I’m okay with us not having access to burning… doesn’t feel very “thiefly”. We should better at removing it, though, as being on fire obviously makes it harder to be stealthy! It would also be nice to have some more access to conditions we are supposed to be good at through design and theme.
Examples:
Blind – Okay at applying it, but less strong than it used to be, and too much of it is tied up in one weapon set.
Vulnerability – Very Thiefly and supposed to be one of “our” conditions but we suck at applying it.
Torment – We should be so much better at this. Glad to see it on one of the leaked dodge traits, at any rate.
I’m very excited to whack things in the face with a bifrost! also very excited to match some medium armor with it. Hopefully they do a good job on the bifrost specific animations.
The only thing I want from Anet is to give the auto attack a nice cleave, maybe even something like the guardian staff, so that I can slap PVT on my thief and command smoothly. The stealthiness and mobility won’t hurt either.
Have any of you people begging for a “ranged weapon” for your profession of choice ever PLAYED a ranged class in this game? Ranged damage SUCKS in GW2. That’s a RULE. And they aren’t going to change that rule for Thieves. You see P/P…? THAT is what the Devs feel is a good level of performance from a ranged skill set backed by Thief mechanics. Rifle is not gonna be better than that. It’s just not.
When they do a rifle Espec for thieves — and they will — you are going to be horribly disappointed to find out its’ gonna have the same problems every ranged class has. Terrible damage coefficients, no cleave (piercing is a privilege not a right), optimal position is out of range to give or receive buffs, inadequate ways to maintain/restore distance vs. a persistent melee attacker. And honestly someone is gonna be so clever with it and so over-perform Dev expectations that it finally brings the eye of Sauron down on the whole stealth mechanic and end up getting the whole class nerfed.
So much this. Look at what happened when you they gave guardian a bow. There are so many limitations that must be put in place to ensure ranged combat “fits” and “fun” of the spec becomes lost. Don’t get me wrong ranged gameplay can be fun and has it’s place in guild wars 2 but I feel, mechanic wise, it will also be inferior to melee or even mid range combat.
the new makeshift staff from the hot expansion (look on wiki if you want to spoiler) – it looks simple, but very nice for a melee staff
not 100% happy with the thief staff skin – looks too much like gallant / guardian to me….
Yea the elite-spec staff for thief doesn’t seem to have a thief-ish vibe for some reason. I know it’s suppose to be different from thief core spec but the color scheme is totally different from the thief and the background seen in the teaser.
Hey Anet, I think it would be cool if all the elite specs had at least one skill that changed the visuals on their skill-bar. The Revenant has several of these, the Berserker has one as well I believe. Some skill-bar changes I would like to see would be Tempest when overloading depending on the element, like for fire overload you would have a flaming skill-bar (similar to Guardian’s one but a different color) Another neat one would be a change to the Necromancer’s bar when entering reaper or death shroud. What are your thoughts, feel free to add some! (You too Anet :P).
Nice work. My only complaint is I feel pve/pvp/wvw should be separated a bit better. For example there are some weapons/traits/utilities I use in pvp but never in pve. Hope the devs take some time to at least glance through these.
To take chrono, you’re losing out on another trait line. That’s the sacrifice compared to normal Mesmer. You could probably dig up some ancient threads that discussed this half to death. Losing a trait line from a normal build is a difficult sacrifice. Just take any standard build and try and pick which one to drop.
Besides, how is that second argument not applicable to warrior/ele too? They don’t ‘lose’ anything other than a traitline either, so go cry nerf somewhere else.
I’m not asking for a nerf just trying to understand the expansion from a point that doesn’t seem pay-to-win because if expacs owners have an advantage over non-expac owners, no matter how smaller, is bad news for any game. But only time will tell I guess. But I trust Anet to deal with these issues…
I need to just make a copy/paste for this absurdity cause it keeps coming up.
Mesmer gets an additional thing because we only get an offhand weapon. Warrior doesn’t “lose” regular burst skills any more than we “lose” access to our other shatters because shattering F5 kills all our illusions too.
Ok forget the part about lose or gain a mechanic. What about horizontal and vertical progression. As I stated above a Mesmer with the expansion versus one without are they at an advantage when looking at continuum split?
probably because you actually have to trait the extra shatter skill. It’s not auto selected once you pick chronomancer tree (I’m not 100% on this but you can just google the tree)
I’m pretty sure you automatically gain continuum split when you take the chronomancer traitline.
I was reading the forums and someone brought up a point about the Chronomancer’s new shatter. The Chronomancer adds the continuum split shatter to the Mesmer when you take the trait line. Other elite specs have either have their core mechanic changed or limited when choosing an elite spec:
Guardian: Virtues Change
Necromancer: “Loses” death shroud
Elementalist: Gains longer cooldowns on attunement swap.
Revenant: Gains Boon duration/“burst” boons (this one is the exception because it is not as game-changing in my opinion."
Warrior: “Loses” Regular burst skills for 15 seconds.
My point is the Chronomancer’s shatter seems to move in the direction of vertical progressing rather than horizontal. Would a Mesmer without the expansion be at a disadvantage to a Chronomancer?
My solution to this would be to replace one of the Mesmer’s F-skills with continuum split. The most logical shatter to be replaced would be Distortion as it fits into the whole space/time theme of Chronomancer. Continuum Split would be the Chronomancer’s version of distortion.
What does everyone think about everything I’ve dicussed? (I’m not singling out Mesmers, if the futher elite specs have something similar it should be changed or toned down in some way).
Devs need to read this! Well done OP! Also would a 1200 range leap on courage be op? I think that would be nice be I’ll settle for 900 and that symbol port you mentioned. Also about the trait themes both Dragonhunter and Tempest seem to lack this. I believe following the themes will great increase the viability of the specialization and the various traits.
But isn’t condi just the same expect ferocity becomes condition. I hardly play condi out side of pvp but with the exception of certain utilities, traits and weapons it’s pretty much seems like the exact same play style. Sure you could go tanky condi but then you will probably be kicked for your damage output.
This is a very shallow way of looking at it. When you have the ability to apply conditions, it’s a completely different method of dealing damage. Yes, you’re changing one of your stats to another, but that’s as far as your analogy goes.
Tanky condi is what necros do. It’s what guards do. It’s what rangers do, etc. There are many viable condi tanks. Settler’s with shouts and X/LB is a very viable spec in PvP right now. I like using sword/axe, sword/sword, and GS. LB is a necessity.
This comment was a response about condi in pve. If Sinister was meta people would complain about the same things they complain about in the zerk meta. Conditions would not change this at all. So for people thinking that moving towards condi would solve these issues, it wouldn’t. Furthermore sure you can go condi tank but be prepared to be kicked from current content pvp wise. For example, sinister engi contributes more to dungeons than rabid/dire engis every could.
love condi, hope it helps with condi a lot. condi is the future of dps anyway, a lot of sinister builds are close to, or surpassing power now. Condi also opens up more types of gameplay. I dunno how people can be opposed to this…. doesnt just power/pre/feroc get boring?
But isn’t condi just the same expect ferocity becomes condition. I hardly play condi out side of pvp but with the exception of certain utilities, traits and weapons it’s pretty much seems like the exact same play style. Sure you could go tanky condi but then you will probably be kicked for your damage output.
Woah is this a joke? That thing misses at basically point-blank range. Specter does this too? Did ranger Longbow 1 do this before the change cause I never noticed?
Glad to see the changes & good to know you guys are reading the feedback. Also any word on virtues being instant cast. Was the aiming issue of symbol of energy tweaked? Thanks. As others have said below can we please get an adjustment to the projectile speed of the bow?
Erhmm I think you mean what do we win Poor ranger yet another week goes by. I’m looking forward to thief more but ranger was one of the first to be announced…. I’m guessing engi will be last but thief is possible because it wasn’t even in trailer.
You know what would go along way in fixing thief? Bring back Shadows Arts & Acrobatics to what they were pre-patch. Also give us our vitality trait back maybe in Acro or SA instead. Pre-shadow arts is what mesmers have when they take Chaos and Dueling traitlines so why can’t we have this?
Non-thief player chiming in.
I actually think they should increase the revealed time, and buff other forms of thief survivability to compensate.
No no no. Increase reveal time? 4 seconds is long enough to get us killed. Not only that but our most efficient skills namely, Backstab, require stealth.
Thief and stealth is inherently bounded. Anet cannot expect to add a Reveal skill to half the professions AND expect Thieves to casually cope with this. Something has to be done, the more powerful the reveal, the weaker the Thief. This is a direct correlation.
Maybe they do need to rework on the Stealth mechanism like some of us are suggesting, but anyone who played thief just a few times would understand how deadly Reveal is most combats. For the Mesmer, Invisibility is optional, Trapper Ranger, Invisibility is clearly optional, I am pretty sure Stealth is not optional for the thief.
All those reveal mechanics makes me think Thief Elite spec with Staff will not have any invisibility skills.
That’s the point I was trying to get at, how would increasing the reveal time help at all? And as the post above me states initiative is not a spam to win system it’s just another form of cooldowns. Only people that play the profession enough can understand the consequences of changing certain aspects of thief gameplay.
Again you guys are assuming a thief that isn’t fighting is stealthed, if you’re always stealth you’re not doing anything…. You can’t capped while stealthed or do damage. Yes I’m up for adding up more ways than stealth that a thief can survive, but doing away with it completely is not an option.
We arnt always stealth, we use stealth to, do either or all, Heal, Removal Condi, Not to get hit with spike damage, and in general survive.
If we needed to get out of a situation and we are reveal, we are dead, if we need to remove that 9 burning and go to stealth, get revealed we re dead. If we needed to set up burst damage and get reveal, we cant burst.
Its going to get to the point stealth will almost be to hard to even use with to much counter play, Stealth doesnt need that much counter play.
But thief also doesnt need to be that dependent on stealth too.
I agree with you, that was intended for the others agreeing with Anet’s overuse of revealed.
Again you guys are assuming a thief that isn’t fighting is stealthed, if you’re always stealth you’re not doing anything…. You can’t capped while stealthed or do damage. Yes I’m up for adding up more ways than stealth that a thief can survive, but doing away with it completely is not an option.
Non-thief player chiming in.
I actually think they should increase the revealed time, and buff other forms of thief survivability to compensate.
To be frank, stealth shouldn’t be the default state you fall back to as soon as you’re not attacking. But thieves are so squishy and lacking in other forms of survivability that it seems they don’t have much of a choice but to do exactly that.
Revealing yourself should be something you commit to in combat, and stealth should be a precious resource you occasionally go into (“occasional” in the context of GW2 combat, is perhaps something to the effect of every 15 to 20 seconds on average). Forms of perma-stealth playstyles are just too unfun to play against and as such are unsuitable for an MMO.
You have to have very well developed stealth mechanics for them to be fun for all involved parties, which is necessary for any sort of multiplayer environment. But GW2 doesn’t have that, GW2 just has straight up invisibility on a cooldown.
Stealth in this game isn’t that bad, most players that have a hard time with it just need to learn the mechanics and then they will see it’s not as bad as they thought. Furthermore being revealed any longer then 3-4 seconds will drastically cripple a thief. Mesmers on the other hand can get the debuff but they have so many ways of surviving this will barely affect them.
I’ll never understand why people like the concept of an auramancer. The whole mechanic promotes face tanking and unskillful play. It basically screams “hey hit me so I can get the benefits of this aura surrounding me”. That just seems boring to me.
Now that Rev also has a Counter Stealth… aka Reveal for 5sec.
More and more classes are getting skills to reveal us. When is it too much for a thief? So just a Community question, Are we getting too much Counter Stealth?
Thief has only 3 ways to defend its self.
Evade
Blind
Stealth
Thief has ZERO
Blocks
Invuls
Resistance
I dont mind Counters to stealth, but giving a Reveal time LONGER than the actual normal reveal is what I dont like.
2 Things:
1. Our “blinds” (Cloaked in Shadow) are currently competing with health and initiative regen (Shadow’s Rejuvenation) for a grandmaster slot.
2. Our “evades” (Feline Grace + Endless Stamina) are currently a joke.
So the only thing we have left is stealth and they are slowly pushing us out of that by adding all these forms of reveal. My point is Anet doesn’t want thief to revolve around stealth but has not given us other mechanics that could increase our survivability.
The DH isn’t really that bad. I believe all the mechanics are in place the only things that need to be done are some bug fixes on the longbow skills, making virtues instant cast, fixing projectile speed of AA & some audio/visual adjustments.
Then we would have the options of:
Long range nuke / group support: Staff
Mid range damage / control: Scepter / Warhorn
Close range brawler / group support: Dagger / Dagger
Close range brawler / tank: Dagger / Focus
Burst: Scepter / Focus
I think that when you equip a warhorn your scepter range should be increased to 1200, making it a staff alternative. The 3 main hand skills would be more target specific than staff, and warhorn would give us the larger aoe tempest skills (which also need range increase and ground targeting for some of them). THen we could have traits that buffs the dagger or scepter in interesting ways, instead of it being a weak alternate to focus and dagger offhand.
As interesting as these ideas are, I hope they don’t base the spec around specter, that weapon needs a lot of work (they also need to decide whether it is a burst weapon or just utility). Don’t know why they didn’t do Tempest like necro where equipping the spec changes the auto attack of daggers, that alone would have significantly helped create the frontline playstyle they were going for.
As others have said great changes, glad to see our feedback mattered! My only bone to pick (pun intended) is the elite skill cooldown. This should be about 60 seconds if it wants to compete with lich or plague.
and that symbol port you mentioned. Also about the trait themes both Dragonhunter and Tempest seem to lack this. I believe following the themes will great increase the viability of the specialization and the various traits.