Guild Wars 2

Dagins.5163:

Advantage? You have an interrupt on your steal, and as d/p you can interrupt pistol whip. S/P thief can’t interrupt any of your moves.

What… do people even play this game?

LuRkEr.9462:

Put down that blind field so they miss half their pistol whip and the damage is pretty low also.

Just no… Black Powder will do nothing to them, don’t waste the initiative unless you need stealth to cover your heal or you’re timing a heartseeker at the end of their pistol whip so you can get a backstab in.

Headshot the Pistol Whips

When I refuge downed players who are getting stomped I always make sure to roll over their incapacitated body and then place it precisely back where it was prior to the stomp attempt. Just sayin’ – maybe the thief learned to do the same.

It gives me an idea for how quickly you learn based on your current level of proficiency at the class and amount played.

Will be contacting people about playing as time goes on, may take a few days to get back to you. Anyone else is still welcome.

Making a team, aaaand we’re looking for a bunker guardian. You don’t have to be amazing or anything. The info can be found here:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/lfteam/NA-Looking-for-a-Guardian/

Posting this to get some extra traffic since hardly anyone goes to the other forum.

I’m asking what your experience is on Guardian, if you can provide recordings of gameplay then that’s even better.

Looking for a bunker.

Closed.

-Caed

Things I disagree with:

Headshot – Daze duration increased to the original amount (pre-nerf) when interrupting the target.
I think headshot is fine as is. It is used as an interrupt, not to spam chain dazes on people.

Shadowstep – Increased cooldown to 60 from 50.
Other utilities should be brought up to Shadowstep, not the other way around. Utilities should be strong and I feel like the majority of them are unappealing. Why nerf the few good ones instead of making the others more appealing and bringing variety to the things people play? On top of this Shadowstep is a thief’s only reliable condition clear outside of Hide in Shadows.

Shadow Refuge – Increased cooldown to 70 from 60.
I do not see the point in increasing the cooldown. This skill compared to others has counter-play to it. It tells people where you are for he duration and you can be knocked out of it. This is unnecessary.

Debatable:

Executioner – Reduced extra damage when target is below 50% from 20% to 15%.
I don’t see this as a necessary nerf but it won’t really affect much and people will still take it regardless.

Sleight of Hand – Decreased steal cooldown reduction to 10% from 20%.
The amount could be argued, but this in tandem with the trait line change you proposed is probably too much. I’d argue to 15%.

Trickery Traitline – Decreased steal recharge reduction gained from traitpoints spent by 33%.
Again, watch what you touch because if you touch a little bit of everything then it all adds up and has a fairly large affect on internal balance.

What I want the most:

Disabling Shot – Added a ~0.25 second aftercast to add counterplay and discourage endless chaining of this skill for evasion purposes.
I believe all weapon skill evades should have a window of vulnerability. This promotes reactionary evades as opposed to proactive ones. Instead of spamming 3 until your initiative gets low you have to use it at the right time. Chaining evades forever is skill-less and boring to play against.

Overall:

I agree with most everything else. I think Jumper offers a lot of interesting idea’s and changes to abilities that are fairly balanced and sound fun to play. One last thing I’m unsure about is Runes of Perplexity. I think adding them would see a large shift in meta and I don’t know how I feel about it. All in all, good post, good ideas, and mainly fair suggestions.

Caed~

P.S. Something I would suggest is changing the hit radius on Shadow Strike (3) in Pistol/Dagger. The cone for the hit box is extremely small and frustrating to play with the extremely fast (and silly) cast animation.

Moderators removed my post, I said some things to that guy already.

I wouldn’t mind playing on EU but I get too much skill delay, around 2-3 seconds =[

Super I was ranked 16th a few days ago… NA needs help. You have far more players on EU than we do here

The irony. There isn’t much for you to understand yet it seems to go right past you.

The game started 4v5. Someone disconnected. 3v5. Still 100 point difference. Had there been 5 players at the start we would have won regardless of a 4v5 two minutes in. The joke with the title is that the game is that close regardless of a 3v5, and what’s the point in playing when 90% of my losses are from 4v5 or 3v5? It’s not fun to play and deters people from queuing. You’re arguing nonsense and trying to be a know it all whereas all you’re doing is displaying ignorance and arrogance.

P.S. Yes, I’m mean. Get used to it.

The game didn’t even start 5v5. It started 4v5.

Assumptions won’t help you argue anything, you come off as ignorant.

As for claiming that I’m lying, our 4th disconnected 2 minutes into the game and it started 4v5. The rest of the game was 3v5. Your assumption and insinuation are an insult to my integrity.

No reason to play if I’ve had over 20 of these in the past week. Regardless of whether you say it’s a player issue or not it’s not something I will waste my time with. Solo queue is a joke, and a bad one at that.

So not only do I have to play a game 3v5, knowing that if I had even one more player to make it a 4v5 we would have won. Matchmaking needs some work (@justin <3)

This is why I hate solo queue. Regardless of new players, people who have below average intelligence, and haters it’s the Xv5 that gets me. The decrease on idle time until the game kicks you does not help either. All of my matches today have been 4v5 or 3v5. What’s the point in even playing?

It’s still garbage.

The camera at the bottom of temple is atrocious. Beach/Courtyard on Nifl, or the Graveyard on Foefire would be better.

cymerdown.4103:

Valentin.2073:

guardians and spirit rangers are pretty much the same, IMO.

That is now quoted for all eternity, no backsies.

For some reason my mind tells me the origin of the word “backsies” comes from Doyourbestbear.

Interrupt it, interrupt the ranger casting it, kill it before you kill players (stack the conditions on the spirit and epidemic that if you want – rangers do not watch the conditions on the spirit and won’t use it for that).

My only complaint with it (I have two, but the other is with targeting) is that it doesn’t require Line of Sight.
The other complaint being it’s hard to target through the masses of AI clutter and particle effects in the game.

Other than those two the spirit has a number of counters.

I will second Justin on this. The PvP team is very small in comparison to everything else going on. They do a lot for the amount of people they have and they’ve been getting a lot better about it by trying to keep you guys happy. They are more open, answer more questions, give out patch notes ahead of time that are open for discussion and listening to you. While PvE has several groups working on different aspects of the game PvP has one doing everything to do with PvP. That includes content, balance, rewards, progression, etc. You can’t compare the amount of PvE content being pushed out to the amount of PvP content when the PvP team is 1/20th of the size.

I’m not saying they’re perfect, but comparing to two without knowing much about it isn’t a very logical thing to do.

It still amazes me that this guy is complaining about thief. A two year old chimpanzee can smash his hands on his keys as a DPS guardian and kill any glass thief in the game. If he cannot then I have no words.

This amuses me. If it annoys people this much I’m going to stop killing them and just reset 15 times before I get bored toying with them.

Amaterasu.6280:

Sure, if you want to put it like that, no one is forced to play any build. But Caed – answer me 1 thing after reading all of that:

In tourneys, why isn’t anyone using the other builds that you say are viable right now? Do you feel it’s because people are lazy and/or did you single handedly dictated the d/p meta build to be 10/30/0/030 since people claim that’s the “caed build” so it must be amazing?

I’m pretty sure you yourself have been using 10/30/0/0/30 since sleight of hand buff. You are sure as hell not forced to play 10/30/0/0/30 but what’s stopping you from using the other builds? Surely if you want to talk about tailoring a build to one’s style of play, not everyone should end up using the same build? There are good thieves around, and they theory craft all the time, there should be a reason why they end up with pretty much the same build?

I’m open minded when it comes to thief builds, sure – but I also know that there are just certain builds that are above others right now in a tourney setting. If you want to talk strictly builds that are “viable” overall in hotjoins or solo Q, then yea you can play anything. But a meta build is a meta build, there is a reason for it.

Why are rangers playing spirit rangers, why are warriors playing hambow? They are definitely not forced into it, but if you want to win, you are pretty much “forced” to play a certain build because of the meta. You could argue it’s a player issue, but that’s a whole other discussion.

I told you why, if you’re that daft and choose to ignore what I say I can’t help you. As for why I use the build I made that’s pretty self explanatory. I made and stuck with it because it suits me, it’s how I play.

As for Spirit Rangers, they are forced into it. Everything else is mediocre in comparison to what spirits does. Warriors on the other hand, you claim they’re all Ham/Bow but that’s not even true. You see Double Sword/Longbow condition bunkers, Ham/Bow, GS/Bow, Sword Warhorn/Mace Shield bunker… I can keep going. I don’t only see Ham/Bow.

And to close it out, you say there are a number of good thieves around. I’ll be the prick and just say it – There’s not.

Two things are wrong with what you’ve said. First being “forced” to go 30 into trickery. You aren’t forced to do anything – in fact there are countless builds I’ve doubt you’ve even tried. People see someone make something work and they flock to it without checking other options. Just because one thing suits someone’s playstyle and they are efficient with it does not mean it’s the best – it merely suggests that a player has found a build that tailors to the way they behave. People are lazy, they see success in others and try to imitate it instead of finding success themselves. Instead of assuming that a build is the only (or worse yet, will be the only) viable build find out how you play and tailor something to that. After which you can tweak accordingly. Even worse to this people try something and fail, so they assume that it’s the build when in fact it’s a player skill issue. Just because something didn’t work the one time you tried it doesn’t mean it doesn’t work at all.

Second, you assume that Deadly Arts builds aren’t viable. However they will probably make a return to the meta depending on what happens and the team compositions players choose. Deadly Arts builds have a key counter to burst builds: weakness. It’s abundant. You can spam poison which in turn spams weakness onto enemies. To top it all off it has higher burst and one of my favorite traits: Improvisation. If you think this build isn’t viable or is weaker than Sleight of Hand then you’re misinformed. The reason Trickery builds were more prevalent than Deadly Arts builds were due to a heavy condition meta where weakness was generally useless and thieves needed the extra survivability from the Mug/Sleight of Hand combo.

Anyway – you can think what you want. Just be open minded and don’t assume anything. The patch hasn’t even hit yet. Ignorance is bliss~

Amaterasu.6280:

I was just thinking about this as well.

In my opinion, I really do wish it worked like arcane thievery, as it would allow smarter plays with steal. It’s also a way of countering a lot of cheese, I.E loads of stability of warriors, plague form stability, 15-25stacks of might, etc. I think if you are going to be walking around with 15-25stacks of might, there should be a risk involved, and the risk could be that a thief could steal all of it and use it against you. That’s assuming IF they can steal it because let’s face it…a lot of random dodges happen and steal can easily miss. Risk vs reward is a good thing in my book.

Example: If a warrior popped balance stance and I stole it from him with the duration, I’d get 8s of stability which I could use against him. It would make fights a lot more interesting and would allow counter-play against the current meta hambow wars where if you get hit by a stun without a stunbreak, you’re pretty much dead as a thief.

Also, say, a necro decides to plague form on point – he gets 20s of stability. If you are able to steal that from him for your team, it would be tremendously helpful and a counter play because he chose to pop plague with a thief around so he should be able to be punished instead of having stability for 20s and being able to hold a point for a long while.

The 3s of whatever boon you steal from the enemy just doesn’t seem sufficient. I’d be happy with a few more seconds if not the full duration. And stacks…STACKS!

I’m against this. It would move it to a Grandmaster trait, and there’s nothing else I’d want in master – I’d take Sleight of Hand over Bountiful in that case as well. Bad idea in my opinion.

Justin ODell.9517:

We would give you a window of time to allow you to change characters. You just wouldn’t be able to do it after committing.

It would work if you can’t do it after joining a game, as you said. However from what I hear there are people in EU who know how to check their solo queue roster. They could easily ask a teammate what’s on the other team before entering and adjust that way – something to look into.

That’s a very niche role the class can play, there are far more things it can do in the right hands. Vigor is arguably the strongest boon in the game however – not something small, especially 10-15 seconds of it. Not only that it applies boons you steal to other classes. The small window that you steal stability in can ensure a safe stomp or res for an ally, not just a daze. It also removes protection and aegis when you burst allowing you to fully maximize your damage without having to wait for certain conditions.

There are many reasons to take the trait in my opinion, not just stealing stab to daze.

Justin ODell.9517:

Yuki.1765:

And what about the rerolls? People will still be able to reroll another class or change their build before the game start? Or, do you want to block professions/builds composition after people click “go now” ?

This is something we could do. I don’t know how well received that would be though. Maybe if we provided a preview of what the team looks like and let you back out before committing, at the cost of losing your position in the queue. At that point it would be much easier to replace you.

This could push some players away from PvP as they like to log onto other characters to PvE while the queue pops – forcing them to sit in queue and do nothing isn’t a very good system.

Justin ODell.9517:

We use Glicko2 for our MMR. When updating your MMR, we base it off the average MMR for the opposing team.

The current matchmaking will find 2 sets of 5 players that have are within each others MMR range. That range expands the longer a player has been waiting. Once all 10 players have been found, it will take those 10 players and form 2 rosters by shuffling players by rating (03478 12569.) It does not go out of its way to find low skill players, and does not factor in PvP rank or leaderboard rank at all.

Future matchmaking will go one step further and grab all players within range and use a scoring system to find the best quality match possible with those players. This means we’ll be able to do things like limit number of professions/builds, and more.

The most likely culprit for low skill players being matched is their default placement on the curve, and several ideas are being discussed on how to best handle that.

I already knew that you used Glicko 2, but I wasn’t sure if you could fill us in on some of the constants and coefficients you have in place. This would help us (or me since I’m the one asking for it) better understand the rating deviation in place.

As for future placement it’s difficult to kitten things such as score as players may start to turn to a hotjoin mentality to farm points. I understand the difficulties in accurately placing people because a lot of the sources for placement can be manipulated under the right circumstances. If you add decapping/capping points under a list of things that affect rating you will start to have players decapping and capping points in pairs because they all want to increase their MMR. Then the problem comes “Where is the line between winning and points per game”. If you make it so that losing affects MMR only by losing people will complain that they played as best they could and shouldn’t lose as much, if you add score in then people will tend to lose more because they are concerned about points: “Hey I’m losing now, so I better start farming so it doesn’t affect my MMR as much”, then you get a landslide effect where players who are losing will throw games to try to minimize their rating loss instead of trying to win the game. Same thing works the other way where players who are winning will try to maximize their point gain and could potentially throw a game because of this. However with such a small player base having the current MMR system makes it hard to accurately place people around the same skill level.

Do you have any plans on addressing those issues? (If so could you kindly go through and explain them).

Mrbig.8019:

sigh i don’t want to start arguments with you again.

Outplaying is not a good argument, you said it.

If you need to OUTPLAY it means your prof is not on par. Moreover, there’re classes you simply can’t beat.

A team must think about all these stuff. A necro ( built for teamfight) is strong 1vs1 against most classes with few counters and can handle multiple players for quite some time with plague form and blind spam.

A thief, even an acro one, won’t be able to do such thing without losing the point.

Currently thieves are not in a good place because team, in EU, start stacking bunkerish builds you can’t bring down.

In top EU solo queue all you see is wars-engies-spirit rangers-necros with some random off guard.

Against such comps thieves are borderline useless and if meta shifts towards this way, we’ll been outclassed in any possible way.

This is just a fact, i even dunno why we’re arguing: ini regen buff won’t help burst thief sustain against condi spam, so we’re left with 2 subpar option instead of only D/P trickery being subpar.

I want to believe i’ll be viable, i know i won’t.

Even if i can outplay my opponents, my contribution will be very minimal when compared to other classes.

Thing is outplaying is in the game, you can’t ignore it. It’s a bad argument because on paper it sounds easy and in the game it isn’t. But truth be told it’s part of every game in existence. You need to outplay people, that’s how you win. Doesn’t matter how you look at it. A build should not be an instant win against something else, and while you say it is against thieves it’s not. Just because you lose to certain classes or spec it doesn’t mean that everyone playing is as well. Play better or keep whining if that’s what you really want to do, it’s not going to change much. The class has the ability to win 1v1s against anything, you have the tools to do so. So instead of playing poorly learn to win.

As for bunkers, there’s a thief spec that melts them all. Just because you don’t want to venture outside of your cookie cutter builds handed to you, or you don’t have the imagination to do so (not sure which, but all I’ve seen you do on forums is whine about everything) doesn’t mean it isn’t possible.

tl;dr: thief is fine, and will be fine. Learn to play.

P.S. You can try to argue with me, but you’re going to waste your time. Going to let you think what you want at this point since you always think you’re right about everything anyway

Kaon.7192:

Agreed on skill ceiling of full burst D/P builds.

In terms of skill floor, however, I guess in the end it depends on what you’re fighting. Playing P/D attrition is at least as easy as D/P permastealth against any melee build that isn’t hammer+mace/shield warrior with its insane AoE CC + condi removal + sustain. Against primarily ranged builds that try to kite you around however, it definitely becomes exponentially harder than D/P permastealth because you won’t be able to reliably land your C&D’s.

Skill floor isn’t something I really concern myself with – not something I can be objective about. Same goes with perma stealth as I don’t play it. I was more referring to full glass on both sets. I play burst P/D if I play it, using the same build I made for D/P with one trait change. The build has 3 gap closers if you include Shadowstep. The difficulty of P/D comes up when you face D/P. Blinds hard counter you. That being said if played properly on both builds you can 1v1 anything as a glass cannon. The skill ceiling is incredibly high on both sets, I just find it to be higher on D/P as there’s more you can do in terms of “making plays”. P/D is just a pain to consistently land Shadow Strike and Cloak and Dagger. Once you manage to land those every time without fail then the amount of things you can do on the set is pretty minimal. Landing those is a pain in the butt however, since the hit box and animations on both of them make it a headache (Shadow Strike being too fast for it’s small hit box and Cloak and Dagger being too obvious). D/P is more of a skill based set in terms of blinds, dazes, combo fields, etc.

Mrbig.8019:

Yeha, so strong that you’ll have basically no chance to win a 1vs1 against any meta class and will need to run away as soon as you meet one.

SUPASTRONK.

Mesmer is already better. After 10th december it will be obviously better.

If you can’t win 1v1s then that’s a player skill issue. The class has to tools to win a 1v1 if you outplay the other person. Yea, not exactly the best counter argument I know: Oh just outplay them. However, you have the ability to win just about every 1v1 IF you don’t mess up. Not easy to do, but possible. Saying the class sucks because you can’t win a 1v1 is pure ignorance, and even if that was the case there are several classes (such as necro) who build for team fights (losing several 1v1s) and are still more than viable.

Justin are you able to tell us the specifics of what the MMR is based off of? This will give us a better idea of how we’re being placed on teams and what the game is looking for in order to place us. It will also help us make suggestions for better improving the system to help ensure a better solo queue experience for the majority.

capmasterflash.5690:

Not easier to play than d/p lol.

It’s a different playstyle. Having played both (I don’t play shadow arts) I would say each is difficult in its own way. Perma stealth is cheese. Extremely forgiving, easy to play, very rotation based. If you play glass cannon on a D/P set it has one of the highest skill ceilings in the game, if not the highest. P/D isn’t easy either, but because of different reasons, you can do more on a D/P set so playing it to its potential is the part that takes work. However playing P/D with the cast time and hit box of Shadow Strike can be extremely annoying against good players. That and Cloak and Dagger has one of the most obnoxious cast animations in the game – people see it a mile away.

If I had to choose one over the other in terms of difficulty I’d say playing D/P to its potential is harder than playing P/D to its potential. Again though, I don’t play Shadow Arts, that’s for little girls who need handicaps <3

Edit for grammar, it’s too early for me

Volrath.1473:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Jrunyon.3012:

Volrath.1473:

Passive Crit chance is caped at 70%

Source?

The wiki says differently.

He said “passive” means what the crit chance is at the load out without buffs from food or boons, for example.

However with the Assassin items, you can push that passive cap pass 70%.

exactly, the crit change you get from gear runes traits etc is caped at 70%, (I’ve read it somewhere on the early days of the game and since i play thief I never forgot about it but still a confirmation from a dev would be appreciated).

Meaning that if you go over 70% crit it wont matter since it will not pass 70%. It can go over 70% with boons/food.

Again I have no proof of this…

That being said you can achieve over 100% with fury, side strikes, and signet of agility.

If you think that’s the only reason to use it you highly under-rate the effect of vigor.

Thief will be fine. Certain specs will be better than others but play what’s fun for you. The more fun something is the better you become at it since the more time you’re likely to put into it. If you become good at the game rather than play something people think is “OP” you will kill other people because you’re a better player than they are, not because your build is good or bad.

It’s a video game, you should get some enjoyment out of it.

Cheers, and good luck

Caed

Kaon.7192:

As a boon steal it’s a bit crippled compared to most others. But in combination with Daze on Steal it becomes an instant 1-button Stability stomp counter, which is very powerful, especially considering with that trait setup it comes with a 21.5s cooldown.

Ding ding! We have a winner. Main reason I run it.

It’s alright, I have a thief build to melt all bunkers if that’s where the meta goes. Fear not fellow thieves, Caedalade will save the day. Death to bunkers, down with oppression.

“Do remember, though, that sometimes the people you oppress become mightier than you would like.”

Jrunyon.3012:

Volrath.1473:

Passive Crit chance is caped at 70%

Source?

The wiki says differently.

This is definitely wrong. I’ve gotten 100% crit chance in sPvP.

Use Ogre runes. Rock dog will keep the other player in combat. If you do it properly you can stealth out, reset, and reenter before they get ooc as well. Sneaky sneaky.

If you find yourself to be a decent player P/D with full berserker is a pretty strong set and fun to play. Also means you don’t have to find new gear. I hit people for about 6-7k on Shadow Strike 2.

Pew pew (Use a super pistol for max fun).

Again though, it’s pretty unforgiving depending on the traits you run.

Caedalade to the rescue! Allow me to translate the following into English:

Black Teagan.9215:

This is normal.
In my eyes is BT the weakest skill that steal something and unlike Arcane Thievery, have the stealing boons from BT (and FS) only a duration of ~5 secs.

Basically what he’s saying is that Bountiful Theft seems to be the weakest of all boon steals in the game as far as I can gather.

Now, my opinion. Bountiful theft boon steals last 3 seconds. Might is the last priority on this boon rip, as you will take every boon before you take might. That being said the situations where you can utilize might stacks on a target become minimal, and the amount you can do in 3 seconds further delay the effect of stealing might. My intuition on their reasoning for the way Bountiful Theft operates in the game tells me that they did not want thieves to be able to steal 25 stacks of might when using Steal because that is a very typical part of a heavy burst rotation. If thieves were able to steal that much might in the middle of their rotation then their burst would be far too high (enough to one shot most bunkers on a full glass build). That’s bad for the game.

Just my thoughts, hope that helps.

Cheers,

Caed

Fortus.6175:

But lets be honest, BS followed by a HS on a 14k target is almost a guarantee kill.

Dodge, Blind, Aegis, Focus Shield, Invulnerability, Shelter… I heard pressing buttons was hard.

Lopez.7369:

Caed was in one of my matches tonight.

I’ll play here and there until I find a life… Anyone know where I can get one of those?

On a serious note I got in a car accident and don’t have a car, so you’ll see me around from time to time. Unfortunately I have a problem. My name is Caed and I’m addicted to this game. Halp.

They’re buffing thieves, not nerfing them. Possibly too much.