Guild Wars 2

Engineers are way too OP. I mean seriously, no one should be able to have such early access to a back slot item. They literally get one for FREE from their character creation. This kind of unequal treatment needs to stop.

They also have OP skills. I mean seriously, Fumigate doesn’t make any sense. You spray your enemies with poison and cure conditions on allies. It needs to do one or the other because you can’t spray your allies with poison and then make them feel better so obviously this is some witch craft voodoo black magic.

Another thing. Some of their traits are so just broken. Static discharge is just so OP. It literally gives them another skill that doesn’t exist in the game otherwise, making it instantly broken because now the engineer has even more skills.

Not to mention engineers are terrible people. Seriously, have you ever watched one of them? They drink elixir after elixir like a drug addict and then they just throw their garbage on the ground. Someone could step on that glass and hurt themselves. So inconsiderate.

Live and let live everybody. Every build has something that counters something so no need to get mad when someone’s counters yours.

Conditions are sustained damage but weak to removal and thus require constant application, further cementing the sustained damage idea. It is possible to burst with conditions via applying a large amount of them in a short period of time but not all classes are capable of this.

Direct damage excels at bursts more so than condition damage and places sustained damage on the backburner in exchange. It is meant to be like this because say direct damage only had one stat. People would pump that stat way up and then just oneshot people due to being built around burst and only requiring one stat. Due to the nature of conditions, they can’t be used to oneshot people in seconds alone and that is the trade off, your opponent has more time to react.

But I suppose if you wanted to make it even you could allow conditions to crit just like regular skills. 25 individually critting stacks of bleed anyone?

P Fun Daddy.1208:

Necrotize.2974:

What on earth are you talking about…
I never once said thieves shouldn’t be allowed to post their videos or that it bothered me. What bothers me is you posting their videos as “evidence” of whatever point you think you’re making without actually arguing anything. I never insulted the people in the videos, in fact I used their own words to point out why the videos don’t prove you right.

You make blatant assumption and call thieves OP without providing any evidence supported reasoning and then the minute you post a video saying it proves your point you ignore any and all evidence within the video that proves you wrong.

Its like I’m talking to a person who is only reading every other word in a sentence. I think we’re done here, unless you care to provide some actual evidence that thieves are no-skill, OP spammers against anyone other than brain dead players or are just plain terrible at pvp.

It’s like the minute I say something logical that requires refutation, you spring off on some weird self-righteous tangent about nothing that anyone was talking about.

Although I starting to get a sinking feeling I’ve been trolled. If so, well done. If not, I suggest you play a thief yourself instead of just watching every youtube video with the tags “thief”.

You didn’t get trolled, you got Burnfall’d.
He really, really hates thieves, and is pretty unswayable on the subject.

I figured as much after I looked at his other posts regarding thieves but I just had to test it out for myself.

What on earth are you talking about…
I never once said thieves shouldn’t be allowed to post their videos or that it bothered me. What bothers me is you posting their videos as “evidence” of whatever point you think you’re making without actually arguing anything. I never insulted the people in the videos, in fact I used their own words to point out why the videos don’t prove you right.

You make blatant assumption and call thieves OP without providing any evidence supported reasoning and then the minute you post a video saying it proves your point you ignore any and all evidence within the video that proves you wrong.

Its like I’m talking to a person who is only reading every other word in a sentence. I think we’re done here, unless you care to provide some actual evidence that thieves are no-skill, OP spammers against anyone other than brain dead players or are just plain terrible at pvp.

It’s like the minute I say something logical that requires refutation, you spring off on some weird self-righteous tangent about nothing that anyone was talking about.

Although I starting to get a sinking feeling I’ve been trolled. If so, well done. If not, I suggest you play a thief yourself instead of just watching every youtube video with the tags “thief”.

Burnfall.9573:

Necrotize.2974:

The more this goes on though I’m realizing arguing this is a lost cause. Just from glancing at your recent posts Burnfall, you seem to have some delusional idea that thieves should “play fair” by not using stealth and that all thieves are ruthless, child eating monsters. Just copying a description from the thief wiki,

“Thieves are expert in the shadow arts. They utilize stealth and shadowsteps to surprise and to get close to their target. They’re deadly in one-on-one combat using their agility, acrobatic fighting style, and the ability to steal to overcome their enemies. They have an affinity for setting traps and using venom”

What, if anything, about that description would suggest to you that thieves are supposed to be “fair” fighters. This is the type of class that utilizes tricks, traps and other forms of underhanded skills to gain an edge or throw their opponent for a loop. But ya, I’m sure we should just nerf all those skills and turn thieves into low hp, low armor class with the mobility of a necromancer who couldn’t maneuver their way out of a paper bag.

please! take a look at this and explain to me what “skills” do thieves have and use?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTSlULPN768

You really do enjoy videos don’t you. Then I’m sure noticed the intro where he said, and I quote “the following video contains strategies that only work against people who are terrible at this game”. Heartseeker spam is hardly effective play, especially since the auto attack does more dps above 50% health anyway. Terrible players will get hit by the thief then start trying to run away. All you really accomplish by doing that is giving them an easy backstab. But you know, heartseeker spam in a video over a year old against terrible players must prove you’re right.

Maybe instead of scouring youtube for videos of thieves you should actually articulate your arguments yourself. It would definitely make it seem more convincing than just posting any video you can find with a thief killing people. But I suppose you’ll respond with yet another video that I won’t need to watch because honestly 90% of people who play thieves have seen those videos already.

Edit:Just saw the second video you posted. I’m guessing you also missed the part where he was laughing and pointed out it was a zerg full of uplevels. I don’t think a single video you’ve posted refutes any of the points anyone makes, it just shifts the conversation to yet another topic so you can post even more videos.

But I guess I’ll just ignore the fact that you’ve yet to address more than a single point I’ve made so far…

The more this goes on though I’m realizing arguing this is a lost cause. Just from glancing at your recent posts Burnfall, you seem to have some delusional idea that thieves should “play fair” by not using stealth and that all thieves are ruthless, child eating monsters. Just copying a description from the thief wiki,

“Thieves are expert in the shadow arts. They utilize stealth and shadowsteps to surprise and to get close to their target. They’re deadly in one-on-one combat using their agility, acrobatic fighting style, and the ability to steal to overcome their enemies. They have an affinity for setting traps and using venom”

What, if anything, about that description would suggest to you that thieves are supposed to be “fair” fighters. This is the type of class that utilizes tricks, traps and other forms of underhanded skills to gain an edge or throw their opponent for a loop. But ya, I’m sure we should just nerf all those skills and turn thieves into low hp, low armor class with the mobility of a necromancer who couldn’t maneuver their way out of a paper bag.

Burnfall.9573:

Rottaran Owain.6789:

Burnfall.9573:

To Splatter Paw,

" "Each class has good ways of fending off a thiefs initial burst and then taking the advantage* "

Please demonstrate this wonder (in video format), where each class has a good way of fending off thieves initial bursts.

Also

Please explain these to me.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCX372Pic4o
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=879m6bAxpNo
Thanks!

Since those videos have been made, assassin’s signet has been nerfed so hard into the ground that I haven’t seen anyone using it in months, mug has been nerfed to never crit, and cloak and dagger took a 33% damage nerf. Oh, the elite is also stun-breakable now, making it only useful for use with runes of lyssa.

Can’t wait for you to reply back trying to invalidate my post based on me not having a video off-hand.

Ok

(Thieves are always in denial, even when presented with the Truth) common thieves! make my dream come truth; admit you are OP

Here the Truth, with Proof

Truth

The Nerf to Assassin was released in October 22, 2012
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/updates/Update-Notes-October-22-2012

" Assassin’s Signet: This skill has been updated to grant 15% damage for 5 attacks rather than 50% damage for one attack "

The video was posted on Feb 2, 2013
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=879m6bAxpNo

The video was posted on Dec 8, 2013
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCX372Pic4o

Any more validation to the Truth??

So your counter to his argument was to prove one of the nerfs happened before one of the videos, then ignore the other points and continue to post more videos that really can’t prove much seeing as I highly doubt the maker would include players that kill them or times when they die because their goal was to showcase thief burst?

Seems to me like you’re just selectively reading so that you can use the same argument over and over despite what anyone says then just stop paying attention when confronted with arguments that can’t be countered by posting any old videos on youtube.

Burnfall.9573:

To Splatter Paw,

" "Each class has good ways of fending off a thiefs initial burst and then taking the advantage* "

Please demonstrate this wonder (in video format), where each class has a good way of fending off thieves initial bursts.

Also

Please explain these to me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCX372Pic4o

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=879m6bAxpNo

Thanks!

Simply put, blocks and blinds. They will royally screw up a thief’s burst. Or even just randomly turning around a few seconds after stealth. Also, using examples of coming across unsuspecting(and possibly undergeared/upleveled) people is not really applicable to everyone. Obviously the people making the video wanted to showcase thief burst, meaning they’re not gonna include the people that survive the burst or kill them, making it a biased source.

draugris.9872:

Stealth is not counterable in this game, (no AoE is clearly not a counter) it is a lame mechanic how this works here. Press a button, vanish, go your way, gg. It´s just easy mode. Thiefs which are questionable from a class design point of view by itself relying so heavily on stealth leads to state we have now. Look at wvw solo roamers, 90% thiefs, it´s ridiculous, you can not take this kitten seriously, it´s just another way how anet trolls the playerbase. And no stealth (as the thief) will never be fixed because that would imply the Devs acknowledge that they did something wrong. In the mean time, just avoid thiefs, it is not worth the time.

You realize that applies to one type of thief, only in roaming WvW, and it can work for other classes too lol(ever try catching a GS warrior who doesn’t want to be caught?). Those thieves build for roaming and want to be able to escape should they become outnumbered or bite off more than they can chew. This means that if you are more skilled than them, chances are they won’t kill you because the second they’re low on hp they will refuge and run away. Could just be me but solo roaming is such a small part of WvW and I really doubt balance should be made with solo roaming as a priority. Take that same thief and put him pretty much anywhere else in WvW and he’s dead from random AoE in seconds, stealth or no stealth.

There’s also no risk for missing burst skills. Oh no, you poor baby, you get 8 more seconds of 3-bar adrenal health before you can try to burst out of no-where again. Not to mention backstab can be greatly mitigate simply by spinning around fast after 2 seconds of stealth.

Removing stealth when hit seems like a great nerf. The buff that comes with it should be that you can use backstab anytime you’re behind an enemy, not just when in stealth. Seems fair because if we implemented that change a thief would never get behind a person in stealth ever again.

Nova Stiker.8396:

Why do engineers have a 3 second block on a 16 second recharge?

Why is it not a 30 second recharge?

Engineers, can do everything better.
Let the conditions run rampant!

I’d imagine for two reasons.
1: To avoid redundant skills. They have a block for melee range attackers, a block for ranged attacks and a block for both. Each fills a nice role and does something better than the others. Mobility+Stun on block, No mobility+reflect+blast finisher/knockdown, Mobility+Plain block
2: To make up for the fact that to have that 16 sec cd block they need to use a utility slot and go 20 points into a traitline.

Pistol Whip is great at killing random people or unexpecting burst classes. The more skilled the person is, the less likely you’ll kill anyone. Engineers will wreck you as outside of Shadowstep there is no fast condition removal on S/P and any skilled player tankier than a burster will be able to give you a run for your money.

Its a one trick pony for sure but anyone competent will wait till they see you steal then use stability, effectively making your damage output almost 0 until its gone because no one is gonna stand in range of PW unless they’re stunned/immob’d.

The downside of course is not only are you playing a burst class, but you are also still a thief, one without stealth mind you. If you get focused on by someone with high stability uptime or heck even just someone good at timing dodges, you will not only deal very little damage, but you will also have no way to mitigate damage apart from running.

I will say this though, in random matches, the odds of finding people smart/skilled enough to deal with this type of burst are few and far between and most will just stand there trying to attack you the moment the stun wears off so it can seem very OP there.

As for the “no skill like it” comment, blurred frenzy is fairly close on a relatively short cd and assuming you’re on flat-ish ground, works through stability thanks to illusionary leap immob.

Here we have a perfect example of why people always hate on thieves. No matter who they are, they will eventually come across a thief that is good enough to wreck them, which then leads them to believe that either thieves are incredibly OP, or that everyone saying thieves need buffs is wrong because that single person destroyed them.

“I fight with honor”
~Walking Lootbag

Unmatchable Stealth,
Speed and Skill to be envied,
Woe unto my foes.

Just gonna point out right now that warriors that support protecting healing signet constantly say something along the lines of “well roll a warrior and you’ll see they’re not OP”. Obviously people take that advice, otherwise there wouldn’t be so many freaking warriors all over the place with a good 90% of the running healing signet and the same 20 trait points in defense.

So here’s a challenge to you guys. Take your own advice and roll one of the underdog classes that has been begging for buffs for months. I recommend a non-spirit ranger or maybe a nice elementalist if you feel your up to stepping out of the passive play comfort zone. Then come back and compare how you think they measure up to warriors in their current state.

Level with d/d(lightning hammer at hard parts or when you just want to kill with no action required) and get your rotations down because it will help immensely later in pvp or WvW. The sooner you learn how to cycle effectively through your attunements and manage cooldowns across all 4, the better off you’ll be.

Well then, lets turn the argument warriors love to use against them. You’re not looking at the whole picture. Warriors possess quite a great amount of both soft and hard CC in addition to field control or blocks making it quite unlikely that the warrior will just stand there waiting for his regen to kick in while you burst him down. They will stun you, or knock you down, or block you, or even just set the ground on fire with longbow so you don’t want to follow.

The regen wouldn’t be so bad if it meant warriors couldn’t CC people so well. Getting low on health? Knockback with hammer, pin down with bow then plink away while your hp steadily climbs back up. By the time they get back, you’ll have regained a good chunk of what they took with the opening burst and done some dmg to them.

The advantage of heavy burst is that you can catch an opponent and then hopefully down them before they even have time to react. This is quite difficult on warriors due to their large hp pool and passive defenses meaning it is unlikely you will down them before they have time to react and this is where their strength lies.

thaooo.5320:

Necrotize.2974:

Heck, I’d give up stealth on my thief for a passive heal strong enough to keep me alive through bursts in a heartbeat.

Fact: Healing signet is EXTREMELY vulnerable to bursts and high dps builds.

????
????

So much face palm for you

Lmao, funny.

((Ps use withdraw, not hide in shadows, withdraw is 500x better))

I do use withdraw, and rarely use stealth because I don’t like that if a thief is going to be defensive they need to spec for stealth to get sustain, hence I’d trade stealth in a second for passive play like a warrior. A few suggestions, change signet of malice to scale proportionally to how much damage is done on the hit, with a cap of course. Remove/transfer conditions on steal, remove conditions on dodge, etc. But I guess if a thief had passive play then everyone would cry “nerf it into the ground”.

I’ve played a warrior before(not my cup of tea so didn’t play for long) but I did play long enough to get a feel for skill cycles. I never once found myself planning my burst skills around conditions or thinking I should use my healing signet active. Those problems just kind of sorted themselves out without me thinking about it. Covered in conditions? Chances are my burst skill is off cd and I’ll kill two birds with one stone that I was gonna throw anyway.

How dare a class be good at something they spec for specifically. He is trading his damage for control, which is how it should be. Other classes take the jack of all trades approach and then wonder why they can’t beat someone who specialized specifically to stop that build. Someone beats your meta build? They must be OP because there’s no way in hell they’re just more skilled that you.

Is the spec annoying to fight against? Yes. Is it going to kill you or be unkillable? Probably not. He built to be a tanky bunker and that is what he is.

Warriors don’t have clones/stealth/aegis/evades etc. That’s because they don’t need it. They have the bursting power with minimal points spent to take down bursty classes like thieves with a few well placed skills and the sustain necessary to not fall to a burst build. Heck, I’d give up stealth on my thief for a passive heal strong enough to keep me alive through bursts in a heartbeat.

The main reason healing signet/adrenal health leaves a bad taste in people’s mouths is because it is all passive play. Everything about a warriors sustain screams brainless. Automatically regen health, no need to worry about poison or when to use heal because its always going off and there is no real reason to use the active. No need to worry about conditions because they naturally cleanse themselves when you use burst skills every 9 seconds. Low on hp? Endure pain will automatically activate for you, giving you 4 seconds of that passive healing to get you back to a safe spot.

I say nerf it because warriors need to realize how to actually specialize. You can’t spec for burst and still have sustain. The signet will still be strong on builds designed to be tanky, the difference is burst or heavy damage builds won’t be able to achieve the same effect. As it is, healing signet is pretty much the universal heal skill for warriors. Combined with the other passive play traits of adrenal health and cleansing ire, you’d be hard pressed to get poison to last more than 7 seconds on a warrior.

But I also believe that the other heals should be altered to be better in certain situations. They should have a heal for tanking(signet), they should have a heal that encourages bursting(like mesmer’s new heal that recharges phantasms) and a heal that is designed to clear and protect from conditions. But as it stands, the sustain heal grossly overshadows other heals in both condition and power situations. The only time it really doesn’t blow the other heals out of the water is incredibly high bursts.

Another idea, since you already have 2 spectral traits. If you do what flow said, you can gain stability on DS which is nice because then you could say, swap out spectral walk for spectral grasp. Applies a fairly long chill on a short cd, great for pulling people into reaper’s mark and spectral wall. Fear them into spectral wall, fear increases, as soon as it is about to run out, spectral grasp and pull them right back through the wall.

Or make it have different effects related to conditions based on your attunement at all health levels.

Water-Cleanse a condition every few seconds in water, activates when swapping to water then one condition every say 5 seconds thereafter
Fire- Conditions applied grant buffs when applied to you in fire for a brief time. Bleed/Poison=Regen, Weaken=Fury, Cripple/Immob=Swiftness, Burn/Chill=Might
Would have to be short durations for the boons applied obviously, but it would greatly synergize with ele’s boon generation

Air- Reduce condition duration by x%. Probably something like 50%

Earth- Reflect conditions applied within say 600 range, meaning if someone is in range and applies a bleed, they will also receive a bleed.

I actually really like that idea. The problem arises though that Anet said they wanted to reduce the need for lower attunement cds to reduce the dependency on arcana. This would tie the conditions removal for people who spec 30 into earth, to their ability to switch attunements when needed. So in the end it would just encourage speccing 30 into arcana and 30 into your desired line.

If they did do this, they would need to make it work like mesmer’s arcane thievery instead of bountiful theft. If they kept the bountiful theft mechanic, you’d transfer 2 conditions but only 1 stack if they do stack. Nothing quite like blowing a 20+ cd skill to transfer a single stack of bleed :P

Interesting, I’ll have to give it a go. And I’d imagine this build will get a substantial boost in survivability when they bump up the signet’s heal to that of PvE. Will that change alter the build in any way?

Wow, thanks for that list of tips. I knew a few from watching but a lot of them I hadn’t really noticed before.

@oZii- I generally prefer tankier specs so I’d probably enjoy bunker more but I’m unsure if the squishiness of eles would allow for bunkering at this point in time with all the burst thieves and such.

Ok I’ve always admired D/D eles, they look so complex and yet at the same time everything just flows together like a well oiled machine. So I was wondering, what tips do you guys have for practicing the skills necessary to achieve this? I know you can give me combos(which would help as well) but I also know that the flexibility of elementalists means having something for every situation and that would also help immensely.

This is mainly for SPvP and to a lesser extent WvW once I hit 80 so keep that in mind.

It was more of a “because I can build” honestly and it actually proved to be quite effective in keeping people busy while I remained on points. Protection Injection helped quite a bit with the lack of stun breaks and overcharging rocket turret can usually keep them from landing too much burst on me due to knockdowns. Obviously when met with another tanky spec, mine will most likely fail due to not being able to stop them from outlasting my turrets but against burst classes that attempt to cap points when the main conflict is going on, the turrets quickly become a problem.

So far it has proven especially effective against thieves. They can’t remain within range of the turrets long enough to burst be down without either getting chain stunned/knocked down/caught in net and can’t reset a fight with refuge so long as I blast them out with shield.

It is of course not optimal as a turret build but fun nevertheless.

What would be the best strategy to take advantage of exploding turrets. The range is quite small(unless it uses turret’s massive hitbox for the 120 range) and most of the time I don’t notice people getting knocked back by it unless I stack them all on the point and they die in AoE.

Hmm, I had considered conditions would be a problem, just didn’t want sacrifice the turret utilities as turrets need all the help they can get. The downside is I would have to do what Dredd suggested in the build and go 30 into alchemy, meaning 10 points from somewhere else. So which do you think would be an easier sacrifice, Deployable Turrets or Accelerant Packed. The former allowing me to throw turrets onto unreachable platforms in place like skyhammer and foefire and the latter allowing me to clear points if my turrets do get destroyed.

Build I currently use is http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcAQJAqelIqyWnrSTF1LJxoCMO0jCL4FLSxl1/nC0F-TkAA1Ebp2ytlZL5W2tGQMLA

Pretty simple really, you set up camp at a point, I usually pick the one closest to enemy because it acts as a great diversion and by the time they finally evict you, all the other objectives are secured.

Obviously I wanted to make this build as tanky as possible so that the enemy actually contemplates killing those pesky turrets lying around the outside of the point. You should not ever detonate your turrets, not even heal unless you are really about to die. Save supply crate for if you ever get overwhelmed by more than 1-2 people. Net and thumper turret are interchangeable I suppose, I just prefer net I guess.

You’ll want to make use of Deployable turrets to the maximum so throw your turrets to distant hard to reach place where enemies will need to go out of their way and off the point to deal with. This also means your turrets won’t be eating any AoE damage that happens to hit you on the point.

Any suggestions to improve staying power?

Black Teagan.9215:

Necrotize.2974:

Hmm, I may be missing something obvious but then the traits affecting steal cd must be misleading. None of the ways I perform the 30% reduction from 30 points in trickery and the 20% of sleight of hand results in 21.5 seconds. They result in either 19.6 or 17.5.

That’s because Sleight of Hand use a different formula, than the reducion from the 30 points in trickery.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Math-on-steal-cooldown/first#post2282813

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Talk:Sleight_of_Hand

Ahh thanks.

Hmm, I may be missing something obvious but then the traits affecting steal cd must be misleading. None of the ways I perform the 30% reduction from 30 points in trickery and the 20% of sleight of hand results in 21.5 seconds. They result in either 19.6 or 17.5.

dylan.5409:

@ Necrotize
There are a lot of assumptions in your post so maybe I came across as inexperienced. Im not a pro, but ive also been playing, on all proff’s for 1yr or so. Yes I was immobilized till dead by a pw’ing thief. This was with rabid, so not full glass and it took 1 whip and some auto attacks to go from 100 to 0. As you’re post implies a thief has a lot of options to land its burst, not limited to yet including several different types of teleports. As to risk/ reward, there is less risk for a class that teleport/ stealth when engaging than say my ranger. I would think that much is obvious. There are a lot of different forms of mitigation, you’re correct. That being the case, my trapper ranger should be able to 100-0, during say the spiders immobilize, anything under 2k toughness right? Or do we need to account for cooldowns?

Sorry if it came off as a lot of assumptions, I was trying to figure out ways to get immobilize other than venom and Sbow sneak attack and realized the only other one would be panic strike which would mean if pistol whip could knock you down below 50% that immob would restack assuming this thief actually built for that. I wasn’t aware you were running a glassier spec than most engineers I come across(most of them are full of tanking utilities and such) so it would make sense pistol whip would do a lot. Squishy classes really don’t have much hope against pistol whip if they don’t play preemptively. Most squishies can be burst down with a few teleports and PWs before they even realize what happened thanks to haste on crit.

But ya, against squishies PW is killer. But keep in mind, apart from shadow refuge, these sword thieves most likely don’t have stealth and they rely on teleports to land PW so if you see them casting PW out of range, tumble. Otherwise they’ll steal as soon as its about to hit and PW you. I’m not too familiar with rangers but I do know their damage abilities are fairly underwhelming so it might not be a fair comparison. I’ve personally never had trouble with a ranger. I’ve had a few that can hold on for a while but most of them drop the second I interrupt their heal with steal+PW.

The problem with that would be certain classes making steal better than others. For example, steal is nothing but a gap closers+heal on engineers because honestly, who uses that skill for anything other than filler. Necromancers on the other hand. What I’d give for a 15 second cd 3 second fear to use on a class with almost no stun breaks. Same goes with consume plasma to a lesser extent. That gives you most buffs (stab and retal will fade faster than the others) for 2/3 of the time.

Personally I think steal could do with a lower cd, after all it is our class mechanic and most classes have ways to make their class mechanic either instantly recharge or have multiple options when it comes to skills to use. I just know it will be complaints waiting to happen, as is expected anytime thief gets a buff that is easily noticeable in a fight.

Rarnark.5623:

More thieves implying that thieves are underpowered. Thieves aren’t underpowered.

A lot of it stems from the constant uproar from other classes and nerf after nerf on things that were in general, fine the way they were. Honestly, I’d say maybe 33% of my games I have someone, usually a warrior, cry about how OP thief is. And to further cement my idea that very few of these people actually know how to play thief, most of them say “spam 2 more” or “heartseeker noob” despite the fact that I use a sword…

Everyone makes thieves out to be uber-OP ungodly stealth monsters that are invisible 100% of the time and attack for 20k backstabs when really anyone with half a brain should know if the thief disappears right in front of you, odds are they’re gonna show up behind you and backstab.

dylan.5409:

great pw already kills any toon I play that dosen’t have an evade/block rdy. Combined with immobilize stacking that thieves seem to be able to do (just had 1 match where the eng I was playing was immobilized for the full duration of pw) and great, more risk free ganking for a class that has too much of that already

You were immobilized the entire time and didn’t do anything? That’s like 2-4(depends if they had haste trait) seconds where you were just standing there eating pistol whips. Its hardly free risk, not to mention nothing is really free risk on thief when it comes to burst. If the enemy sees you coming or sees you stealth, “lol block” and you have a 3 second block that will out last stealth. Heck if you see a thief with sword coming towards you and start to cast pistol whip, just tumble. Odds are they’ll teleport to you with steal or signet and you’ll already be out of the attack range. But seriously, when immobilize is the only worthwhile condition the thief is gonna put on you, why not cleanse is…

But it makes sense that it would lock you down. It would be OP if you could move during the evading portion and chances are if you land the stun in the first place you’ll at least get some dmg out of the flurry. All this really accomplishes is thieves will probably spam the hell out of 3 with sword/pistol in order to make the time between the two parts negligible because the longer you wait in between the two, the less damage you’ll do as the stun wears off and they move away. It just seem like a pointless change with no real purpose but I suppose we’ll have to see the find detail of how the skill performs(lag will be a huge factor) and the tiny intricacies that emerge when the attack is split such as the time in between if you are spamming 3, the delay between when the stun icon becomes the flurry, etc.

Shockwave.1230:

It’s weird people feel S/P is bad in PvP, but that aside ANet said they were thinking about making the skill a two part skill like Flanking Strike and Larcenous Strike. That’s what I took away from the info at least. A change like that would only be a nerf if you couldn’t queue up the evading flurry if you didn’t connect with the pistol whip.

My issue with it at least is that this change is not only completely useless and serves no real purpose, but it just cements the idea of thieves spamming skills. Thieves already have a major stigma regarding skill spamming. Whether it be complaining about heartseeker spam, 2 spamming, PW spamming, evade spamming, stealth spamming, really anything the thief can do, if they do it more than once a minute everyone shouts spamming. The last thing we need is to actually have to spam pistol whip just to get it to work as it does now.

If it isn’t broken don’t fix it. But I suppose it should be said if its balanced already, for the love of god don’t try to balance it because chances are it will end up royally screwed up in either direction. If its made too OP it’ll be changed in a matter of weeks. If it’s broken to the point of uselessness, probably won’t be changed for months.

With stifled screams I was imagining it’d be like you applied a stealth like buff to them, making it so their teammates can’t see them but you can, sort of like if you stealthed an ally. So basically both of you are invisible to your opponents.

I imagined scapegoat being the way it is so that you literally disappear and the opponent thinks they downed you when really you are backing up. It could apply some sort of invulnerability or be like A.E.D and activate once you take lethal damage, saving you from the damage and teleporting you back. Obviously if it activated when you still have like 20% hp it would be obvious the downed copy was not you. unless the person really wasn’t paying attention.

PW is far from bad in pvp if you build for it. Running a bursty/evade build you can take down squishy classes in one or two pistol whips and you can guarantee that you’re at least in range for it with steal. Obviously this is predictable and better players will tumble the second they see you start casting PW from far away but still, great for getting the jump on people like backstab thieves or staff eles who are hanging around the outskirts of a point.

I’ve always loved thief, it’s just such an elegant class. But I have to admit I was a bit disappointed that there really wasn’t an “assassin” archetype outside of backstab. By assassin I mean someone who slips in and silently executes a target before their allies even know.

Just a few things I thought could not only make this happen but also possibly shift the meta for thieves away from swords or conditions.

Assassinate-Trait-Probably GM trait in Shadow Arts or Deadly Arts
Sneak attacks that reduce a target to less than 5% have a chance(maybe like 20-30%) to instantly kill a person, bypassing downed status. 10 Second cd to reduce multiple assassinates on a person after a failed attempt. Must be performed from behind or to the sides of target.

Stifled Screams-Trait-Probably in Shadow Arts or Trickery as a GM trait
When downing your opponent, stealth them and yourself so that their allies can’t see either of you for 3 seconds. Definitely would need a long cd, probably 45 seconds minimum.

Disorientation-Adept Trait in Shadow Arts or Trickery
Stealthing causes confusion to nearby foes. Probably something like 3 stacks.

Scapegoat-Acrobatics-GM trait
At 1% health you evade backwards and remove conditions and enter stealth for 3 seconds leaving behind a downed copy of yourself. Long cd, at least 60 seconds.

Just a few ideas. Do you guys have any cool ideas for skills or traits that you think could either bump thief up or shift their current meta?

SB is a harassing tool that you use to aid allies before jumping into the fight yourself. If I see people fighting on a point I’ll usually open with choking gas+cluster to poison and area weakness then sometime another choking gas before I switch to my main weapons. It can usually shut down healing signet warriors long enough to burst them down.

But nerfing an entire weapon because you can come close to killing someone with one build with one skill in particular being the problem is insane. Honestly I’d rather them just make choking gas have some explosion damage in addition to the poison so it causes revealed if they are dead set on nerfing something. But if I had my way, they wouldn’t touch SB at all anyway so I guess just go with the lesser of two evils.

Really against larger groups, the most a stealth thief can do is harass people with things like caltrops+choking gas since they don’t break stealth. Although you’d be hardpressed to find a group of 2-3 people that could actually die to that and even then…

Thieves are probably the only class that can reliably escape from a gang attack, which is at least one thing they have going for them. Its also not uncommon for these thieves to harass waypoints by making them contested then disappearing. I’ve always thought that commanders that use this to their advantage could gain a huge field advantage by forcing enemies to run very far to support their teammates.

That being said, thieves can’t (usually) kill you from stealth and if they’re a perma stealth build, they probably won’t be killing you if you are at least with one other person. Once a good thief tests your hp pool, they’ll know exactly who to go for. They could down the tougher guy so that when the squishy one comes to rez he’s easy prey, or do it the other way around so the big guy has to waste a lot of time constantly rezzing.

Maybe thieves will get nerfed so hard that everyone will just accept that they are so underpowered and the few remaining thief players will be applauded for their skill and dedication to their class as they continue to thrive in the harshest of conditions…

Or maybe “STEALTH OP!!!!!1!11”

Me thinks some sarcasm might have been missed.