Guild Wars 2

lordkrall.7241:

You are aware that people making skins and such for the gem store does not work on fixing bugs, right?

You are also aware that we have had updates more or less monthly (at least) for most of the games life, that did not focus on gem-store?

You must’ve skipped over the part where I did acknowledge that, and resources are complimentary of both so why is one department getting them and the other not?

Yeah, they released a little chapter once every 2 weeks and then took a break something I’m sure they had worked on for months prior. How much of that content can you actually walk through and enjoy? All I see is blobs running to a boss with it being either too challenging because the scaling is way off or its too easy where people can just afk with auto attack and collect loot afterwards. I enjoyed that content for a few weeks and got immediately bored with the same layout as the rest of the game’s open world events.

A few neat things in this section of LS, but it didn’t exactly turn the tide when the best tactic is just more players. Atleast tequatl and the wurms takes some thinking where bring massive numbers makes sense given they are actual world bosses. I thought they would continue with that kind of thinking instead of going back to the brain dead bum rushing that almost every bit of content promotes.

You could just buy gems and convert them to gold and buy a precursor the way anet intended O.o

Anywho, 2630 hours with atleast 3/5 being pve and no precursor. Best loot I found was worth ~15g and that was once over 10 months ago.

People seem to be missing the point and assuming I want the gem store removed or something. I am grateful this isn’t subscription based, my point is they obviously have the time and resources to add onto the gem store but they seem to ignore other departments. You don’t need to hide in the shadows for months on end to fix bugs and tweak the profession balance with an update here and there. Hell even throw in a new champion/legendary drop skin or touch up on a crafting recipe skin/consumable to keep things fresh.

Expansions for land or a new profession or any other major project is nice but not my concern. My concern is that there seems to be little to no effort made on looking over the game except for gem store updates. When you get no service and all gem store purchases it seems like the company just shifted to income only mode and left the rest in the dust.

kyubi.3620:

well if might stacking gets nerfed likely well see a lot of build wich rely on it dies.

I’d be ok with that, shouldn’t be promoting a lack of build diversity with such dominate builds lurking around. Why go zerker when you can just out-live your opponent(s)?

Same reason I advocate that air and fire sigils be deemed the same type so they cannot be combined on a weapon set. Burst in the wrong location resulting in unnecessary nerfs to some builds for no reason. Nerf the weapon not the wielder.

If they can dish out gem store updates this frequently why aren’t there bug fixes this frequently? Why are new and obvious (with proper examples and facts to back it up) balance changes ignored for months letting people soak in its misery without just tweaking things? They are against a wac a mole balance approach which I can understand, but when you tap a screw in once very 5+ months is it really amounting to anything? There are some bugs still existing since launch!

Yes, there are different people for different jobs but where is the prioritization exactly? There is very little communication on these problems, they don’t get dealt with on any level, and people just get more and more impatient waiting for any answer. They can sure dish the resources to release some gem store skins and get some money but I guess bug fixing and reacting to problems with so much as a response is asking too much.

Somehow they never fail to release more item mall skins heaven forbid they add aesthetics that can be obtained from playing the game :/

No more money from me anet, fix your game and focus on players rather than income. Its slowly been boiled from necessary income in order to keep things rolling to all we ever get is gem store updates and a 30 minute add on as a bone to keep a few people busy. From the amount of free trial periods I start to wonder if the game is banking on the gem store to afford it or are they desperate for new players with a declining player base.

I doubt I’ll leave a mark by leaving but your image is just gradually sinking with this approach where no one is going to take this game seriously anymore. 5+ month balance updates with some very questionable changes & very miniscule land expanding & same bugs month after month welcoming a batch of new ones after a major patch with a rare fix to ever show its face….

No more….

Same reason warrior has the highest health and armor rating, because they can.

Thief isn’t the only victim of low health pool, the whole health teir system is out of whack with such massive as massive range it limits build options for some professions and eliminates build requirements for others.

Sagat.3285:

Zero Day.2594:

NinjaEd.3946:

I’d much rather have traps removed for something else…

I second this. Give the traps to rangers (more) if you so want to keep them in the game.

How about no? Trap p/d was born of those runes I oppose!!!!!

The only reason these runes exist were to give rangers another thing to be excitied for, thief was just the fortunately in the crossfire and received the same treatment similar to the dagger aa hitting 2 targets now that necro got.

Thief traps still suck, and have no place in the thief kit. Thief is about reacting and adapting quickly, not sitting around a bunch of trigger effects waiting for someone to put mediocre debuffs on themselves. If I wanted that I’d play engineer turrets or minion mancer with staf or better yet, ranger trapper whose traps actually have results…

I’d much rather have traps removed for something else. Also why are we suggesting any “hard” counters towards anyone? We should be advocating their removal not expand on them.

Reinn.7436:

Funny how this forum turns to a QQ rehab in any instant.

Seriously, SR sucks and will continue to be. And yet here you are complaining about it and Thieves’ innate ability to reset fights.

There are lots of options to go for. A Thief casting SR is a dead Thief

You have two options vs Thieves: learn to play against them or go quit. You cant keep calling for nerfs just because of your incompetent performance, adjust yourself for the community because the community won’t adjust for you.

Dat truth hurts

They also need more traits that behave like corruption skills on necromancer. You lose something in exchange for something more powerful tailored to your build rather than some hilt or bowstring or handle upgrade some games used.

In the simplest way, look at some sigils. You can honestly cover a lot of your damage from some of them, you can cover condi removal (crit and non crit), you can drastically boost your condi durations, etc. It’s like 1 way campaign missions where things are just too obvious for the set up and don’t allow abstract decisions which gets in the way of build diversity in this game.

So to get to what I’m trying to say, to possibly fix up some of the rather useless traits that every profession has maybe complicate some of them with ups and downs, along with per-(insert pre-requisite here) bonus effects, time effects similar to One with fire (better chance after X seconds), etc. Make things unique to the weapon and the trait line so the opportunity cost isn’t taken into such deep consideration when building.

This would help the mediocre builds and if there is any hope left, shake things up for some enjoyable builds instead of the stale kitten I’ve been seeing for months now. I do not speak for the majority of any game mode but I’m bored out of my mind with this game, nothing drastic changes in this 5-6 month balance patches which is incredibly depressing when you realize they’re still polishing the game after 2 years.

moi.4398:

If something needs a nerf , it’s Shadow Rejunevation , Shadow refuge is fine and totally balanced . A thief without Shadow Rej. will just get 2/3k-ish heal via SR . on a 60sec cd it’s not a big deal .

That 2/3k is like 20-30% of our max health sometimes, its too much! Better lower it to something approachable such kitten -10% so people can counter it in time to finish making their sandwich.

Fluffball.8307:

A lot of people will post their builds shortly, but the general idea to help you make your own is that might stacking works best with celestial builds. It also can be transferred to your pet via fortifying bond.

^ This plus companion’s might, beastmaster’s might and sigil of strength can rack some serious pet might. Remember regardless of the might duration you get, its 10 seconds (base) but the stack amount is still shared so BM might is actually X3 might for your pet. Add this to a bird such as raven and deal some serious damage. With the new axe its even easier now too, but prior to the axe update I was getting ~6k blinding slashes on people.

Even so axe MH is such an obvious hybrid weapon for ranger that it almost seems best to just use it as such and forget trying to lean one way or the other.

I’d prefer skins to pets over new pets. We already have a zoo worth of useless pets, kids just throw their cotton candy at them at this point :/

Also improve the pet action UI so we don’t have pointless buttons like stow (doesn’t really work) and follow me (which should be merged with attack depending on what the pet is currently doing). More micro managing the pet skills and skins!

wall of texts back to back causing….

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZAQRAqa8Yl0Mpyp9Ox0J0PNBNhsdmGR8+a3taFA-TpBFwAPOBAd2fo9BBYxRAoaZAAPAAA

Is what I’ve used to keep the mobility and damage semi- consistent.

Overall it’s a very “spam” orientated build revolving on pressing 3 with some BPS in the mix. Its more of a fun build than a serious competitive build.

Zenos Osgorma.2936:

Its flipping 75g on the Tp, I bet it will Just for Economic reasons.
75g for a single sigil is insane, though it would take a week maybe more for any player that is on and off to gain that amount of gold. (excluding Dungeon runners/speed runs)
it would still require a lot of dungeon runs to get that amount too though.

its free in pvp (initial purchase price not included, see store employee for more details)

shimmerless.4560:

I think people are getting confused about what I’m asking for. The newer swap I can take or leave it, it doesn’t really matter any more.

What I want changed back is the “bug fix” that now prevents swapping on clone death.

That was a bug fix…. at the wrong time but with the new and improved swap, yeah it was a bug.

I’d honestly put immobilize on the priority list of conditions removed. If you think about it, immobilze leads to comboinations of condition application and/or heavy hitting power skills.

I don’t care if I have 3 bleeds on me, removing that immobilize to escape burn and 15+ more bleeds because I cannot dodge is my main concern.

No to effecting condition damage, but I’d say let it have cc reduction in small amounts.

Posted this a long time ago actually, I think I suggested something like per 100 armor reduce cc duration by 1% so 2,000 armor had 20% reduction. Reason I say armor is heavy classes should feel more bulky but in the event you invest a lot into toughness you would get some help to stay on your toes. Reason being vitality works against conditions and power, toughness only works against power. I don’t want the same thing since conditions already have skills dedicated to removing them (some however severely lacking), but toughness needs a dual function to counter with.

In comparison, vitality is far stronger to take over toughness if you have the choice of 1 or the other but not both. I’d say toughness needs something to incentivize it’s position in builds but not in the form of condition reduction.

Rusc.4978:

NinjaEd.3946:

Prince.7198:

Arenanet look at this again please. Theif is borderline extinct in Spvp!

I disagree, but the population certainly has gone down since they’ve been essentially skyrocketing the skill floor on our builds so that little mistakes have a more heavy punishment so new players are less inclined to bother with playing a thief.

Even so, the bigger issue is they nerf 1 build and don’t open up a new one. I don’t care if 2/0/0/6/6 fire/air s/d gets toned down although the skills in s/d were not at fault. But why are we getting mediocre attention towards other builds, where is the diversity?

Don’t be ridiculous. They’ve been buffing venomshare.

Sneaky sneaky O.o

I did say mediocre attention, can’t sue me. Same goes for p/p :/

Tips against RF:

-LoS, its all around
-defensive cooldowns. Even if they have a longer cooldown than rf, sometimes it’s all you need to avoid hteir burst→turn around and smite them. reflects go a long way.
-Gap closer, teleports, leap, etc.
-awareness that you are being sniped. Sure rf is quick but the arrow animation is incredibly obvious once its entered your screen, again use LoS to lure them out or waste their time sitting on that rock doing nothing.
-practice…

Prince.7198:

Arenanet look at this again please. Theif is borderline extinct in Spvp!

I disagree, but the population certainly has gone down since they’ve been essentially skyrocketing the skill floor on our builds so that little mistakes have a more heavy punishment so new players are less inclined to bother with playing a thief.

Even so, the bigger issue is they nerf 1 build and don’t open up a new one. I don’t care if 2/0/0/6/6 fire/air s/d gets toned down although the skills in s/d were not at fault. But why are we getting mediocre attention towards other builds, where is the diversity?

I’ve been looking into the traits and amulet choice and wondering if X2 meditations utility, obviously renewal elite, shelter, and signet of wrath or bane signet with hammer and scepter/focus would be better. The build would look more along the lines of this:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fVAQNAS7dlsApSolDxaI8DNB+QVVAgdRMEH61xQQuCA-TphBwAAeAAauAAcOIA82fIyRAYcZAA

I’ve been noticing that with hammer is far to slow to use it as a hybrid of defense and offense. With meditations and decent defenses I could stay on target a little better, still deal with conditions moderately and lay down heavy pressure during an immobilization. Still testing things and working on my playstyle but still open to more suggestions.

mango.9267:

I think all of these ideas miss the point. The problem with p/p isn’t the damage, which is honestly fine. The problem is the survivability. Even if you buff p/p dps, you’d end up with something like a killshot warrior, which does good burst damage, but is focused down extremely quickly.

What p/p needs to be viable is some kind of mobility or stealth mechanic on the 3 skill, perhaps an evade or a shadow step.

There are methods of defense outside of p/p although a little built in defense would help. It is a damage problem, where you can’t put enough pressure to really use p/p effectively where it is comparable to (some) other professions. I’ve made a build that can create gap openers, keep bps out here and there and dish out a nasty 4-6k unload without feeling like I’m vulnerable for the next 8 seconds. It’s still very squishy however if the enemy has heavy mobility and does little against beefy targets who either soak up hits and recover or neglect my damage from either stealth or reflects or blocks/evades.

P/p does not need a strict damage buff, it needs functionality changes so the kit works on keeping high pressure.

mango.9267:

Einlanzer.1627:

Ugh, I wish everyone would stop focusing on Unload so much for improvements to P/P. The problem with the set is that a.) Vital Shot sucks, and b.) other skills already can’t compete with Unload.

The problem is that you can’t buff any other p/p skills without also buffing p/d and d/p, which don’t need to be buffed. Unload is the only way to “fix” p/p.

They could look into the auto attack and body shot without making p/d OP and not effecting x/p OP.

First off body shot has seen some drastic changes to the point where you just dunno what anet wants the skill to do. Immobilize? Vuln stack? Nothing lasts long enough except for you to ensure a CnD hits which is for p/d then.They could make this a 2 part skill with a slightly different result such as:

Body shot: Fire a bola at your foe immobilizing them. For the next 3 seconds, each projectile against this target will apply vulnerability. (effect does not stack in any way, only refreshes). Immobilize duration 1 second. Vulnerability duration 5 seconds per projectile(1 stack per projectile). Range reduced to 600 units.

Idea Make the skill function for either p/d or p/p. For p/d you can continue to secure a CnD and also fire off 5 vuln stacks and a little more. For p/p, you can stack heavy vulnerability stacks causing unload to become stronger the more hits it makes. As compensation for the buff, the range is slightly reduced with the idea that you’re shooting giant bolas from your pistol which is questionable on its own.

Vital shot/Sneak attack: Reduce the bleed duration on vital shot to 3 seconds. Increase the power on vital shot to ~160 base and increase the power coefficient to ~0.45. Increase the bleed duration on sneak attack to 5 seconds. Reduce the power coefficient on sneak attack to ~1.05.

Idea Relocate power into the auto attack since p/p doesn’t regularly have access to sneak attack. Relocated bleeding to sneak attack since p/d does have regular stealth access which can utilize it. Basically give the effects that each set has access to the most into the #1 skill.

Unload: Added effect while standing inside an ally combo field, all projectiles from this skill are 100%.

Idea synergy with bps and smoke screen and even SR after you pop sneak attack for a lengthy life steal. This however comes with the drawback of you staying in position of that combo field so it has a fairly basic counter.

HAZAH!

Love how all his numbers and philosophies were light years off. Made me giggle

Otokomae.9356:

Just fix the Rune of Evasion set, so it grants Vigor on dodge, or on crit or some other bonus that actually helps you “Evade” more often. This rune set is so close to being something a P/P or even D/D Thief could use, but it just isn’t quite there yet, and it honestly doesn’t have real synergy with any class that I can think of except for maybe a few specific, niche, dodge-heavy Ranger builds, and even those guys aren’t using this set!

No build should be so centered on a rune set, that’s just lazy balancing.

shimmerless.4560:

NinjaEd.3946:

shimmerless.4560:

NinjaEd.3946:

shimmerless.4560:

NinjaEd.3946:

shimmerless.4560:

I think there is a point where we are being too tough on ourselves while others scamper away scot-free…..
I really just want my Mesmer back.

Really? You must be the special profession that gets punished with 0 compensation because of forum Q.Q. Hard to think of another profession that has asked for rational changes towards themselves :/

I just want my thief left alone

You should re-read what I actually said if that’s what you took from it.

I don’t see how you can believe the Mesmer players are being kitten themselves when saying what they have is enough. I’ve read a lot of Mesmer feedback on the ileap change since the update and almost all of them are happy with the change even with the small bug relating to range. It finally connects reliably, its fluid, it works but there are still those few people who think they need to go further and revert the dead clone swap “nerf” because it isn’t fair.

There is a point where people are asking for too much and you’re there atm.

No, I’m not, you don’t really know what you’re talking about (nor does this forum represent all or even most Mesmer players). Any Mesmer at a high level will tell you sword wasn’t viable in teams before and got even worse with the “fix” regardless of the clone update. I’m more than happy to bring them in here to give their 2c if you like.

Pug/WvW/alt-character Mesmers may have wanted this oh so “fluid” change, but then those same Mesmers also wanted conditions on scepter auto, fixes to phantasmal haste and buffs to Mender’s Purity (to the point that it’s pretty insane right now) so maybe you should be careful whose company you keep.

Still doesn’t change the fact that you want to bend the rules on your clone mechanic so that you can ignore your surroundings and fire ileap off with no problems. You should be able to adapt to your surroundings especially with the teleports and stealth to place ileap appropriately rather than expecting it to face tank a bunch of zerkers and conditions. Such a change is not balanced and I highly doubt it would suddenly make sword that much more “viable”.

I should point out that the change is a revert (it already worked this way for the majority of the game’s lifespan) and no one of any note had an issue with Illusionary Leap being too strong before

You’re right, they didn’t complain about it being too strong. They complained about it being far too telegraphed and bugged to even make contact when passing over simple terrain like a step.

So please tell me why you’d like to go back to teleporting to dead clones that rarely ever made it to their target to begin with? I’m not trying to make this sound personal but you really need to see what your suggestion is asking for and realize its a step in the wrong direction. The guy who posted above me here is one of the many examples of people who are more than satisfied with the change to ileap, just leave it alone.

shimmerless.4560:

NinjaEd.3946:

shimmerless.4560:

NinjaEd.3946:

shimmerless.4560:

I think there is a point where we are being too tough on ourselves while others scamper away scot-free…..
I really just want my Mesmer back.

Really? You must be the special profession that gets punished with 0 compensation because of forum Q.Q. Hard to think of another profession that has asked for rational changes towards themselves :/

I just want my thief left alone

You should re-read what I actually said if that’s what you took from it.

I don’t see how you can believe the Mesmer players are being kitten themselves when saying what they have is enough. I’ve read a lot of Mesmer feedback on the ileap change since the update and almost all of them are happy with the change even with the small bug relating to range. It finally connects reliably, its fluid, it works but there are still those few people who think they need to go further and revert the dead clone swap “nerf” because it isn’t fair.

There is a point where people are asking for too much and you’re there atm.

No, I’m not, you don’t really know what you’re talking about (nor does this forum represent all or even most Mesmer players). Any Mesmer at a high level will tell you sword wasn’t viable in teams before and got even worse with the “fix” regardless of the clone update. I’m more than happy to bring them in here to give their 2c if you like.

Pug/WvW/alt-character Mesmers may have wanted this oh so “fluid” change, but then those same Mesmers also wanted conditions on scepter auto, fixes to phantasmal haste and buffs to Mender’s Purity (to the point that it’s pretty insane right now) so maybe you should be careful whose company you keep.

Still doesn’t change the fact that you want to bend the rules on your clone mechanic so that you can ignore your surroundings and fire ileap off with no problems. You should be able to adapt to your surroundings especially with the teleports and stealth to place ileap appropriately rather than expecting it to face tank a bunch of zerkers and conditions. Such a change is not balanced and I highly doubt it would suddenly make sword that much more “viable”.

scerevisiae.1972:

CntrlAltDefeat.1465:

I can see the point here. Ranger pets have a a magical ability to draw all foe and upset specific builds..whoever, this can be micro managed with how you control your pet. I can see why some players may want to opt out of having a pet, but this also makes 50% of traits useless now and 40% of your utilities have no purpose.

Unless the GM trait that removed the pet made it so that any trait or effect that would be applied to your pet applied to you instead.

Solved.

Best would be to lower the amount of damage your pet does across the board. I think right now its like 70/30 or something but w/e the number may be reduce the amount to something like 85/15 and have the beastmastery trait line in addition to pet stats change that ratio in favor of the pet. That way you either have you doing the heavy lifting and have the pet for utility (for those who don’t want the pet) or you invest into your pet and have it do the heavy lifting and you focus on surviving.

Lastly merge “return to me” and “attack” to function depending on what the pet is doing at the time and allow F3 to control another pet skill. Micro managing the pet would do wonders in effective BM specs.

shimmerless.4560:

NinjaEd.3946:

shimmerless.4560:

I think there is a point where we are being too tough on ourselves while others scamper away scot-free…..
I really just want my Mesmer back.

Really? You must be the special profession that gets punished with 0 compensation because of forum Q.Q. Hard to think of another profession that has asked for rational changes towards themselves :/

I just want my thief left alone

You should re-read what I actually said if that’s what you took from it.

I don’t see how you can believe the Mesmer players are being kitten themselves when saying what they have is enough. I’ve read a lot of Mesmer feedback on the ileap change since the update and almost all of them are happy with the change even with the small bug relating to range. It finally connects reliably, its fluid, it works but there are still those few people who think they need to go further and revert the dead clone swap “nerf” because it isn’t fair.

There is a point where people are asking for too much and you’re there atm.

Zero Day.2594:

Tempest Darqmane.4862:

Systematically eliminatiing all the useful options for thief one by one?

I guess my picture didn’t illustrate how much of a kitten I give about yet another one of this threads and ideas. Honestly even if all the thieves in the world would comically agree to this… What we will actually see from ANet will be something completely arbitrary. So yeah wish and nerf away!

Update the wish list!

Also there are far better methods to reset than depending on SR which has multiple counters already.

Wouldn’t be a bad idea giving a dual function to one of our traits. The day I stepped away from thief to explore other professions I learned a strange truth that most of the thief traits are single functioned while others have a lot of double effects. Generally those effects are cooldown based which makes sense since thief doesn’t have a literal cooldown on each weapon skill but still. Not everything has to play out so simple as cooldowns often it can just tie to a particular kit.

I’d probably suggest putting such an effect into ankle shots because its a master trait and isn’t that attractive over things like critical haste or signet use. I’d go so far as to even tie the affect into the whole p/p kit tbh so it gets the defense it needs.

-Ankel shots: Critical hits with pistol skills have a chance to cripple foes. Dodging with dual pistols will apply an AoE blind. Cripple Chance 60%. Cripple duration 3 seconds. Cripple ICD 10 seconds. Blind duration 3 seconds. Blind radius of effect 180. Number of targets 2.

Only thing I wonder though is if the blind would be better placed from the location you dodge from instantly or where you land from the dodge roll. The idea is to give p/p the defense it lacks.

Faeyd.5094:

I’m not usually prone to throwing out glib statements like ’it’s fine’ to try and look cool… but I use DB relentlessly and think it’s perfect. It shouldn’t be put into a place where it is so good everyone simply switches to it because it outshines everything else. It should be good in some situations and bad in others and should be a tough choice over other decent skills.

I don’t think everyone wants DB to become the “go-to”, its not a case of “its good in some places and bad in others”, its more like “it’s clunky”. You can’t work with the skill because of the evade frame and not being a skill shot that you can control.

Some people are thinking of this skil in the wrong light by suggesting it should do strict direct damage and apply vulnerability or something. DB has its place in the d/d kit, its just too unreliable to use. We already have our hard hitters, gap closers, stealth access, and poison/bleed all in D/D. Its a QoL fix that is needed so that can be timed.

-Fix the evade frame on DB so it lasts the full duration of the dancing effect and keep a small after cast (<0.25 seconds) so that it cannot be spammed effectively and abused.

-Change DB to a skill shot and increase its distance slightly(~400). This adds more strategic play to the positioning aspect of the evade and also gives more control in the event you are crippled or chilled and can’t connect with a circling enemy or want to create a combo effect without having to drop target.

-Change dancing dagger to something other than what it is. It’s nice as a projectile finisher but there is no damage and HS costs the same initiative, is a better gap closer, hits (more) reliably, and has far better damage, and is a leap finisher which is far greater than projectiles.

That would complete the D/D kit so each skill has its purpose without it being a 1 trick pony.

mexay.3902:

1) Add a 1s Pre-cast
2) Add a telegraph similar to Pin Down
3) Reduce range by 300 – 600 units
4) Increase recharge by 2 seconds
5) Remove vulnerability

There. Rapid Fire fixed.

My Isaiah sense are tingling O.o

Only profession I have troubles with against this rein of power rangers is thief because they can track me so easily. Every other profession I’m either too beefy to worry or have sufficient methods to block/reflect on top of my excessive evades that ignore most of their sustained damage.

shimmerless.4560:

I think there is a point where we are being too tough on ourselves while others scamper away scot-free…..
I really just want my Mesmer back.

Really? You must be the special profession that gets punished with 0 compensation because of forum Q.Q. Hard to think of another profession that has asked for rational changes towards themselves :/

I just want my thief left alone

Zephyric Reaper.3049:

long

Can you solo a boss? Yes, but its incredibly boring and for the sake of teaching those pugs a thing or 2, does absolutely nothing to benefit them. You’d honestly be better off dying or entering stealth to reset. I’d be more pleased seeing 4/5 of us take down a boss than have me carry them 50% of the boss’s health because I ran stealth regen which is rather selfish. If you ran other alternatives you can actually benefit the group and possibly yield better results.

Only time I run SA is for the group support via regen or venoms, I don’t do it to clutch and flex off for the pugs who went afk for a sandwich after getting tired of watching me. Even with pw I have aoe fury/swiftness and blinds going off, beats using d/x to spike 1 target down at a time imo.

shimmerless.4560:

Functionally it isn’t fine, swap deactivating on clone death makes it terribly unreliable and it killed off one of the skill’s advantages which was swap mind games.

So a near instant cast stun breaker and AoE immobilize leading to a heavy cleave isn’t good because you can’t swap to a dead clone? How about don’t send the clone into a cluster kitten and realize that your clones are not tanks of war…

You had a major QoL fix on the skill, if you wana play god there is an APP for that that fits nice and snug into your pocket. Quit asking for non-sense to break rules because you can’t set anything up.

Sagat.3285:

NinjaEd.3946:

Sagat.3285:

You would need to buff stealth.Why? While in stealth you are most likely not getting it so you can receive full healing while revealing you could receive unlimited damage,need to buff Shadow’s Embrace because while revealed you could receive unlimited conditions and so on……don’t forget that if you do it would be a nerf to the ground….a very very very extreme nerf that would KILL thief

I think the idea was to relocate some traits to proc during revealed and be rebalanced on a much shorter duration. The idea of just sitting around and waiting isn’t very fun to fight with or against, but on some thief builds you really don’t have a choice but to recover in stealth.

Imo I think it’d be difficult to rebalance an X value (stealth has a wide range of activity) into something that lasts 3 seconds (6 with 2 utility skills) without making it extremely overpowering or extremely underwhelming and unintentionally nerfing stealth to oblivion. It could work, but it’d definitely be a tricky number game.

I see the top but the road is full of broken glass, a better (not the best) option(not solution) would be in and out proc: Shadow’s Embrace- remove 1 condition when you enter and exist stealth ,and so on…it would need initiative or stealth attacks tweaking you don’t want the thief blowing initiative too fast to benefit(similary to necro’s DS traits….)

I suggested something like that actually, dunno if it was this post. It was along those lines though where it functioned in both fields so it wouldn’t lose its intended result. For example

Shadow’s Embrace- remove 1 condition when you enter stealth, and 1 condtion every 3 seconds you are revealed. 1 condition removed at the start of revealed, so essentially guartuneed 3 conditions removed on a normal reveal

Shadow’s rejuvenation- increased healing per second and healing scaling, only lasts 5 seconds max. end result, the healing would be nerfed in the long run however those who use stealth for a few seconds will see a buff since the healing is condensed. This eliminates the need to sit around without nerfing the intended effect. In turn, this does nerf the playstyle where thieves could sit around and wait for cooldowns with traits such as this being active.

Hidden thief- Stealing grants you stealth and removes revealed. (revealed removal effect ICD 35 seconds). still grants stealth if the ICD is active.

Hidden assassin- Grant 2 might every 3 seconds for 15 seconds. This effect will end after 6 seconds of stealth. again, a condensed effect without removing the intended result. Max 6 stacks of might

Fleet shadow- Move faster while revealed. 50% increased movement speed. talk about a nasty surprise

Patience- Gain faster endurance regeneration while in stealth. 50% endurance regeneration. changed to remove any chance of high stealth uptime.

Result: Less need to sit in stealth for long time. Use would be for reposition or to break target to recover cooldowns, but not to heavily recover over 9+ seconds and wait on cooldowns essentially resetting the fight for both players for wasting so much time.

I’d actually recommend not using SA for anything but certain boss fights. You generally do not use stealth because

A) Only good stealth attacks are single target, and most encounters are groups
B) If you use stealth to skip trash mobs or position yourselves, SR does the job on its own
C) if you have to recover in stealth (shadows rejuvenation) you’re sitting around while your group carries you.

Only time you use SA is for:

-Volcanic fractal, during the part where veteran grawl spawn and run to the edge to knock a human off. Best thing I’ve done with thief is S/X venom share which requires SA.

-Volcanic fractal, during the boss I go 6 points in so if I need to heal someone the rejuvenation covers up the burning I get for sitting still.

-During Mai trin boss I go 4 points in since I use d/p for her for mobility and high single target dps. The condi clearing and regeneration to allies only though.

That’s really the only time I go into SA for anything, the rest is always critical strikes (6) and acrobatics (4-6) because it gives vitality which helps with our naturally low health pool and the “1 shot” mechanics that swarm higher level fractals with some other good traits like faster initiative regen for PW or power of inertia for extra dps.

Also X/p does a far better job of blinding than CnD + cloaked in shadows.

Relentliss.2170:

You might want to focus on stacking vulnerability instead of chill. Increase the length of the immobilise and as many sources of vulnerability as you can. Would make for some big mighty blows.

That’s kind of the aim. At face value I have awful damage, but the vulnerability stacking and having a sitting duck before me is what gets me the kill. 1v1 its a little difficult but I’ve pulled it off focusing on actually keeping a distance and using scepter most of the fight.

I’d wish the 6th rune effect was a little more than 7% considering such a short uptime on chill but with vitality I can see it isn’t meant as a heavy dps rune set. I can’t see giving it up however because the chill duration effects everything.

I’ll definitely relocate my sigils though and use shelter + pure of voice for better sustain. I may try bloodlust of strength sigils on 1 set to get my power a little higher, but my thought was if critical hits are already 150% damage than I just focus on crits as opposed to having sustain and power which ultimately isn’t as valuable without critical hits.

Thanks for the extra feedback, I’ll keep checking in and testing things out.

Sagat.3285:

You would need to buff stealth.Why? While in stealth you are most likely not getting it so you can receive full healing while revealing you could receive unlimited damage,need to buff Shadow’s Embrace because while revealed you could receive unlimited conditions and so on……don’t forget that if you do it would be a nerf to the ground….a very very very extreme nerf that would KILL thief

I think the idea was to relocate some traits to proc during revealed and be rebalanced on a much shorter duration. The idea of just sitting around and waiting isn’t very fun to fight with or against, but on some thief builds you really don’t have a choice but to recover in stealth.

Imo I think it’d be difficult to rebalance an X value (stealth has a wide range of activity) into something that lasts 3 seconds (6 with 2 utility skills) without making it extremely overpowering or extremely underwhelming and unintentionally nerfing stealth to oblivion. It could work, but it’d definitely be a tricky number game.

I’ve thought about bane, since the condi damage is pointless however the cooldown on bane is higher and can be ignored by stability while immobilize is hard to ignore unless they have condi immunity(which few have).

I’m on the fence with shelter since the cooldown isn’t that different but considering how slow I am I could swap to pure of voice to cover condi removal and use shelter. I just like having the cushioning with extra hp incase I get something like condi overload or burst where I have a few seconds to recover.

Im confused on the 0/5/6/6/5 however O.o

Thank you for the response

Ima paste the same thing I said in an earlier thread.

-s/p is your friend. Despite the BPS nerf, the AoE cleave + evade is invaluable since 9/10 dungeon encounters involve stacking on a corner to obstruct LoS (line of sight). Enemies will take the shortest path when chasing you if they loose LoS, causing them to gather all at a corner for easy AoE application. You will not use s/p always, but its a primary set to have.

-You will constantly be adjusting your utilities and traits, even in the same fractal. Each encounter is different for the most part, so expect a tweak here and there such as using smoke screen and dagger storm for projectiles along with the smoke screen on down trait (concealed defeat in critical strikes adept), p/p for ranged dps [the decending lasers on the uncategorized fractal are projectiles and can be blocked/reflected as such protecting your allies on the way up]. You will see what is needed in each encounter the more you play and can adjust accordingly. I can tell you that I change my traits between ~3 set ups and utilities/weapon skills constantly because everything has its place.

-Learn boss skills. Most are very telegraphed but some act much quicker than others or have strange delays either visual or effect. Knowing them you can act on the fly using all the tools thief has to offer to stay alive. Remember, a dead player = zero dps so if you are dying too often change your playstyle up and possibly your build until you are comfortable stepping into heavier dps builds.

-On the volcanic fractal (with the legendary shaman at the end) make sure you have pistol/x as one of your sets. When it uses its bubble, it is based on number of attacks. Simply carry SR (naturally both as an offense and defense) and keep pressing 1. The short aftercast will let you fire 5X bullets real fast and destroy its bubble. You’re no the only one there but for your end of the fight, its the best bubble destroyer.

-Scorpion wire can be quite useful in some situations. Get creative with it especially for fights where you need to relocate the boss somewhere (mai trin, giant jellyfish, dredge fractal boss, etc).

Thats really it, just learn the encounters and overtime you will find new and creative ways to take them down. Most important point is don’t just hop in with full zerker gear and expect it to be easy, if you are dead you aren’t contributing to the group no matter how much damage you got off in those few seconds. Ease into zerker if you can.

Let me start off by saying, I’m not brand new to guardian but I am new to this forum and still have tricks to learn for guardian. I’ve read some very good feedback from others so I just want advice on my favorite guardian build, chill spam.

Goal of build:

When I don’t use sword or mediations, mobility is lacking for me. With this build, I don’t use my mobility to stay on target, I use their lack of mobility to catch up and beat them to a pummel. Prior to the buff, I messed around with glacial heart but now I want to expand on this.

The build

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fVAQNAS7dl0ApSo1CxVI8DNB+QVVAgdQMEH61tQOEkA-TphBABAcBA04IAwz+DfXGYvDCQEPAAA

Combat

Since I cannot escape for kitten with this build, when I enter I fight till someone is downed. I’m very focus fire orientated with this builds since I can apply a very heavy immobilize and keep heavy pressure on them with chill. Conditions for the most part are ignored however despite my heavy toughness rating I still have to play carefully against bursts from power builds. As you can see my power isn’t all that high but using hammer and other chill sources and immobilize I use scepter to finish most people off where they are stuck on smite.

Goal of Feedback

What do you think of it? Am I missing a certain element that would help more or is my approach to this build off? I’ve been hit and miss with this build since its a dps build with not much dps. My problem is if I use zerker, the hammer is incredibly slow and I can’t last long enough to get its rotation down so I’ve went with more defense so that I can face tank just enough to place that rotation into play without worrying so much about dodging and limping away with essentially 0 swiftness.

The only issue I still would have is even with a flat 10 second cooldown reduction on utilities when stealing, people who spec for steal (sleight of hand) will have an incredibly strong effect with this trait. I’d say still add an ICD onto the recharge portion because it would permanently reduce the cooldown of everything by 10 seconds which is quite powerful for stealth based skills.

So perhaps something like this:

Improvisation- Reduce the cooldown of recharging utility skills on successful steal. While holding a stolen item, move faster and deal extra damage with bundles.
Recharge effect cooldown 10 seconds (30 second cooldown)
Movement speed increase 5%
Bundle damage increase 10%

Very friendly and detailed. +1

:)

P.S its ok to say a skill is underwhelming especially when directing new thieves who may feel like they’re using a skill wrong. Many of the underwhelming skills are highly situational and take extra practice to make any use of them.

As for the fractal part of the guide, I can help out with a few pointers.

-s/p is your friend. Despite the BPS nerf, the AoE cleave + evade is invaluable since 9/10 dungeon encounters involve stacking on a corner to obstruct LoS (line of sight). Enemies will take the shortest path when chasing you if they loose LoS, causing them to gather all at a corner for easy AoE application. You will not use s/p always, but its a primary set to have.

-You will constantly be adjusting your utilities and traits, even in the same fractal. Each encounter is different for the most part, so expect a tweak here and there such as using smoke screen and dagger storm for projectiles along with the smoke screen on down trait (concealed defeat in critical strikes adept), p/p for ranged dps [the decending lasers on the uncategorized fractal are projectiles and can be blocked/reflected as such protecting your allies on the way up]. You will see what is needed in each encounter the more you play and can adjust accordingly. I can tell you that I change my traits between ~3 set ups and utilities/weapon skills constantly because everything has its place.

-Learn boss skills. Most are very telegraphed but some act much quicker than others or have strange delays either visual or effect. Knowing them you can act on the fly using all the tools thief has to offer to stay alive. Remember, a dead player = zero dps so if you are dying too often change your playstyle up and possibly your build until you are comfortable stepping into heavier dps builds.

-On the volcanic fractal (with the legendary shaman at the end) make sure you have pistol/x as one of your sets. When it uses its bubble, it is based on number of attacks. Simply carry SR (naturally both as an offense and defense) and keep pressing 1. The short aftercast will let you fire 5X bullets real fast and destroy its bubble. You’re no the only one there but for your end of the fight, its the best bubble destroyer.

-Scorpion wire can be quite useful in some situations. Get creative with it especially for fights where you need to relocate the boss somewhere (mai trin, giant jellyfish, dredge fractal boss, etc).

Thats really it, just learn the encounters and overtime you will find new and creative ways to take them down. Most important point is don’t just hop in with full zerker gear and expect it to be easy, if you are dead you aren’t contributing to the group no matter how much damage you got off in those few seconds. Ease into zerker if you can.

Xae Isareth.1364:

NinjaEd.3946:

Xae Isareth.1364:

Did Anet ever talk about how they intended this thing to work?

They try to avoid talking about thief at all, I mean someone gave carl the card suggesting venoms were for a condition build and several of the changes were functionality changes followed by a confusing look.

Took 2 years for them to make venomous aura use the thief’s own stats :/

This is why I think they should just ask the top thieves of PvE, WvW and sPvP to give them advice on what to do.

Those guys spent collectively hundreds of hours turning over ever rock, I doubt the devs know more about the class than those guys.

Exactly, the top thieves can only give advice, however anet wont take it seriously. We’ve spent how long explaining that last refuge is harmful AND impossible to correct with how stealth works? We’ve spent every waking day mocking their addition of assassin’s equilibrium and they believe it’s a number issue so they add .5 seconds (technically .65 from 30% boon duration). They keep upping initiative costs of skills rather than balance their effects only making them less attractive. Improvisation is still nonsense, so many useless traits and utilities, sb received all but 1 nerf to infiltrator’s arrow which I imagine won’t be long, p/p is still a 3 spam, venoms are too heavy of an investment, etc. Basically, only person who shows a presence in this forum is a moderator who isn’t even posting anymore when (s)he shuts a thread down. It’s down right sad.

All top thieves could do is show Anet the perspective of thief that they see, similar to the ranger CDI it will basically be for show and ultimately ignored. They just aren’t taking this game seriously, as if they’ve moved to something else or rack up so much income from the gem store that they don’t see a reason to fix things appropriately.

Xae Isareth.1364:

Did Anet ever talk about how they intended this thing to work?

They try to avoid talking about thief at all, I mean someone gave carl the card suggesting venoms were for a condition build and several of the changes were functionality changes followed by a confusing look.

Took 2 years for them to make venomous aura use the thief’s own stats :/