I prefer the latter.

The problem is, what would you give S/P and P/P in place of the stealth from the leap finisher? That utility is only really unnecessary on D/P, the stealth really opens up both of those sets and removing the leap finisher would be a much bigger nerf to those sets than D/P all told.

Other than that, I agree with what you said. The damage is great, and dodges are defensive in nature so having them go backwards by default is fine.

I like this build tbh:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vdAQFASnUUBtbh9dBGpCEqiF2iSsjminAMELxAgu5P+lH-TFSGABRp8TR1I8VVFCVJAm9HA4CAU+DA0BknSwAAIAG6QH6QH6QboDdoDdoDtUACqzC-w

It’s odd I know, but I love hybrid builds, and this doesn’t lose much direct damage while gaining reasonable burn ticks. It’s pretty easy to get 20 odd stacks of might while fighting, so the burns do hurt. Rocket boots mean it’s harder to kite me, and bulwark gyron is just too good defensively imo.

Just a few thoughts:

Since you don’t have much stealth access outside of traps, you might get more out of taking acro instead of SA and bound over dash. More stealth access, a damage increase etc. Up to you that.

If you take trickery instead, consider using draining/absorption sigils. They don’t have an internal cooldown, so they’re better as long as you can reliably get rid of stability (bountiful theft) and draining adds a considerable amount of sustain.

If shots tracking you are an issue, try taking smoke screen for blocking projectiles. Also gives you a nice way to set up a burst from shortbow, or to stealth when traps are on cooldown.

And as long as a build works for you, then do it. Most thief fights these days are basically about who has more stealth and who lands an interrupt first, so it’s nice to see less conventional builds being used ^^

Shortbow is mainly useful for stacking party stealth with pistol offhand and for mobility. If you don’t need to port up walls or stealth teammates, there’s not much other reason to take it over P/P or staff imo.

That said, the mug>detonate clusterbomb combo still works really well vs squishies (esp with air/fire sigils) and doesn’t require a target. I’ve killed more than one thief fishing for a backstab just by dodging and detonating cluster bombs on myself, and nearly one shot power mesmers with it. So it depends how you use it I guess. It also doesn’t require a lot of ini to be useful, which is a big plus point.

I never said it wasn’t strong, or best in slot, it’s both of these for a power build. I’m simply saying it’s nice not to trigger the autoproc traits for a change when ganking low health targets on the fringe of a zerg.

Sleight of hand in isolation is fine. In this meta, it’s a liability. I hope that’s clearer

OK, it’s been a long time since I did statistics so be kind if I’ve not followed this completely. I get what both rikkity and dgraves are saying, kinda. Rikkity is correct in that there is a chance of never proccing the bleed in a trial with a small time limit, the 15% only becomes the true solution when you integrate the function over time to Infinity. Makes sense, people should agree on that. What we are looking for is the maximum DPS, and it’s here that the methodology differs. I’m going to use an analogy to explain my thinking, so people can give me a real world example if I fluff my logic.

Statistically speaking, the DPS from a trait like this has a build up time and a maximum DPS value, the current DPS value depending on how long the player has kept up the damage rotation and if they have done it for longer than the base duration of the bleeds procced, after which point current DPS will have reached its maximal value.

This means that the damage inflicted can be roughly modeled with the same equation as charging a capacitor: DPS[t]=DPS[max]e^(¥/t), where ¥ is an arbitrary time constant in this case determined by the rate of attack, the duration of the bleeds and the chance to proc, and the integral of this function with regards to time (the area under the curve, put simply) giving the total damage inflicted since you started the trial. This models an exponential curve that begins at zero and asymptotes at a set maximum y value for DPS when (¥/t)=0 at t=Infinity, and it’s this value that we’re all interested in.

What dgraves is saying is that when you stop the damage, so you remove the voltage source that is charging the capacitor in my example, DPS would decay exponentially until it returns to zero, much like the voltage across the capacitor would, and that we should include this discharge time in our calculations because there is still damage being done. Correct so far?

The problem is that this assumes that there is a body for the damage to flow through. In the capacitor example, if there is no resistor in the circuit then the capacitor would discharge almost instantly after the current was removed, as there is noting to stop the flow of charge back to its original state. In our case, the boss is dead. Were not going to stop the DPS before the boss is dead, so any discussion on the decay of the bleed damage after the boss dies is meaningless, and shouldn’t contribute to the DPS calculations. In this case, t would be the time from engaging the mob until the integral of the function equals the health of the mob: the line drops straight to zero after that point, as there is no longer a mob to damage. So as long as the time period of your DPS test is greater than the time needed to kill the mob, your calculated DPS needs no further adjustments beyond accounting for the wind up time.

This is why statistics requires a sufficient size pool of data to work, and does not work for small groups or values of time!

Tldr: the time period of your DPS test should only be equal or greater than the time taken to kill a given boss, assuming that time is greater than the time needed to reach the maximum possible stacks from the trait. You’re not going to stop the DPS til the boss is dead, and after the boss is dead the DPS is nil, and so is not relevant to the discussion.

Forgive the messy formatting, I typed this on my phone

So I was playing without sleight of hand in a zerg yesterday, not being auto countered by any number if passive traits felt amazing

It’s odd not running it, but honestly, being able to land a burst on a DH without the auto trap triggering was well worth it. It says a lot about the state of the game though.

As others have said, since black powder applies the blind every 2S there’s too many things that can ignore the first blind and one shot you still, and a lot of players know to interrupt you if you try to auto in it. A warrior in black powder could go berserk, clear the blind with hydromancy and still hit you with arc divider and gs 3, which if you’ve taken any prior damage will likely kill you. Repeated shadow shot then dodge as soon as the damage lands is just safer damage in that situation, saving the black powder mug backstab combo as an opener if you get the jump on him or for when his endure pains are on cooldown and he starts running. You can kill a rev pretty much just landing shadow shot and the stolen ability, staying at range and dodging the rest of the time. Also, the number of thieves I’ve killed with mug > pistol whip as they’ve stood in black powder trying to stealth is just silly >:D

Do what works for you at the end of the day. If you’re killing things by using black powder the way you do, then by all means carry on.

Yeah, I was tired and totally forgot about the reveal timer, I don’t normally use stealth lol >.< it probably would be fine with rending shade. That being said I still think they should split the blind on stealth from cloaked in shadow and replace the regen on with just that effect, like it used to be. That change was such a middle finger to dagger offhand builds when they merged the traits, and I’m pretty sure people take the regen only if they don’t want stealth on steal messing up their combos.

I still like the op’s idea either way tho, so bumpety bump

Gibimo.2193:

Jugglemonkey.8741:

Warriors are much easier to kill on S/P than any other set in my experience. Use 2 and dodges to make them waste their mobility skills, spike with pistol whip when they can’t easily escape or chase you. Pressure with headshot, kite after each spike and wait for their endure pains to expire. If anything, stealth is a hindrance as I find warriors waste more cooldowns trying to catch a thief they never lose sight of.

Bandit’s defense is also a must. Just don’t go near a warrior unless you have this ready.

pistol whip never spike someone if he isn’t braindead
that’s why you can’t see S/P thief as meta

Actually, S/P isn’t in the meta because of limited stealth access without bound, and less immediate spike. The damage is very good still, and if you wait out cooldowns and dodges they can’t avoid it. More of a duelling spec than anything tho.

But anyway. You play what you enjoy and so will I

This is a pretty cool idea, although it would probably be broken with the new grandmaster trait. If it replaced cloak in shadow (possibly even keeping that name) in the grandmaster slot and the blind on stealth was moved to replace shadow protector, I imagine that would make a lot of people extremely happy.

Warriors are much easier to kill on S/P than any other set in my experience. Use 2 and dodges to make them waste their mobility skills, spike with pistol whip when they can’t easily escape or chase you. Pressure with headshot, kite after each spike and wait for their endure pains to expire. If anything, stealth is a hindrance as I find warriors waste more cooldowns trying to catch a thief they never lose sight of.

Bandit’s defense is also a must. Just don’t go near a warrior unless you have this ready.

I can only assume it’s based on glicko and the expected positions they had. Either that or many coins were flipped and Derren Brown was present.

Not convinced Gandara or Piken needed linking, let alone fsp. But ah well, let’s see how it plays out.

I’ve used the tree tonic while ask in enemy territory in eb before, when I come back I’m stl a tree.

Hell, I’ve used it from stealth mid fight before and the enemy ran off in the opposite direction looking for me. I wouldn’t draw conclusions from either of these events tbh :P

I haven’t done fractals regularly since before the fractured patch, and I still have enough to get my rings and backpack infused easily. The golem sells almost everything you need, it’s really not all that hard.