Guild Wars 2

Void.4239:

Maugetarr.6823:

[Title]….then what’s the point in buffing venom share in its current form?

does any1 say once you shared venoms that you are only allowed to hit 1 person with your full team ?

people are to used to focusing 1 person with 3 to get a kill.

Maybe you don’t have to, but 1 person with spider venom will max out the stacks, 2 people with ice drake venom will max out the stacks, and 2 people with scale venom max out the stacks, not to mention if anyone has a condition attached to their normal weapon skills the effectiveness will be lowered even further. Also, if I’m going 30 into SA and not taking shadows rejuvenation, I’m probably slotting master of deception to put smokescreen and and shadow refuge on a 24s and 48s cooldown respectively (at least in dungeons where those 2 will be much more useful to the group)

[Title]….then what’s the point in buffing venom share in its current form?

Sanduskel.1850:

As a thief, I really have to laugh at all the raging from my fellow thieves. This won’t hurt a bit…

Conncept.7638:

Maugetarr.6823:

Use a long channel skill, knock them out of smoke fields, immobilize/stun/fear or use the myriad of control skill in this game that will force a thief to use a cooldown. Another tactic I have used on thieves with my warrior is intentionally eating a backstab which did a grand total of 3.5k damage to me (from behind) to which I responded with a pin-down, combustive shot, arcing arrow, to which he went down before I had a chance to land my shield bash and eviscerate. I would like to note that even though I used aoe skills I was not guessing where the thief was, I baited him out, controlled him, and countered him.

Targeted channel skills are available almost… nowhere, and only work through one completion of the channel. That extra second is real helpful to scepter Eles and GS mesmers.

Immobilize does not cause interrupt and therefore does not stop stealth, and it’s duration on most abilities is also laughable. Additionally, I’ve never seen a stealth build without shadow’s embrace, look it up, it’s important.

The other effects you have listed are interrupts and control effects. All abilities can be interrupted, and everything else in the game has counters in addition to the constant danger of interrupts, as you recall I stated ‘which do not apply to all abilities in kind’.

Nice try.

And finally, you are built specifically to counter a thief’s backstab, well sort of, I can already see how to get out of that. Regardless, how is that any different than putting in direct applications of reveal for people to build with? Do you not find that the least bit hypocritical?

There are in fact a number of skills that last over a second in terms of channel time that still hit even if the thief at the end of the channel regardless if the thief stealths during the channel. Even short channel abilities (.5-.75) seconds still hit the thief if the button was pressed before the thief stealthed but before the skill technically started to channel if the press was close enough. Also, pets/minions/clones do not drop aggro once the thief, so all that occurs is a 3(4) second delay on something like izerker sweeping through you. Yes, I was built tough to spearhead and break small groups, but it wasn’t specifically designed to counter the thief. I don’t consider it hypocritical because what I’m saying is that there are already tactical ways to counter stealth in both build and gameplay. Introducing a skill that will stop the thief from stealthing with the press of a button may make it easier for the average player take the thief down once every 40 or so seconds, but at the same time those who will use it will never learn how to fight a thief if they forgot to equip the skill. It may be a blessing in disguise though as the argument that there is “no counter” can no longer be made.

Additionally, there was a reason I used pin-down +combustive shot. Had the thief not been revealed (which he was making shadows embrace moot) he would have had 2 cover conditions, so the initial condi cure only had a 1/3 chance to remove the immobilize, and if it happened to remove burning, that would have been reapplied by the field, if not the second tick of shadows embrace would have only had a 50/50 chance of removing the immob.

As an afterthought, it may just be that they are considering implementing a hard counter to stealth while simultaneously reducing the effectiveness of LS against boon bunkers by 50% that leaves a bitter taste in my mouth.

Conncept.7638:

liefbread.9513:

Conncept.7638:

infantrydiv.1620:

Actually, I main necromancer (I have more hours of playtime + pvp on it). And it is a hell of a lot easier to play than thief. Also, I don’t know what you are on about claiming that only professional gamers can talk about actual balance instead of just screaming that stealth is the most overpowered mechanic in the game. I also don’t know where you got the idea that there actually are professional gamers playing GW2 pvp. LOL.

If you knew anything about this game’s pvp, you would know that builds that bring more team support are almost always better for it. A pure glass cannon thief CAN insta-gank glass and medium toughness builds. Yet, strangely enough, it doesn’t matter. This is why you don’t see these types of thieves in high level competitive play.

The other point I’d like to make: certain classes excel at 1v1, certain classes excel at support. Thief and mesmer and the primary 1v1 classes of GW2. Thieves are meant to be assassins. However, 1v1 is not important AT ALL in this game. Roaming in WvW is maybe fun, but it doesn’t actually serve a purpose. A build dedicated to only 1v1 fighting will lose tournaments. It’ll also be bad for PvE, it’ll be bad for zerging. Earlier today I fought a couple of tournaments against a pure glass thief on my glass guardian. This guy could down me pretty fast, but he brought nothing to his team other than that ability. Whenever my team showed up to help he would die before he could stomp me. So he was actually a negative for his team, when he could have played something like guardian or ranger and brought massive team utility

Once again….

It

Does

Not

Matter

What you think or even claim to know about high level play. And has absolutely no bearing whatsoever on what needs to be done with the game. A game is an interactive experience, if any portion of a game contains something which at any time removes or prevents interaction, that is a problem which needs to be addressed. Stealth removes interaction, all interaction in fact. It does not matter what level of PvP play or parts of WvW in which it is useful.

And I noticed, you still have yet to actually name any of these direct counters to stealth which you claim exist. So please, enlighten me.

Stealth literally does not remove interaction in any capacity and I already stated how in a previous post, please go back and read it.

Well then, if you can, literally explain how that is so, because I have checked your posts and all you have stated are your expectations about how people should and should not play in your little world. None of your business in the first place if I may say, if the majority of players do not wish to to play a certain way, and feel forced to by how others play, that’s a problem not a solution. There should be choice, in a properly made game, there would be.

So if there is a mechanical counter to this, which does not apply to all abilities in kind, what is it?

EDIT: And if you say AoE, wait and dodge, or don’t try to solo them in the first place, I’m just going to laugh at you.

Use a long channel skill, knock them out of smoke fields, immobilize/stun/fear or use the myriad of control skill in this game that will force a thief to use a cooldown. Another tactic I have used on thieves with my warrior is intentionally eating a backstab which did a grand total of 3.5k damage to me (from behind) to which I responded with a pin-down, combustive shot, arcing arrow, to which he went down before I had a chance to land my shield bash and eviscerate. I would like to note that even though I used aoe skills I was not guessing where the thief was, I baited him out, controlled him, and countered him.

“Hard to Catch” for thieves seems like it’s rarely taken. It would be nice if you guys could replace it with something like condition removal on dodge so stealthless thieves can have active condition removal in this high condition meta and especially if the reliable condition removal may be cancelled out by rangers. Maybe it could only remove damaging conditions so you’d have to pair it with fleet of foot to get full condition removal, but it would be nice to not have to spec into shadow arts for condi removal.

If I had to choose between the 2, I like the lifesteal version more because it would bypass protection which is mainly what I’m trying to pull off in the first place.

How about steal 1 boon and 25 endurance?

RedSpectrum.1975:

My only question is that Sic em lasts for ten seconds, so will be be revealed to everyone, or just the ranger?

I would think they would implement it by the ranger applying the revealed debuff to you.

Curing conditions on dodge would also be nice. It could replace hard to catch, be similar in effectiveness to eles traiting into water, and synergize nicely with the line intended to increase or evades and dodges.

JonathanSharp.7094:

Class balance:

Ranger
Sick ‘Em will now apply ‘Revealed” to enemies they target. We want to introduce some counter play to Stealth (players have asked for that for a while), so we thought a pet “catching your scent” might be a cool way to insinuate some anti-stealth into the game.

To help Rangers support allies, we increased the ability ranger pets have to support allies. For instance, the Bear condition removal isn’t strong enough, so we’ll be improving that. Moas and Fern Hound will also be improved.

There will also be # changes to some of the Ranger weapons.

If this is implemented, could stealth also break channeled abilities? There is already a ton of counterplay to stealth which doesn’t explicitly break stealth (ranger rapid fire’s long channel or knocking the thief out of smoke filed and shadow refuge for example ) and renders going into stealth useless. If thief access to defense is going to be reduced (through being able to take fewer boons or flat out revealed by the opponent), it would be nice if the defenses had meaning when activated.

Sil.4560:

Abilities that counter stealth is a great idea, get over it.

Well it’s sort of 2 fold though. Rangers, with ample access to regen, vigor, and protection, will have the ability to counter an entire trait line of the thief while the thief will simultaneously have their ability to remove the ranger’s forms of defense reduced. It’s not so much adding counterplay as it is putting your finger on the opposite scale. As someone else mentioned, it may be nothing more than another stealth trap, but it certainly is disheartening to change both an evade build and a stealth build at the same time.

Could they put a blast finisher on body shot? That would be supportive and definitely not interact with anything else on P/P.

Deleted (Double post)

JonathanSharp.7094:

Class balance:
snip

Thief
Venomous Aura was very difficult to use, as the radius was fairly tight. We’ve now increased that radius a bit, so that it’s easier to share venoms with allies without huddling closely together.

We’re also looking at shaving the efficiency of Flanking Strike slightly, so that it now only removes 1 boon instead of 2.

Also, pistol main hand may see one of its skills reworked to better support allies. We have multiple prototypes that we’re trying out, so we’ll have to see which we settle on by the next release.

snip

Instead of making it easier to share the charges of the venom which seems underpowered considering you may cover the conditions that an engineer or necro can bring and apply more rapidly, could venomous aura instead drop a combo field related to the venom? Say ice drake venom drops an ice field which you could then leap through for your personal benefit or blast finish for your team. This would allow for more team interaction and more interesting solo play with condition builds. These could last for maybe 4 seconds and seems reasonable considering it would put them (almost) on par with necro wells except that you’d still have to trait 30 into SA to achieve it.

Coloxeus.3480:

i run perma swiftness with my Superior rune of centaur + withdraw healing skill… +165 attack power.

I haven’t run with them very much as I only bought them yesterday, but so far, the + cond. duration and the + boon duration really help out. I guess it all comes down to preference of power or utility, but so far I really like the new Runes of the Traveler. This weekend I’ll probably get some more WvW in to see how they really stack up though.

MiLkZz.4789:

Red Falcon.8257:

Daecollo and Excalibur in the same thread, oh noes.
The king of terrible suggestions and the queen of “I’m too bad to counter this simple thing, nerf it plox”.

throws bags of Asuran Popcorns to everyone

Thanks, looks like a interesting thread. And don’t think there will be many nerfs to the warrior to be honest. A few adjustments maybe, but warrior really ain’t as bad as people claim he is. I have no idea how they are in PvP, but I duel a lot in WvW. And roam tons aswel.

Thing with warrior now is that it absolutely destroys nubs, which is normal. I have seen 4 classes which cause problems for a warrior if played well. Mesmer, engineer, necro and thief. Unfortunately, there are tons of bad players out there.

Calling warriors OP is rediculous tho, it is normal for a solo roaming build, focussed on 1vs1 or 1vs2 to win fights against zerg builds or other junk running around in WvW. I fought tons of people who didn’t even dodge once, I tried to lure out their dodges till I realized they never did… No wonder people claim warrior to be too strong.

This would be the trap that D/D thief fell into. No amount of walking people through how to take on a thief (what skills to eat, when to block/dodge, immobilize, etc…) ameliorated the complaining, so a D/D burst build has basically been removed from competitive play. S/D is next on the chopping block if you watch the last SotG. After that (or perhaps at the same time) the warrior will likely be next in line for “balancing.”

ensoriki.5789:

Maugetarr.6823:

What’s funny to me is they now want to nerf fs/ls when they created the spam in the first place. Looking at it:
AA remains unchanged

IS was nerfed for both the range and stunbreak, so its better to not get hit in the current meta than to react to getting hit

FS/LS buffed to track properly and steal the boons from its first iteration. Initiative cost increased to compensate, but still decent

DD huge damage nerf across the board, slow moving, and (lately) easily obstructed on flat ground

C&D damage reduced significantly in PvP

TS daze duration shortened in PvP which doesn’t make sense anymore considering the control capabilities of the other classes in the current meta

Revealed duration at 4 seconds instead of 3 further reducing survivability and also effectiveness of TS.

Its weird to me that the nerf the damage, survivability , and control of the rest of the weaponset and then complain that thieves use the remaining unnerfed ability excessively. S/D in WvW doesn’t play the same at all where some of the other skills still deal decent damage and have decent control. Maybe before they nerf FS/LS in whatever capacity they are thinking of, they should revert some of their previous changes and see what happens.

Basically this. They’ve nerfed everything on S/D except1 and 3 which they fed steroids. Naturally those are going to be your most used abilities when everything else has fallen to the wayside. Brb throwing an inf strike nerf to hurt S/P due to your overbuff. That being said Tacticals still dazes for 2s as it always has they made it impossible to daze for 3 which shouldn’t of been as big a problem as it was but given the DD and CnD nerfs I suppose it was too much nerf all at once…

I thought that they reduced it to 1.5 in sPvP. Did they revert it or does it round to 2 seconds but being 1.5 base not allow it to be extended to 3?

What’s funny to me is they now want to nerf fs/ls when they created the spam in the first place. Looking at it:
AA remains unchanged

IS was nerfed for both the range and stunbreak, so its better to not get hit in the current meta than to react to getting hit

FS/LS buffed to track properly and steal the boons from its first iteration. Initiative cost increased to compensate, but still decent

DD huge damage nerf across the board, slow moving, and (lately) easily obstructed on flat ground

C&D damage reduced significantly in PvP

TS daze duration shortened in PvP which doesn’t make sense anymore considering the control capabilities of the other classes in the current meta

Revealed duration at 4 seconds instead of 3 further reducing survivability and also effectiveness of TS.

Its weird to me that the nerf the damage, survivability , and control of the rest of the weaponset and then complain that thieves use the remaining unnerfed ability excessively. S/D in WvW doesn’t play the same at all where some of the other skills still deal decent damage and have decent control. Maybe before they nerf FS/LS in whatever capacity they are thinking of, they should revert some of their previous changes and see what happens.

This (Sept. 6 SotG) seems like it belongs here. I can’t remember when they mentioned it in the video, but S/D thieves got mentioned a couple of times during the discussion with possible ways to nerf them.

http://www.twitch.tv/guildwars2guru/c/2883614

What if CS in the auto attack chain were buffed in power so that you had to choose between doing more DPS or evading. Nerfing LS would probably be the wrong way to go. (A carrot instead of a stick for once)

1.02k hours on my thief. I am qualified now to decide in no uncertain terms which of you is an honest thief and which of you is a dirty liar!

Burnfall.9573:

Maugetarr.6823:

Burnfall.9573:

Zacchary.6183:

Maugetarr.6823:

Burnfall.9573:

Scribbles.3974:

i think what we can take away from this is best described by the joker, but in gw2 terms

“everything goes up in chaos when the unexpected happens, like, i could say a warrior is going to kill someone with his hundred blades combo because thats the order of the world, but when i say this thief is gonna use his stealth combos to kill that warrior, everyone looses their minds”

honestly, im sick of little cute, buggy eyed kittens, pointing the finger at the stealth class, ALL THE kittenING TIME, why is it always the stealth class that gets deemed op, oh i know why, because people dont understand how to counter it, what people dont understand they cry to the developers as being op “waaaaaaaaaa this character can invest lots of time into stealthing, almost like i invest lots of time into this combo but he can go invisible waaaaaaaaaa”

What i find alarming in your post is that, you blame and insult your victims for crying, yet you are their sole Abuser to their pain and sufferings.

You thieves, should be held accountable for your sadistic and malicious crimes against the defenseless.

PROTIP: Disregard anything burnfall says.

How very Dare you telling others to silence my posts

Everyone here have the right to post without violating the forum rules.

Infact, i’m calling out Arena.net to Ban you imposing my rights, How Dare You!!

They will certainly make you an example to others who think they have the right in imposing others from their very right to free speach in the forums.

For i didn’t violate any forum rules, Nor encourage others to seek retaliation to another person/

Embrace and Await your fate, once and for all.

No remorse.

You have the right to say what you want, but that doesn’t mean you can force people to listen. Thieves (and some warriors) do grow tired of the zealous fervor with which you attack other classes while characterizing those who play them as sadists. Funny the first time, annoying after the umpteenth time.

Look up my threads and posts and quote my words where I’m calling players sadist and that will be end to this argument.

I never once called a players sadist or any names; and you’re responding to my post by prejudjing my words without doing your homework?

I will not continue until you apologize.

Infact, I’m calling out all thieves to tell me in quotes, where and when i personally called them names.

Times up, none whatsoever.

Thanks for wasting my time.

You from 8 questions concerning thief madness on Aug 23rd:

“Unfortunately, there is no denying that this class Have Not been Diciplined for any of their Actions, instead, they are Rewarded for their Malicious and Sadistic Crimes”

Burnfall.9573:

Zacchary.6183:

Maugetarr.6823:

Burnfall.9573:

Scribbles.3974:

i think what we can take away from this is best described by the joker, but in gw2 terms

“everything goes up in chaos when the unexpected happens, like, i could say a warrior is going to kill someone with his hundred blades combo because thats the order of the world, but when i say this thief is gonna use his stealth combos to kill that warrior, everyone looses their minds”

honestly, im sick of little cute, buggy eyed kittens, pointing the finger at the stealth class, ALL THE kittenING TIME, why is it always the stealth class that gets deemed op, oh i know why, because people dont understand how to counter it, what people dont understand they cry to the developers as being op “waaaaaaaaaa this character can invest lots of time into stealthing, almost like i invest lots of time into this combo but he can go invisible waaaaaaaaaa”

What i find alarming in your post is that, you blame and insult your victims for crying, yet you are their sole Abuser to their pain and sufferings.

You thieves, should be held accountable for your sadistic and malicious crimes against the defenseless.

PROTIP: Disregard anything burnfall says.

How very Dare you telling others to silence my posts

Everyone here have the right to post without violating the forum rules.

Infact, i’m calling out Arena.net to Ban you imposing my rights, How Dare You!!

They will certainly make you an example to others who think they have the right in imposing others from their very right to free speach in the forums.

For i didn’t violate any forum rules, Nor encourage others to seek retaliation to another person/

Embrace and Await your fate, once and for all.

No remorse.

You have the right to say what you want, but that doesn’t mean you can force people to listen. Thieves (and some warriors) do grow tired of the zealous fervor with which you attack other classes while characterizing those who play them as sadists. Funny the first time, annoying after the umpteenth time.

I typically use this. Downside is that you die if you get caught. One thing to mention is that I prefer is 0/15/30/25/0 over the 0/20/30/20/0 because there is rarely a time when I have absolutely full endurance, so a flat uptick of 10% of all damage over about 2% more crit chance and 5% crit damage makes more sense to me, but it comes down to playstyle.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQRAoa8YlYmiOHfy3E+5Ex+hdy9wpGtp9M4qVB-jEyAYrBRTECEVI0Jviox2GKiGraBTVSEV7NKiWNA-w

Burnfall.9573:

Scribbles.3974:

i think what we can take away from this is best described by the joker, but in gw2 terms

“everything goes up in chaos when the unexpected happens, like, i could say a warrior is going to kill someone with his hundred blades combo because thats the order of the world, but when i say this thief is gonna use his stealth combos to kill that warrior, everyone looses their minds”

honestly, im sick of little cute, buggy eyed kittens, pointing the finger at the stealth class, ALL THE kittenING TIME, why is it always the stealth class that gets deemed op, oh i know why, because people dont understand how to counter it, what people dont understand they cry to the developers as being op “waaaaaaaaaa this character can invest lots of time into stealthing, almost like i invest lots of time into this combo but he can go invisible waaaaaaaaaa”

What i find alarming in your post is that, you blame and insult your victims for crying, yet you are their sole Abuser to their pain and sufferings.

You thieves, should be held accountable for your sadistic and malicious crimes against the defenseless.

Depends on your playstyle. I always carry one in my inventory but rarely use it. Mostly I run S/D + D/P to allow me to adapt to fighting most classes on the fly. When I’m defending a tower, I’ll slot it sometimes, but the alts I have handle range much better while the thief handles close combat (slightly) better.

That said, I would put it on the thief over a ranger so when you so use it you can have unicorns fly slowly through the air and then burst in 3 other unicorns, or have 1 charge between multiple targets as your arrows bounce around.

You realize you bumped this from about 10 months ago, right? Warriors have seen some pretty nice work done recently, especially in the last month or so.

Lightsbane.9012:

Maugetarr.6823:

Lightsbane.9012:

Oxstar.7643:

Lightsbane.9012:

really? it isn’t? well, okay. let’s ignore the fact that it uses everything imaginable that a more modern “soldier” (by modern i mean 1700’s+)uses. considering that Guild wars 2 is in an era 200 years in the future of the last game, and assuming Anet plans to release expansions, won’t there be more ‘soldier’ professions using rifles?
to be honest, i’d say engineer is a better fit for the soldier profession than guardian. as guardian is just a mage who realized that heavy armor is more protective than a dress.

Nah man, Guardians are a mix of soldier and cleric while doing both well.

and engineer is a mixture of soldier and …uhh.

….scholar. They’re smart and constantly inventing stuff, not training to run around in plate armor. Layers of leather provide a flexible platform for inventions to sit on.

“Layers of leather provide a flexible platform for inventions to sit on.”
wut. this is of course assuming anet took mobility into consideration when designing the classes. and judging by warrior’s movement capabilities i’d say that’s a flat no. thus the argument holds.

Well considering modern soldiers use uniforms with Kevlar/ceramic plate vests underneath, leather seems like a reasonable approximation of what a modern soldier would wear. An engineer would use technology to buff what they’re wearing instead of wearing simple metal plates, hence why the inventions line contains things stabilized armor, energized armor, cloaking device, and protective shield.

Lightsbane.9012:

Oxstar.7643:

Lightsbane.9012:

really? it isn’t? well, okay. let’s ignore the fact that it uses everything imaginable that a more modern “soldier” (by modern i mean 1700’s+)uses. considering that Guild wars 2 is in an era 200 years in the future of the last game, and assuming Anet plans to release expansions, won’t there be more ‘soldier’ professions using rifles?
to be honest, i’d say engineer is a better fit for the soldier profession than guardian. as guardian is just a mage who realized that heavy armor is more protective than a dress.

Nah man, Guardians are a mix of soldier and cleric while doing both well.

and engineer is a mixture of soldier and …uhh.

….scholar. They’re smart and constantly inventing stuff, not training to run around in plate armor. Layers of leather provide a flexible platform for inventions to sit on.

Scoobaniec.9561:

Daecollo.9578:

Please show me your screenshots, this is not the topic. I didn’t ask for aegis and protection and your trolling and shoving words in my mouth.

I am however glad I could get all the warrior trolls in one thread.

2,8k hours with 6-0 keys? ok..xd

You know you can play with something like a Razer nostromo, Naga, orbweaver, etc and rebind the keys on the device rather than rebinding within the game, right? Just saying not to make judgements based on screenshots rather than gameplay. That’s how classes end up with undeserved nerfs.

peter.9024:

Crovax.7854:

Sanny.1270:

stab/blind/dodge are all poor arguments on how to counter.

Why?

Because they require skill to use.

And because that’s the (valid) argument thieves have been using since day 1, yet it hasn’t stopped the rather steady flow of nerfs that have been sent their way. I’m not arguing for or against nerfs for this build, but you’re gonna have to find another way to defend it because that argument is going to fall on deaf ears.

Cygnus.6903:

Maugetarr.6823:

This may sound weird coming from a thief main, but I would like to see it extended to more disabled effects such as knockdown and fear (when you’re flat on your back or running in terror you make an awfully easy target). As for placement in trait trees it seems fine where it is to me.

And this will sound strange coming from a warrior main, but I think it’s fine as is. Applying it to Fear and knockdown will make it a bit too much IMO. We have good knockdown skills and a very strong Fear inducer.

Fair enough.

This may sound weird coming from a thief main, but I would like to see it extended to more disabled effects such as knockdown and fear (when you’re flat on your back or running in terror you make an awfully easy target). As for placement in trait trees it seems fine where it is to me.

Have you seen these little gremlins? Also the animations are great, flips for hammer burst, yoda attacks for 100b (as someone else mentioned). Decent voice acting. Great comic relief.

Love the magitec armor. First thing that really felt like it was designed for my engineer.

S/D got very popular for a while, but they removed the infinite range return and the stunbreak on sword #2. I don’t remember when they changed #3 on S/D, but it’s split into 2 skills now, the first costing 3 initiative, and after people started complaining since FS was tracking properly, the increased the initiative of the second half of the skill by 1 for a total of 2 for the second skill to reduce spamming. Overall S/D got better, but it certainly left a sour taste especially considering the stun and fear locking abilities of warriors and necros right now. I’m not saying those are overpowered, but it would be nice to have a counter to the counter.

Zacchary.6183:

Would a “Remove a condition on dodge” be OP?

No, it would be similar to an ele dodge rolling while attuned to water on certain builds. I’d be for having a skill like this replace the current functionality of hard to catch. Make it remove the damaging condis first so you can stack it with fleet of foot. In the current meta, you could burn 3 dodges in a row and still have a couple on you.

A warrior LB + GS build worked for me (didn’t want to buy new trinkets for 1 boss). You should be able to do it with a non glass build. I did it with mostly cavalier trinkets and knights armor at range. Stick close to the center during the second phase (better for the camera and you don’t need to to run as far if you get crippled) and just throw out constant mediocre damage in the form of cluster bomb while circle strafing. Get ready with a stunbreak if you get pulled by an orb, but if you have time to see them, lob a cluster bomb at them and they wont be obstructed. GL

Grimwolf.7163:

Maugetarr.6823:

What I took away from that video is that you stood there doing absolutely nothing for over 20 seconds against 4 people and are complaining. Had you swung your sword once, you’d have hit the thief back for 2k+ damage with how glassy he had to be compared to the other people there. Furthermore, if you look at that thief’s autoattack, your retal hits almost as hard as his double strike (until you met a set of requirements like under 50% health + conditions + his initiative over 6 etc).

You missed the point of the video completely. He wasn’t say “Oh my God, I died before I could even fight back and had no chance!”
He was showing how much damage the Thief was able to do through his defenses and how much more it was than the Mesmer.
The problem here though is that we have no idea what kind of build the Mesmer was using. If it was 100% GC just like the Thief likely was, I’m sure it would have done a comparable amount of damage.

I understand the point of the video, but it was a biased portrayal of the event. He wanted to show raw numbers and how unbalanced the thief is, but I was making the point that it took 3 other people helping the thief (who hit first) over 20 seconds to take down a bunker that only took the effort to drop banner of defense. In the meantime, without even attacking, he managed to output thousands of damage from retal alone. I’m not saying nerf retal. I’m not saying to nerf bunkers. I’m saying if the thief were not able to put out damage like that, a bunker would never go down. If you noticed, a (probably similarly specced) thief jumped to his aid and was downed easily. What I’m saying is that I’m tired of hearing how unbalanced the thief is when it takes that long to down someone intentionally not fighting back. A guardian with protection up would have taken longer. Bunker buster builds exist because bunkers exist.Yes it’s a lot of damage, but that was a lot of health and armor.

Edit:Also if you take the time to slow down the video, the 5.5kish backstab hit when he had 14 stacks of vulnerability on him. a lot of conditions had to be met for the thief to put out these high numbers on a bunker. Maybe I’m tired of my main getting nerfs so that my alts start seeing more playtime than my main.

What I took away from that video is that you stood there doing absolutely nothing for over 20 seconds against 4 people and are complaining. Had you swung your sword once, you’d have hit the thief back for 2k+ damage with how glassy he had to be compared to the other people there. Furthermore, if you look at that thief’s autoattack, your retal hits almost as hard as his double strike (until you met a set of requirements like under 50% health + conditions + his initiative over 6 etc).

TL;DR everyone’s comments, but I hope the gauntlet is sort of a bar test for where the game is going. I like fighting bosses with unique abilities and environments that make it a real challenge beyond DPS. I even like fighting the champs that have unique tactics like having to dodge till they are exhausted. I don’t like huge health pools, and if mechanics are going to replace commas and zeros in the long term, I’m all for it.

Maybe I’m dense, but it appears that I have not faced all of the competitors even after beating Liadri. I am missing the challenge option on 3 of the bosses when talking to the fight manager, and just normally fighting puts me back up against Liadri. Is this a bug?

Fight manager menus and achievements panel for beating Liadri attached:

Olba.5376:

totalpwnage.6534:

I’m just gonna go ahead and re-post my picture from another thief thread and it should fix your problem.

Actually, considering how the damage formula works, if someone with 2,700 armor is getting hit for 15,000, someone with 4,000 armor should be hit for 10,125.

Honestly, as a Warrior, Thieves are the reason I originally went full Soldier armor in WvW. After checking my damage logs in WvW, I realized that they weren’t really doing that much damage to me. Now I’m running Berserker armor with Knight Trinkets and I’m still not getting oneshot.

Am I doing something wrong?

Not at all. I went knights armor cavalier trinkets on my warrior when I first hit 80 because there were threads about lack of sustain and thief burst and what not. I’m currently in the process of gearing to berserker armor because the highest crit backstab I got hit with (so far) was 3.5k damage from a thief who had wrecked me on my thief earlier that week. I was able to down him with a combination of LB, axe auto, shield bash, and finally eviscerate which hit for over 7.5k (on a toughness build 0/15/25/0/30). I actually decided I had too much defense and could trade some for attack. Fighting thieves really comes down to having played as them and realizing that their only defense is smoke and mirrors.

At such a low level, instead of 10 into crit and power, try to get 15 into acrobatics as soon as you can. A lot of thief survivabilty comes from dodging the big attacks. Picking up feline grace and using vigorous recovery and withdraw will do wonders for you. Like others have said, there are a couple of paths to 80. I preferred S/P, but I can’t stand condition builds for the most part. Pick up smoke screen while you’re at it. It really helps with mixed melee and ranges mobs.

Cyhann.2609:

P/P lacks evasion which is Important for the Thief, and since Body Shot isn’t really a good
skill how about you make a Teleport or an Evasion out of it? How about a short shot
followed by a short sidestep teleport, in a similar manner like the Dimensional Anchor?
Make it about 300 – 600 range, and while we are at it remove one condition?
Also it should port you in the same side you are walking right now, or default to right,
but not forwards or backwards since other skills allready do that.

Unload needs some kind of secundary powers, like flanking strike has.
So maybe 50% more projectile speed, and built in reflection and/or
retaliation immunity?

If they reduced the number of shots and increased the damage of each shot indirectly reducing the cast time, unload would become more bursty with less of a chance proc sigils and traits balancing it out and it would simultaneously become less susceptible to retaliation. This is similar to the change they recently made to pistol whip (reducing the time between stun and flurry) which wasn’t the fix that was needed, but at least a step in the right direction. Both PW and Unload suffered in the wake of the quickness nerf and need some sort of compensation. Adding additional features to both could come later.

Defektive.7283:

killahmayne.9518:

Would like to see a 1v1 video vs S/D thieves, I think those are the ones that will give most people trouble more so than D/D specs.

S/D is fairly common.

The pressure is a lot less than D/P so if you’re tanky enough it actually isn’t that hard to just wait out the fight.

It’s important to fight ontop of the area they Sword teleported FROM. This is because when you get a stun or CC, they’ll teleport right back to the same spot.

It’s just a more annoying build is all.

Just to add on to Defektive here, that is an excellent tactic especially after the stunbreak was removed from the sword shadow return. The return also no longer has a hidden infinite return range, so the thief will only port a maximum of 1200 towards the original location. A skull crack while fighting them on top of their return will force them to burn the utility shadowstep to survive.

Hard to catch needs to be moved to master tier. At best (being really generous) its on par with mirror of anguish and reaper’s protection. It could be exchanged with fleet of foot which should have the internal cooldown removed and be changed remove a condition on dodge roll. Non-stealth thieves could then choose to take condition removal on par with the adept trait in the SA line.

I’d like to see the bounce removed from dancing dagger and the damage returned to its original value and now marks the target. To prevent spamming it can be given a rollover skill for 2 initiative, lets say “augury of death” (yeah I like linking thieves back to assassins) on a 15 second timer that’s an instant cast shadow step to the marked target which removes 1 condition. Sort of a reverse of infiltrators strike that can help D/D be played with a little more sustain. P/D also gets a gap closer as a set-up for its recently improved dual skill.

I have an idea to “fix” the heartseeker spam. Why don’t we raise the damage values to their original levels so that heartseeker under 33% would be the finisher its supposed to be. No more spam.

The only problem I really see is that this is pretty close to mesmer phantasms. Mesmers get phantasms on weapon skills usable on short cooldown, while thieves get stealth on weapon skills. They have a utility that gives them stealth and an elite that gives them stealth on a long cooldown. We get a similar version of the elite on a shorter utility cooldown traitable to even shorter and a phantasm trap (i.e. shadow trap) and elite phantasms on a long cooldown (thieves guild). Instituting a change like this would really blur the two classes together a little too much.