Guild Wars 2

But she C&D spammed at one point. Noob.

Adaneshade.2409:

S/D is easy? Compared to what? It has the highest skill cap of any kit we can wield.

The issue was the builds that abused stealth to crazy extents were “ez-mode”. They got nerfed, now people QQ rather than getting good at playing with slightly less access to their crutch.

I’m not sure I would say it has the highest skill cap. Looking at it, it has a built-in shadowstep + snare + stunbreak+condition remove+escape, a decent evade with decent damage (assuming it hits), a cripple, and a stealth. The auto attack is powerful and it’s unified around direct damage. Try sustained (non-condition, non-burst) D/D for a challenge. D/P can also be quite a challenge since it only has a shadowstep into combat and it costs 9 initiative to use stealth, meaning that you have to really manage your initiative to use it (reward being that you can use it to perma-stealth). This is not to knock S/D as it is powerful and takes longer to learn than burst D/D, I’m just not sure that it has the highest skill cap, but it’s all subjective anyway. My current build is 0/15/30/25/0 S/D + D/P making it non-bursty relying on both stealth and dodging for survivability.

ensoriki.5789:

Maugetarr.6823:

ensoriki.5789:

D/P

….probably this. Been using D/P + S/D since the patch. Great utility with added defense from blinding attacks. People will be annoyed that even though they can see the thief they either can’t hit them or get interrupted. D/P dual puts heartseeker to shame post change, especially considering the reverse shadowstep that occurs if it’s reflected.

D/P is an anomaly among the other 2 /P sets which are less reliant on their stealth attacks but like them as a temporary boost or effect.
I would not be surprised at all if like the haste nerf everyone saw coming from beta. D/P loses it’s self-stealth access in favor of stronger effect on it’s dual and improvements on the Pistol off-hand in general. As it is now, D/P creeps quite strongly in the /D (current) usage of focusing on stealth to get off Stealth attacks.

That’s me playing prophet however.

Maybe, but the self stealth takes such a huge amount of initiative I’m not sure it will be removed. People complain that thieves don’t have to think or plan their escapes, but when that combo takes 3/4 of your global cooldown to accomplish, there is either forethought to using it or dodges till the initiative can regenerate itself. Not to mention right now it seems as though the 1 extra second of stealth does not affect this trait so its power is limited unless you take the time to HS through it multiple times making sure not to nick anyone in the process.

You could be entirely right though as I didn’t see the revealed time extension coming.

In terms of boosting our utility/staying power (which the said they are looking into….) It would be nice if quick pockets (trait name?) reduced weapon swap cooldown also to either 5 or 7 seconds so we had more flexibility in combat. 3 initiative every 10 seconds assuming I weapon swap right then (locking me out of a tactical swap later) is lackluster compared to 2 initiative passively every 10 seconds. It’s not that its bad, its just that it offers nothing that makes me want to trait to 30 to get.

Straegen.2938:

It is 1… 1 freaking second on a combo that is still so ridiculously powerful no other class can match it. People here are QQing about still being really powerful.

It’s a 33% increase to the duration of revealed. Yeah its adaptable to, but say ANet had done a 33% reduction to the number of clones a mesmer could control or increased the cooldown of elemental attunements (not to mention they did so to try to change 1 build that it then had no impact on), those classes would similarly be up on arms. When you have hundreds of hours of timing and gameplay ingrained into you, what may look minor on paper is fairly significant.

google.3709:

Anet said they were going to tone down Mug, it was their idea, not ours and at the end did not end up doing it :S and with haste nerf, they can’t really nerf burst damage anymore since all bunkers remained untouched.

and mesmers did not get hit by nerf :S! TW was something that mostly berserker warriors on CoF p1 benefit from, not the mesmer itself or general groups. if anything mesmer, guardian and eles were the only class to get buffed

and before anyone says, engineer got buffed for the all the patch notes, we actually had our strongest DPS build removed and core trait nerfed to the ground, so just imagine they removed backstab from the game and nerfed mug to the ground.. thats what happened to engi

Engi definately got shafted too. Maybe (emphasis on maybe) 100 nades needed to be toned down, and some of the new abilities were sort of cool on KR from a utility standpoint, but then to add a 20 second global cooldown on top of it was a little ridiculous. At most it should have been put on a 10 second cooldown to put it on par with standard weapon swapping.

ensoriki.5789:

D/P

….probably this. Been using D/P + S/D since the patch. Great utility with added defense from blinding attacks. People will be annoyed that even though they can see the thief they either can’t hit them or get interrupted. D/P dual puts heartseeker to shame post change, especially considering the reverse shadowstep that occurs if it’s reflected.

Edit: Forgot to add mug to that list. Got hit by a 7.6k mug last night while under 50% health with conditions on me. Then again, I also got hit by a 6k maul while at full health. Maybe its just the way I’m specced and not the abilities themselves.

Kavia.8249:

I was disappointed to see that Mug remained unchanged in this patch. I think it needs the “kit refinement” treatment. It remains way too powerful for its position on the skill tree.

Now that 100 nades is gone, I don’t think there are any other 10 point traits that do this much damage (6k+ in some situations), let alone instant cast from 900 range. In fact, show me any other instant cast skill with no animation that does this much damage. What makes this game’s combat fun and exciting is reacting to what your enemy is doing, and with mug, there is simply no chance to react.

Suggestion: make the damage apply only if the steal was initiated in melee range OR reduce the damage coefficient OR make it so it cannot crit OR move it to a deeper trait spot in a non-damage oriented tree.

I don’t think mug needs to he changed, but I think the kit refinement nerf went too far. They made it into utility like they said which is alright, but having a 20 sec global cooldown for just utility skills is fairly extreme. Way worse now than an eles ability to change attunements on a class that’s supposed to be flexible in all situations. Bring KR up to the level of mug in terms of value.

Well I thought the original intent was to make it so thieves couldn’t C&D>C&D. As I see it, only legitimate rotations will really see this change and all of our timing that we’ve gotten accustomed to will change. What we should do is ask for the autoattack chain to be slowed down also so our timing feels right again. That would entirely fix the problem just created. They could have easily put a 1 second reveal debuff at the end of stealth when you don’t attack so C&D would be visible to dodge for a full second (since people couldn’t figure out how to count to 4 and dodge) and left regular reveal duration alone. Let’s see how long it stands.

No counter play? On my engi it’s gear shield till they pop out of stealth, pry bar → rifle knockback, root, leap, blunderbus → flamethrower knockback flame blast. I will say I’m not the best at my engi yet, but thieves are the easiest to take down once you start to cc them. That being said I’m not terribly worried about the changes coming.

A way to fix that might be to make instinctual response and last refuge give you the non-stealth stealth(the one denoted by the little mask) that the npc in CoE gives you occasionally. This wouldn’t trigger the change to backstab, so it would become purely a defensive trait, and even if you’re immune to stealth(real stealth) you wouldn’t be immune to the alternative stealth.

Gotta agree with swinsk. A lot of people will now see it as the best defense is a good offence. If you can put them in downstate before they can react, there’s no need to stealth. Drawing out a battle will hurt you more than help you as you give the opponents the chance to get their boons up and rolling.

@redscope: you act as though we don’t already play other classes.

Neutral. The only thing it might (emphasis on might) affect for me is dungeon play. We’ll still get called OP noobs with no skill that don’t understand how it is for other classes (even if we have multiple 80s). Let’s see how it goes. I guess I’m slightly excited for the fact people can’t blame culling for losing anymore and that 20-30 people won’t appear on top of me.

Sebrent.3625:

15 trait points in the tree that will give you +15% boon duration … vigor on heal and use less endurance per dodge. That 8 seconds of vigor is already 9.2 with that +15% boon duration.

15 sec cooldown on two heals (12 if signet traited).

Bountiful theft gives Vigor.

One heal has a dodge built into it.
One utility has a dodge built into it.
Dagger+Dagger #3 (Death Blossom) has a dodge built into it.

Yes, you have to invest points and/or use skills to gain vigor … so does everyone else.

…like mesmer and guardian gaining vigor on crit as 5 point minor traits? And one gaining clones when they dodge while the other heals on dodge. But yes, we thieves are the kings of dodging.

Sifu.6527:

Kaon.7192:

zaxon.6819:

the only reason other peoples skills get put on cooldown is because they do not use initiative. none of our skills get put on cooldown when used.

the skill that did get put on cooldown is whatever you used to get into stealth. that is the ability that gives you backstab.

Yes, most of our skills use initiative, which serves as our global cooldown mechanic. When missing those skills, there is opportunity costs involved.

Backstab does not use initiative, however, and can be used immediately after a miss/block/evade, so missing it has very negligible opportunity costs for us. Therein lies the problem.

I think you’re talking about point B and negecting point A.

The current topic of discussion is Backstab and how miss/evade/vul affect it. Before we talk about that, we need to go back to point A; stealth. How did the thief get into stealth? There are serveral options; heal, utilities, and weapon sets.

This should be where the oportunity cost comes into play. The majority of the time, stealth is either achieved by CnD or BP+HS. All of these skills cost init and with CnD it must hit the target at 120 range. But you as a thief player, already know this. The cost is paid up front via init and Backstab is our reward.

Just to add on to this, the backstab damage then requires repositioning which can be tricky when not using a movement speed buff:

Green up arrows. Usually, even if they are great players, they don’t necessarily understandtheir class inside and out yet, and are relatively squishy. If you don’t stomp, the more skilled players usually come over to help them up, so by injuring 1 you’ve removed 2+ from play. You can then target the people who didn’t help them up as they are usually not paying as close of attention to their surroundings.

Uloi.8593:

Maugetarr.6823:

What I’ve been using lately:

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/thief/?7.0|8.1g.h2.a.1g.h1|5.1g.h1|1g.a1.1g.a1.1g.a1.1g.a1.1g.a1.1g.a1|1g.67.1g.67.1g.67.1g.67.1g.67.1i.67|0.f3.u45b.p39.0|0.0|59.5f.5a.5b.0|e

if you cant get to the link:

0/15/30/25/0
Zerk armor, beryl orbs
zerk accessories (cavalier backpiece)
CS:+7% crit chance from the side (III)
SA: Remove a condition every 3 seconds (IV), Gain 2 ini on stealth(V), gain health in stealth (XI)
Acro: Vigorous Recovery (III), 2 ini every 10 seconds (IX)

Utilities/Heal:
Withdraw
Infiltrator’s Signet
Blinding Powder
Shadow Refuge

Elite: (Your preference)

14k health
2.3k armor

Maugetarr that is really close to my build. How do you burst? Can you? I can’t take down a Guardian or a D/D Eley (Well not good ones) with my build.

I usually just move along when it comes to taking on bunkers in whatever build I’m using. Against D/D eles, it usually comes down to them messing up. It sort of comes down to a rock paper scissors thing in my experience. Direct damage thief beats necro>condition necro beats bunker>bunker stalemates with direct damage thief. I’ve had some success with popping thieves guild from stealth against a bunker once you establish a pattern that they react to, but there’s a fair amount of luck/timing involved in that. In sPvP you may cause some ragequits if you’ve stalemated in a 1v1 then pop TG to burn them down.

What I’ve been using lately:

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/thief/?7.0|8.1g.h2.a.1g.h1|5.1g.h1|1g.a1.1g.a1.1g.a1.1g.a1.1g.a1.1g.a1|1g.67.1g.67.1g.67.1g.67.1g.67.1i.67|0.f3.u45b.p39.0|0.0|59.5f.5a.5b.0|e

if you cant get to the link:

0/15/30/25/0
Zerk armor, beryl orbs
zerk accessories (cavalier backpiece)
CS:+7% crit chance from the side (III)
SA: Remove a condition every 3 seconds (IV), Gain 2 ini on stealth(V), gain health in stealth (XI)
Acro: Vigorous Recovery (III), 2 ini every 10 seconds (IX)

Utilities/Heal:
Withdraw
Infiltrator’s Signet
Blinding Powder
Shadow Refuge

Elite: (Your preference)

14k health
2.3k armor

Kaon.7192:

addikt.1270:

bhagwad.4281:

addikt.1270:

Or is it just that you feel you should be rewarded somehow for surviving an initial hit? Yeah. lets reward you for doing that. and actually ruin the whole build for a dd thief just because you managed to evade the initial backstab, and like i said, refuse to hit that one button.

Anyway, BS unblockable ftw.

But nevertheless backstab should be unblockable.

If by “rewarded” you mean being safe from that particular attack at least till the next time the thief stealths…then yes!

I’m concerned that you think being unable to spam BS “ruins” the build for a D/D thief. Don’t you want at least some skill to play?

i dont really know how many times can one spam backstab in 2-3 seconds (depending on how long it takes to get in position), and maybe you didnt know.. but once you land it, you get revealed, so, “spamming backstab” is not an option.
and yes, nerfing backstab that way will break the build because it will take a huge amount of luck to actually land it (maybe if the opponent was sleeping or something). The glass cannon build is ment to deal that huge damage (which anyway requires good positioning before you even use steal to actually have chance to get close to instagibb) – observe the emphasys on how backstab isnt that easy to play as you think it is -. If you blow your burst then you might as well disengage, and if not, most of the times die, considering the opponent is not a total noob.
So you see.. playing a dd bs build requires that you have some skills to set up the burst and the rest of them to escape/survive. How much viable will that build be when you get to mess it up more often than now. Because when you play on a higher level, people actually know how to counter. Which leads me to the same question.. why do you keep beating around the bush and refuse to say why you prefer not to press the counter button?

Spamming BS in this context refers to repeatedly missing your BS until it hits.
I think you’re confusing luck with skill, patience, and practice. Instead of mindlessly spamming 1 until backstab hits, this change will force the Thief to observe his opponent more carefully, watching for dodges, aegis, stunbreak cooldowns, etc.

Right now, dodge, the counter button shared by all classes that SHOULD work on backstab, doesn’t work because backstab can simply be repeated until the evade is over. No other kind of burst has this fail-safe functionality, and backstab shouldn’t either, as it trivializes the consequences of bad play on the thief’s part as well as good play from the opponent.

With a default dodge roll though (straight backwards/not directional), the thief will already be set up to come out of stealth before they can attempt another backstab as they have already wasted time getting in position and will again have to reposition to recieve the full damage instead of the 2k facestab he will most likely get. Also, with the changes to stealth that are coming, the change would be fairly punitive as the thief will now be revealed after stealth ends no matter what, which will already reward players who can avoid the backstab for 3 seconds (which against most thieves is as simple as backpedaling in a circle). How about we see what its like to play against thieves after this round of changes to stealth, then decide if it needs to be changed further.

Switch to D/P. More unified, more mobile, more utility, and you can sit in the smoke field for the full duration of revealed.

vespers.1759:

Maugetarr.6823:

vespers.1759:

zaxon.6819:

so its 1200 a hit.. pretty sure thief shortbow is alot better then that. it seems the only benefit to being a ranger in that situation is having to push less buttons. or you can just put auto shoot on your 1 button and pooof… you are a ranger.

yes assuming ever arrow crits and the target is a glass canon. but a dodge (or even simply running normally at long range) will make most of the shots miss.

the only time you can land all 10 is vs a stunned target or someone who runs away from you in a straight line. at 1000+ range you can literally just side step the arrows.

i fail to see how being able to do 12k dmg over 10 hits compares top being able to do 7k in 1 hit and be able to do that move repeatedly as a thief can with heartseeker.

a simple stun 2, 2 combo for 14k dmg will kill most players easily.

First of all, 2 heartseekers rarely kills people, and unless they are under 50% health, they wont do nearly the 7k damage you keep saying they will. In fact, above 50% you’d be better off autoattacking. What you consider a weakness in a continuous channel I consider a strength. Blind will only last for 1 of the shots, a single block will only block for 1 shot, and it will follow a stealthed thief for almost the entire duration of stealth causing them to have to burn dodges in addition to using stealth.

Loading all the damage into 1 attack in the case of heartseeker means it can be easily negated by the aforementioned methods. In addition, rapid fire is a ranged attack while heartseeker is a melee attack. Ranged attacks will never be as powerful as melee attacks because they do not carry the risk that melee range does.

so you talk about blind and block when i mentioned neither one of those things and ignore the dodge which i did mention and which is the skill that causes the majority of rapid fire to fail.

good job. i can’t wait to see what you come up with next to defend thieves.

Because dodge affects heartseeker more than rapidfire and if you are ignoring those other aspects of defending yourself against heartseeker, then its no wonder you die quickly to 2 of them.

vespers.1759:

zaxon.6819:

so its 1200 a hit.. pretty sure thief shortbow is alot better then that. it seems the only benefit to being a ranger in that situation is having to push less buttons. or you can just put auto shoot on your 1 button and pooof… you are a ranger.

yes assuming ever arrow crits and the target is a glass canon. but a dodge (or even simply running normally at long range) will make most of the shots miss.

the only time you can land all 10 is vs a stunned target or someone who runs away from you in a straight line. at 1000+ range you can literally just side step the arrows.

i fail to see how being able to do 12k dmg over 10 hits compares top being able to do 7k in 1 hit and be able to do that move repeatedly as a thief can with heartseeker.

a simple stun 2, 2 combo for 14k dmg will kill most players easily.

First of all, 2 heartseekers rarely kills people, and unless they are under 50% health, they wont do nearly the 7k damage you keep saying they will. In fact, above 50% you’d be better off autoattacking. What you consider a weakness in a continuous channel I consider a strength. Blind will only last for 1 of the shots, a single block will only block for 1 shot, and it will follow a stealthed thief for almost the entire duration of stealth causing them to have to burn dodges in addition to using stealth.

Loading all the damage into 1 attack in the case of heartseeker means it can be easily negated by the aforementioned methods. In addition, rapid fire is a ranged attack while heartseeker is a melee attack. Ranged attacks will never be as powerful as melee attacks because they do not carry the risk that melee range does.

I’m on the fence overall about this change. The only thing I really see being eliminated by this change is zerg surfing. The way they phrased it (or at least I heard it) is that you need to come out of stealth to get revealed, so D/P can still maintain long stealth if they want to. From what I can see, the meta will change to more S/D and D/P after this because S/D contains a snare to successfully land C&D once reveal is up. D/P can use bps to fight from thier blind field until reveal is up, then heartseeker out of it. The meta may change, and the people who are cheering about this nerf now will become more annoyed with the new playstyle than they were with the old one, especially when thieves don’t have to spec into full burst anymore to deal with a bunker when/if they institute boon hate.

vespers.1759:

Dasorine.1964:

they still take damage and stealth doesnt stop that.

how do i do damage to someone who is invis other than with a lucky untargetted aoe? also what aoe do i use as a ranger? i have barrage on longbow, nothing on shortbow, nothing on sword, nothing on horn, nothing on dagger, nothing on axe, and nothing of GS. i could run traps, and hope the thief steps into one but unless specced they fall at your feet. the flame trap that is probably the best dps trap will only activate when the thief is right on top of me (unless traited but that’s even more based on luck than untraited) and the terrible burn dmg will surely pose a threat to the thief who hits me for 7k+ a hit!

then of course the thief will simply stealth again in 3 seconds! wahoo! and my pet, who will never land a hit on the thief also provides the thief with an extra target to stealth off of.

As I recall, the ranger sword auto attack cripples the target on the second attack and then leaps you to them on the third… The auto attack chain provides a clear indication of where the thief is and also prevents them from easily getting behind you to attempt the backstab. The pets can easily land hits now as they no longer drop aggro on thief stealth. Rapid fire continues to hit thieves in stealth due to its long channel nature.

I suggest you make a thief and take it to sPvP running it in full glass spec to see how other players react to you.

Zog.3954:

Yes, you heard that. BUT they didn’t said it will be in this patch. Was a conceptual idea about thieves and their gameplay, possibly in the future.

….AN hardly ever says whats coming in their next patch. The only thing that we can really say will change in this one is the culling options since they did a blurb about it.

Zog.3954:

Funny how people still think thieves will get any buffs this patch.

Pretty sure I heard something about boon hate and more mobility (since they even said that the ele has better mobility) and something about more build diversity and more staying power.

Say they put the equivalent of flashing blades at grandmaster in acro or trickery (maybe gain aegis and retaliation on crit with melee and C&D grants protection instead of stealth) I have a feeling there would be more of an outcry than right now because thieves would be able to keep up constant pressure while mitigating damage against themselves not to mention they could still begin the fight with a huge burst. The gw1 assassin could dictate the fight from start to finish with heavy cc, high damage, and a rapid flurry of attacks. The gw2 thief lost some utility and staying power for stealth. I don’t mind. They play differently. As they said though in their live stream when they were talking about nerfing eles, stealth can be hard for new players to deal with, but it appears to me that they are essentially saying its a learn to play issue. We’ll see what happens after they fix culling, but I have a feeling that we’ll continue to see small buffs to thieves.

(P.S. I use that builder quite frequently already)

In that 3-4 second window though, the high damage attack assumes that you can safely postion yourself against you opponent. If you can’t, you would have been better off autoattacking, although that would have provided any defense against the opponent. In addition, while the thief is stealthed, pressure is taken off of the opponent whereas the warrior is able to keep up constant pressure with high damage attacks that have no positional requirements to them. I may look into Cavaliers ascended stuff, but I am not a fan of losing the precision attatched to zerker pieces as the most balanced between survivability and power builds I have come to use are either 0/25/30/15/0 or 0/15/30/25/0 meaning I don’t have the inherant precision that come from one of the builds or hidden killer in either. Nothing more disappointing than hitting a backstab from behind and having it do a whopping 1.9k damage and having the enemy turn around and hit you for double or triple that with no setup.

It is apple’s and oranges though since thieves lack all the other measures to defend themselves that other classes have and are given a skill that may be more effective or less effective than the others depending on your opponents’ skill/luck. As I stated before, I’m not great with the engineer (yet) but thieves are the easiest class to take down because I have over 650 hours on them. Once you know what to expect they become weak compared to other classes (such as duelist mesmers or eles).

Channeled attacks were actually never affected by stealth (assuming the channel started before you stealthed). In the future, 15 in acro + withdraw and vigor on heal will keep you alive better during the second phase. If that messes with your build too much, you can save your initiative for SB 3 spam during his AoE spam and save your dodges for his underground attack. I tend to save SR for when teamates go down and throw it on them while letting our guardian res them while I try to hold pressure on myself.

Sebrent.3625:

@Maug: I’m not trying to argue that a Thief can place protection, etc. on themselves and block like a madman. I’m saying that they can be tanky through use of something like Knight’s gear, stealth, and evasion (both dodge rolls and weapon skills if applicable). For example, I know several thieves like to take the blind-on-stealth trait to help in this department.

@oZii: If you’re behind and her stuff is not even on cooldown, waiting for your cooldowns doesn’t put you any farther behind. She wasn’t waiting on cooldowns so any time in the fight that you are getting yours back was only in your favor.

Secondly, you shadow stepped back for what reason? Open your eyes and realize shadow stepping into her axe is a bad idea. That’d be like me blinking away on the mesmer only to swap right back next to the warrior when I want to buy some time for cooldowns … doesn’t make much sense.

Third, you’ve often said, duels don’t mean anything, so why are you trying to show yourself failing horribly at a duel to try to prove a point?

Fourth, that axe arc is only in the front 180.

But my point was that to build for survivability we sacrifice a good amount of damage without the ability to easily gain the loss in power back. I have a full exotic knights set of armor for my thief ad well as a knights amulet and 2 knights rings. I also have a full zerker set and a full magic find set. I’ve tried everything from total toughness builds to (almost) full glass builds and the added survivability doesn’t justify the loss in power. When I build my 80 warrior and my 80 engineer I don’t need to trade one for the other because they can stack might so easily. I take the blind on stealth trait, but blind isn’t the powerhouse it was in gw1. 1 autoattack with no target clears it, so you’ve protected yourself from 1 hit. The blind field from BPS is small enough that you can actually stand outside of it and still hit the thief inside so you don’t blind yourself. As to your response to ozii, he teleported back after he was seen by the warrior in an attempt to mislead the warrior to take pressure off of himself. The obvious rings though betray where the thief really is and player experienced either fighting with or against thieves will easily see though the deception. As to the 7% damage mitigation argument if the thief is taking a 1000 damage hit, that represents a total of a little over 9% if his base health. For a warrior, the 930 damage hit represents less than 5.4% of his health. It would take 18 hits to down the warrior while it would take only 11 hits to down the thief. This represents an actual increase in the ability to kill the thief almost 40% faster than the warrior. There are other factors that compound this desperity like the fact that channeled abilities will continue to track and hit the thief while the warrior’s/engineer’s block is instantaneous and can actually reflect projectile attacks causing the user to end their assault prematurely.

Sebrent.3625:

By your definition, the Thief is only 7% less tanky than a Guardian or Warrior. Back to the 10,000 vs 9,700 damage example.

Tankiness involves all your abilities. Blocking, dodging, regenerating, blinding, etc. all make someone “tanky”.

But, anyways, back to on-topic. It doesn’t matter which definition you go with. It has already been shown that Knight’s gear makes a Thief quite capable of taking hits and doing good damage.

<edit>
A build that is tanky from dodge rolls and avoidance? Go look in the Ranger subforum at the sword+dagger/shortbow builds.

They have quite a number of ways to gain vigor, the two weapon sets have 5 dodges built in (4 in sword+dagger, 1 in shortbow), ways to gain regeneration, 2 sec prot on dodge, and they take play around in any of the Soldier, Rabid, Apoth, Cleric, Knight’s type gear depending on preferences.

Why don’t we talk about tankiness using all abilities. My engineer has a 3 second block out of every 16 seconds, access to protection, regen, easier access to vigor, can root opponents for 2/10 seconds untraited, and 2/8 when traited and even longer if I upped condition duration. Not to mention good knockdown in a 15 second cooldown(12 if traited) and decent burst to top it off. Admittedly I am no expert on my engineer as I hot 80 last night, but so far in spvp, thieves are the only class I consistently take down because loss of sight/targeting doesn’t mean much when you know what is going to happen.

To go further into talking about taking everything into account when talking about toughness, my guardian friend is in 3.2k+ armor with virtual perma-protection when using the hammer combined with runes of earth (i believe) with a bunch of cc on it while still packing quite a dedecent punch + condition damage. There’s a whole host of abilities that other classes have access to that thieves don’t which mitigates their light armor or allows them to stack might much better when they have built tanky to make up for their lack of base power (read through the engi forums and you’ll see discussions on maintaining a permanent 10+ stacks and the most efficient way to spike to 25). There are a couple of alright ways to stack might in a thief build, but they are temporary and either require us to blow utilities or dodges detracting from our survivability. So the thief class is forced to choose between survivability and power whereas other classes, while initially starting a battle weaker, gain a huge advantage over thieves if the battle drags out (the reason thieves are balanced around burst and the ability to escape).

How come the discussion has shifted into making heartseeker the ranger sword autoattack? Not to mention if they bumped up the cost our cost distribution across all the abilities (for D/D) would be 0/4/5/4/6, whereas S/D already has only 0/3(2)/4/4/6 and is more unified. If heartseeker broke CC, cured chill/cripple/immobilize, then upping the cost might be justified, but as it is, it’s such an easy counter to the ability, why nerf it?

Just to throw my 2 cents in about using heatseeker vs. mesmers; in my experience you’ll kill a clone (via decoy or the dodge roll trait) and they cripple and confuse you making continued use if heartseeker pointless as the leap distance is diminished, it has a decent length channel time, and it hurts you. Thus far I have found hearseeker to only be effective against mesmers once they start to run at ~30% health.

RedSpectrum.1975:

Kyrion.2749:

azmodeus.3409:

gw1 assassins were on the right track with shadow step type abilitys, and gw2 would be wise to adjust the stealth skills to a similar coefficient.

Sure! Assassins in GW1 also had 75% perma-block againts attacks… Can thieves get that too while you are at it, Anet?

I have no problems with this

Can you imagine the outcry if C&D were changed to give the equivalent of critical defenses or flashing blades?

Kasama.8941:

If you only use the various weapon skills in an attempt to dodge, you aren’t going to have a lot of success. The skills aren’t meant for just dodging, they are meant to keep the Thief constantly moving, while dealing damage at the same time. You fire at your opponent with your shortbow while strafing, weapon swap to sword and use Infiltrator’s Strike, hit your opponent with a Pistol Whip, use Black Powder to blind, auto-attack with sword while strafing, weapon swap to shortbow and use Withdraw, auto-attack with the shortbow while strafing, use Choking Gas to diminish a possible heal, weapon swap to sword and use Steal, auto-attack with the sword while strafing, use a stealth skill, daze from behind with sword, use Pistol Whip, weapon swap to shortbow and use Disabling Shot, and so on..

Playing a movement focused Thief, means constantly being active; strafing around your opponent while dealing damage, going in and out of melee combat, and switching between weapons. Other professions simply don’t have the ability to do this as efficiently, because they don’t have the short recharge times from initiative, or as many choices of different movement skills. With other professions, you either attack, or run away. The Thief can do both at once. I don’t know how you play a Thief, but it defiantly has superior survivability from movement, compared to any other profession. It’s easy to see just by looking at the healing skills alone.

I do not only use weapon skills to dodge, which is where my complaint about the lack of vigor comes from. Right now my builds typically include X/X/X/15/X + withdraw + vigor on heal to try to gain some of the endurance regen located in the damage/crit damage lines of other professions. That battle plan sounds great on paper until you run across your first shatter mesmer that can keep you constantly crippled and confused while obscuring where they are actually attacking from. A GS hammer warrior can exceed your attack rate with 5 second weapon cooldowns, highly moblie AoE damage, and contant stun/knockback. Mobility is great for keeping pressure up in the thief profession, but I would consider it an offensive strength rather than a defensive one. Stealth is where the defense of the thief is. The ability to change tactics while unseen so you can go from close combat to range while taking the pressure off of yourself for 3 seconds is where our survivability is located.

Lightsbane.9012:

point in case: almost all major mmo developers favor the rogue, warrior, and mage. how powerful are those classes? does the engineer have the same damage capabilities as any of those three?

Yes (to the second question)

Kasama.8941:

Maugetarr.6823:

The dodge portion of the weapon moves is usually quite a lot shorter than the full length of the move and has a delay upon activation (it doesn’t interrupt current actions) making them more of a lucky move unless you are spamming it like in a DB build. Thieves need a better access to endurance regen before I start trusting movement as a legitimate form of defence. My engineer can be easily traied to have perma swiftness and perma vigor in combat and a passive 50% endurance regen in the crit damage line. My ele can have perma vigor as well, even with the internal cooldown added in this round of rebalancing. The thief can trait to give himself 1 more upfront dodge, but unless I trait vigor on heal and use withdraw, blowing my heal constantly, I actually have worse dodging/defense through movement than the other 2 I mentioned.

Well then it’s a good thing that the Thief allows you to use one evade multiple times, so it’s more effective. I wouldn’t say you have to be lucky for the skills to work, though. I’ve only ever had problems using Flanking Strike, when it comes to the back stab. Disabling Shot, Infiltrator’s Arrow, Infiltrator’s Strike/Shadow Return, Heartseeker, Death Blossom, Cloak and Dagger, Shadow Strike, and Black Powder, are all very reliable for avoiding damage.

The Engineer and Elementalist also need to use traits to get permanent swiftness and vigor, so I’m not sure how they are better then the Thief? The Thief can get 10 seconds of vigor on healing, 15 seconds of vigor on steal, 15% endurance reduction per dodge, and use Signet of Agility to refill endurance 100%. And that’s on top of various stealth and shadowstep skills, which neither the Engineer or Elemenalist has.

Oddly enough flanking strike is the most dependable weapon dodge for me.
Disabling Shot→often needs a short windup making it unreliable for dodginging
Infiltrators Arrow→ Alright for running, not for staying power, expensive
IS→does nothing to mitigate damage
Shadow return→Alright against melee for half a second, not so much against range, unreliable stunbreak vs. knockback/knockdown/blowout
Heartseeker→range dependent on conditions, no dodge attatched (don’t understand how this is adding to my survivability)
DB→Short dodge, high initiative cost, forced movement, windup + after animation
BPS→Decent defense against melee, limited use against ranged, expensive, traps you within a small AoE field
Pistol whip→Long windup, medium dodge, roots you
CnD→ I thought we were talking about survivability out of stealth

A thief can then have access to vigor 66ish% of the time while the other 2 classes can have it up 100% of the time, yes while traited, but traited into their power lines, sacrificing little to gain this. Additionally they can have fairly reliable access to protection multiple blocks and knockbacks, blinds from a distance, and a potion that refills endurance same as the signet that does + giving a powerful tool for getting players in downstate up. The point was that those classes and more can have equal survivability from movement while attaining better levels of control. Their access to vigor when traited is also passive while the thief’s is active.

Lightsbane.9012:

Maugetarr.6823:

Columba.9730:

Masters of defense too with perma stealth

engineer: master of control, able to easily run around in areas 6+ levels above themselves and contribute enough to events 10 levels above themselves to receive gold. My engineer feels OP to me. It’s a matter of perception. Try playing a class before suggesting “fixes.”

Engineer is the most underplayed class, which means it has the least amount of attention from arenanet. which means it’s underpowered.

Which is why I included a picture of my level 55 running around in a 65 area completing 65 events, surviving better than many of downleveled players. OP vs UP is a matter of perspective. My engineer is capable of accomplishing things my thief couldn’t think of doing.

Edit: Also when it’s not being changed, that doesn’t mean it’s underpowered or overpowered, it means they think its fine where it is or are currently deciding what small change they could make which wouldn’t create an OP/UP class.

Kasama.8941:

The Thief is fine in PvE, as long as you understand that you need to use a combination of movement and stealth, not just stealth alone. Your weapons sets as a Thief are full of dodge moves, you don’t need traits to get them. In dungeons the Thief is by far the best at reviving, thanks to AoE stealth and very fast movement, and can also give some boons to allies with steal, plus share venoms, through traits. But when it comes to full support, the Thief has always been lacking.

The dodge portion of the weapon moves is usually quite a lot shorter than the full length of the move and has a delay upon activation (it doesn’t interrupt current actions) making them more of a lucky move unless you are spamming it like in a DB build. Thieves need a better access to endurance regen before I start trusting movement as a legitimate form of defence. My engineer can be easily traied to have perma swiftness and perma vigor in combat and a passive 50% endurance regen in the crit damage line. My ele can have perma vigor as well, even with the internal cooldown added in this round of rebalancing. The thief can trait to give himself 1 more upfront dodge, but unless I trait vigor on heal and use withdraw, blowing my heal constantly, I actually have worse dodging/defense through movement than the other 2 I mentioned.

Columba.9730:

Masters of defense too with perma stealth

engineer: master of control, able to easily run around in areas 6+ levels above themselves and contribute enough to events 10 levels above themselves to receive gold. My engineer feels OP to me. It’s a matter of perception. Try playing a class before suggesting “fixes.”

Lightsbane.9012:

coming from someone who’s played every class, i can say the skill thief requires to play is significantly lower than most of the others. the things thief can do that the others can’t can be insufferable at times. i understand that thief is the stealth class, and that it is a burst class, but there is no way to reveal stealth’d enemies nor is there really a way(no matter how much armor you get, i’ve had 3200 armor and still been 50%‘d by a backstab) i’ve tried matching that damage on other classes and i just can’t. if classes like Thief’s role is damage, i recommend clearly defining in the character creation that this is their role. if other classes exceed at support, make them called support classes in their description. as well as difficulty levels in star-rating form at character creation.

From the December 14th patch (thief part excerpt):

“Class balance philosophies
We normally try to employ metered and controlled balance changes with each pass, rather than huge reductions or improvements to classes. We want to get all classes on the same playing field, and we want to avoid “whack-a-mole” style balance. HUGH increases and HUGE decreases lead to meta instability, and thusly, we try to make multiple small tweaks rather than putting in massive changes that we have to later correct.
When designing and balancing the classes, we try to make sure that class roles and identities stay intact. So, in doing so, we make sure that there are rules and boundaries outlining the capabilities and weaknesses of each class.

Thief:
Thieves are the masters of mobility, stealth and high single target damage. They can be very fragile if you counter their stealth with area of effects or large stacks of conditions, but they trade this fragility in order to have some of the highest burst damage in the game. They are able to help allies through traps, venoms and the mobility to flank most encounters

Okamakiri.8746:

1) Other players don’t automatically home in on me behind walls the second I pop out of stealth.

2) Players don’t have threat tables.

3) Players don’t have millions of HP.

4) Players don’t take 1/2 – 3/4 of my HP in a single hit.

5) I don’t give two kittens about PVP in this game.

Your PVP “logic” has no place in a PVE discussion.

1) Correct, the good players still attack you in stealth or put a mark or trap under themselves that activates as soon as you break stealth.

2) You don’t think players prioritize targets?

3) Nope, they have better reactions, more blocks/dodges and constant uptime on attacking you

4) Says someone never hit by kill shot, eviscerate, or 2 shatered clones simultaneously. There are tons of moves that do half our health or better with the single press of a button.

5) Well alright

I spend most of my time in PvE. Cursed shore pre-nerf wasn’t very difficult excluding some group events. A dodge here and a blind there. Cursed shore post nerf is a joke for exploring. I wander into wvw when I’m tired of running dungeons, same with sPvP. Its good that they’re making mobs smarter and more interesting to play against. And post change, I’ve run fractals twice with no noticeable change to how mobs target you in it.

Edit: when I stated Arah, I meant cursed shore, sorry I lumped the 2 in my head.

Okamakiri.8746:

Maugetarr.6823:

Okamakiri.8746:

swinsk.6410:

Unless you applied a ticking condition

You said it yourself. The solution to the resetting problem was as simple as doing a single DB, a minor inconvenience. On the other hand, the downsides to this change are huge and far outweigh the inconvenience of applying a DoT to your target.

Yes you could have used 5 initiative to do less than the autoattack in terms of damage, especially if you’re not specced for condition damage whatsoever, or for 1 more initiative you could stealth, and in the case of my build, remove conditions, blind foes, and regain health. Now you simply have to treat mobs a little more like enemy players. They only made them slightly smarter.

No, they didn’t just make mobs slightly smarter. They completely changed the way stealth works.

1) You cannot use it as an escape mechanic, something that’s a defining trait of stealth in EVERY game that has it.

2) You cannot drop your threat. As a class with highest burst and also one of the highest DPS (and we don’t bring much else to the table), we will have constant attention of mobs now, yet we’re probably least equipped to deal with that attention.

This is a terrible change. Applying a dot once every 18+ seconds in the rare occasion when you’re soloing tough mobs, using an ability that also provides evasion during its execution, is hardly enough of an inconvenience to justify such a drastic change in behaviour to our core mechanic.

So you just have to adjust your playstyle to treat them like other players. Other players wouldn’t drop aggro because they couldn’t see you, now NPCs do the same. Its just slightly better training now for wvw and PvP. You might actually have to stealth, switch to SB and use infiltrators arrow to get out instead of relying on the stupidity of the NPCs to escape. You might have to pop SR ahead of getting downed so you can get back up inside of it like you would have to in PvP or wvw. At least the mobs won’t start swinging inside the circle to down you regardless of whether or jot they can see you. The minor change will strengthen the thief playerbase.

Okamakiri.8746:

swinsk.6410:

Unless you applied a ticking condition

You said it yourself. The solution to the resetting problem was as simple as doing a single DB, a minor inconvenience. On the other hand, the downsides to this change are huge and far outweigh the inconvenience of applying a DoT to your target.

Yes you could have used 5 initiative to do less than the autoattack in terms of damage, especially if you’re not specced for condition damage whatsoever, or for 1 more initiative you could stealth, and in the case of my build, remove conditions, blind foes, and regain health. Now you simply have to treat mobs a little more like enemy players. They only made them slightly smarter.

Well after 2 runs of fractals last night, I can say that there was no noticeable change for me. The only thing that was different is mobs didn’t sprint away at full speed when I stealthed.

I try to make builds that can stand on their own. Consumables are a device to give you an extra edge (imo).

Daecollo.9578:

Maugetarr.6823:

To me, if a build wasn’t viable without temporary buffs then it wasn’t really a viable build in the first place.

30 minute Buffs with no recast isn’t a temporary buff.

I will rephrase then to consumable buffs.

To me, if a build wasn’t viable without temporary buffs then it wasn’t really a viable build in the first place.

Kurow.6973:

Maugetarr.6823:

As an indirect buff, flame and frost auras have also been improved (important if you group up with eles while using D/D + SB)

Yea…and as a direct buff, my ele is even more godlike now! OH YEA!!!!!!

I’m entirely certain that this did not buff D/D bunker eles in any way. Definitely not in any way. (way to find the dark cloud in the silver lining. :P)

As an indirect buff, flame and frost auras have also been improved (important if you group up with eles while using D/D + SB)

Bloodgruve.6038:

‘Using stealth no longer resets NPC aggression tables.’

I thought we were already quite squishy, how is this going to effect us in dungeons?

Blood~

I’m hoping this means that as soon as you stealth the mobs don’t run away and start healing. Nothing as frustrating as trying to res someone in a dungeon in SR losing aggro completely while the boss heals to full when you had <10% left.