Guild Wars 2

Ember.4326:

He can’t dodge the cluster bomb while immobilized and surprise shot is a 2s immobilize.

Here’s for a regular opener, pre cast caltrops, steal into them, surprise shot, choking gas, cluster bomb. They either break immob and move away or teleport away or eat damage. Your heal stealths you. Refuge stealths you, steal from other thieves / some NPCs (blinding tuft) stealths you. Hitting 25% life stealths you. Plenty of ways to get surprise shots in to immobilize and then you can land cluster bombs. It is actually very reliable.

And I said earlier, if you trait into steal stealth, it works basicly as a stun breaker. It ports you away, it removes a condi, it makes you stealthed.

The d/d thief can try CnD, but you can just disabling shot that, he runs out of ini sooner than you. Yea he probably has a bow in 2nd set as well, but if he opens the fight with d/d out, he is gonna waste his ini without landing a blossom, then swap to bow and…autoattack for 300?

Duels are important for that build, you aren’t gonna hold a point since you rely on stealth, but you can pretty handily neutralize points, since your area denial is effective and normal node sized. Team fight presence is pretty good as well, since you aoe bleed everything on a node.

If you wanna compare games played that’s fine, I’ve about 1.1k games played as thief, 80%+ of that as condi.

As a sidenote, yes uncatchable isn’t all that good, best use is to dodge on top of someone you immobilized, or dodge on them while you are stealthed and shooting choking gas around, get some bleeds up while they can’t retaliate.

Good thieves try to make sure their attacks hit. Don’t act as if you’d dodge every single attack in the game with the help of your SB#3 and your infinit ini pool and stealth options. Your immobilize theory is easily countered by condition removal, stealth, blink, weapon dodges or just tanking it for the duration. You are pretty much wasting your defensive options for offensive purposes. You even suggest using steal against thieves – wow I’d only do that if I had no other option left for obvious reasons – oh wait you burn your stealth utility for immobilizes to land your cluster bombs, go steal thieves.
Oh I never said I wanted to compare played games or whatever. I brought this number in to give you a rogh picture of my own experience with the class since you assumed right away that I’m not familiar with the SB condition concept. In fact I’m not interested in any of those comparisons at all since they prove absolutely nothing. The fact that you misinterpretaed that statement but jumped right into that comparison just suits the way you bring forward your somewhat inconsistent and unsteady arguments.

Open a topic “How is shadow refuge stacking stealth not broken?”

Guard needs a target, mesmer/ele blink got heavy CD which means you’ll most likely not use those for mobility out of combat.
Anyway, the post was meant to point out how absurd this topic actually is.

Give all bunker builds free blinks please and give them perma swiftness without any investment. Game gonna be bunkered to death by 5 bunker team roster meta.

How are thieves going to use fear when there is no necro to steal it from?
Regarding the cast time – even though the actual cast time is only .5s iirc it takes about 2s for the effect to kick in. Any daze/knockdown/stun/launch/fear will interrupt that fear during those 2 seconds. After that you got 35-45s CD on your only class mechanic, good kitten. In larger scaled fights the chance to land that fear is probably only 50% unless you stealth.

Ember.4326:

I know stealth is not a stunbreaker, but say a situation, mesmer pops his clones, magic bullets and gets ready to shatter you, steal into one of his ranged clones, which stealths you, removes a condi (likely the immobilize he just leaped on you)and break target. Close enough for a stunbreak for me, his combo is ruined, I’m out, in stealth, ready to immobilize and bleed him.

And yea, the bleed is shorter duration from clusters, but you can actually land them. If you haven’t tried the bow build out, then you don’t know how hard it can roll on blossom thieves, they will never ever land a blossom in 1v1, instead they are rooted and eat bombs. He can blossom you 3-4 times, you can evade 6-8 times a row. Then he is at range, crippled.

Dunno, it’s just something you have to try out youself to see. I’ve seen maybe 2 other thieves play it out with bow, so it’s not something you run into everyday and can make easy comparisons, my best advice is to try it out. 0/0/30/20/20, take things that buff stealth, ini regain, steal. Dodgetrops naturally. And unlike unicorn build, you don’t rely on weapon swapping at all. You can play 100% bow if you want. I use d/p in 2nd for some utility for stomps (blinds) and daze from headshot for things like guardian books.

Fighting an ele bunker with ether renewal with any condi build is pointless though, you need back up for that from a burst class.

To land cluster bomb bleeds you need to be in melee range. If you are not close to your target it’s super easy to dodge – alot easier than DB.
DB is as fine as any other melee attack in terms of hit rate. As your enemy reads your movements and predicts your attacks so can you predict his dodges or just pressure him into wasted dodges without burning your whole initiative.

SB is totally fine. I use it alot. In fact I got my Sigil of Corruption in my SB. I’d never run without that weapon because it brings too much utility. D/D is still better in terms of damage + daggers complement the SB quite well. They key is to anticipate the battle to swap weapons accordingly.

I’d also like you to refrain from your lecturing tone. I’ve played more than 1k games on a condition thieves. I’ve been trying a lot of builds with a lot of gear sets and be sure I’ve tried using SB as main weapon but it doesn’t even come close to a well played thief using merits of both SB and D/D.

Somehing that is really puzzling me is that you bring up a thief#build1 vs thief#build2 argument. You make it sound as if thieves have unlimited immobilize/stealth-waste options which is completely false. You also make it sound as if other thieves wouldn’t use a bow. Thieves using daggers have better stealth options than SB thieves. Having that in mind landing hits isn’t hard. The most important thing to add at this point might be that standing far away from a node does not capture the node for your team.
Anyway, regardless of the fact that SB condition thieves aren’t that hard to counter, I really wonder how you got the idea to determine the overall viability of a class/build by anticipating the outcome of a duel.

As a side note,when you are aware of the fact that stealth does not break stun, then please don’t claim that it would do that. The damage mitigating effect in your scenario doesn’t come from stealth but rather from steal for the most part.
As a second side note, Uncatchable is still pretty bad.

Katsumoto.9452:

This ability keeps not working since the last patch. I put it down having used NO stealth attacks. As in, I was visible fighting and hadn’t use say, sneak attack recently at all. So I put it down and it says i’m immune to the stealth till the last second of the refuge house being up.

It’s as if putting down refuge puts the revealed debuff on me sometimes?

Stealth triggering seems to be buggy a bit. When you receive too many hits in a short period of time then stealth will just fail and revealed will be triggered instead. Happens alot against rangers and sometimes against mesmers as well.
A good way to increase success rate is to dodge before using a stealth ability.

Make sure there aren’t any travelling projectiles of yours like bouncing arrows or something around – if stealth kicks in during projectile travelling it’s going to be broken once the projectile hits.

Disabling auto attack as already suggested is a good advice. Prevents you from unintended revealed triggers.

@Ember: Cluster Bomb’s bleeds only tick 4s while DB bleeds tick 10s. DB also grants evasion while applying bleeds. If you want to play a condition build you gotta swap weapons alot to achieve best results.
Btw, stealth is not a stunbreaker since stun/daze do not count as conditions. (AoE)Blind does mitigate incoming dmg while being stunned/dazed though.

I don’t see condition theieves wrecking bunkers either. There is no way you gonna beat either bunker necro or ele. This isn’t going to happen unless the bunker is playing the game for the first time. Shout guardians are extremely tough but theoretically doable at least. Meditation guardians and engis have a hard time against condition thieves and that’s it.

Everything about thief is op!!!1

Holy kitten get better and stop complaining.

There is alot of false information in this thread.
First, the Uncatchable trait is horrible compared to the utility skill. The Caltrops from this trait last for roughly 2s and the AoE is alot smaller. The effective hit rate on an enemy is incredibly small to even take this trait into account for any “Thieves are op” argument. To get at least a noticible effect from this trait you’d have to run a build that highly relies on primary dodges (using stamina). This will kitten your char’s potential to stack more conditions.
The Caltrops utility skill doesn’t instantly stack 20 bleeds on its own. In fact the skill itself can keep up ~8 stacks of bleeds by itself unless you run with massive condition duration which again is terrible for almost every possible situation in the whole game.

Caltrops don’t cover the whole point as some people suggest. The field covers ~70-80% of it. When it comes to graveyard@foefire it’s almost useless.

The funniest about this thread is that some people bring up necros here. They got per se more survivability, have a more reliable way to apply bleeds and apply way more conditions than thieves which makes it alot harder to remove their bleeds.

People whining about Caltrops or condition thieves in general should just try them and run some tournaments to get a better insight. Playing condition thief is comparable to playing BS thief player skill wise. You can achieve good results on low to moderate skill level but it takes alot to master it due to lots of condition counters in the game.

Steal is just awesome. There are tons of traits related to it as well. It’s just not as usefull in PvE but hey, GW2’s PvE experience is one of the worst in MMO history.

GlockworK.2954:

We can use Backstab twice (due to the cast time) with perfect timing coming out of stealth. It’s rather hard to land a .5 second cast with latency, let alone WvW so I’d say you were just unlucky.

It doesn’t happen very often, I’ve been practicing on PvE mobs lately trying to get the timing down.

This.
In case this post didn’t make it clear here is some further explanation.

Backstab has a cast time of .25s and an animation time which add up to a ~.5s time frame. If you time your BS that the stealth buff wears off within that time frame the revealed debuff will not be triggert even though your BS landed. This actually gives you the chance to restealth and BS a second time. As GlockworK already pointed out, this is rather hard to pull off.

Combat log doesn’t tell you his state. It just tells you that you’re hitting the thief or not.
If this thread is about sPvP/tPvP just check the kill history at the right side of your screen. If it’s about WvW then you have to guess. Figure out the thief’s build and gear and “guess” how much dmg he can take until he’s down.

milo.6942:

BringBackMonks.7068:

I lose at least four or five 2v1 fights because the first guy I down gets right back up, usually because thieves don’t have cc.

I don’t think that’s a coincidence.
edit: hey actually thieves have stealth stomp, what are you smoking man?

Stealth stomp doesn’t make his stomp faster than the res. Downed state is fine, the res is just way too strong.

Eles and Necros are probably the worst enemies for thieves

I made the same observation.
In fact I never got bugged so far unless I looked at the score board.

Pick whatever fits your playstyle most and what’s more benefitial for your team. If you lack direct dmg and if being a glass cannon is fun for you roll power build. If your team lacks condition dmg and if you like more survivability roll condition build.
There are always counter builds against any possible build anyway.

Lord needs HP and dmg buff. At the current state it’s mad easy to solo it. The adds are cake as well. I usually just go in, pull all the adds and melt them together with the lord.

Depends on your roll in your team. Play whatever is needed.
I personally find SB power build pretty annoying in 3v3 or larger scaled fights.
Condition thieves are pretty awesome in handicap fights.

Rieselle.5079:

I havent tested it myself, but I think the ideal system would be for the stomp and the res to be roughly equal in time.

Thus, whoever reaches the downed player first, would win.

You always have a stomp available, and similarly, the enemy always has their res available. So the situation can be tipped in favour of one side or the other if either of you has some interrupt skills available to use.

If you count in the heal of the downed player then res time is shorter than stomp cast time. It already happened to me that the enemy was rallied even though his ally started ressing after I started my stomp cast.
Also keep in mind that some classes have very limited access to interrupts depending on their build and/or weapon set. I’ve also seen people using stability to res. Your only chance then would be quickness.

Basically everything mentioned in this thread to secure a stomp (such as blind/stealth/aegis/stability) is meaningless if the effective res time is shorter than the stomp time.

By game design flaws I mean stomp time being longer than res time and res hps (counting downed#4 in) being higher than avg sustained dps. You don’t even need to interrupt a stomp, just res to save your mate. How can you call that coordination?
Rallying team mates 7 times in a row doesn’t put someone clearly winning a 1v2 under pressure.

I think you’re supposed to report that to ANet directly instead of revealing that to public.

It happened just yesterday that I had to down a Warrior and a Guardian 7 times in a 1v2 before I could stomp them both at the same time because I managed to down the second one while he was trying to res. This needs to be fixed because it’s just frustrating to be unable to stomp because of game design flaws.

Asum.4960:

Malicious.6742:

I usually win far point races against warris on foefire. I don’t know what you’re talking about. Thieves’ mobility is by far the very best in the game. Infiltrator’s Arrow is way too strong in terms of mobility even though it’s expensive.

Last time i checked mobility in a game based around combat isn’t measured in “who gets the fastest from point A to point B”, but overall (combat) performance.

What use is getting to point B very quickly, but not being able to do anything once you reach it (except in a racing game, where the goal IS in fact to reach point B, but again, GW 2 isn’t a racing game, it’s a combat based RPG)?

Movement speed is of major importance at the current state. Whoever captures a point first bunkers it to win the game. Also fights are usually won by the team that brings more players to a single point. Yet again it’s about traveling speed in order to hold points.

If you want to talk about in-combat mobility then thieves still have way better options than warriors on almost every weapon set – ofc at cost of initiative but that’s another story. Moreover thieves got utility skills like Shadow Step or the class mechanic Steal to offer incredible in-combat mobility

I usually win far point races against warris on foefire. I don’t know what you’re talking about. Thieves’ mobility is by far the very best in the game. Infiltrator’s Arrow is way too strong in terms of mobility even though it’s expensive.

I agree that Quickness stomp is way too strong. Especially Rangers with on-demand Quickness on pet swap are god stompers. That probably makes up for being the most underpowered class in the game currently.
I disagree with Deception being the second best. In fact it’s easily countered by interupting the stomp yourself and recast it. Since it has a cast time the Mesmer most likely will use it once you begin to cast the stomp. Since you start casting your stomp again while the Memsmer is casting his downed#2 he will pop up before you finished your cast. In like 80% of the cases he will appear close enough to let the stomp work.

Necro downed#3 is bad I agree. This #2 is strong but can be countered with shadow steps which some classes have access to.
I personally find Guardian skill set way too strong. Guardians are hard to down in the first place. In downed state they get a massive knockback (can be countered with blind/block/stability I know), they got perma retaliation, downed#3 is an AoE heal which heals allies and himself and even #1 is a channeled skill that follows the enemy’s movement. Very strong compared to other classes.

Raytek.6193:

Quickness Stomp
Stability Stomp
Knockback
Knockdown
Stun
Daze
Damage the downed enemy

Problem?

This does not really solve the problem except for Quickness. When winning a 1v2 people usually don’t have any interrupts left. Some classes don’t even have access to interrupts unless they run a specific weapon set. Stability will never ever help because ally res+player heal will rally the enemy faster than the stomp is cast.
Damaging the downed enemy only helps if you can outdmg the heal which is hardly possible on condition builds and therefore just favours burst builds yet again.

For those bringing up class balance here, I’d like to point out that this is not supposed to be a discussion about downed skill balance. Even if all classes had the same skills or no skills at all in downed state the issues described in this thread would still exist.

no
/15char 123456

Personally I like the down state concept because it’s adds more complexity to the game but there are certain issues connected to it.

First, the recent change of the respawn timer. Fixed 15s respawn timer starting after being finished simply destroys the whole idea for ~50% of the fight.
When there is no chance to get a res from a team mate trying to stay alive is absolutely pointless and will effectively prolong the respawn timer. In fact enemies might just tap you every 5s to interrupt your heal and let you die as slowly as possible.

Quick ideas how to fix this:
•let the timer start once a player enter downed state; set it to 20s
•implement respawn waves every 20s

The second issue concerns ressing and stomping. Ressing a player that does not receive any dmg takes exactely as long as stomping him. This means that you basically can’t win a 1v2 against half capable players unless you kill them both at the same time or unless you can outdmg the heal. If it is a 1v3 it’s just ridiculous how fast a downed player is back on his feet.
Some people might argue “hey you’re not supposed to win a 1v2 or a 1v3 and it’s team pvp” but actually people “win” those handicap matches quite often or at least they would win if res wasn’t that strong. Down state interrupts/knock downs/stealth and kitten just makes it even harder. Long story short: ally res is way too strong while self res is way too underpowered.

Quick ideas how to fix this:
•reduce ally res-heal efficiency by 30%
•reduce ally res-heal efficiency by 50% and make self-heal uninterruptable (at least with normal hits)
•leave efficiencies and just reduce starting hp percentage while adding 50% to the total downed state hp to make up for the hp loss

Feel free to add ideas/thoughts about this. In case you disapprove and feel like the current state is fine please write down you arguments as well.

Edit: This is not supposed to be a discussion about downed skill balance, please keep that in mind. Even if all classes had the same skills or no skills at all in downed state the issues described in this thread would still exist.

I combine Lyssa with Daggerstorm in PvP but usually boons are applied after the DS has ended :o

Whatever, concerning PvE I’d probably go with Ruby Orbs for direct dmg or Undead Runes for condition dmg. Probably not the very best but realiable and cheap.

Once again it happens when you look at the score board when you’re dead and waiting for the respawn timer. Just don’t check the score and you’ll be fine.
/thread

Don’t look at the score boards when you’re dead. Shouldn’t happen then.

Wow I’ve seen dungeon groups looking for members that must not play with any kind of minion. ANet is destroying the entire game in almost every aspect :/

Don’t look at the score board when you’re dead and waiting your effing 20s to respawn. Shouldn’t happen then.

This game needs competitive larged scaled GvG in addition to the current sPvP/tPvP and WvW. Moreover tPvP needs to become complex, right now it’s friggin simple.

I’ve never seen a thief stacking massive stealth to ninja the boss. IIRC stealth is caped at 15s anyway. It also not like you have to fight the boss on the spot and it’s not like you have to fight it once you know there is an enemy around. There are teams that almost never lose a boss. There might be a reason for it which is not “lulz they neva play against theifs”.

Traveling arrows/daggers can break it you stealth even though they’ve been fired/thrown before the actual stealth skill that would instantly cancel. (I assume that’s the issue here, stealth skill not working due to unexpected revealed triggering or whatsoever)

Moreover, there is obviously a bug with Blinding Powder. If too many attacks connect to you character it will fail to stealth you for some weird reason+triggering revealed. This is often the case against rangers.

Ranger

15char

Amonde Daneren.2380:

• Mesmer Clones
• Ranger Pets
• Elementalist Golems
• Guardian Spirit Weapons
• Necro Pets

Will all steal your buffs and healing. It’s silly and frustrating since they don’t even benefit properly from them. Kitten, mesmer clones can’t even benefit from the regen and fury that they should be getting from traits.

I came across this last night in 5v5 sPvP. There was a random Minion Necro in my team. I casted Shadow Refuge with me being at the edge of it.
Result: Necros+minions got stealth and I was still visible. -______-

It actually affects every class ther eis in the game not only Guardians. You might even end up not getting buffs/heals yourself. This change completely destroys the idea of playing a support build.

ANet needs to put in priorities for players, caster and party members because we simply can’t target our stuff as it is possible in other games people are familiar with.

Btw there is already a thread on general GW2 forums
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/AoE-Buffing-Healing/first#post775876

With the current game design I’d personally never go without Caltrops because it covers like 80% of a small node and therefore offers great ground control (probably the best gc skill in the game). It’s also a little semi-safe zone for you. Tank melee dmg while standing in your own Caltrops. It can also combined with Scorpion Wire of Thieves Guild. Short Bow offers a 2s immobilize which can be combined with Caltrops.

Sure against good players the skill is not as effective but it helps alot to keep him under control. It really shines in larger scaler fights like 3v3.

Since Nov 15 Patch not only healing is limited to 5 people but every single AoE support skill in the game is. If you’re partied and in a huge zerg in PvE or WvW it might be the case none of your party members gets your buffs. In fact you might even end up not getting buffs/heals yourself.
Since GW 2 doesn’t allow accurate applying of support as in other games this change pretty much destroys all the support builds there are and therefore reduce variety in the game.

ANet should at least add priorities to their support skills (if not revert that whole change back). The caster should always be affected as well as the party.
If it was just healing it would probably be okay but applying this change to every group supportive aspect of the game can’t be intended by ANet.

Discuss.

I recall a dev stating that there are new stat combinations. So will we get items with something like Toughness/Vitality/Healing power on them?
Anyone got an item with new combinations yet?

Shadow Arts IV trait removes up to 2 conditions on stealth.
Hide in Shadows/Pain Response trait remove damaging conditions.
Withdraw/Roll for Initiative remove movement restricting conditions.
Signet of Agility removes a condition when used.
Shadow Step cursed 3 conditions.
Prayer to Kormir (human only) removes 3 conditions in WvW and PvE.
Sigil of Purity – 60% chance to remove a condition on crits.
6x Runes of Lyssa remove all conditions when using an elite skill.

I think that’s not even all of the possibilities there is. Just get a bit higher and use whatever fits your style and needs.

The obstructed/outof rage whatsoever kitten is ofc a terrible bug.

BUT phantasms being dodged is totally fine to me. Mesmer was pretty ez to play before as far as effective skill chaining is concerned. From now on you have to pay attention to your enemy and his moves in order to make your attacks hit. That’s basically how it should be regardless of the specific effects (AE/ST).

A good Mesmer can still achieve quite some burst dmg and still maintain a good survivability. It’s just not that easy anymore which is totally fine to me.

If it had been like that since the beginning this thread wouldn’t even exist.

You might want to get some Tough/Prec/ConDmg on some pieces.

The heal is around 300 HP every 10s. Not much tbh.
Then again lots of sigils need a decent crit chance to be worth using and sigil of water might be among the few viable options left for your build.
I don’t know if those stats are form PvP or WvW and I don’t know your weapon sets/source of dmg either.
There are quite some good combinations that are more defensively. Lyssa runes synergize really well with our low CD heals+Daggerstorm/Basilisk Venom. They some minor Precision to slightly increase crit rate to a decent level to make 10s crit proc sigils worth a try. Sigil of Purity is pretty good if you play defensively. (60% to remove a condition on crit – 10s CD)
Since you build around survivability a stacking sigil such as bloodlust or whatsoever is mendatory.
If you wanna use 2x the same weapon set (e.g. 2x shortbow) consider proc on weapon switch sigils. Geomancy is pretty nice to apply 3 AoE bleeds for 7s. Those sigils break stealth on proc though.

I don’t know why they buffed it that much. Blinding Powder was absolutely fine before as far as skill design is concerned. It’s pretty bugged though because it doesn’t stealth you and triggers revealed right away when you get hit at the same time you use the skill.

Even with 60s CD (48 traited) the skill offered much more utility than most people would think.
The instant AoE Blind is extremely strong. It can be used to stomp certain classes and make their interrupts miss and it can be used to counter bursts. It reduces incoming spike dmg you receive while being stunned/immob’d. Moreover, it’s an AoE stealth which cures up to 2 conditions (if traited) and heals you (if traited).

There is no other utility skill that is actually that versatile. Reducing the CD of it just makes it even more powerful. Once they fix the bug it might be overpowered because it gets 100% reliable then

Wait, he’s dominating BS thieves using all the different means of utility he got. How is that proof of the game’s imbalance? I don’t know why you’re bringing up raw dmg numbers here. If the thief hits a 6k Crit every 5s while the necro hits ~1.5k every second the necro’s overall damage done respectively DPS is significantly higher. (those numbers are just made up to make my point clear)
It’s a pity this vid hasn’t been done earlier. I would’ve posted it on every single QQ thread about BS thieves telling people to get better and play like this.

Pretty awesome vid. Any chance you’re an EU player and open for some sparring duels?