Guild Wars 2

Slowmelt.8547:

Maugetarr.6823:

So is the name daredevil or enforcer?

Daredevil is likely the name.
Enforcer Training is likely more for the sake of linking them back to a criminal theme.
An “Enforcer” really would be the type of criminal to use a staff or club.

For that reason I think I could get behind enforcer more easily. We’ll see tomorrow I guess.

So is the name daredevil or enforcer?

Maugetarr.6823:

New trait line is a better version of acrobatics, which is why they nerfed acrobatics so we’d be happy to get the same line.

So if the unconfirmed stuff ends up being true, do I win?
Nvm, I wasn’t specific enough.

Chapell.1346:

Maugetarr.6823:

D/D is just not that great right now. This is coming from someone who was enjoying D/D in ranked before the last patch and is currently playing S/D in ranked.

If i may, did you just switch recently?

I switched after the patch

Maugetarr.6823:

Maugetarr.6823:

It lacks the mobility and condi clears that it needs to survive, thus it has a lower skill cap. .

Oh my, i stand corrected \o/
it seems, i did played the wrong game.

As I stated, if you have these they come from your traits and utilities, not the D/D set. I listed what the other sets bring that D/D doesn’t.

Chapell.1346:

style.6173:

Chapell.1346:

style.6173:

Chapell.1346:

kamix.4713:

b) They run D/D – its worthless spec in this kind of meta

I disagree, D/D Thief has a lot of Traits and Utilities to choose for so that he can blend perfectly in conquest.

Trust me -

Nope,because of what you said about D/D being a worthless in Conquest.

No GOOD thief runs D/D in PvP.

You’re wrong, i see them more often than not lately (good sign btw) and if all things failed i am your living proof. and who said you need to be on top to become viable?
Did i oversleep to much that i don’t get all this kind of jokes from this period of time? it seems i played the wrong game.

Show me the stream of a really good thief who runs D/D. I personally have no seen it either on stream or in any match that I’ve played.

Sadly, i don’t have the capabilities to stream with cos of my crappy internet speed and some boundaries. although i am willing to take the risk and cross it, if your in NA you can look me up in Anet official hotjoin room001, i can game a match or two with you (against or team-up) and show you the beauty of the design on equal footing.

Although i knew a lot of forum lurkers that has some D/d clips or something, it would be much appreciated if one of them step in and show its viability.

D/D is just not that great right now. This is coming from someone who was enjoying D/D in ranked before the last patch and is currently playing S/D in ranked. It lacks the mobility and condi clears that it needs to survive, thus it has a lower skill cap. I don’t mean that you are bad for running it, what I’m saying is that there’s a lower limit to what the set can do for you, even if you were the best thief in the game. D/P has blinds, gap closers, interrupts, stealth on demand, and burst. S/D has gap closers, boonsteal, immobilize, condi removal, interrupts, blind, and decent weapon evades. D/D has burst. Everything else it has is utility and trait dependant meaning the set really brings nothing to the table. If you love D/D, I would recommend going S/D. You’ll lose the 6-8k backstabs, but the autos and larcenous strike can hit for upwards of 5k. You can also trait full damage as utility is built into the set itself.

PopeUrban.2578:

To the rifle/1200 range camp:

Dude, you still don’t get it do you? They are never (never) going to give us a max ranged spec due to our extremely high disengage ability. A 1200 range thief is never happenning. Combining max range with our ability to easily chain withdraw/shadowstep/stealth is a literal get out of jail free card for both PvE and PvP.

It’s the same reason they changed mob behavior to remember you exist when you stealth, and it’s the same reason they didn’t give us a 1200 range weapon to begin with. They consider stealth, our evade utils, and shadowstepping to be balanced for mid range ranged use, but potentially game breaking for long range use.

If we had a 1200 range weapon we could quite literally kite everything in any game mode with nearly zero risk.

If we see a rifle spec in a future expansion, you can bet that it’s not going to be sniping focused, and in stead it’ll take on a carbine style mechanic and be used as a control weapon at shorbow range.

Thief ranged builds will always be equal parts mobility and range due to the way our class mechanics work. There’s simply not another balanced alternative that wouldn’t allow us to trivialize content by blowing all out init at max range then stealthing/teleporting away until it recharges.

I would take a carbine style rifle that got stronger as you got closer like Deathshroud life blast. It could have like a 0.55 multiplier/sec at >900, a 0.75 at 500-900, and a 1.0 at <500. Preferably this would be a burst shot of 3 actual shots too to knock off aegis and stuff like that. I just wanted good sustained damage with utility on the 2-5, not a sniper class. Give the option of long range, but make getting into skirmishing range more beneficial. Maybe next elite spec, huh?

Kageseigi.2150:

Two can be as bad as one. It’s the loneliest number since the number one :-(

No is the saddest experience you’ll ever know. Yes, it’s the saddest experience you’ll ever know :’-(

Dem feels

Windu The Forbidden One.6045:

Maugetarr.6823:

Landspear Confirmed!

A shame anet already confirmed there would be no new weapon types.
Land spear would have been cool though.

Really the only reason I’m disappointing in staff vs spear (if staff ends up being melee) is that a lot of skins are going to end up looking clunky where spear could have had some cool slash/thrust animations.

That said, I already have a shadow staff skin.

Landspear Confirmed!

….cause there are sooooooo many staff skins that will work with this.

Oh well. Can’t wait to actually see the line.

Zero Day.2594:

Maugetarr.6823:

Zero Day.2594:

Wait, we do have a way to apply burning…?

Maybe burning was supposed to be confusion.

Yeah, I honestly can’t recall… Off the top of my head, the only access to burning we have is from the gunk stolen off of an engie….. lol….

AFAIK that’s the only place I know of for burning also. Bewildering amush has confusion attached to it though.

Another quick thought: Thief’s ability to survive combate goes from “dead”-“witness me!” Don’t you only get witnessed when you’re going to die?

Zero Day.2594:

Wait, we do have a way to apply burning…?

Maybe burning was supposed to be confusion.

DarkSyze.8627:

Thieves playing victim role?

Playing the Victim: Avoiding Responsibility While Getting Sympathy- “Most of the time, when the manipulator casts themselves as a victim, they don’t really see themselves as victimized, they just really want the other party to see them as wounded, injured, or suffering in some way in order to elicit sympathy, cloud the picture about just who is the victimizer and who is the victim, and otherwise impression-manage the real victim”.

“That’s why playing the victim role is such an effective tactic. Especially when they’re confronted about their own malicious behavior, disordered characters will try and turn the tables by trying to get you to see them as the injured party”.

Well there’s the pot calling the kettle black.

DarkSyze.8627:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8MmbMCps00Q

For 2 years: thief always viable: if not, show me their balance sheet and Arena net actions? I can show you more of “thief worse than” evidences if you want? Yes! evidence with actions not with words.

Did you even watch the video you linked? It was like halfway through before a fight that he killed someone without +1, engaging with them at half healf, or out of cooldowns. In fact the biggest backstab out of the whole thing was against another thief….

This may be the 40k in me, but I’d much rather see Harlequin, Death Jester, or Shadowseer.

New trait line is a better version of acrobatics, which is why they nerfed acrobatics so we’d be happy to get the same line.

Dat 100% acrobatics needs fixing doh….

Wow, I thought that name was familiar wave, you played with us last night on your warrior in ranked (BDL). I was on my sylvari thief (Irrilythe).

Anyway, I think I mentioned it in another one of your thief videos, it seems like your damage is low for the tradeoff of acrobatics. In the short fights it’s just not really helping you, but you’re losing 20ish% damage from not taking CS.

I’ve tried taking SA with S/D and it seems to help more than acro right now. The problem with acro is that it really is unnoticeable in short fights, where the damage from CS or the condi remove/stealth steal from SA can change the course of fights in both the short and long term.

Read thread title: the bright side is that torch berserker is smashing you over the head with.

Lonewolf Kai.3682:

Maugetarr.6823:

Kidel.2057:

Death Blossom is a Thief skill, this is Revenant subforum.

Added a cool Mist-y animation to Revenant dodges.

I corrected you m8

Mist-y/Shadow-y: Awesome responsiveness none the less.

(Burst failed…. SB 5’s back to thief forum)

Kidel.2057:

Death Blossom is a Thief skill, this is Revenant subforum.

Added a cool thief-y animation to Revenant dodges. Did an awesome job staying true to Shiro (assassin) flavor. Added an evade to Unrelenting Assault (which it needed). Thought I would give it a shot.

Roy Cronacher.1576:

Tried it out and looks awesome. It won’t be out in time for the next beta weekend, but know that it’ll be coming.

This might be a little more balance related, but while you’re testing out cool dodge animations, would you mind turning Deathblossom into a Whirlwind Attack style skill shot?

Kocoff.7582:

Cynz.9437:

oh btw from what i understand the guy responsible for thief spec was also responsible for tempest and dragonhunter…. you can imagine how crappy thief spec will be

Tbh Cynz, Dragonhunter is well done. I just wanna thank you for putting such a reasonble big CD to this devastating skill to Light’s Judgement.(https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Light%27s_Judgement)

Daredevil will be a fine, it will fun. I just don’t want the Thief community to expect it be the Messiah. I expect most thieves to run DareD build in the 1st month, and after that, it will be another option.

Yeah, I’m gonna have to agree with you on the dragonhunter. Reaction seems pretty well mixed which is good considering it’s only seen 1 beta weekend. Look at how terrible the reaction was to the Revenant the first trial and how much better it was received at the BWE. The problems with the Tempest seem to run a little deeper, but DH strikes me as hitting at least decently close as a first attempt.

Cynz.9437:

Sagat.3285:

GreenPhoenix.2943:

We still heaven’t seen the specialization yet. Perhaps the people at anet are just trying to flush those of us who aren’t committed to the class. Watch as the elite spec is revealed to make us as powerful as we once were

It’s supposed to be optional.

this^^

spec should be an option not the sole solution to all issues this class has

Agreed

Signets + Zerker + vuln + executioner+stacks if you were under 50%. The most I’ve hit in PvP after the patch is about 16.5k, but I died to a stiff breeze.

Well, stats don’t exactly split the way you’re describing you want to build in this game. By DPS D/D, I’ll take it you mean power (instead of DoT D/D). Most of your stats come from your armor and trinkets (rings, earrings, backpiece). While you could have power daggers and a condi SB, the condi stats from just the shortbow won’t make your condi damage high, but the loss of ~180 power (at max level) will be noticeable. SB is largely a utility weapon for thief (and happens to be one of our best). So if you want, you can pick power or condi damage and people can make suggestions from there, but thief really doesn’t do hybrid damage well either.

You should probably post this in the Revenant forums while complimenting his work on Shiro especially.

Edit: Something along the lines of "the changes to sword 3 were awesome, could you take a look at deathblossom? "

Bloodyx.5946:

Gray.9041:

uglydan.1638:

Little tid bit of info: the same dev that is responsible for Thief is also responsible for the Ele. There’s a reason why two professions hate their elite spec. Other professions are getting stuff they like, and are seeing changes done based on their feedback.

Guaranteed if Thief is playable during a BWE that any feedback we give will go unheeded. GUARANTEED.

no.

nonono.

say it isn’t so. say it’s a lie.

Tempest was bad, but Ele was already broken.

but thief? we can’t handle that kind of disappointment…

seriously? the dev doing ele does thief?

dear lord… I going to irrationally choose not to believe you because it makes me feel better

NinjaEd.3946:

Maugetarr.6823:

“Mos Eisley Spaceport The thief forum. You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. We must be cautious.”

-devs

Joking aside, this place can be pretty hostile towards devs. I can understand why they wouldn’t want to spend their spare time here. No one wants to work hard at something just to be yelled at.

Work hard? In what moment has there been any evidence of a dev working kitten thief? The released some short videos explaining thief in fractals (only to die repeatedly) and show us how various skills proc signet of malice healing and small features of thief. There is no passion for thief from anet, and its grown more and more apparent with these balance updates. They really should show the community some effort and I’d be willing to bet any rude or uncalled for comments will be quickly shut out by the numerous thief fanatics who want a meaningful discussion with the developers.

I sincerely doubt the respectful thief players would rage at anet if they opened such a thread, even if it feels justified. We just want progress.

Well, trying. Effort was put in, although I agree that a lot of times it was seen by the people who play thief as more groan worthy than anything else and we mocked them for the effort.

Gray.9041:

Maugetarr.6823:

Zero Day.2594:

Jana.6831:

Sandrox.9524:

it wouldnt be staff it would be offhand hammer

Kitten, now I have to decide between Team GS and Team Offhand Hammer

;) Go with team GS, and be part of the master race (Guards, Warriors, and now Reapers).

No! #TeamLandSpear! (A thief can dream, can’t he?)

no new weapons this xpac – though I’ve been wanting land-spear for a while. perhaps next time.

But it’s not new, it’s just allowing a weapon that already exists to now be equipped into the mainhand land weapon slot in the hero panel.

Advent.6193:

As a P/P Thief, a Gunslinging-noStealth-motherkitten … what do I want?

• I would like my Acrobatics trait tree -as a whole!- to keep proper pace with & be an equivalent form of defense to Shadow Arts
• I would like some attention paid to the fact that our -oh so fun!- Dual Pistols have been crapped on, in an effort to rein in D/P and P/D.
• I want Venoms reworked into something Thieves can love and take pride in.
• I want the exact same for Traps, and Thief skill use underwater. Let’s be honest here, at some point, ANet’s going to make us fight Bubbles … and Thieves are underequipped for that battle.
• I absolutely want Thieves to have a Dev like Robert Gee, who not only has interesting ideas for improving the class, but can actually coordinate with, and -when it’s actually a good idea- can honestly listen to the folks who love the Profession, and simply want to see it perform at its best.

Now, can Thieves acquire some of these (reasonable) gains?

I like the sound of it. My fear is that they nerfed acrobatics so they could give us acrobatics 2.0 in our elite spec and we’d be happy to just get it back. Also, don’t forget about Roy and his swift remedy of Sword 3 for Revenant. I wouldn’t mind seeing him address Deathblossom.

“Mos Eisley Spaceport The thief forum. You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. We must be cautious.”

-devs

Joking aside, this place can be pretty hostile towards devs. I can understand why they wouldn’t want to spend their spare time here. No one wants to work hard at something just to be yelled at.

Zero Day.2594:

Jana.6831:

Sandrox.9524:

it wouldnt be staff it would be offhand hammer

Kitten, now I have to decide between Team GS and Team Offhand Hammer

;) Go with team GS, and be part of the master race (Guards, Warriors, and now Reapers).

No! #TeamLandSpear! (A thief can dream, can’t he?)

reinforever.8902:

Maugetarr.6823:

DeceiverX.8361:

Maugetarr.6823:

reinforever.8902:

AikijinX.6258:

Yeah, well all power to you. You are 1 in a million. A thief that can successfully run a trapper spec. I would be interested in seeing a montage video, but thank you.

You’re righto on that, everyone I’ve tried to convince that the build is good says it sucks. But good idea, I think I will make a short montage vid!

Edit: Suggest me some decent free recording software. Does the built in windows 10 stuff actually work?

Nvidia shadowplay. Windows 10 isn’t bad as Zero Day suggested, but I haven’t tried the capture software because shadowplay already does such a great job for me.

This thread appeared in the PvP forums asking the same thing recently

Was just about to recommend Shadowplay if he has an nVidia GPU. That software is absolutely amazing and it really upsets me I run a card on older architecture currently that isn’t supported, but the weaker card in the same series does.

Yeah, I love it too. I’m running on a 770 and it has no noticeable effect on framerate. I uploaded a raw video in that to show the video capture quality.

I see you with that PTV, anyways…. what editing software?

PTV? (edit: Pierce the Veil, for some reason I thought you meant soldiers amulet) No editing software. This was the raw video. The recording pauses when you alt-tab (for reddit or forums) while you wait. Music was what I was listening to. I literally dragged and dropped the video file to youtube with no edits because the guy in the other thread was wondering about capture quality.

ronpierce.2760:

Okay, being one of the highest unexpected (at least in terms of D/P) or relatively unpredictable burst is a role. Not all “roles” have to be tanky and super self sufficient to be a “role”. Unfortunately, Mobility and objective completion IS a role and team beneficial and goal oriented. Toker basically carried WTS to the win. It is a role, you just don’t seem to like or agree with that role.

To sum it up:
- Mobile objective executer
- Unexpected Spike team fight winner (including stealth stomps when necessary)

This is a generalized role D/P thieves fill and yes, they contribute HUGELY to a team, hence why they’re still ran in WTS. The simple matter is Thief is entirely build around a role you don’t seem to agree with. So wait for Daredevil, and hope it brings back the melee stealth fighter who can go toe-to-toe, or reroll…

It’s insane to be upset that the thief fills the mobile objective and team spiker role… I can’t imagine what you even thought it’d do… Like you example of a rogue “finding traps”, being the team unexpecter Spiker (aka Assassin) is a role that has been around for ages.

It’s partially the fact that the other builds were nerfed while the one that was already performing the best got buffed (D/P). Even if our elite spec is an evasive brawler, we already had it, and it was removed. Being pigeonholed into a specific setup is very frustrating, so even if we accept the premise that we are peripheral support in our role, we’re annoyed because we had the choice to be more in the past and that was eliminated.

Rain.9213:

Cynz.9437:

They are not going to answer you: reality is, too many players rolled thief (for RP purposes/pve mainly) and this class will continue get nerfed to garbage tier for the sake of:
- reducing numbers of thieves in game to improve statistics
- to please QQing masses

Oh and obviously they will never admit that none of them ever touched thief or they would know about backstab bug for example or wouldn’t embarass themself so badly on POI stream by not knowing neither trait names nor what they do.

Not sure how accurate this is but http://guildwars2viz.com/

Thief is 4th most played class so if anything, they nerfed Thief to encourage people to play Mesmers or Engineers which get stealth also xD

But I don’t think that’s the case, tbh.

I think that’s the 2012 information.

DeceiverX.8361:

Maugetarr.6823:

reinforever.8902:

AikijinX.6258:

Yeah, well all power to you. You are 1 in a million. A thief that can successfully run a trapper spec. I would be interested in seeing a montage video, but thank you.

You’re righto on that, everyone I’ve tried to convince that the build is good says it sucks. But good idea, I think I will make a short montage vid!

Edit: Suggest me some decent free recording software. Does the built in windows 10 stuff actually work?

Nvidia shadowplay. Windows 10 isn’t bad as Zero Day suggested, but I haven’t tried the capture software because shadowplay already does such a great job for me.

This thread appeared in the PvP forums asking the same thing recently

Was just about to recommend Shadowplay if he has an nVidia GPU. That software is absolutely amazing and it really upsets me I run a card on older architecture currently that isn’t supported, but the weaker card in the same series does.

Yeah, I love it too. I’m running on a 770 and it has no noticeable effect on framerate. I uploaded a raw video in that to show the video capture quality.

reinforever.8902:

AikijinX.6258:

Yeah, well all power to you. You are 1 in a million. A thief that can successfully run a trapper spec. I would be interested in seeing a montage video, but thank you.

You’re righto on that, everyone I’ve tried to convince that the build is good says it sucks. But good idea, I think I will make a short montage vid!

Edit: Suggest me some decent free recording software. Does the built in windows 10 stuff actually work?

Nvidia shadowplay. Windows 10 isn’t bad as Zero Day suggested, but I haven’t tried the capture software because shadowplay already does such a great job for me.

This thread appeared in the PvP forums asking the same thing recently

Cameron.6215:

Maugetarr.6823:

Wait, if one line is weak, why would I take another line and it to maybe bring it up to par? If the new line is awesome, I’ll drop CS from my DA/CS/Tr build. Right now, replacing CS with Acro is a hindrance because it’s not a strong line on its own. Giving up 2 lines for the benefit of 1 makes no sense. If the new line is powerful enough to make up for the shortcomings of Acro, I’d rather pair it with our other strong lines. If it’s weak or designed poorly enough that it needs Acro to function properly, I’ll pass (aside from the fact that would kill build choices by making 2 necessary on top of the virtually mandatory trickery line).

Here’s another thing to think about. They literally called the S/D acro set “dodge spamming.”

Tldr: if the new line is strong, I’ll use it to supplement our other strong lines, not as a crutch for the weak ones.

I don’t think it will literally be “take this with acro or there is no point to using this new shiny traitline”. But more-so of “hey, if you want to make a build around acro, take this traitline too for an effective build”. Hopefuly like Trickery the new traitline will also synergies greatly with all other trait-lines and improve the weak ones. This is more so my point.

But that’s my point. If it’s good on it’s own, I’ll pair it with the other good lines. If it’s not good without acrobatics I won’t use it. If this really would have made us too dodge heavy, it probably has good enough evasion traits to use in place of acrobatics. Really, the problem I have is that it’s not fine nerf one line to irrelevancy because we still have 4 other lines. Each line should be able to stand on its own and offer choice in playstyle. Acro does not stand on its own and will not stand on its own if it needs another line as a crutch.

Wait, if one line is weak, why would I take another line and it to maybe bring it up to par? If the new line is awesome, I’ll drop CS from my DA/CS/Tr build. Right now, replacing CS with Acro is a hindrance because it’s not a strong line on its own. Giving up 2 lines for the benefit of 1 makes no sense. If the new line is powerful enough to make up for the shortcomings of Acro, I’d rather pair it with our other strong lines. If it’s weak or designed poorly enough that it needs Acro to function properly, I’ll pass (aside from the fact that would kill build choices by making 2 necessary on top of the virtually mandatory trickery line).

Here’s another thing to think about. They literally called the S/D acro set “dodge spamming.”

Tldr: if the new line is strong, I’ll use it to supplement our other strong lines, not as a crutch for the weak ones.

+1, or rather a player controlled add.

We’re not Mai Trin…..we’re Horrik

Tenrai Senshi.2017:

For me personally, I’d like them to remove the “Detonate Cluster” ability on Cluster Bomb for Shortbow (Skill 2).

There is really no benefit at all to detonating the Cluster Bomb, and in many ways it actually makes the skill weaker. The three smaller bombs, even if they all hit the same target, only amount to the same damage that the larger, un-detonated bomb would do if it just hit normally, only in a smaller area of effect. In addition to that, detonating the bomb causes it to lose its blast finisher effect, which is super important for blasting combo fields.

Lastly, it really impedes our ability to fire the “Cluster Bomb” skill more rapidly, for some more burst dps at range. You have to wait for the skill to land before you can fire the next one, otherwise you’d detonate it prematurely and miss your target altogether.

Unless they rework the detonation and make it so that detonating the bomb is actually worthwile, I really think it should just be removed altogether, because it’s a massive hindrance.

If they would up the velocity of CB by ~50% it would go a long way towards increasing the ability to successfully hit from range.

DeceiverX.8361:

I liked what I saw, though I would like to keep my three vuln on CnD. If anything, the duration can just be cut to 3s to prevent double-stacking like it can be currently. I have but one suggestion I made in another thread that I didn’t think much of at first, but has really grown on me and I don’t think it would break anything, which ties in nicely to what was said above regarding:

-Condition cleanses still feel weak
-HK needs a little bit of… something.

Unblockable is definitely way over the top, but HK for the most part, while awesome, doesn’t really feel fitting for a GM, and CS as a whole is not taken for the most part in competitive PvP builds and HK is considered sub-optimal in the dungeon meta. It enables valkyrie builds, but disables either SA or DA, which are arguably two of the best trait lines available (Trickery aside).

Giving HK a one-condition removal per stealth attack would put CS builds in a much better place, for now they can sacrifice SA’s remaining utility for extra damage/reliability, and still get a cleanse every few seconds, but at the cost of not constant cleansing, initiative regeneration, healing, extended stealth duration, etc.

A SA build then can build into CS for even better condition removal on par with guardians and eles, but at the cost of the damage and utility from DA; mug, Lotus Poison, Panic Strike, EW, Executioner are all very strong traits and would make this a very calculated decision with definite ups and downs.

I do like the general direction of these suggestions, though. Nothing seems out of line but everything looks pick-worthy.

That’s an interesting idea. As I said I’m a little hesitant to put too much defensive capability into an offensive line. I think this could be fair though at least because it would be offset by having to pick between invigorating precision and this proposed change. It’s also self limiting by revealed and this would make it an alright choice for S/D builds. It would also restrict you from taking NQ which is a pretty powerful GM within itself.

Jugglemonkey.8741:

Maugetarr.6823:

I’m going to disagree with you on the CS part not being worth it (from an sPvP perspective). At my crit chance, when making the choice between SA and CS, SA is a moderate increase in utility (not bad, but not great for my playstyle) while CS represents a 25% increase in outgoing damage (total damage when weighing the likelihood of crits). I definitely agree that Acro is mediocre and contains a bunch of auto procs that may or may not help.

I played with CS for a while and the extra damage is very nice, although I feel like condi rips me apart if they can tank a hit then burst (Necros for example). Admittedly I roam WvW and duel more than I PvP, so for me SA has more benefits in those circumstances, but for +1’ing a fight on point you’re definitely not wrong.

I guess what’s bugging me is that CS only really offers more damage, acro is mostly passive as you say, and with DA/TR being almost mandatory SA is the only appealing choice if you don’t want to go full glass.

I might be limiting myself by playing S/P but it’s more fun than D/P imo. Like I say, a lot rides on how good this new spec is. I realise i’m preaching to the choir at this point :/

I’m playing on S/D right now for the same reasons you play S/P, so I depend on the sword for low condi variety and Signet of Agility and Shadowstep for more. Most of the time the big thing I try to clear is poison and I treat other conditions like physical damage. This sort of depends on you killing stuff fast though so I guess the CS/SA tradeoff is really just playstyle preference.

I’m going to disagree with you on the CS part not being worth it (from an sPvP perspective). At my crit chance, when making the choice between SA and CS, SA is a moderate increase in utility (not bad, but not great for my playstyle) while CS represents a 25% increase in outgoing damage (total damage when weighing the likelihood of crits). I definitely agree that Acro is mediocre and contains a bunch of auto procs that may or may not help.

Actually if they hadn’t nerfed acrobatics this wouldn’t bother me so much. The problem is that they keep making 1 defensive line the obvious choices and then buffing foes abilities to negate it. Counters to a build is fine if we have other options to choose from, but right now it’s either DA/CS/Tr or DA/SA/Tr. I’d like some options. And yes, we have great disengages, but running away is pretty much losing without dying. It allows you to attempt a fight faster again where you’re not really outplaying them, but rather hoping they make a mistake or don’t have their skills off CD yet.

My thieves. I tend to favor red/orange.

TheMurkMuffin.8213:

Watch us not get a weapon altogether. XD

Empty handed skills! GW1 style Touch skills confirmed!

Nothing is off the table!

Empty hands have stats based on an equipped weapon, but you don’t use the weapons!
You have no weapon swaps, only kits!
Staff kit, Rifle kit, shuriken kit, grenade kit!
Elite stolen bundle! The last profession you stole from gives you a kit based on what they were!

#TeamLandSpear

Gray.9041:

Maugetarr.6823:

Sagat.3285:

uglydan.1638:

More likely they haven’t even started on thief elite spec.

If they take a break after Herald’s POI I’ll believe you.

Keep in mind they still have forge, berserker, and the druid that could all come before whatever we’re getting.

Edit: I think they’ve actually been on it for a while because shortly after they mentioned HoT, one of the devs at a convention said they were most excited for the thief elite spec, which leads me to think that we might actually think it’s pretty cool but the rest of the community might think it’s OP so they’re keeping it in reserve.

remember that this is from the post expecting Dragonhunter to be a crowd-pleaser.

take with many pinches of salt.

DH (other than the name) seems to be a mixed bag of like and dislike.

“Mesmer elite spec likely to shake up PvP landscape the most” seems pretty accurate.

1.5ish for 2 so far. We’ll see how accurate it stays if forge and druid come out first.

Sagat.3285:

uglydan.1638:

More likely they haven’t even started on thief elite spec.

If they take a break after Herald’s POI I’ll believe you.

Keep in mind they still have forge, berserker, and the druid that could all come before whatever we’re getting.

Edit: I think they’ve actually been on it for a while because shortly after they mentioned HoT, one of the devs at a convention said they were most excited for the thief elite spec, which leads me to think that we might actually think it’s pretty cool but the rest of the community might think it’s OP so they’re keeping it in reserve.