Guild Wars 2

Toxsa.2701:

MidoriMarch.8067:

@DarkSyze.8627

u are the 1 whos joking LOL…

in order to get that amount of damage on thief u have to basically sacrifice most of defensive stats to get that number and it forces u to use assassin’s signet which basically tells that if u cannot kill the opponent in 1 combo chain u will get screwed and so obvious that build is squishy as hell.

Umm, after the patch you don’t sacrifice anything. Your stats are all moved to gears, and you only need Deadly Art for that damage.

It would actually still require crit strikes to get the might from signets required for that build. Nothing has changed about that build except that the signet traits and executioner are now in separate lines. Not to mention lead strikes is crit damage now, not just damage. Whoa this build might have been nerfed slightly. :P

Zero Day.2594:

Man, now all we’re missing are Sandeskul and Burnfall.

Don’t forget Columba too.

Einlanzer.1627:

Maugetarr.6823:

Einlanzer.1627:

Death Blossom is fine, even bordering on OP in conjunction with certain utilities. Despite what many people think, it’s actually more effective at bleed layering than even SB is. It’s crazy effective in PvE and only lacks in efficacy in PvP due to the lack of buffer conditions on the set. D/D is intended to be a versatile set, which is good because the only other melee option, S/x, is not.

As stated, the only problem with Death Blossom is that it’s the only major source of condition damage on D/D since Poison was nerfed into oblivion before the launch of the game. This is actually a problem with Poison (or D/D’s condition in general) and not with Death Blossom. Even then it’s not as much of a problem as people think if you build around it.

Regardless, poison buffs are likely to come in HoT that will help address this.

It’s not just that there’s limited condis on D/D, it’s the pre/post cast and the very short evade frames of DB. If it were made more controllable and useful as an evade, it would be powerful in both a power and condi setup, possibly bringing D/D up to something like S/D.

Well I certainly wouldn’t oppose such a change. My only opposition would be converting it to a power skill.

Yeah, I’m not supporting changing its power scaling especially when you’re going to be able to stack poison damage in the near future (strongly hinted at) and when I have used P/D+D/D to great effect. I’m just trying to make it useful for both types of users. This might also allow it to work well with how the devs imagined the new FG working.

Toxsa.2701:

babazhook.6805:

Toxsa.2701:

Impact.2780:

SA isn’t OP currently. If it were, most thieves would be running it.

Shadow’s Rejuvenation heals more than Mug. Stealth can miss and steal can miss, so missing excluded, Shadow’s Rejuvenation has more potential healing. It is a healing trait. That is its purpose. It is there to heal you when you need it, and to not be utilized when it is not needed, thus, in a fight it can just as easily heal less than mug as it can heal more.

The issue:
1) Thieves don’t take Mug for a heal. The heal can save us, and it’s a nice addition, but it’s taken primarily for the extra spike damage. You also pick up an extra 100 power at the cost of 2 trait points. Shadow’s Rejuvenation does not deal any damage, and getting it costs 2-6 points depending on how much it contributes to your investment into that trait line. You gain no offensive stats, only toughness and healing power which benefits regeneration if you take it, and Shadow’s Rejuvenation itself – thief heal skills scale poorly with healing power.
2) With more power and spike, you may take a few hits less due to killing your opponent that much faster – that is damage not taken. Avoiding damage while fighting is more beneficial than taking it and trying to heal through it.
3) To receive the heal from Mug, you must only land Steal which you would do anyway. To heal from Shadow’s Rejuvenation, you must stop dealing damage to sit in stealth, giving your opponent time to recover as well.
4) If Shadow’s Rejuvenation does indeed heal less than Mug would have in a fight, then it does not mean it is less healing than Mug, it just means you didn’t need the trait in that fight, which means it was wasted. Mug is never wasted.

Thieves don’t run SA “currently” for several reasons:

1. The offensive traits are scattered between Critical Strike and Deadly Art. Anet solved the problem by moving all the good traits to Deadly Art, and make Critical Strike neglitable, so thief only ever need to choose DA now (unless you’re in PVE)

2. Thief is one of the classes that benefits the most from choosing 3 full traitlines. Thief couldn’t choose SA currently only because they lack trait points to go BOTH offensive and defensive. Now with 3 full lines, they’re able to go offensive and defensive at the same time, thus making SA’s defensive much more accessible.

3. Combine the feature of DA becomes the to-go trait and Critical strike becomes not needed at all, thief can easily grab full SA without any consequence or drawback. They can be even more survival with the newly buffed Acro or stay to their pvp/wvw trickery.

4. Anet basically makes SA a brain-dead traitline by giving you EVERYTHING, without the need of making choices. You get even MORE regen from going to stealth, you get initiative, you get -50% damage, you get cleanse all in one build, no choice has to be made. (Unless you want to go for the new venom build, and ONLY if you go for venom build)

5. All trait stats are merged to gears, so thief wouldn’t “sacrifice” dps to go for SA. Thieves are reluctent of choosing SA currently ONLY because they need to keep their dps by choosing critical strike and grab all the steal traits, that they don’t have points for SA. After the stat change, thief does not need to worry about losing dps anymore.

Consider all the factors above, that’s why the new SA will become OP.

Criticize me all you like, I understand thief player will like themselves to be OP in future. Who wouldn’t want their main class to be OP?

Yet in another post you claim you can kill virtually any thief outside one very specific build.

I do not see any of your concerns are credible given, in spite of significant enhancements to rangers you ask for yet more even as you claim thieves will be OP.

In short it all self serving and no real concern for balance. You want your ranger to be able to kill that last specific build with the same success you claim you have with all the others.

Yet you show 0 example as to why it’s not credible, proving you’re even less credible than me. People in the forum, especially those white knight defender of the class tend to disregard other people’s point of view by providing nothing, derilling the topic to something else (like other people’s post in other sub-forum), despite we already given our reasoning in great detail,

It doesn’t matter though. My reasonings are to be shown to the developers, not you.

Listen to the devs on this

Einlanzer.1627:

Death Blossom is fine, even bordering on OP in conjunction with certain utilities. Despite what many people think, it’s actually more effective at bleed layering than even SB is. It’s crazy effective in PvE and only lacks in efficacy in PvP due to the lack of buffer conditions on the set. D/D is intended to be a versatile set, which is good because the only other melee option, S/x, is not.

As stated, the only problem with Death Blossom is that it’s the only major source of condition damage on D/D since Poison was nerfed into oblivion before the launch of the game. This is actually a problem with Poison (or D/D’s condition in general) and not with Death Blossom. Even then it’s not as much of a problem as people think if you build around it.

Regardless, poison buffs are likely to come in HoT that will help address this.

It’s not just that there’s limited condis on D/D, it’s the pre/post cast and the very short evade frames of DB. If it were made more controllable and useful as an evade, it would be powerful in both a power and condi setup, possibly bringing D/D up to something like S/D.

I hope if it’s rifle that it’s medium-high sustained damage with good utility so you can maintain pressure and save initiative for actual counterplay instead of the the initiative dump that is P/P.

Zero Day.2594:

Azure The Heartless.3261:

Zero Day.2594:

Wait. Not even!
It’s the melee rangers that are the strongest spec for 1v1’ing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPS21-PMbh0

Man, and ANet’s giving buffs to both necros and rangers. We should go and raise awareness about how OP those classes are.

No, that’s just Charrmagedon/GW Fox.

He needs a nerf.

No dude, it clearly represents all ranger players. Here I will link some more videos to convenience you.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gK2hQFrU0hc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKjR6DhC-Yg

kitten rangers. So OP.

Man it’s just sickening to watch how ANet allowed such unfair, challenge-less, and OP things to go on in their game.

Well, if Anet is taking suggestions, I’d still like o
the evade to be increased but the skill to be changed to something akin to whirlwind attack (warrior GS #3). The skill shot factor would limit how OP the skill would be then while allowing the skill to be useful for either power or condi.

@nightblood

IIRC they mentioned maybe boosting the base rate again.

found it: https://youtu.be/WPqYpcteqac?t=3960

They wanted to remove the regen traits and roll more into baseline…. which makes quick pockets a weird contradiction like you were saying. If they would make you able to swap weapons every 5 seconds and gain 1 initiative on swap, that would be pretty cool and really add some versatility to thief.

Jana.6831:

Maugetarr.6823:

Even if you arent nomalizing the heal over the over the cooldown which clears up the confusion here, you can’t get mug 4 times in a minute. The trait line increases the steal regeneration rate while SoH reduces the CD leading to a steal time of 35×0.8÷1.3=21.53. The heal from mug is 1980 without healing power, and is only 2160 if you have 300 in shadow arts. This is only 92 health per second. Since taking shadow refuge gives you 300 healing power from the line, the minimum healing healing you’ll get is 323 per second. With the base initiative pool you could maintain a 50% stealth uptime with no other utilities or traits, so we’ll use that as the maximum uptime (pistol 5, 2 leaps). So 323×0.5 =161.5. To see where the % uptime would yield the same average heal per second, we’ll rearrange to 92÷323×100=% uptime=28.5% uptime of stealth being the crossover point where it heals more than mug. Conflating the argument with shadow refuge (the utility) doesn’t have anything to do with the argument.

Tldr:
mug maxes out at 92 hps with SoH included
Shadows rejuvenation maxes out at 161.5 hps with no other traits or utilities (Assuming OH pistol so you’re not reliant on CnD for stealth)

Ok, so maybe we should make a new topic with all possibilities – traits, bloodlust or not if in wvw, buffs from allies, when a healing skill was used,what healing skill was used etc.
Thanks for the attempt to bring some facts into this. You’re right, it takes slightly longer than 20 s to steal with a full line of trickery and SoH, so it’s 3 steals (in the first minute) for thieves with a full line of trickery and 2 for thieves without anything in trickery. = 2000*3 +2100 = 8100 for trickery thieves, 2200*2 = 4400 +2100 = 6500 for 26600 thieves who also likely have Shadow Rejuvenation.
You guys complained that I was making an ideal situation of my mug thief but didn’t realize that I also made an ideal situation of my D/D 06620 thief. I rarely ever stay stealthed for full 15 seconds or for full 4 seconds, my CnD misses more often than I like, so I usually don’t get the 13k potential healing, I think 10350 is the best I can hope for (2 s stealthed for 5 times) and that isn’t that much more than the 8100 from mug with trickery and that’s my point.
The “health per second” is potential health per second, while Shadow Rejuvenation really heals per second, mug doesn’t, so I have to be stealthed to gain health with Shadow Rejuvenation, wheras I get my “full healing” with one skill (steal) with mug – it’s more risky to have to wait to heal, don’t you think?

And if you want to prove me wrong don’t write “Too long, didn’t read” makes no sense =)

Other people might not want to read through a big block of text.

For the life of me I cant figure out where the extra 2100 in the “2000*3 +2100” comes from. The most mug will produce is 5940 health in a minute. If you can stealth for 18-19 seconds total in a minute, you’ll get 5814-6197 health with shadow rejuvenation.

DeceiverX.8361:

Shadow Arts is going to be so totally busted that you don’t even need the blind; there’s a built-in 50% damage reduction while stealthed from the minor 5 pt.

Also, if you want to play sustain-based D/X, play D/P. D/D is meant for damage. I’ll take my executioner + Hidden killer on signet stab but the sad fact is that a thief traited into SA can now get out-played and win/eat damage anyways because of 50% damage reduction while stealthed.

ANet’s not helping their case in regards to what will be future thief nerfs because of this ridiculous amount of sustain which requires skill to counterplay remotely well from stealth alone. Now it’ll be largely build-based.

Here’s a thought. Move RoS to the GM Major slot and roll it into CiS. Choosing between RoS/CiS and SRej feels more like an equal choice then.

Even if you arent nomalizing the heal over the over the cooldown which clears up the confusion here, you can’t get mug 4 times in a minute. The trait line increases the steal regeneration rate while SoH reduces the CD leading to a steal time of 35×0.8÷1.3=21.53. The heal from mug is 1980 without healing power, and is only 2160 if you have 300 in shadow arts. This is only 92 health per second. Since taking shadow refuge gives you 300 healing power from the line, the minimum healing healing you’ll get is 323 per second. With the base initiative pool you could maintain a 50% stealth uptime with no other utilities or traits, so we’ll use that as the maximum uptime (pistol 5, 2 leaps). So 323×0.5 =161.5. To see where the % uptime would yield the same average heal per second, we’ll rearrange to 92÷323×100=% uptime=28.5% uptime of stealth being the crossover point where it heals more than mug. Conflating the argument with shadow refuge (the utility) doesn’t have anything to do with the argument.

Tldr:
mug maxes out at 92 hps with SoH included
Shadows rejuvenation maxes out at 161.5 hps with no other traits or utilities (Assuming OH pistol so you’re not reliant on CnD for stealth)

Have it drop smokescreen. It will protect you, won’t reveal you, and can be leap/blast finished.

Scootabuser.4915:

Thanks for re-iterating everything, every post on the forums have been saying. DA is so strong that EVERY build will take it and that’s bad for variety.

Well, they shouldn’t make it weaker, they just need to make it CS more interesting to be competitive. I mean you’ve got 1/3 of the choices in the CS line just flat benefits to different things. DA has flat benefits (if a condition is met) that’s universal like a power or damage boost to all skills, not just dual skills here and precision buffs if behind/side there. Maybe boon destruction or blinding on crits could be the way to go. That could make it worth taking as a complimentary line or even instead of DA depending on what you’re fighting.

I wish they’d make last refuge pop smokescreen. That way it wouldn’t reveal you, could add defense, and you could always leap/blast finish it.

I did like the part where they guy sort of poked fun at “Teef OP” and said if you’re complaining about thief you obviously don’t play one.

In case you wanted a link directly to the thief portion of the AMA video:

enjoy

DarkSyze.8627:

Shatters.7315:

DarkSyze.8627:

Something about a car race in poor english which i couldnt fully understand

Only thing you are forgetting is the fact that stealth users cant attack. Compare stealth to, for example, a shoutbow warrior.

Thief regens ~300hp/second, excluding his heal skill. Thief cant attack but can still get damage by any player that has half a brain.

Warrior regens ~400HP/second, excluding shouts. Warrior can still attack and damage the thief.

While in stealth, the thief (or other classes with stealth) CANT DO ANYTHING besides positioning himself better. He can still get hit very easly, and it doesnt require much to drop a thief.

English is my 2nd language: obviously

You can not compare a warrior to a thief. Warrior have responsibility and duty for them-self and for the team/party. Warrior duty and responsibility is to sacrifice their life for the party and team. That is why majority of commanders are warriors: they stay behind and die for their team and party.

That is why i agree with warrior having high regens and high damage.

In the moment: i do not see what responsibility and duty thief have because all they do is stealth and instant kill and run away and restart fight over again with no risk or consequence but reward only for hiding while like the other profession take risk for them-self and others while visible except for elementalists profession and engineer profession

Suggestion: Remove all skills, mechanics and traits conditions while thief in stealth.

In my opinion: thief is a selfish profession: not a team player profession and that need to change.

-Thief should have been one of the most challenging and fun profession in the game-

-see

ReadyUp32

Can we just roll concealed defeat into last refuge so that you drop smokescreen on hitting 25% health instead of BP?

Always thought that it was part of the counterplay to stealth. It’s been that way since the game came out as far as I know.

Azure The Heartless.3261:

mango.9267:

*Even if you decided to spec into acro, you have hard to catch, which is getting a pretty substantial buff, or you have swinder’s equilibrium, which is kittening amazing. Imagine how easy it is to evade random AoE in a team fight, and now imagine shaving off 1s on steal every time you do (with only 1s ICD). That is just borderline OP.

I don’t understand how any thief can QQ about these changes.

This.

I dont care that I dont get endurance back on dodge now, if I evade anything I get vigor, and I have a trait that lets me do it when swiftness is applied, which is, conveniently, every time I steal.

That’s fine and dandy. I don’t really mind the change to feline grace. The problem lies in the the new grandmaster minor trait which is too weak for the trait it replaces. At a 20% boost to the effectiveness of vigor, you’ll get a dodge back in 4.54 seconds as opposed to 5. That’s 1 extra dodge over regular vigor every 50 seconds, assuming 100% vigor uptime. That’s extremely weak compared to some of the other GM minors and paltry compared to the other defensive line’s GMm.

DontPaniC.8740:

Vavume.8065:

Starsurfer.7209:

Vavume.8065:

Cloaked in shadow is a worthy GM trait if you play zerk DD, try playing without it, you really cant. I feel that most of this whine is coming from thieves who do not play zerk DD and haven’t realised how important it actually is.

Oh we realize how important it is… So much so that we also realize that forcing us to choose between it and another even more essential trait for D/D builds isn’t fair, since the weapon set was already struggling to stand out.

And let’s be real… You’re saying it’s totally fine where it is? Seriously sit down and ask yourself if the D/D build you use would be even remotely as effective as it currently is without the sustain from Shadow’s Rejuvenation, especially when compared to other sets that DO have SR because they (unlike D/D) don’t need CiS.

Ive played zerk DD since release, and have never needed to go 6 into SA for shadow rejuv, it is a crutch, most people know that, so nothing to ask myself, I can play without it very easily, blinding a 9k evi is far more important than sitting in stealth letting your hp regen, fact is if you spending to much time in stealth as a DD you are doing it wrong anyway…

Can you really say that without having shadow refuge on your bar as a crutch?

Well, I play mainly D/D acro without any stealth on my bar. They’re nerfing acro though, so we’ll see how that goes. It’s sort of the same principle though, having that one extra doge to not get hit by the 9k eviscerate which would take ~18 seconds in stealth to recover.

Endless stamina needs to be a 50% boost. Seeing 50% makes it look big, but in reality, that would just make the rate 150% of normal instead of 100%. So instead of the base of 5 endurance per second back or 10 with vigor, you’d get 12.5. At a cost of 50 endurance per dodge, that’s 1 dodge every 4 seconds instead of every 5, which seems fair considering we don’t have other defensive boons (except limited regen). That means every 20 seconds we have one more dodge than an elementalist.

Mug can’t be used 4 times a minute. At best steal is on a 21ish second cooldown. Mug heals for 1980. I should not have used SR for Shadows Rejuvenation as it seems to have caused confusion.

It seems that this has caused you to go from talking about shadows rejuvenation versis mug to shadow refuge versus mug.

Your original claim was

so I calculated how much mug heals /per minute and how much shadow rejuvenation heals per minute, given the thief has got sleight of hands mug heals 1k more than shadow rejuvenation.

Leaving shadow refuge out of this since it’s not adding to the comparison of the traits, if you keep stealth uptime in a fight at around 1/3 of the time, Shadows Rejuvenation will offer a greater heal per second (or minute if you prefer). In addition to this, the assumptions made in this argument are that you steal exactly when it’s available while not attempting to stealth whenever possible. Including the trait that gives you an extra second of stealth, you can safely backstab after 3 seconds of regen and easily maintain 50% uptime of stealth. Moreover, if you miss the backstab window (either by choice or counterplay ) you can CnD again which will raise your hps since you don’t have to wait for revealed.

I’m not arguing that shadows rejuvenation is op, I’m pointing out that the potential healing it has in theory and practice is higher than that of mug.

Jana.6831:

Kolly.9872:

So you’re saying that the only way you are winning your 1vsX is thanks to shadow rejuvenation? Well this is the reason this trait should go right now. That include the vast majority of self sustain trait every other class has

I’m running 06620 with shadow rejuvenation.
A friend ofmine recently annoyed me how I would be a bad thief and would never become a better thief because I use that trait, just like you guys did – so I calculated how much mug heals /per minute and how much shadow rejuvenation heals per minute, given the thief has got sleight of hands mug heals 1k more than shadow rejuvenation. So if you guys say that that trait is too strong you should first remove mug and the lower cooldown of steal.
And yeah, I’m aware that people use both – I’m not one of them.

I don’t know how you came to that conclusion. Mug gets you ~2k health, and let’s even round down to a 20 second steal. That’s 100hps at best. SR heals for~320 (including the healing power it gets right now ) a second while in stealth. If you maintain at least a little less than 1/3 uptime of stealth, SR comes out the clear winner in hps.

Kolly.9872:

Yeah I think Cloack in Shadow is a good GM trait, the problem here is Shadow Rejuvenation in the wrong spot. Anet pls remove this trait and move executioner again in the CS line and thief will be balanced

They shouldn’t move executioner back, they just need to make the CS line competitive in its own unique way. Something that destroys boons on crit maybe. Or how about blinding people on a crit in melee range with kitten ICD (let’s call it flashing blades for the sake of nostalgia). There’s a lot of things they could do to move the line sideways and make it interesting. Some of the problems are that things just aren’t worth it along the way. Side strikes could be rolled into hidden killer. Sundering strikes isn’t really great on it’s own without some sort of condi duration increase. If they would roll that flashing blades idea into sundering strikes, You’d have an interesting master and grandmaster path. Combo critical chance could have the 10% pistol damage added back into it. Thief could have an endurance steal on crit in place of side strike (called exhausting assault maybe?).

I like having damage being the focus of the DA line. Lets have the crit strikes line have its own, unique flavor so it that could compliment or replace that damage.

I like the idea of just granting quickness. Quickness already shortens evade frames and leaps, so it’s already a tradeoff. If they immobilize, chill, or somehow else create a gap, both your offense and defense will already be reduced.

Shockwave.1230:

Maugetarr.6823:

Don’t know how cloaked in shadow is a major and resilience is a minor. Maybe they’ll swap them before the release.

Honestly adept, master, and grandmaster don’t have to mean anything anymore. You always get all three of them.

Really it comes down to putting traits in the correct tier to create compelling choice. There could be 4 grandmaster level traits, but if they are in each tier with 1 tier having two of them then you only have choice in one tier.

If you have two in a tier and two in another tier you have two compelling choices. If you have 3 in one tier and 1 in other, you again only have 1 compelling choice.

I said minor (not adept) though. I think it should be swapped with RoS in the “5” spot. That way there are 2 compelling choices in the GM area.

Edit : or they could put it in place of last refuge and put last refuge in place of concealed defeat so we don’t have to have that trait. Roll concealed defeat into another trait like reducing deception recharge time + something else and bump it to GM.
edit 2: or have last refuge drop smokescreen instead and replace concealed defeat and still put CiS as the minor and come up with a good trait for grandmaster.

If they merged hidden thief into it, I would be even less likely to take it. It should be made a minor trait or merged with shadow protector. In fact swapping it with last refuge would solve a lot of problems.

I understand that they put it there based on blinding ashes for ele, but D/P is handing out blinds like candy already, and D/D will have have to hit a crucial CnD for it to do anything. If you’re using the utility stealths (BP, SR, HiS) you’re not going to proc it often anyway.

It should be made more accessible for /D.

Don’t know how cloaked in shadow is a major and resilience is a minor. Maybe they’ll swap them before the release.

Except you forgot we get a 6/6/6 distribution now.

Why not 60606?

Trappers respite (withdraw as heal)
Panic strike
Potent poison

Shadows embrace
shadow protector
shadows rejuvenation
(~400hp a second in stealth? why not?!)

Caltrops
Bountiful Theft
Bewildering ambush
(Cause confusion on top of stacking poison)

Let me help you wipe your face

Kolly.9872:

Do you realy think Anet will remake their traits according to some random suggestion? I’m playing since beta and since there I’ve seen a lot of things well written but impossible to realize without rewrite the whole game. If ppl have such good ideas why they don’t make their own game with their own idea of thief. We should just focus on suggesting small changes that don’t require a big resources investment by Anet if we wanna actualy see something done or just play the game Anet designed for us with their own ideas

Hard to Catch was listened to. I’m pretty sure someone mentioned that exact change at some point.

yolo swaggins.2570:

Maugetarr.6823:

yolo swaggins.2570:

Even though the original feline grace is gone that 1 lost second doesn’t mean much. Thief has a high dodge uptime already. The most this trait does is add reward to those who use evasions properly.

Certain builds have high dodge uptime, and I’m not complaining about the change to feline grace wither, but I don’t think the new GMm trait is up to par. It knocks off less than half a second for dodging. Feline grace was one of the tools you could use to make up for the dodging deficiency of D/D which has an abysmal weapon evade. I’m just saying giving endless stamina a 50% boost would give thief 1 extra dodge every 20 seconds (instead of 1 extra dodge every ~50 seconds, which this trait is)

Well at least they fixed Hard to Catch. Bad part about it is thieves cannot claim the worst trait in the game anymore. :P

I mean I’m actually pretty happy with the changes other than this one. Hard to catch is a nice change. It’s just that acro and crit are underwhelming compared to the other 3 lines now like ensign said, especially since they don’t offer a stat boost even.

yolo swaggins.2570:

Even though the original feline grace is gone that 1 lost second doesn’t mean much. Thief has a high dodge uptime already. The most this trait does is add reward to those who use evasions properly.

Certain builds have high dodge uptime, and I’m not complaining about the change to feline grace wither, but I don’t think the new GMm trait is up to par. It knocks off less than half a second for dodging. Feline grace was one of the tools you could use to make up for the dodging deficiency of D/D which has an abysmal weapon evade. I’m just saying giving endless stamina a 50% boost would give thief 1 extra dodge every 20 seconds (instead of 1 extra dodge every ~50 seconds, which this trait is)

yolo swaggins.2570:

4.) Good traits that seem to have been nerfed like Feline Grace are not as bad as you think they are. Back to FG, the vigor applied gives 120% for 2 seconds. Add on the fact that all you have to do is make that Evaded thing appear on your head which for a thief is completely braindead easy.

Endless stamina is too weak to make up for the fact that FG doesn’t stack with vigor anymore or the loss of fluid strikes. It would need to be 50% before it’s going to make an impact on actual combat (which would be 1 more dodge every 20 seconds). I’m more or less happy about everything else though.

Math for FG and the change:

Baseline Endurance: 50(endurance)/5(endurance per second)=10 seconds per dodge

Baseline FG Endurance: 35(endurance)/(5 endurance per second)=7 seconds per dodge

Vigor Endurance: 50 (endurance)/ (5*2)(endurance per second)=5 seconds per dodge

New trait: 50 (endurance)/ (5*2.2) (endurance per second)=4.5454 seconds per dodge

Suggested trait (50% increase): 50 (endurance)/(5*2.5)(endurance per second)=4 seconds per dodge.

Current Vigor+FG: 35(endurance)/(5*2)(endurance per second=3.5 seconds per dodge

oEnvy.3064:

The Influenced Strikes trait would definitely be OP as hell but I guess that would make CS worthwhile.
It’s kind of a joke what they did with the CS line. I’m not really complaining because we got one of the specs in the game now. But I just find it funny that all they did was reverse a few adept and master traits, give it a pve trait from deadly arts, and it lost both traits that made it worth using over panic strike. Like honestly what were they thinking giving deadly arts executioner and then giving critical strikes an unbuffed ricochet I just find it comical. Oh and the offensive stats are gone lol.
At this point there’s no reason at all to go dps 66006. Thieves will no longer be punished for going SA which is stupid in my opinion.

^^^
Acrobatics still isn’t as good as xShadowArts and doesn’t make up for it either with a greater number of evades now as long as you have vigor from some other source (BT for example). With no stat increase, I don’t see that going 6 into crit has a reason. Signets>PT>HK? Meh. DA definitely is the raw killing line now. The crit line really needs to benefit from crits like having additional boon removal or some sort of debuff for scoring said crits.

Well, I’m not happy with the FG changes as you could use it to cover the weaknesses of D/D by giving it more access to dodges. Now, yeah it might have more vigor uptime (depending how you build) but the grandmaster minor trait is a little weak.

Assuming you have vigor, you get 1 dodge every 5 seconds. With the increase in the effectiveness of vigor (+20%), you get one dodge every 4.54 seconds….. we gave up 2 minor traits (FG +damage) to get something back that is significantly less powerful than the single skill they’re replacing. FG, by itself, allows 1 dodge every 7 seconds. Combined with vigor, it allows for a dodge every 3.5 seconds (yeah, perhaps slightly too powerful, but keep in mind that means you get 1 extra dodge every ~10 seconds over regular vigor). If they made it a 50% increase, that would mean that you would get 5 dodges for every 4 available with vigor on another class (i.e. you would get 1 dodge every 4 seconds instead of every 5 seconds).

Math for this since it’s a rate increase and not a reduction in time:

Baseline Endurance: 50(endurance)/5(endurance per second)=10 seconds per dodge

Vigor Endurance: 50 (endurance)/ (5*2)(endurance per second)=5 seconds per dodge

New trait: 50 (endurance)/ (5*2.2) (endurance per second)=4.5454 seconds per dodge

Suggested trait (50% increase): 50 (endurance)/(5*2.5)(endurance per second)=4 seconds per dodge.

Current Vigor+FG: 35(endurance)/(5*2)(endurance per second=3.5 seconds per dodge

It’s not really that the new FG will be bad but the new GM minor is very weak in increasing vigor over its baseline. In fact, the new FG (excluding any other sources of vigor) is on par with the old one (4sec*2.2mult*5end/sec+2sec*1mult*5end/sec=54 endurance in 6 seconds) assuming you hit the next evade frame right when the ICD of FG goes away.

TLDR: Endless Stamina is pretty weak as a trait and doesn’t make up for the fact that FG and Vigor no longer stack

RIP feline grace -.-

So, quick thought, are we actually getting semi-survivable burst builds now? I mean we can go 66006 after this picking up the executioner, revealed training, and SoH all in one. This would also give us 3 grandmaster-minor damage modifiers actually increasing our output damage.

Maugetarr.6823

Jayden Ennok.3687:

The word is a result of “counter” and inception (from the movie). Didn’t really expect someone would understand it differently since it was used in a part of post talking about counters and this is a gw2 forum (gaming).

woo I was right
about inception

and stuff being inside of stuff
like quotes
.
.
.
.
.
quoteception

Maybe it would be a 3 second ICD to be on par with SE.

I just wanted to add in here that I think thieves are far from useless in pvp. It really just depends on your build, the opponents’ build, and the skill levels of each.

As an example, medi guard is a huge uphill battle on a power based thief. On a P/D + D/D thief (50036) the builds are much more on par with each other so it will come down to skill level.

Also, I don’t think we should necessarily limit ourselves to 2 viable/meta builds. Condi thieves with caltrops vand already put some major pressure on nodes, punishing people for staying on them. D/D power is still pretty useful in spiking someone down in a team fight. The extra 4kish damage from CnD really helps.

Are thieves perfect? No. Is there room for improvement? Yep. Are we useless? Definitely not.

Hope so.

Awaltir.5302:

Yes i think we will get this stick right in the a…. , because some “lucky” profession will get traps for specialization and it will be probably us….

“Almost every elite specialization will gain access to a complete set of new skills : a single heal, four utility skills, and one elite skill. Revenants will gain a healing skill, an elite skill, and a set of utilities of the same type. One specialization will have access to traps , while at least one profession’s elite specialization will be a full set of six shouts. In order to equip any of these new skills, you’ll have to train and equip the corresponding elite specialization. We’ll also be reusing old types of skills like shouts and traps to create more synergy with the Rune system.”

From the sections I’ve bolded, if I’m reading this right, we’ve avoided getting trap specialization because we already have access to them. Maybe mesmers will get them. No other class really makes sense to get traps to me and we saw that mesmer cast a temporal AoE skill in the trailer which may or may not have been a weapon skill (maybe a time trap that causes slowness on enemies; the opposite of time warp) edit; oh crap….pu mesmers with trapper runes

As for people worried about losing choice of traits from the same tier, keep in mind that they said they’ll be rolling some trait functionality into base skills and moving some stuff around. I’m not saying I’m not worried about it, but they’re paring down the useless ones it seems, so some that you really like could be rolled into a better trait overall or moved up a tier.

Edit 2: “How does a trait that removes a condition every time you evade an attack sound?” This line makes me worry a lot less. They’re adding some pretty cool stuff to the game it seems.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Azure The Heartless.3261:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Gern.2978:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Jayden Ennok.3687:

Counterception.

You do realize that is a birth control term right?

You’re thinking of Contraception.

Trust me, both terms are interchangeable. If not, look it up.

“Counterception” as a word doesn’t exist. It is mainly use by people mispronouncing “Contraception”.

I did and came up with this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqOMc8Vs7zU

lol, yet another meaning to the word that is not even close to what the other poster is talking about. Nice find.

I think that’s what the other guy meant actually. A counter within a counter: counter-ception. Like the movie inception after which everyone started putting “ception” on the end of something when there was one thing inside another.

Azure The Heartless.3261:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Gern.2978:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Jayden Ennok.3687:

Counterception.

You do realize that is a birth control term right?

You’re thinking of Contraception.

Trust me, both terms are interchangeable. If not, look it up.

“Counterception” as a word doesn’t exist. It is mainly use by people mispronouncing “Contraception”.

I did and came up with this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqOMc8Vs7zU

Go greninja!

But 33333 spam is all we need to win, right? Where’s your screen shot of your highest game score with 20 kills in your first game?

All joking aside, welcome to the thief! Try out some of the different weapon sets too; some sets’ playstyles just fit different people better (like the classes in the game really).

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Maugetarr.6823:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

“Target too close” for steal = “You’re using the Thief wrong”

I think these “training wheels” they’ve added only encourage bad players to play Thief. Before, if you use steal wrongly, you learn from it because you just wasted it. Now… too much hand-helding.

I have yet to get this message, but what about if you were using steal for interrupt rezzing or stomping with traited SoH?

The main reason why I carry Scorpion Wire and use P/P.

What about interrupting a big attack that the target has stability on right in melee range (BT+SoH)?

You don’t interrupt it, you dodge/evade it. Save your steal against healing skills.

These hand-holding “helping” messages might actually hurt people trying to use it correctly too.

Not really, because you’ll learn not to rely on a message to remind you when you shouldn’t use Steal. The message is just an unnecessary distraction.

But does it stop you from stealing? Like I said, I have yet to get this message

That one thing you bring up about shadowstepping is really annoying actually. If I shadow return to avoid a projectile, it really shouldn’t hit me when it hits the place I was just standing. Melee attacks let you juke like this, I would think that ranged attacks would too.

This has gotten me downed in the uncategorized fractal a couple of times before I realized that I was getting hit when his agony attacks hit where I shadowstepped from.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

“Target too close” for steal = “You’re using the Thief wrong”

I think these “training wheels” they’ve added only encourage bad players to play Thief. Before, if you use steal wrongly, you learn from it because you just wasted it. Now… too much hand-helding.

I have yet to get this message, but what about if you were using steal for interrupt rezzing or stomping with traited SoH? What about interrupting a big attack that the target has stability on right in melee range (BT+SoH)? These hand-holding “helping” messages might actually hurt people trying to use it correctly too.

Hey, I’m glad someone else went condi in that too, cause it was too funny when all the NPCs would stand in the caltrops. I went with something slightly different from your original build with 30236, P/D + X and had a lot of fun.

Abjurd-ed-ed