Guild Wars 2

I think the point of doing more damage on his guard than thief is he isn’t having to spend time actively evading or being dead. Dead zerker = dps, vs clerics who just skips by throwing aoe attacks. Even if they hit weak it’s still constant.

On the flip side, a zerker guard wouldn’t last too well there, atleast I don’t believe so considering the trait reworks they would do to get there but maybe someone has such a build to be beefy and deal heavy damage with gs without going down like a pile of bricks. Thief may hit harder in general but the lose the luxury of sustain as a result, passive sustain. Som, caltrops, caltrops on dodge, pw, w/e you want it will help though. Its not viable in wvw or pvp but it sure does hella wonders in pve. I’ve solo’ed Captain rotbeard with a similar build, never got close to death.

Incurafy.6329:

Viking Jorun.5413:

Dagger/Pistol, X/30/30/X/X and repeatedly throw down Black Powder and heartseeker through it a bunch of times.

Then, have a little bread with that cheese.

Actually, it’s 100% impossible to maintain permanent stealth with just D/P + Infusion of Shadow post 10th Dec patch. Seriously, you of all people should be against spreading misinformation.

Alone, but trolls seek ways to keep on the troll road. Signet of Infiltration, and quick recovery and even patience if they really want to just troll. Bottom line they can still maintain perma stealth but they have to invest more into it than before, and overall its not all that effective against people who have experience with these clowns who abuse it.

Blackhat.4016:

A proof that a mediocre warrior > a mediocre thief… Man, I really needed a video to know that.

But seriously, every single player knows that warriors are too strong right now and the upcoming “nerfs” won’t change anything. Beating a thief as an engi should be pretty easy as well (too much condition spam), ranger could be interesting.

Would be nice to see you playing an ele after that.

But wait, theres more! We have “good things in store”. Expect dancing dagger to cripple for 4 seconds and ambush thief to get a 10% bonus to their health pool.

Cynz.9437:

there is no dev playing thief as far as i know

i can confirm (saw it myself) they play mesmer, warrior, ele and engi…idk about other classes

Granted this will sound insane, but could a dev respond on this? Don’t have to say who or if they’re in your opinion, good. Just confirm or deny if there are actual dev’s playing thief or are all the changes directed towards us player feedback.

Still anet chose him to play thief on a live stream. Says something about some of their decisions. They don’t make mistakes all the time, but some of them are just like “da heck? Really?”.

Did that thief kill anyone? Were they upleveled? These are the questions you should be asking. Trust me, you don’t want to go down that cheese bricked road, its has a bad smell on it that has caused rage for months.

And a thief can stealth for as long as they want if they spec for it, they just won’t kill you IN stealth. If you had 20 people incapable of stunning or immobilizing when they appeared , I’m afraid your allies were actually skritt. Shocking though, since they have a hive mind.

Gallows.4318:

NinjaEd.3946:

Cynz.9437:

all the money spent on ascended gear…. if i only knew this change was comming i wouldn’t have crafted entire set/bought new trinkets….:/

They said zerker will still be the top dps set, don’t flush the news down the toilet so soon. We should of all seen this day coming, crit dmg is insane and is the center of speed runs in pve, hard to make inventive and fresh content when all it requires is quick killing.

Doesn’t really matter. They just made condition damage 10% better compared to direct damage.

10% better P/D thief build, HA. Wish I say the brighter side of things but I rarely do, guess its a side affect for playing thief.

10% stronger condi engi necro ele warrior….. SHEET!

Ibbuli.4027:

Dee Jay.2460:

It’s the nature of stealth + burst.

It’s the same reason the Assassin archetype has been despised by so many in EVERY other MMO. ANet just made it worse by giving Thieves so much in combat stealth as well.

The reason people hate Thieves is because they might we wandering around, minding their own business when BAM, they instantly lose 50% of their health. This causes many less experienced players to panic and stresses them out. They make mistakes and then die quickly to another round of Backstab burst.

I get why that’s frustrating. I don’t blame people for expressing that.

I blame ANet for creating the worst, most unfair and exploitable stealth mechanic in any MMO I’ve played. In no other MMO was stealth ever such a cause for frustration both for the user and the receiver.

I think the keyword here is “less experienced players”.

I regret to mention it, but Silkroad online probably tops GW2 in stealth exploit.

You get like 200% dmg bonus, and it’s permanent, and they put it on the hardest hitting class in the game. There was no ground target skills or directional skills, it was all click based so you can imagine how ridiculous it was. Nothing like watching a mage meteor you for 280k or a rouge twin stabbing you for 200k.

Kolly.9872:

aimz.6287:

Why ARENA net WHY??? Why do you listen to these terrible players?

Just because Devs are terrible players too

Should watch the “Fractured” preview gameplay, where the dev died over and over and over on his p/p thief. Granted he was ridiculous for using nothing but p/p to begin with but… it was laughable. Even his buddy behind him was laughing.

You got killed by a sb stealth thief? What mystic creature did you find, and where? Did he have long pointy horns? Or was it a she? Soo many unanswered questions.

But really, you think sb is op? #3 spam posts are being spammed, and its all nonsense. If they actually spammed #3 over and over they would be out of initiative, and hten you don’t have to worry about #5 teleport. #4 getting a nerf btw, and #2 is insanely slow when shot at range, up close and its just player fault for standing at his feet while be slowly burns through all his initiative, and it isn’t even all that threatening tbh unless your stuck in SR and can’t get out without revealing yourself. Heaven forbid we have a counter to anyone who sits still, let alone a blast finisher, might as well turn it into [Ball of yarn], shoot a ball of yarn for the kitties to play with.

SB is a great utility weapon, and almost all thieves carry it on their backs. Keep in mind ICD timers of all the sigils are being split so you can put energy and battle on that sb, or w/e new sigil they pull into spvp. It’s not a nerf to anyone, its a balance to 2h weapons now having as many bonuses as 2 1h weapon users.

I’ll say this, learning thief isn’t something you can learn from youtube or forums. As many hints as you can soak up its just like any other profession, you have to just jump in and start learning how things work together. A few tips I can suggest for building

DA is best known to have mug which deals damage and heals you on steal, don’t bother going more than 10 points here unless there is something you really want to try.

CS is our dps tree, due to crit damage and executioner. You can go with hidden killer but executioner is just the boom to your nuke as far as traits go.

SA is for stealth builds. If you dislike stealth, no worries as there are ways to avoid it (although in reality you will need it to some small degree). I’d suggest going atleast 10-15 into here for on demand condi removal.

Acrobatics has its uses but the main thing is 15 in with Vigorous recovery, 150 vitality 15% boon duration and a good solid source of evasion. You can build further into it but its not nearly as good kitten as far as defensive traits go imo. Mix the two up if you wish, see what you like.

Trickery is for steal spec’s. If you don’t like them, don’t go into this trait line. If you like them, try going atleast 20 into it for bountiful theft and something else, nothing like turning the tides with boon steal.

D/d is primarily a power spec, don’t fool around with condi d/d, its a waste (except maybe open world pve)

D/p is also a power spec, some say it’s cheesy but that’s if you follow the trend of spamming #5+#2 which you don’t need to. #2-#4 is a great amount of utility at your disposal, and #3 on d/p is the perfect gap closer (unblockable, teleports, blind, dmg).

SB is almost mandatory but depending on what you’re doing you can sub it out. SB is a great utlility weapon just like staff to guardian or necro, its good to have on the side. Look through the skills and you will see why.

S/x is more so to dance with your target and control. Whether you get s/d or s/p, you will be up in their face to annoy them. I wouldn’t bother with s/p in spvp but if you want to give it a try by all means go for it. The whole point is to try everything out before knocking it.

p/x is just…. weak. Don’t bother unless its pve with p/p.

Best of luck to ya. Oh and don’t be surprised if a build you finally feel comfortable gets nerfed, it’s in the fine print when you make this class.

Ghostwolf.9863:

Some counterplay to the poison field, not really a big hit and it was needed, I wish the poisonfield would last for longer though. Engineers poison nades were hit way harder imo.

Mesmers wont be able to mindlessly spam clones with dodge,
Warriors pin down will be better visible, engineers net turret will have shorter immobilize duration, eles will be slightly buffed which they need although it’s not their sustain which needs a buff, the bugfixes to ranger were good, some minionmaster builds will be slightly less sturdy and dumbfire will receive some changes which I have mixed feelings about, the main source of vigor for guardians will be cut in half.

All in all, a good day. If they just stuck with these and did NOTHING to thief I’d be happy. I feel like our “good things to come” is just throwing powder sugar on manure. Our “jelly doughnut” isn’t going to be as appetizing and it’s made to be but even still, I have hopes. Small, microscopic hopes..

Travlane.5948:

NinjaEd.3946:

Travlane.5948:

NinjaEd.3946:

Travlane.5948:

NinjaEd.3946:

Its not nearly as bad as people think, it just means ppl won’t explode as quickly. I think the only aspect that this will change for thief is wvw roaming where they can exceed 120% crit damage. 10% less damage from 120% crit dmg builds is a lot, but 10% from ~50% in spvp isn’t that big of a drop. Granted for some classes this isn’t opening builds but the crit damage change wasn’t the only one. Besides, they always dropped hint of “good changes” that they couldn’t discuss at the time. Maybe we have good things this time around ^^

yes but dmg is thief specialty. like defense/hp is to a warrior. wont hurt most classed but will hurt badly on thief.

will 10% hp loss or toughness loss or armor loss on warrior hurt? yes! badly! on thief? no not really.

dying 10% faster from 5 seconds hardly is a change lol. Still crit damage is fairly balanced in s/tpvp because its not so out of control like it is in wvw/pve where they can exceed 120%. No doubt the crit damage change will hurt thief, but this “good stuff” I heard about has me thinking the grass may get greener on our side for a change. Besides this change also affects Mesmer ele and warrior who utilize crit damage really well too. Granted zerker ele dies in seconds too but they have their “oh bullocks” skills too, and in various quantities.

27k hp warrior vs 14k hp thief. both loses 10% hp. warrior now has 2430hp and thief has 12600hp.

the warrior gets hurt more. just as thief willg et hurt more from 10% dmg nerf. get it?

If both go zerker spec, technically warrior would get hurt more(skills scale with higher coeficients and Crit dmg scales off those). Unfortunatly they aren’t forced to go zerker so indirectly yes thief gets hit harder because they have no choice but to deal with it, warrior can move onto other builds and be just as good post patch or so it seems. Hard to know whats in store, they only covered what seemed like a fraction of changes.

As for wvw, this is a huge nerf to thief, no argument there. The only thing they are good at in there is roaming and capping ruins/camps, nerfing their efficiency is just rude when a warrior can cover just as much ground and face tank camps much easier.

warrior never goes full zerk in wvw. thief kinda has to. maybe a piece or 2 of balk.

Shouldn’t, but I know a couple who do for roaming. Granted they get ambushed time to time but I’ve seen (on some occasions, not all) them turn around and slap the thief or Mesmer and continue on their crusade to N camp. Thief doesn’t need full zerker, they can throw in valk or calvaliar if foods/oils/traits get them the precision they need. OFc if they want dps their going to go into CS so the mind blowing amount of crit chance almost seems wasteful if they went full zerker. Thankfully I don’t roam wvw as much as run havoc/small ops but I feel bad for those who made a living out of it.

Cynz.9437:

all the money spent on ascended gear…. if i only knew this change was comming i wouldn’t have crafted entire set/bought new trinkets….:/

They said zerker will still be the top dps set, don’t flush the news down the toilet so soon. We should of all seen this day coming, crit dmg is insane and is the center of speed runs in pve, hard to make inventive and fresh content when all it requires is quick killing.

Iruy Ariviel.3605:

Well, why not completelly change steal? Right now I think steal is useless, because the cooldown is too long for what you can get with it. You may base your entire build on steal, there is at least 11 or 12 seconds each 21-22 seconds of battle you get nothing from your traits, the other 10 you might gets boons, poison your enemy… well, whatever? Nothing the other classes don’t have for the entire time.

Change Steal so it becomes usable whenever you’re in Stealth in any enemy or in any enemy that is Blinded, consuming the blind effect. That will remove Steal’s cooldown, instead now it has a chance of being sucessfull, and so the “Steal Recharge Rate” can be changed to “Steal Success Chance”. Give it a… 15%-30%-45% chance of being successfull based on Front-Side-Back hitting, the Trickery Branch will give other 30% (sum 75%), and that last trait that increases recharge by 20%, gives the other 20% (sum 95%). There, fixed.

Idk, I hear engi all the time complain about how terrible RNG class mechanics are. Granted I hate fighting their condi builds they have a point. Not all trait’s aren’t meant to have 100% uptime, I think cooldowns are much better than rng for the sake of steal. Who we steal from and the item we get isn’t RNG, but overall its a gamble because you can’t walk into any fight and decide “hey, I need condi clearing, hope I get healing seed, oh wait I’m against an engineer..”. You can’t choose your stolen skills freely which is fine I guess, it makes the class unique but its limiting for something we have no choice but to equip.

Lucky Shot.7650:

Zero Day.2594:

Not being sarcastic or bashing anything… but the positive changes are probably:
Arbitrary trap buffs.
And most definitely arbitrary venom buffs.
A possible buff to Hard to Catch, reducing it’s internal CD.

I agree, thieves can expect some MASSSIVE buffs like those you posted. Also, they will probably lower Last Refuge cooldown to make it a lot better.

Also get ready to have Pistol Whip split in two, the first one costing 2 initiative and the second one costing 3. Then have the second part of the skill cost 4. Then have the second part of the skill deal 10% less damage. Then have the first part of the skill cost 3 because a 2 ini stun is too much.

On a side note, how in the world will you land the second part if you choose to not use it immediately after the first part? And you’ll be locked out of the stun for about 5 seconds… that will prevent you to land an actual pistol whip.

That’s the life cycle of “good things” for thief sadly. They should tattoo a tear on the face of the thief toon icon, just to express how we really feel inside.

Gwalchgwn.1659:

NinjaEd.3946:

Truthfully I dislike PW and think it isn’t thief fitting at all. If we are supposed to be nimble fighters how is a channeled root skill fit into that? Even if it has an evade in it still it seems silly imo. I say nimble to shorten up the description of thief from the wiki.

Swashbuckling pirates steal stuff too and are thieves too. S/P is more a pirate than an assassin

I like s/p, I don’t like pw though is what I meant. Granted its got its uses (mostly pve imo) but its a rooted channel skill. Not saying I think you should be able to move while in flurry but the skill as a whole is lame for a profession who is supposed to be dancing around the enemy.

Travlane.5948:

NinjaEd.3946:

Travlane.5948:

NinjaEd.3946:

Its not nearly as bad as people think, it just means ppl won’t explode as quickly. I think the only aspect that this will change for thief is wvw roaming where they can exceed 120% crit damage. 10% less damage from 120% crit dmg builds is a lot, but 10% from ~50% in spvp isn’t that big of a drop. Granted for some classes this isn’t opening builds but the crit damage change wasn’t the only one. Besides, they always dropped hint of “good changes” that they couldn’t discuss at the time. Maybe we have good things this time around ^^

yes but dmg is thief specialty. like defense/hp is to a warrior. wont hurt most classed but will hurt badly on thief.

will 10% hp loss or toughness loss or armor loss on warrior hurt? yes! badly! on thief? no not really.

dying 10% faster from 5 seconds hardly is a change lol. Still crit damage is fairly balanced in s/tpvp because its not so out of control like it is in wvw/pve where they can exceed 120%. No doubt the crit damage change will hurt thief, but this “good stuff” I heard about has me thinking the grass may get greener on our side for a change. Besides this change also affects Mesmer ele and warrior who utilize crit damage really well too. Granted zerker ele dies in seconds too but they have their “oh bullocks” skills too, and in various quantities.

27k hp warrior vs 14k hp thief. both loses 10% hp. warrior now has 2430hp and thief has 12600hp.

the warrior gets hurt more. just as thief willg et hurt more from 10% dmg nerf. get it?

If both go zerker spec, technically warrior would get hurt more(skills scale with higher coeficients and Crit dmg scales off those). Unfortunatly they aren’t forced to go zerker so indirectly yes thief gets hit harder because they have no choice but to deal with it, warrior can move onto other builds and be just as good post patch or so it seems. Hard to know whats in store, they only covered what seemed like a fraction of changes.

As for wvw, this is a huge nerf to thief, no argument there. The only thing they are good at in there is roaming and capping ruins/camps, nerfing their efficiency is just rude when a warrior can cover just as much ground and face tank camps much easier.

Well op mentioned the #2 immobilize and that’s basically what I was thinking. Why bother splitting the skill if a .5 second stun is just about the same as 1 second immobilize? End result immobilize will win and you can get that flurry off. Truthfully I dislike PW and think it isn’t thief fitting at all. If we are supposed to be nimble fighters how is a channeled root skill fit into that? Even if it has an evade in it still it seems silly imo. I say nimble to shorten up the description of thief from the wiki.

Travlane.5948:

NinjaEd.3946:

Its not nearly as bad as people think, it just means ppl won’t explode as quickly. I think the only aspect that this will change for thief is wvw roaming where they can exceed 120% crit damage. 10% less damage from 120% crit dmg builds is a lot, but 10% from ~50% in spvp isn’t that big of a drop. Granted for some classes this isn’t opening builds but the crit damage change wasn’t the only one. Besides, they always dropped hint of “good changes” that they couldn’t discuss at the time. Maybe we have good things this time around ^^

yes but dmg is thief specialty. like defense/hp is to a warrior. wont hurt most classed but will hurt badly on thief.

will 10% hp loss or toughness loss or armor loss on warrior hurt? yes! badly! on thief? no not really.

dying 10% faster from 5 seconds hardly is a change lol. Still crit damage is fairly balanced in s/tpvp because its not so out of control like it is in wvw/pve where they can exceed 120%. No doubt the crit damage change will hurt thief, but this “good stuff” I heard about has me thinking the grass may get greener on our side for a change. Besides this change also affects Mesmer ele and warrior who utilize crit damage really well too. Granted zerker ele dies in seconds too but they have their “oh bullocks” skills too, and in various quantities.

Travlane.5948:

ONE of the anet team even tried working fire and air sigils while playing himself. yeah. pros.

Last time I watched them their p/p thief was spending more time dirt napping than they were shooting bullets. There aren’t any high expectations so far from their game play vs game knowledge.

Its not nearly as bad as people think, it just means ppl won’t explode as quickly. I think the only aspect that this will change for thief is wvw roaming where they can exceed 120% crit damage. 10% less damage from 120% crit dmg builds is a lot, but 10% from ~50% in spvp isn’t that big of a drop. Granted for some classes this isn’t opening builds but the crit damage change wasn’t the only one. Besides, they always dropped hint of “good changes” that they couldn’t discuss at the time. Maybe we have good things this time around ^^

Steal- Thief profession mechanic.

[F1] Pickpocket- Shadowstep to your foe and obtain a skill. (steal as is)
-Range 900
-Cooldown 35 seconds.
[F2] Disarm- Steal a boon from your foe. Steal 2 if from stealth or behind.
-Range 150 (can miss)
-Cast time 1/2 second.
-Cooldown 60 seconds.

Traits-
(Deadly Arts)
-Improvisation: Transfer 2 conditions you are suffering from to your foe on disarm.
-Serpent’s Touch: affects both steal skills. Shorten base duration to 7 seconds.
-Mug: only on pickpocket.
(Shadow Arts)
-Hidden thief: Pickpocket stealths, disarm causes chill for 3 seconds.
(Trickery)
-Kleptomaniac: only works on pickpocket.
-Bountiful theft: Stolen boons are shared with your allies (up to 5). Pickpocket grants vigor. Disarm steals 2 boons regardless of conditions. (affects s/d too, drastically help team fights and promote use in zergs, slight nerf to pickpocket for the shared boon effect and buff to disarm)
-Thrill of the crime: Affects both steal skills. Lowers duration to 8 seconds base instead of 10. If Disarm misses does not apply, Pickpocket works as before.
-Long reach: Increases range of both steal skills by 50%. (Pickpocket 1350, Disarm 225. A flat 600 range on both would make disarm very OP.)
-Sleight of hand: Steal skills daze your target for 1 second. Stolen skills reduce weapon swap by 2 seconds.

Thoughts? More nerfs to steal traits to balance out the presense of a 2nd profession skill?

Zacchary.6183:

Karolis.4261:

Viking Jorun.5413:

I’m awaiting Burnfall and Sanduskel’s responses to this. Haha.

I believe they are same person with split personality but same beliefs.

No they aren’t Burnfall is a drama queen/king and Sanduskel… well he is a non-cuss word that will probably get me another infraction because rules.

Sandy at first just came on the thief forums to establish that using permastealth is a crutch and that he doesn’t use it. People ignored him because his posts offered nothing to conversations.

Then he started saying permastealth is OP after a few weeks and I called him out on his BS. He backed off for about a week and then got back on easing his way back into discussions. I called him out again. He backed off for a few days. Repeat.So think of him what you will.

But, they are not one and the same. Their approaches to thieves are completely and I don’t think there is a single person in the world who can maintain two completely different personas simultaneously.

Troll A by day, Troll B by night. If a murderer can live amongst us is it hard to believe they can be so different during the day? And by murderer I mean trolls who want easy mode and cry for thief nerfs.

D/p #3 is just all around great. #3 is increible, #4 for interupting heals and channels, and #5 for kitties who stand still. Spamming #5+#2 is just lame unless you need to enter stealth for shadow protector or condi clearing. D/d is has 1 useful skill, d/p has 3 useful skills for power builds that is( not including aa or hs or stealth attack because they’re both d/x which seems pointless to compare the same mh weapon). If you wana spam DB best of luck to ya.

My concern with vital shot is based on the weapon selection thief has. We put on d/d, its power (or conditions for kittens), we put on sb its more utility, p/p although not the best is our ranged power build. P/d is clearly condition but the aa for p/p or p/d doesnt lean 1 way or the other, its a hybrid and for a class who can’t multi spec (pvp atleast) they can’t work with that. If they were to buff the aa bleed only, p/p is still going to be weak. Since stealth pistol is imo strictly condi based, it deserves a buff. Its the only skill thie has that applies multiple stacks of bleed, quickly putting pressure on the enemy. Thief lacks this as well as long lasting conditions that damage. Id be all for buffing vital shot an sneak attack but it’d be nice to set a fine line between ranged condi and ranged power so we dont feel like a wana be ele or engi.

Ive wanted to give p/p a try but 1 skill as a source of dps is sad, even if its better than sb.

Latinkuro.9420:

Fenrir.3609:

Atherakhia.4086:

Fenrir.3609:

Nerfing crit damage, yeah that’s really going to remove the pve dps meta and promote diversity….

They didn’t say nerfing, though that’s likely the outcome. Ideally they’d make crits 100% base instead of 50% and remove the stat so power and condition were a bit more even. But who knows.

It’s safe to say they are going to try and nerf it, it’s what they do. It’s sadly also getting increasingly safe to say that they don’t know what they are doing.

if they really wanna help the game why don’t they remove the one mechanic that has no place in a modern mmorpg aka the kitten stealth

don’t understand why dev’s keep insisting in introducing that kitten thing in every game, if a new mmorpg came out and said stealth does not exist in our game i would pay a sub !

nobody likes to fight an invisible enemy that can stealth at will even after attacking !
at least in older games once you come out of stealth and attack it was a lot harder to get back into stealth and escape or whatever, but here the drawbacks are almost none !

you wanna fix something start there !

Cuz you know, you can’t kill that thief in a couple seconds or anything…

Oh and you left your cc skills back at home, shame on you for being ill prepared!

But really, you think stealth is a sufficient mechanic that holds thieves on the top pedastol? Think again, we are best at nothing but stealth accesss which does little good when you have to run from a fight just to heal up vs face tanking and healing and still dealing near the same damage.

I hope we get a power/toughness/crit dmg amulet for once, I want to use hidden killer but executioner is just soo much more delicious atm. Or make actual knight’s jewel, I have enough vitality I need toughness!

Swimfan.8014:

Yup, we’re OP and that’s why 90% of any player you pass bein’ a warrior

Thiefs, guys, thiefs are every….. uhm ne no wait, they’re not.

What ppl think to be “unfair” is our high dps because they don’t (f*cing) get that we play the maybe most risky class in game. We go into melee with the least HP and just medium armor?!

With no aegis, or protection, or invulnerability, or burst heals.

Stooperdale.3560:

“As much as I love the look of a two handed sword it just wouldn’t fit with the thief
archetype. There are many MMOs, and books where a thief type character dual wields swords. It’s the nimble master swordsman that wears light leather armor and is quick to evade/parry attacks. "

I would agree that a two handed sword isn’t a great fit but remember that Conan the Barbarian was actually a thief.

Most fantasy situations where thief types use off hand parrying weapons are covered by long daggers (as much as short swords). The cosmetics for GW2 generally show massive swords that do not equate to a light off hand weapon. I have to be quite selective in finding short main hand weapons for my thief since most seem long enough to drag along the ground when sheathed.

As far as cosmetics go, that has already been done and looks silly. Take Moonshine mace skin MH and a regular sword OH for a warrior. They are still swinging with that bottle. Also this is a mmo, weapon balance shouldn’t be a priority over simple reasoning as in giving the thief all their 1h weapons in a duel wielded fashion. Also I know some pretty long daggers that get rather close to sword length, its all about how you suit yourself up.

thomasgjkgwdn.4760:

NinjaEd.3946:

in pve you will be lunch meat to trash mobs

like… soloing dungeons? or… sounds a bit exaggerated (depending on build/maneuvers).

Dungeons yes, and maybe some living story instances like trying to solo the tower of nightmares (if you tried that on a thief).

Regular open pve kitten? You can do w/e you want. Bring 100 seed turrets from the vendor in Caldeon forest and kite the event, it hardly matters.

Mesmers get dual sword, warrior gets dual sword, what gives? I thought we were dual masters, I mean we have a section of skills called “dual wield”.

S/S:

3-Precise strike- Slash your foe vertically inflicting vulnerability if they were charging a skill.
680 (.4*) Damage
Vulnerability duration 8 seconds (5 stacks)
Range 130
Cast time 1/4 second.
Initiative cost 4

4- Blind spot- Enter a counter stance. If hit within melee range, teleport behind your foe and stab them applying reveal.
550(1.4*) Damage.
Counter stance duration 2 seconds.
Attack duration .75 seconds.
Reveal duration 5 seconds.
Initiative 4
->Sword trick- throw your blade at your foe applying blind to nearby foes if struck.
400(1.2*) Damage.
Blind duration 3 seconds
Radius 150
Combo Finisher: Physical Projectile 100%.
Initiative 1

5-Ambush attack-Leap at your foe dealing bonus damage if they are blinded. (out in the open fighters, instead of stealth attacking. Similar skill to BS except for builds that don’t want to spec for stealth directly.)
850(1.6) Damage.
1520 (2.8) Damage if blinded.
Range 600
Combo Finisher: leap
Initiative 6.

P/s

3- Gouged wound- slash your foe crippling them and fire at the same spot keeping their wound open. Continuous projectiles apply bleed to this target.
Slash damage 280(0.6*).
Cripple duration 4 seconds.
Cast time 3/4 seconds.
Shot damage 300(1.4)
Cast time .2 seconds
Wound duration 4 seconds(applies even if sword hit misses).
Wound bleed duration 1 stack for 5.5 seconds.
Initiative 4.

D/S

3- Blade Transfer- Thrust your sword into your foe.
Damage 550(1.3*)
Range 130
Impaled duration 5 seconds.
Cast time 3/4 seconds.
Initiative 3
->Blade retrieval- Recover your blade and stab your foe, transferring conditions based on how long the blade was impaled. (can be blocked transferring nothing).
0-3 seconds 1 condition transferred
3+ seconds 2 conditions transferred
Damage 120(1.8*)
Range 150.
Cast time 1/2 seconds
Initiative 2.

Well, for thief conditions dire is much better. It gets your conditions up there and boosts your survivability drastically which thieves can always use. Condition thief is horrible in pvp, but it has its power in wvw when roaming if done right.

full zerker thief, in wvw and pve, is bad. You can’t afford a single mistake in a set like that. In spvp it at least gives you vitality but in pve you will be lunch meat to trash mobs. You have to find a balance with them, and also there really is no need to exceed 50% crit chance unless your trying to beat a friend to a dps contest. Better off putting in some cavaliar or valkrie, maintain the crit dmg but gain some defense. If you burst someone from stealth BS + Mug or Mug + CnD + BS and you don’t get them super low, they can turn around and monkey slap that sorry build of yours, you will die really quick. Ascended or not you will be playing in a eternal mine field where the wrong step and its over.

Its easier to throw the controller down and spill slander on a subject you don’t understand than to ask around or do some homework.

Until people actually look into these things and learn to play, we will be nerfed. Sorry, I meant “balanced”, it sounds better on paper that way. Good thieves will try, and adapt but eventually your cornered and left with two options. Abandon or fall into a waste basket of ideas that were never truly appreciated.

Hope some rouge comes along and straightens up the balance team this upcoming patch, I can’t take another month of watching mesmers dominate tpvp or trying to go toe to toe with a warrior and their trusty HS with lb and s/s in 1v1. I just can’t, I’d rather play the robber and be chased around the map than waste my breath pretending like I have or had a chance.

Is it possible we won’t see any thing change on thief? Granted the initiative change wasn’t horrible but sword got pimp slapped, lets make a campaign against all thief changes, just let us die slowly, no sense to pull the plug.

As for sigil/rune changes, You have my full attention, plan to tune in even if I’m at work. Soo much potential with some runes, dying to try new things out.

LittleLepton.8915:

Mmmm…. Ascended foods drools

I’m imagining ascended omnoms… And …. Knock down food…. And life steals…. drools a river

What’d be better is to let cook go to 500 and instead of wasting time on food rarity (really? I don’t even see rare food its all green for trays or fine for regular), they add increased duration recipes as well as new ones. If I enter wvw, 1h is not enough and I sure as kitten am not going to force myself to buy some gem store item that’s gana put me in the deep end. Lets make food that lasts longer, wvw isn’t a 1h tour and constantly reminding or being reminded I have to put food on to be “at my best” is tiresome. Mute button isn’t bullet proof, sometimes those guildies have something that’s important to say, ignoring it only goes for so long.

Well if the fact is you can’t nerf healing signet without buffing its active, or in other words balance vs flat nerf, then why not change how healing power affects it?

If a warrior wants to survive a fight because of regen, make them spec into healing power to get its good side. For example in s/tpvp a cleric’s warrior with HS would be ~450 while a zerker warrior using HS would fall to ~320. You want to preserve HS but I think its more so the other mechanics that warrior has don’t come close to HS so you don’t want to destroy anything you’ve built up thus far (even though you had no trouble nerfing S/D on thief over and over…). Warrior already has the highest health pool and wears heavy armor, they should be able to soak up and recover damage not out regen it with little to no investment. In wvw with only 25 points into the Defence trait line, healing signet does 406, and adrenal health is 360 at 3 bars of adrenaline (or 120 every second) which in my build, is easy to come by. 526 health a second with heavy armor, and I never can be interrupted because it works whether Im sitting still or moving around.

Signet of restoration works whether you hit an enemy with a spell or not, and also can be traited to retain it’s passive effect and you can actually dip into the active for a small burst. Ele must spec for the most part if they wish to make the most of this signet.

Signet of malice works per enemy hit but requires multi target aggressive play which thief has to really spec for to get any sustain from it.

Warrior just equips HS and its game on. Forget buffing the active just to nerf the passive, you’ll just be making another ordinary healing skill that will need more reworking than necessary to make it feel at all unique. Fix it’s healing power coefficient and it can be justified.

Well for shadow strike for p/d could use a torment buff. It currently deals direct damage twice, and applies a mere 5 second torment. Even if they buffed the stacks to 3 for 5seconds that would be great, you can’t easily spam (and shouldn’t) this skill, so for the short time it lasts let it do its job a little better.

I personally think p/x can remain the same condition/power build just rework where its skills effects come from. For example make the aa hit harder direct damage and keep its weak bleed but buff sneak attack to apply a much longer bleed base (8 seconds or more). Since p/d is more of a condi set than p/p, you will still have stealth access to justify sneak attack being your primary bleed source. P/p will have a more suitable aa since they don’t enter stealth as easy and buff unload to deal increased damage every hit (2% per successful hit, cap at 10%?). This would drastically improve ricochet (not that its horrible atm) to make reaching that bonus damage fairly easy. Each cast of unload would ofc reset that counter so you can’ sit at 10% bonus damage for everything.

I kinda wish dancing dagger was replaced with some poison source. P/d has no poison access on its own, and torment isn’t all that impressive so its just bleeds for the most part doing your work, and condition removal will reset all that work. Like if dancing dagger was replaced with

Venomous trickery- Throw a dagger that bounces between and cripples foes (3s). The last target is punctured by the time bomb(4 seconds, does not stack). Combo Finisher: Physical Projectile. 3 initiative
→Detonate- Detonate your time bomb to create a poison field at your target’s location. Field duration 3 seconds, field radius 120 units. 3 second poison per pulse, pulses every second. Combo Field: Poison. 2 initiative.

You’d still be able to keep the cripple effect for chasing (although body shot would be better even if it costs 1 more initiative) or spend a bit more initiative for a field you can combo off. Usually 1-5 weapon skills the last 2 are something special and for pistol it is, but for dagger only CnD means something. Even in wvw it would be good, because you can throw it onto a stack and have them collect all that poison and reduce their heals without getting so close with sb and risk being choo choo trained.

I wouldn’t give thief confusion so easily, especially if its spammable. We already have such short lasting conditions because of our inititive system its why we lack sufficient condition duration compared to ranger or necro or engineer. I’d leave it, d/p doesn’t benefit from DoT and for ranged direct damage neither does p/p.

Well a simple glance at the tooltip says it all, 1/4 second evade 1/2 second cast time. But if you’re immobilized and weapon swap is on cooldown and you don’t have or want to use up a Shadowstep, it has its little trade off there. Granted spamming it is ridiculous, but most people follow immobilize with a heavy hit (easier to hit a target that isn’t moving).

Its funny when you look at the first page of this subforum and its mostly “nerfs” or “op” yet looking at the Mesmer or warrior forums its “need help with build” or “why you should play this build” or other friendly advice.

Thief is not horrible, but they are no where NEAR the top of the ladder and people still complain. I feel bad for the creator of “stealth” archetype classes, I really do. Your work will never be truly polished without a bunch of nagging babies wailing their inability to L2P so dev’s have no choice but to respond with the all mighty nerf hammer. I give it a couple more months before the nerfs for us get so far out of hand that we have no choice but to move onto a new profession. sigh when will the hate stop? We don’t have the highest anything except stealth uptime, which does little in a game with growing knowledge to stealth counters forcing you to either full retreat or pick your next steps very carefully because you can’t afford another mistake. Lyssa forbid a warrior step into a collusion of wells and fight on it, he might just regen past it and remove those conditions like an onion layer.

Travlane.5948:

NinjaEd.3946:

Cynz.9437:

NinjaEd.3946:

Why give a profession undeniable pathetic condition effects and say all classes can fill the same roles.

Can a guardian tank a boss? Yes by taking and recovering damage as well as blocking.

Can a thief tank a boss? Yes, by evasion and blind.

Do they achieve the same goal? Yes but by different means.

Now put thief in your equation and tell me what you see. That’s the problem I have.

actually thief can’t tank a boss due to 10% effectivety of blind and you can evade so much

If they have feline grace + d/x they can evade all the time on bosses. They hit rather slow and are easily spotted.

u get 20% endurance back every dodge. that = evading all the time? yyyyyyyyyyah. idk about that.

15 endurance from dodge, 10 from dagger aa which takes hardly 2s to cycle through. Unless the boss is on some frenzy you can dodge enough. Dodging all the time in pve is the equivalent of ranger soloing champs. Its pve, things are mostly a walk in the park, 1 dodge every 3-4 seconds from a heavy hit is imo dodging all the time. Put vigor and they shouldn’t dip below 25% endurance.

Anyways this isnt about tanking pve bosses, its about power of condi thief.

Idk if comparing sword conditions from a warrior to pistol conditions from thief works because one is ranged and one is melee. Death blossom applies 3 10s bleeds(melee) its just its soo easy to avoid that only fools use it for anything but a whirl/dodge. I think ranger sb and warrior lb would be better comparisons and in both, thief p/d falls short imo. But yeah warrior s/s conditions are ridiculous.

the only boss in game that goes invis? Yeah that’s not limited or nothing… (sarcasm).

Anyways the thread isn’t pve related it’s pvp related. pvp does’t include wvw because you still have food an oils in there as well as exclusive runes/sigils. When you can put on food that grants 50% endurance regen I can’t say your point is a valid argument.

Cynz.9437:

NinjaEd.3946:

Why give a profession undeniable pathetic condition effects and say all classes can fill the same roles.

Can a guardian tank a boss? Yes by taking and recovering damage as well as blocking.

Can a thief tank a boss? Yes, by evasion and blind.

Do they achieve the same goal? Yes but by different means.

Now put thief in your equation and tell me what you see. That’s the problem I have.

actually thief can’t tank a boss due to 10% effectivety of blind and you can evade so much

If they have feline grace + d/x they can evade all the time on bosses. They hit rather slow and are easily spotted.

Viking Jorun.5413:

Arganthium.5638:

If you position yourself just correctly you can still melee opponents standing in a BP field.

Except when a warrior puts on Berserker’s Stance and stands in it with you with his hammer out and decides to say hi.

Yeah they do that in a lot of situations. Feelings aside I think warrior has the least issue with this, so the question is what class is the OP really playing? Can’t be thief, or they would realize how kitten pathetic we are.

100b, whirling axe, whriling wrath, any fast hitting melee skill still gets it’s share of hits in. If the enemy is kitten enough to sit on top of BPS and use them, they deserve to miss. It costs 6 initiative, deals pathetic damage, its a utility skill. It serves no other purpose than a smoke/blind field.

Why give a profession undeniable pathetic condition effects and say all classes can fill the same roles.

Can a guardian tank a boss? Yes by taking and recovering damage as well as blocking.

Can a thief tank a boss? Yes, by evasion and blind.

Do they achieve the same goal? Yes but by different means.

Now put thief in your equation and tell me what you see. That’s the problem I have.

Highly overrated in spvp/tpvp, and unrewarding. Compared to a power spec for pvp, it falls far behind not just in team quality but also impact.

In pve/wvw it has uses because of foods/exclusive runes/sigils that make the bleeds/torment last a good time. Otherwise there is a laundry list of issues.

1. Bleed duration is short, aftercast is long. A mix of the 2 is unhealthy and results in difficult stack management. For a class that relies on bleeds as it’s highest DoT, it sure is a job to get them up.

2. Little condition variation for DoT. Cripple, immobilize(short), bleed, torment (short). The torment is not easy to stack in pvp, because there are soo little ways to bump the duration of torment. Bleeds don’t go far either, you have to completely spam stealth and get lucky to get sneak attack off over and over.

Thoughts on restructure?

I mean reworking pistol/dagger entirely. Whether it be individual skill mechanics or additions/removals of skills that offer little benefit. What do you think condition thief is missing?

IMO,

1. Fields. These make a huge impact with ranged dps like sb for rangers or pistol for thief. Our stealth attack is a 100% projectile finisher X5. Well where are our defined fields? We got poison from sb, and dark from shadow’s refuge. That’s simply not cutting it. Whether it be a trait or a rework of some utility/weapon skill we need a field that’s fit for thief that’s more easily accessed. I feel like the useless traps could and should fit this role. Both tripwire and needle trap are easily the least used utility skills. I never see a thief run them in wvw, pvp, or pve, and that goes without a doubt. What about making needle trap apply poison and immobilize on trigger, and pulse poison for those who cross it afterwards while leaving a poison field for a few seconds (4 seconds?). Something to work with other than caltrops. They are good but easier to spot and avoid than a field that can be combo’ed. The more easy to access DoT conditions the better. (I apologize for wall of text).

2. Condition duration/application. When looking at a good condi build it’s all about condition application/duration ratios. You can apply long bleeds/torment/burn you’re set. You can apply constant burn/bleed/confusion you’re set. Thief can’t apply long lasting bleeds, they have to dump a ton of resources in to get them beyond 20. You’re lucky if the enemy hasn’t packed a mighty condition removal skill and shuts down all your hard work but that’s the reality of it. I believe that the duration of the pistol AA bleed should be bumped by 1.5 seconds base(stealth attack included), and the aftercast be reduced by .25 seconds. Its 900 range, and its single target (untraited). This will allow powerful bleeds with the right investment into bleed duration.

Thoughts on condi thief?

Nymph of Meliai.6739:

Am I the only one finding that other classes have been buffed that much that most of my skill bar is now useless?

Before I was unbeatable underwater and now I find myself struggling against just about every single class and on dry land is starting to become not much better. It was bad enough that a lot of my skills did not work on a slight bump on the map but now I am increasingly finding my opponents are either immune to my skills or my most powerful skills are doing almost no damage.

It is not that my skills have been nerfed… the problem is that all other classes have been buffed to such a degree that mesmers have been left behind and are now at risk of being unbalanced on the losing side.

I don’t want to be 100% unbeatable but I would like more of my skill bar to actually work and do damage.

Please tell me how thief is on that list of buffed professions, and how Mesmer is not strong enough.

1. Gear -Full zerker as thief is non-sense in dungeons. Even for something as simple as cof or ac, you will get hit, and hit hard by boss attacks. A dead thief = 0 dps, keep that in mind when gearing up. Valkyrie mixed with zerker is a good step, as it gives you that much needed hp. Hp is better for thief than toughness because it works against conditions and direct damage, conditions ignore toughness/armor. Also we are the lowest health bracket so sitting at 9-10k hp is not healthy. Also a calvaliar amulet doesn’t hurt, gives a good boost of toughness and keeps your crit dmg high. You generally don’t need to exceed 50% crit chance, its mostly wasted at that point especially if you have access to fury (thrill of the crime, furious retaliation, runes, etc).

2. Traits- Traits are easier to adjust than gear, as they are much cheaper. If you’re going into CoE, get venom share with BV for the subject alpha guy. If you’re going into AC make sure to pack high evasion traits/skills. If you’re going into CoF, pack some regen or some kind. If you’re going into high level fractals (30-50) pack more defence than offence as your gear should cover the offence fairly well. Don’t try horsing around with some bunker thief build, but don’t go full glass for things like that either ,it will hurt a lot and likely grant you a bad rep with the few people who seem to know a thing or 2 bout higher level fractals (I salute those who do, and block those who don’t).

3. Playstyle- d/d isn’t universal. You will have to switch out weapons depending on what your doing. If you’re luring trash mobs by LoS, use s/p with SoM and infiltrator’s signet and smoke screen. The constant blind fields and heavy cleaving will put a serious dent in those headless chickens. If you’re ranged, use p/p as it is the best ranged dps for thief. Sadly it still hits like a wet noodle compared to warrior rifle or ranger lb but its better than thief sb which is more of a utility weapon. You can mess with d/d but if the boss has heavy hits that are hard to avoid, pack a feline grace and vigorous recovery traits to help keep you dodges up. Dagger aa isn’t enough to keep your endurance up. Some dungeons have really slow hitting bosses and you can just shrug their dmg off, others not so much.

4. Thief utility- smoke screen in either utility or as a trait for ranged bosses, as walls are usually awesome. SR for stealth rez but if you carry off-hand pistol you can pack blind powder and get 7 seconds stealth right there, much shorter cd with enough time to rez and in the event someone is low on hp and running (likely to not pay attention to SR circle), BPS+ BP is instant rather than a restricted zone. BV ignores defiant so it’s a great choice for interrupting a boss channel skill or just keeping it still for a teammate to get some distance/raised. Otherwise the rest is just learning boss mechanics and dodging appropriately.

2.

Would be better to just limit how long stealth can last. People can still perma stealth even after the dec 10th patch. It makes for boring duels and lackluster goose chases that lead to no where but wasted time.

Stealth should not exceed 12 seconds in pvp/wvw. Otherwise you come out revealed for the 4 seconds, 12 is more than enough to figure out what you want to do. To compensate, traits that rely on staying in stealth should be buffed but shouldn’t apply when out of stealth.

Shadow’s Rejuvenation- buff healing by 10% and buff healing power ratio to .15

Shadow’s Embrace- pretty solid as is.

Shadow’s Protector- remove the silly “if they have regen it doesn’t apply” kitty litter and grant it a 10 second ICD. If you enter stealth and the ICD is up, you get 10 (X boon duration) seconds of regen, this cooldown is per unique character(you’ve already done that with lotus poison).

Patience- weak trait, but I’m sure those who moved on from infusion of shadow have seen this as a potential perma stealth remake. If you can’t exceed 12 seconds, just buff it to grant 2 initiative every 5 seconds in stealth. The trait is called patience, make it pay off for doing just that. If a can mange to rack up 5 seconds of stealth, they had to use some combination of skills, they aren’t going to be able to CnD on its own and get it. If they want to dance like a fairy through Bps then let them, they will only be revealed in 12 seconds.

Fleet shadow- stealth lowers condition duration of cripple, chill and immobilize by 50% (works actively and passively in stealth). This does not remove those conditions, only cuts their duration in half. Continued applications of cripple chill and immobilize are reduced by 50% while in stealth, effect lost upon exiting stealth.