Guild Wars 2

It is almost funny how I made a post concerned about condition/boon duration prior to this patch and sure enough, it wasn’t addressed and is a problem for many professions. Not to say I was the first to bring it up, but it bets the question of whether or not the dev’s saw this coming or did they just expect to launch something with no failures during the process.

Kadin.2356:

Meryn.6875:

Withdraw: This ability is now a trick. Increased the recharge of this ability from 15 to 18. Healing (both base and healing power) coefficients have been increased by 10%.

Coefficients is key here.
This basically means that healing power is 10% more effective with withdraw.

Not sure what “base coefficient” actually is, but I think this is for scaling, thus making it heal 10% more on downscaled characters, taking 80 as base and the base coefficient to calculate downscaled healing.
So no, the “base healing” did not change, but people tend to read it wrong

Hope this clears it up a bit.

The live stream implied otherwise.

More importantly since the removal of stats from traits, what thief out there is using healing power? No skill or trait on thief scales well with healing power :/

Lygon.4896:

D/D has great initial burst (Steal —> CnD --> Backstab) but its #4 and #3 skills are rarely used, sure you can do a clutch evade or throw a dagger at someone with 5% trying to run, but mostly they’re seldom used.

D/P finds a use for every skill. You also get stealth on demand like others have said, and #5 is a smoke field so you can blast it for aoe stealth, or if you have the black powder utility skill you can lay down #5 then black powder and then heartseeker for instant 9secs of stealth if you don’t have the initiative or time to leap through the field 3-4 times.
The ondemand interupt is also good to stop people from stomping/ressing/getting off high damage skills. You can even use it to counter other thieves if they try to leap through their own blinding powder.

Pretty much sums it all in a bundle.

Geiir.7603:

Are utility and elite skills allowed?

I believe I’ll go with only main hand weapon and spam #3

All info is in the OP ^^

Happy button smashing!

Karolis.4261:

yolo swaggins.2570:

Karolis.4261:

do stealth attacks count as auto attack (1) ?:D

yes

Well then it looks like a basic rotation in most thief weapon sets.

If you use cnd spam then sure, but if you’re using bps + heartseeker its not really a qualifier.

If you’re reading this, CONGRATS! You’ve been invited to an event of a life time. Bring your dagger, or bring your gun, even a bow because on July 15th starting at 5 pm est, all thieves are allowed to unleash their favorite skill one after another!

Where is this taking place? Pvp, call your ambush traps and make a full party!

When is this taking place? Did you read?! Wednesday July 15th at 5 pm est. How long you stay is up to you.

What is being asked? Make a build focused on using 1 weapon skill (no auto attacks do not count). Whether you have pressure striking headshots or quickening heartseeker to disabling shot. The goal isn’t to win, but show the community what real spamming looks like, and to have fun. Healing, utility, and elite skills are free to choose. With such a dangerous task at hand, best stick together to take full advantage of your spamming band of bandits

What if we lose? What if you win?

RevanCorana.8942:

Quick Pockets: “gain 3 initiative on weapon swap”
Since Thieves don’t have weapon cooldown, why not run double – double pistol ^^
This trait has no ICD so it works fine with rune of the warrior giving an extra unload every 7 seconds basically.

So you’d slaughter your defenses for an extra unload? Hardly seems worthwhile, right now having a second weapon set is extremely vital to make up for p/p having no defenses like mobility or stealth.

If you’re using d/x, then I’d go beserker because the higher base damage a skill has the better it is seen with crit damage. If you’re using something like s/x I’d consider assassin’s because you only poke the enemy and spend time evading them, it helps to know those spaced out hits are getting the best output.

The definitely nerfed a lot of initiative gain this patch. Opportunist, quick recovery, infused shadow being the 3 but all very powerful. Even so I really don’t notice a dps loss because for the sake of spamming pw, all dual skills got a damage increase and I can get more traits to help out with damage. Not even a few auto attacks and my init is back, plus I use rfi with trickster so I can resume my hack n slash almost every encounter.

I only wish for some other builds I can get 2 master or 2 adept traits instead of a GM.

Bret.6940:

@NinjaEd of course no one wants to just spam a skill for no reason its all situational. If someone is chaining unloads its because he wants to kill someone. If hes using body shot its to prevent escape from people running away from fights or trying to get into tower. No one should just be spamming bodyshot in a 1v1 for no reason. As for lack of deffense on p/p we do have blinding powder, and if you take the right utilty skills you will have good deffence. Your also not limited to just 1 weapon set. You could easily take p/p d/p and make up for the lack of stealth, or take shortbow and use it for the evades. The only thing p/p has bit of a tougher time with now is mesmer because of clones, and even then like i said your not limited to just p/p. Use another weapon set in junction with p/p and you can adjust to the situation. A good example is thiefs making videos claiming to be s/d users but in footage of them they are usually using shortbow alot. Now about ricochet. I was a die hard fan. One thing i would like to see if its not coming back is the range of pistol from 900 to 1050 made baseline that would be nice.

What I’m saying is other weapon sets have natural defenses, whether its mobility evasion or stealth its there. Relying on utilities and your secondary weapon doesn’t make it any better, its not like you can’t do the same on a set like d/x or s/x which have built in defenses that thief relies on. Like wondra said, you swap and then wait 9 seconds before you can hit them hard again.

I’m not saying p/p is impossible to use, but its a very weak option for thief and there isn’t a whole lot of room to improve it via traits that make it stand along side the other weapon sets. It needs attention both in the skills and its potential trait enhancements.

Bret.6940:

Im just gonna go ahead and say P/P is perfectly fine, to all the people complaining do you guys even WvW? Sure they removed ricochet, and yes i would like to see its return but I have run both dire and zerk for wvw and the damage output on both is amazing. Stop crying. Also to anyone saying they dont use bodyshot i guess you never had a roaming partner or a friend to roam with. You can use that skill a few times mean while have a zerker burst them down. Its great utility.

P/p has no defenses aside from bps which is far to expensive to maintain. The damage output against a single target, yeah its great but it’s entirely dependent on spamming 1 skill which recently was nerfed with the removal of ricochet. All you need is 1 minion whether its utility or rune and you render their efforts useless which also shows how weak p/p is.

As for body shot, when ever you need to spam a skill just to make it useful its a bad skill. Regardless of thief being a resource based class rather than cooldowns, no skill should require repeated use just to be seen as “great”.

evilapprentice.6379:

The sentiment “my class isn’t so good right now, can’t we just ignore the bugs?” isn’t a good one.

That’s actually not what I’m trying to say.
[/quote]
I never said you were – the personal I originally quoted sure was though.

Maybe I should just put it like this: Who cares? It’s not that big a deal. I mean I guess I wouldn’t care either way, whether they kept it at a 32 second CD or a 48 second, but I’m just saying don’t flip out over people “exploiting” something that isn’t even confirmed as a bug for one thing (I mean it most likely is, but there could be other explanations is what I’m saying). People are going to use it whether its a bug/“exploit” or not.

My only comments were about those who said it “shouldn’t be fixed” because of the state thief was in, no judgement on those that are using it. Like you said, the bug isn’t very noticeable or powerful, it’s not changing the course of any fights significantly (as opposed to, again, Grenade Barrage) Also, if you think anything I’ve said constitutes “flipping out”, I’d love to see how you react when someone near you raises their voice. Honestly, it’s almost as if you read 3 words of my replies, decided to make up the rest in your head, and responded to that instead.

Also, if it’s a bug, you could still argue that the proper cooldown should be brought to what it is now, so it wouldn’t necessarily be “ignoring” the bug but rather changing it, because yes, the fact that thief isn’t in a good spot right now actually does give us reason to have some sort of buff. Then again, it would be buffing our damage even more (well I guess it wouldn’t be a difference because of what it is now) when we need balance in other areas, but I’m going off topic.

Yeah, an extra 12 seconds off of Flanking strikes isn’t going to make or break thief, so hoping this is a bug that gets turned into a buff is just as worthless as hoping that it’s a bug that doesn’t get fixed quickly.
[/quote]

You’re still making it sound like this bug is a sin and should not be used until you see it fixed. People don’t see this trait as overpowering, they don’t see it as dangerous buff, its honestly a breathe of fresh air to the million thief players using thrill of the crime with their d/p build. Whether they fix it for you or they treat it as a unique form of haste as alchemist said, it would be nice to see a buff rather than yet another case of fix the skill not the tooltip.

Ever have a teacher miss a question as being wrong, then bring it to their attention and they admit their mistake but let you have it? Can’t we have nice things or is that not allowed?

evilapprentice.6379:

NinjaEd.3946:

Normally I’d agree to fix a bug no matter how enjoyable it may be, but considering the damage this patch did to our defensive trait lines, just let us have it.

Nope.

“But my class is so weak without it” is never an acceptable excuse for a Bug/exploit. If the incorrect timer reduction is accurate, it should be fixed.

Never said my class cannot live without it, the fact that we took such a hard hit to SA and acro they should fix the skill to make that value make sense rather than nerf this “exploit”. It doesn’t make or break thief, but don’t make it sound like cancer.

Auesis.7301:

babazhook.6805:

4>Add to the AA (Number 1) some form of on Crit effect . This to favor power loadout and ensure it more favorable to pistol main hand (d/p is already fine p/d is fine . P/d generally has low crit rate)

Suggestions

On crit gain 3 seconds swiftness (I sec cd)
On crit gain 1 stack might for 3 seconds (1 sec cd)
On crit Inflict slow for 2 seconds (I sec CD)
On crit gain 1 ini (2 sec cd)
On crit gain 2 seconds to all applied boons (5 second CD)

I think on-crit doesn’t even need to be a thing. You could have it set up in a way that benefits both power or condition (P/P or P/D).

What if Vital Shot granted you an extra point of Initiative against Vulnerable targets, the same way that Warrior’s Fierce Shot grants Adrenaline for the same thing? ICD or no ICD, the balance of that can come later, but I think that would be more interesting.

Would make the kit work a little better, especially giving a reason to use body shot other than for giggles. Honestly I rather they remove the immobilize effect and just increase the vulnerability duration to 6 seconds with a shattering effect on-hit. How I see pistol, it has a difficult time distinguishing itself between power and condi which is mostly seen by the auto attack, its sustained damage. A few tweaks could fix that such as:

1. Lower bleed duration on auto attack to 3 seconds. Increase base attack damage, leave power scale alone.
2. Increase the bleed duration on sneak attack to 5 seconds.
3. Remove immobilize from body shot, increase vulnerability duration to 6 seconds. Add a shattering effect to apply the same effects to nearby enemies on hit.
4. Add effect to unload, “hold down for continuous fire. 1 initiative per .5 seconds after initial cost/use” (costs slightly less per second, 1.3 less, to hold down)

As for traits:

-Bring back ricochet now, whether it was going to be reintroduced for our specialization is irrelevant, the trait help conquer one of pistols greatest weaknesses, minion blocking.

-Change ankle shots to apply 5% damage bonus per pistol equipped rather than 10% against crippled foes.

-Either merge or remove flawless strikes or side strike, they are far to similar to be neighboring traits. Add a new trait [Opportunist] "projectile finishers with pistols reduce the cost of your next initiative spender. This effect caps at 3. ICD 5 seconds. This only works if your projectile finisher combo’s with a field. The goal is to help BPs→unload but also slightly helps p/d, and has a minimal effect on d/p.

Going from pistols to rifle wouldn’t really seem all that game changing of a “specialization” for thief imo. We already have guns and making a slower further shooting one doesn’t seem appealing in the shiniest of lights, rather they spend time to fix pistols.

I’d much rather have OH sword or focus. Sword to look awesome and focus for a support.

Normally I’d agree to fix a bug no matter how enjoyable it may be, but considering the damage this patch did to our defensive trait lines, just let us have it.

Our defensive lines definitely took the biggest hit here.
-shadow protector, rather than getting a 10 second ICD (better than that stupid restriction for allies that already have regen) they decide to lower the duration to 3 seconds and remove that restriction rendering the trait almost useless in it’s master slot.
-Shadow’s embrace only works on damaging conditions, well immobilize can be far more deadly if used by a competent enemy.
-Cloaked in shadow was a major defense for x/d and did not need to be bumped all the way to GM. They should bring it to master, move concealed defeat to master, move leeching venoms to adept along with shadow protector, and delete last refuge and make some new GM trait like bringing back hidden assassin but upgraded for those stealth users interested in a spike from SA (like 3 might for 20 seconds every 3 seconds in stealth).
-with the removal of trait line stats, all healing traits in SA (SP, LV, SR) took a hit with 0 compensation.
-Fleet of foot was removed in favor of an even weaker trait.
-assassin’s reward isn’t noticeable.
-with the removal of stats, all boons in this trait line took a hit with 0 compensation, all of which (excluding inertia because it is no longer present) have extremely low durations to begin with.

A lot of build got pushed into going full dps after this patch. It sucks a lot more imo for thief though because our sustain was already lacking, giving us a dps bonus just to lower our defenses was not anything any thief player asked for (except the crazy ones).

The few dps bonuses did not help our build diversity because the already popular meta builds got those same buffs and then some, and the nerf to our defenses was not necessary either given how quickly a thief dies once locked down. This patch did not help us but atleast thief is still playable :/

babazhook.6805:

If you do not want to use P/P then do not dismisss something like Ankle shots as useless when there are people what want to use it.

If you do not want to use PW than do not claim sundering strikes useless if that the weapon that best takes advantage of it.

Oh as to stacking Vuln. I can without much trouble stack 10 and more if I wanted to and yes in a group environment that does in fact help the group. That others can do it too or easier does not make the skill useless. In a large zerg fight those others can be focusing a target completely different than your own. I see someone ticking conditions off and load on Vulnerability he goes down fast and my direct damage is only marginally lower as those conditions tick higher.

In WvW I have been in plenty of smaller groups where no one traited to load Vuln stacks. You adapt to the situation at hand . You just do not use the same build in very circumstance.

Not only was this trait nerfed to only apply extra damage to crippled foes rather than indefinitely, they removed ricochet. If someone wants to play with a mediocre weapon set and underperform that’s their call but you have to acknowledge how this trait doesn’t do a whole lot to assist the set like some other weapon orientated traits do, let alone compete with much stronger alternatives.

As for sundering strikes, even if the situation has no one applying vulnerability anyone can look at someone like a necromancer or Mesmer or even warrior and know that applying lots of vulnerability isn’t anything thief can maintain really well. The duration simply isn’t enough to work with.

It’s all about performance and a lot of thief traits after this patch either lost that performance, (SE, FG, VR, kitten, etc) or the new ones do not help enough. Whether its poor functionality or low values, there are just a lot of nerfs across the board and things were not brought up to par as many of us wanted.

If I had to make a suggestion, increase the vulnerability duration to 8 seconds since condition duration isn’t available via traits anymore and change the damage bonus on AS to be always and not just on crippled targets. It won’t fix p/p but atleast it will revert the fact that they took a few steps back from putting p/p in a good spot.

evilapprentice.6379:

NinjaEd.3946:

Right to it;

-Practiced Tolerance: It used to be a great trait to pick for some added survivability and for some reason it was flipped to go full dps. There were far to many nerfs to thief defense in this patch, we did not need more critical damage/chance modifiers.

Practiced tolerance is perfect the way it is now.

Anet made it a point to remove damage modifiers from defensive lines, and defensive stats from offensive lines. This change was in line with that.

Since a zerker ammy is certain death in PvP (11k HP lol), the extra ferocity helps when taking a marauders ammy. It also helps differentiate thieves using CS from other thieves – if you’re focusing on crit strikes, your critical strikes should hit harder. It’s not like 150-175 extra vitality is worth much to a thief currently – I’ll take 13% more crit damage over possibly surviving 1 additional hit or condi tick.

That was the point of the old PT, that extra defense which thieves lack, not to mention it was a major trait so it was a build choice not a staple on CS. I’d much rather have that extra bit of health to survive an attack and react than to worry about extra damage when thief already has tons of it and was given more this last patch. Our survivability went down this last patch and it was already weak enough, this push towards full glass was a bad idea for the sake of all game modes.

Babazhook, there is no placement for pressure striking that makes it more valuable than the old options. I wouldn’t bother using SoH on a condition build with BA as an option, 5 stacks of confusion alone is a threat not to mention it can be added to our condi burst. I’d much rather use p/d with a gap opener/torment application than use p/p which has almost no defenses and spamming headshot to apply torment, the logic isn’t there. As far as BV, you get 1 application because I sincerely doubt you will shoot once and wait a second to shoot again, you can’t interrupt someone who is already stunned.

I can’t even suggest increasing the duration or stack amount because the idea alone is terrible on thief, the effort to make use of this trait is pointless when there are far more solid options that can be just as effective without this trait.

Right to it;

DA
-Dagger Training: Having a dagger you already have a very quick AA which applies poison, why would anyone think a 2 second application will be worth picking? This trait would of been a perfect opportunity to give d/d something over d/p like OH dagger skills costing 1 less initiative or increased attack speed per dagger equipped.

-Trapper’s Respite: Good trait for power or condition using HiS to set up a backstab or condition overload, although I suspect a nerf eventually given how powerful a 3 second immobilize is.

-Improvisation: There was a long ago post against this idea and sure enough it came to the same conclusion anet did, nerf stolen skills because of this trait. I’m sure more stolen skills will be nerfed before this trait is finally discovered to be the culprit but hopefully not.

-Potent Poison: 10% is simply not enough. Whether they increase the damage portion or instead modify the -healing effectiveness for applying poison, this trait being a GM for only 10% is pathetic. Poison is now a stacking condition so it already was nerfed, this 10% is hardly noticeable.

CS

-Ankle Shots: As if a nerf to pistol was thought impossible, they decide to limit the only damage bonus that p/p had to only apply to crippled foes. Not sure who at the office had it out against p/p but the removal of ricochet was bad enough, now the 10% indefinite bonus is gone as well. Really should bring back ricochet and fix this trait to give a flat 10% damage bonus or at least implement ricochet into unload since that is where the trait was needed most.

-Practiced Tolerance: It used to be a great trait to pick for some added survivability and for some reason it was flipped to go full dps. There were far to many nerfs to thief defense in this patch, we did not need more critical damage/chance modifiers.

-No quarter: Neat idea, but seems like it came out of nowhere to fit the CS theme of full zerker. Not sure if infinite fury was a wise decision but not my call.

SA

-Concealed Defeat: Awesome to see a deception recharge reduction but it is right along side Shadow’s embrace which is the best condition removal thief has. Seems odd to not let people pick 2 adept/master traits anymore.

-Shadow’s Embrace: No reason to of nerfed this trait, please revert.

-Last Refuge: Now that it is a major trait, we should take a poll on how many people bother to use this and realize it is still poorly designed. Auto stealth by any means is a poor design given the reveal mechanic.

-Shadow Protector: Not sure why the regeneration duration was severely cut just to have the pre-regeneration effect removed, why couldn’t the trait just have an ICD of 10 seconds? 3 seconds is extremely short especially for a master trait.

-Hidden thief: Maybe I’m just greedy but blinding powder on steal was pretty neat to have and actually gave a nice little counter for enemies when they see a thief disappear and suddenly they are blinded from a distance (obviously they are on you now). Would be nice to of kept it the way it was given it’s defensive qualities and counter response.

Acro

-Fleet shadow: Still see no reason to pick this trait. If I’m really going into acrobatics I don’t utilize stealth and even so the other options are far more valuable.

-Feline Grace: I wouldn’t say I’m entirely against or in favor of the change, but it definitely crippled a lot of builds relying on Acro for their defense. Maybe a little longer vigor duration (3 seconds) would help along the vigor modifier.

-Guarded Initiation: Not sure what logic there is to removing conditions at the beginning of a fight, especially ones that aren’t that threatening at the start. Couldn’t they bring back the trait that was originally suggested to remove 1 condition on evasion with a 10 sec ICD?

-Assassin’s Reward: Still needs a bump in healing power scaling, since spamming weapon skills on a thief is generally a bad idea you either sort of see this trait helping or you’re wiser than it wants you to be and use your weapon skills as a defense as much as an offense.

-Pressure Striking: The only interrupts thief has are tied to power builds (headshot, PW, sleight of hand Vs Bewildering ambush….etc). Not sure who this trait was meant for.

-Trickster: In a tie with bountiful theft, a great trait but just in a very difficult position. I guess its good though to have solid options in the same trait line rather than 1 obvious choice.

-Quick Pockets: Still one of those traits that I have yet to see as valuable in comparison to its alternatives. Perhaps they could bring something new to the table or add to this trait?

That is all, wanted to get this off my mind.

Well unless you’re running the cheese mode d/p that is plaguing the thief community Mesmer’s are a real threat with this update. Give them 1 second to lock you down and you better think fast or you’re mince meat. This patch hurt a lot of thief defenses which were already lacking, our damage bonuses don’t put us ahead by anything worth bragging about.

Evilek.5690:

Anet remove Ricochet because combined this trait with traits in new Rifle traits line

Ok but until then it is removed, and clearly a bad choice given how few builds thief has to roll on these days.

1. Many merges were necessary however I feel like some of them were not thought through enough. By this I mean before people were limited from being obviously OP by being restricted to a lesser number of traits, now you got more freedom which in some builds is great, but the already strong builds only got stronger meaning those not so viable builds really didn’t go far.

2. Before CS had a little more sustain built into it with the minor trait to gain init on crit and the old Practiced Tolerane, now its more of just go in and go deep. Not to mention p/p was looking pretty awesome having ricochet and pistol mastery together and then last minute they removed ricochet without implementing it in any way. For damage I think its a great trait line but it ended up doing nothing for a lot of builds.

3. On paper acrobatics looks great especially having so many traits heavily dedicated to mobility. However in practice it is most definitely not the same. I wouldn’t say its a bad trait line but its going to take some getting used to and more than likely a few adjustments.

4. I don’t really enjoy condition thief, not to mention the only interrupts thief can execute are tied to power builds so that new condition trait (torment on interrupt) doesn’t do a whole lot. For poison master, the damage increase for being a GM trait on a rather weak condition doesn’t appeal to me. The needle trap on healing skill I actually use more on a power build than condition because it helps landing a backstab against an immobile target.

5. Executioner, 20% is pretty big and not all stolen skills are useful in all situations. Thankfully the F2 helped out on that but still.

6. Thieves guild still functions poorly so no matter what they tie it to, it won’t get my vote until those thieves last longer than 10 seconds in a fray. As for dagger storm it isn’t really any better being a skill you can alter with a trait, it’s best and only function is to counter someone’s projectile burst and that doesn’t change much being a 72 second cooldown with 1 condition removed.

All in all, I wasn’t really happy with this patch for thieves. Not only did it ruin certain builds further, the builds that had a shot at shining got out shined by the already popular (and very powerful) builds from also getting buffed. There was no real change to any of our utility or weapon skills which is also a major issue with some builds underperforming and our sustain was hurt a lot which is something thieves lacked prior to this patch.

I think you guys forget the glory of this, they moved last refuge out of minor. Atleast a trait like this has no negative effects for going into SA.

thunderfall.8095:

And to DecieverX and Kash, please teach me how to use DD effectively. I rarely use it, though I know I should. If I need range, I just go to shortbow.

The only real use is with a combo field because A it is a guaranteed combo finisher and B it bounces so it will reapply the effect. Outside of that there is no good use of DD.

Sebrent.3625:

How would the cooldown work on that?

My intuition tells me that I wouldn’t be a big fan of that as now I’d have to double-check which one I was currently on before deciding if I needed to untarget/turn-180.

I’d say the skill just be left as a normal cooldown for both sides. If you leap or evade wouldn’t matter, using the skill would put both parts on their respective cooldown. Atleast with it this way you get to have control over how to utilize this skill which comes down to good thinking and we should all be rewarded for using our noggin.

Asked for ages ago and it has been delivered. Thank you so much!

D/D’s problem lies in the fact you only really use 2/4 skills regardless of the build. Additionally the evasion from death blossom is usually a death sentence since the animation lasts longer than the evade frame and that it simply leaps at the target.

They should consider reworking death blossom’s mechanics to be a full evade, and be a skill shot because simply having swiftness and strafing or backing up a little makes it miss very much and useless. Even if a small nerf to the bleed duration is needed to balance such a buff, I think it would be a lot more reliable for power.

Then they should either think of a new skill for dagger #4 or add some synergy a thief could use with this skill. For power they could just heartseeker, do more damage and close the gap just as well as slowing the enemy with #4, for condition they could do the same thing and heartseeker, pop death blossom, etc. Also a leap finisher is almost always better than a projectile so you get that bonus too.

Something like giving us more access to combo fields, preferably dark or etheral, to utilize the projectile portion because it does count each bounce, or to transfer a condition if you hit a 2nd foe to give. It’d be nice to add some utility to this skill that could benefit d/d w/o giving s/d or p/d too much. It’d be tricky for sure but dagger #4 isn’t useful on any build except for when you come across a combo field which seems silly given how few thief has.

Lastly, make the trait dagger training reduce the cost of OH dagger skills by 1 initiative for 2 reasons. First this makes the trait much more valuable to compete against mug and secondly this makes OH dagger that much more forgiving to compete against OH pistol. Although CnD still won’t be a guratuneed stealth like BPS+HS, it won’t be as punishing to miss it + w/e buff is made to dagger #4 is that much stronger as well.

Sebrent.3625:

Currently, is the leap still usable with it being the 2nd ability on Sword #2? Yes, it is quite useable.

Would the evade still be usable if it was changed to be the 2nd ability on Sword #2? No, as you’d have to first leap at your foe and then hit the evade; taking so much time that the evade becomes useless.

See the issue?

It is fine the way it currently is as both abilities are usable. If you changed it, you’d make one of them much less so.

It’s usable, its just very clunky and unreliable when you have to reposition yourself to use it. I think the toggle ashfiend suggested would probably be the best of both worlds it’s just hard to imagine how that would work. Maybe if you’re moving forward it turns to a leap and if you step backward it turns to the evade?

I tend to use s/p primarily in dungeons regardless of single or multi target encounters just because its utility and ease of use (I don’t do dungeons to be kool). That being said, d/x (more so d/d) has its advantages against single targets with the right build. On my build 0/6/0/4/4/0 for how short most fights last, I can use pw the entire time and channel some devastating numbers. Ranged is the only type of encounters I will generally swap up my entire build but for melee purposes, I just hurr durr my way to the daily chest.

If a player wants to flame at you for taking 60 seconds longer for a dungeon run because you didn’t maximize your benefit to the party, don’t let it get to you. They obviously have nothing better to do but this game.

Phantom Master.9582:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Well we just have to disagree because the intended use of dodge is for evading attacks and not for repositioning, thus even though it allows you to use it for repositioning, FG will only reward you if you use it as intended.

The current intent of FG is exacly that, to reward both positioning via rolling and evading via rolling, FG’s function is to increase our dodge rolling capacity to give us a more manual defensive mechanic rather than a static one. There is no indication that this needs to change in the meta nor in the build’s performance.

The new FG is not a needed change, and shouldn’t be welcomed, thus the making of this thread.

The fact that there is dodge rolling that indefinitely evades any attack (except the few warding skills) is an indication that it was meant for skillful play. Most classes either get a small source of vigor or have to simply deal with their 2 evade cap and wait. I know thief, especially acrobatic’s thieves, are meant to avoid damage entirely rather than soak it up and recover but I don’t think this much evasion was intended.

When you have the current FG stacking alongside the current vigor boon and pair it with fire/air sigils to roll around and poke it’s pretty powerful and with the upcoming traits allowing 3 full investments they had to address this issue. You can’t just straight buff something and not expect some possible overpowering, so even if they dish these changes in the HoT update I fail to see how it can be a bad one. You can’t just look at 1 trait and say it is the entirety of a build, there are many good changes outside of this small nerf and when you take into consideration the buffs not only to 4 more traits but what those traits you can pick from, we’re getting some solid options. Call it a change if you will at the very least, but don’t say s/d is going to die from this.

Sebrent.3625:

No offhand you’d want to open a gap to use before jumping back in?

• What about Torch? Leap backwards, Throw Torch to apply some burning then Bonfire to leap through for Fire Shield. That’s not bad at all.
• What about Warhorn? Hunter’s Call is ranged and it’s nice to not be auto-attacked while you’re using Call of the Wild. Then you’d likely love to use that newly gained Might+Fury as you go back in to your target.

-It’d be a lot quicker to just engauge with a leap through a bonfire than to have to roll back just to set all that up. Throw torch will have its time to be used and it honestly is better to be used around melee-ish range as long as you’re careful with them going behind you because of how slow the projectile is.
-Warhorn #4 is a very weak skill all around, so landing it or not hardly makes a difference atm (hunter’s call is actually on my list).

The problem I have with the order is ranger does have a few combo fields to use or when you simply find one from an ally. I feel like having an on demand leap would benefit more for the ranger than an evade especially since we already have serpent’s strike. Not even looking at the values of each skill, just the set up potential of a leap 1st than evade could make things like x3 combo using a healing spring with something like s/wh GS much smoother or for sword/torch condi you could jump in with a bunch of conditions and back off to kite your enemy while they tick down.

It’s a preference is all, this is excluding the clunky transition for the 1st and 2nd use.

kaikalii.4198:

1. None of the numbers are set in stone. They said that over and over on the live streams.
2. You forgot that we also get a new grandmaster that gives a chance to evade projectiles while we have swiftness, and we still get swiftness on dodge.

3. Going into acrobatics has a nifty new GM minor trait that increases vigor effects by 20%.

4. the dps on s/d is going up since you get the full benefit of DA now, or if you wana try out CS either way you’re getting 6 traits in an offensive trait line vs just 2 (minor and major).

5. Acrobatics also gets the choice of a internal stun breaker or a reduction in CD for steal which is something s/d loves to use.

Result: Judging on their suggested trait changes (again, not set in stone as people have mentioned), S/D is getting far more buffs than nerfs. So no moment of silence for you OP.

Long reach, even if its 50% (1,200 range) because steal without traits is pretty underwhelming.

Power shots because sb damage isn’t anything special and because this is about making traits baseline rather than removing them completely.

Quick pockets but weaker (1, maybe 2 instead of 3) because even though we don’t have cooldowns for every weapon skill we have a universal cooldown and do have weapon swap cooldown. Initiative has its upsides but when you don’t watch it you it really bites you back and weapon swap won’t save you like it does on some other professions.

Eurantien.4632:

I’ll be honest, I didn’t read the whole thing, but how can I take this seriously when from the one paragraph i did read it’s clear you don’t understand ranger. Porcine pet F2s do activate different things….

The warthog, pig, siamoth, all have the same F2 where it forages for a random item. Whether there is a selection for those items or not, it doesn’t feel different for each pet is what I’m getting at. The design just seems lazy to throw a random item generator for 3 pets rather than giving them something distinguishable. Honestly though there are far more pressing matters for fixing ranger pets than this but I didn’t want to beat any dead horses with this thread.

For the S&R, it is a 180 second cooldown in pvp which is really the only place I can ever imagine this skill being used with how it appears to be designed. In wvw when you’re down you either get a banner or flash rez’ed, pets die really quick in a zerg.

As for sword #2 I’ve used it in a double “retreat” but it is very clunky between the 1st and 2nd use not to mention there is only a I think 2 second window to use the 2nd part. Additionally there is no off-hand ranger can use to where you would want to cause a gap opener use some ranged ability that is going to be followed by a leap back into the fight. With how sword feels power or condition based I think jumping in to dish some damage or throw a bonfire on them and to leap back out and swap to a ranged weapon like lb, sb, axe, etc would fit the flow a lot more.

My preference on a few skills and mechanics that could use a little help (this is based on the trait changes as well). I don’t main ranger but I do have quite a large sum of time spent on it for pve and pvp (mostly pvp).

-Hornet sting-> Monarch’s Leap: Flip flop the order of this skill to have the leap first, then the retreat and slightly increase the time available for the 2nd part. Right now you can’t utilize a gap opener with any off-hand to work with this skill, let alone use it for any set up aside from retreating and leaping through your bonfire. If it were flipped you could jump into the fray, dish out some melee dps, and get out or use it for a general leap finisher whether its a gap opener or closer.

-Swoop: Move the evade to the initial charge, not the leap. I’ve been able to utilize the evade but only when I’m a few feet away to where I know that when I use the skill, I will evade. An evasion skill should not be dependent on an time frame you have little to no control over. It’d be a lot more beneficial if this skill was an on demand evade and not only have the choice of melee range evasion.

-Hunter’s Call: Do something with this skill, anything at all. Right now its only a retaliation curse and doesn’t even do a lot of damage. For instance, make it not require LoS considering it has no projectile tied to it. A bonus can also be added while it is in effect so it can synergize with some other weapons like take increased damage from other sources while the birds are attacking you, or projectile skills will miss while being attacked by the birds, or simply apply vulnerability each hit. Anything….

-Rescue Me: I’m not sure why this skill has such a long cooldown considering it doesn’t rally on use, it relies on your pet to sit still and slowly revive your ally, and it isn’t even faster than a regular player walking up and reviving them. Who is this skill for, let alone, who uses it ever? It really should be completely changed or at least buffed to be of some use like apply invulnerability for a short duration when it starts to revive, or give it drastically faster revive speed like symbol of judgment or elixir R do. A 180 second cooldown for a skill that doesn’t do its job to the slightest just seems like someone on the balance team wanted to void this skill with no explanation.

-Spirits: Since spirits are being adjusted to not move at all, I’d like to make a quick suggestion on their rebalancing. Change them to be persistent effects, not boon applicator’s on a cooldown. GW1 spirits could be placed in far places and apply constant benefits like projectile speed or restricting resurrection or even extra resource generation. A small burn or minor damage increase on a cooldown just doesn’t justify a place on the skill bar even if its for your allies. The actives are neat but their passives should be a bit more unique like banners are to give the ranger a real benefit to their allies or themselves like projectile or attack speed, boon duration (a noticeable amount), increased healing, reduced incoming condition/stun duration, etc. The elite is the only spirit that applies something unique to the allies, every other spirit just doesn’t feel that valuable especially for how quick they can die.

-Soften the fall: To fall more in line with how thieves got their falling damage trait to have an effect outside of falling, and how little muddy terrain can be used in a falling situation to begin with, I’d suggest to swap the muddy terrain with a weaker healing spring and to also apply this when reviving an ally rather than keeping healer’s celerity. There is no use in swiftness when reviving and the benefits of even a 3 second healing spring would go a lot further especially being a water field. Not to mention both traits are meaningless compared to the other options if they are shipped out in the suggested format.

-Pet attribute traits: This is for the healing power and condition damage trait adjustments where the pet has 0 of the stat to begin with, and the small value trait makes up for nothing with how the skills scale off their respective stats. 350 healing power only gives 350 healing on the fern wolf, and the rest is nothing you can work with (harmonic cry, bite, chomp, pet’s activate those skills on their own terms). Then Expertise training still isn’t anything exciting because they can’t get condition damage or duration from any other source (except rare boons from npc’s or banners) so although its a trait the end result is hardly noticeable. I’d say look into these 2 traits so players aren’t picking a trait for something that they will never feel the impact from.

-Porcine Pets: I’m not sure if time ran out or there was no real plan for these but there are 3 pets with the same exact active. Unless this was an attempt to add pet skins and was abandoned I think it’d be nice if there was something different with their F2 abilities.

A brief explination to changes for these skills based on what has been posted as our new traits. To keep it shorter, I’m not posting any suggested changes to the numbers, just a thought on them.

Healing===

Withdraw – Something that has bothered be since the beginning with retreat skills like this that clear immobilize, you can’t aim where to “retreat” to. I suppose that’s the pain that the condition brings but in several cases clearing that immobilize with withdraw actually put me in a worser place (back into the zerg of things). Always wondered if it would be balanced to allow retreat skills to act like a skill shot or have some form of direction when used vs the direction your character is facing, or just allow turning while immobilized.

Hide in shadows- It is nice that this is now part of a skill category so traits can start changing it but even so, I think this skill needs a bump to the healing power scale. Not only does it have a cast time and a rather long cooldown (not suggesting lower the cd in any way), but the loss of healing power for SA thieves, the only ones who would really use this, means SA thieves will want to stay in stealth longer just to have SR heal them back up. I can’t speak for all players but whether against a SA thief or using one, I don’t care for the waiting game.

Signet of malice- The only builds that can really utilize this were fast attacking and evasive, and the go in guns blazing attitude this skill requires can be quite interesting but it has a very large fall off point in group and solo fights. Group fights the bombardment of AoE’s is likely never going to be recovered and in solo the healing doesn’t proc as much unless the enemy has some AI with them. Since this is an offensive healing skill I’d say increase the healing power base slightly, and change the active to something that works with the nature of this skill like extra healing per initiative missing or gain initiative on use.

Skelk venom- By default, its a downer as are all venom skills. The massively long cooldown in addition to the overhealing over a short duration makes this a poor healing skill choice even on a venom build. The heal on activation I think is a bit silly, there should be some high risk high reward with this skill to where its potential can be devastating if used right. I’d say remove the heal on activation, and drastically increase the number of hits so if a thief gets this off they can turn around and really get back on their feet. Additionally change venom proc’s to not spend more than 1 charge if you miss an AoE attack (maybe in this venom’s case, 2) so all efforts are not loss by 1 condition (blind). Given thief has a low health pool this would be great for them to heal back up and for venom share thieves it would provide great group support assuming numbers are balanced out.

Elite===

Dagger storm- Now that it is a trick it can be buffed a little via traits but it still has the major problem of exposing a thief to melee attacks. I’d suggest increasing movement speed while active so thief has a little better use of this skill outside of projectile reflection especially after it’s stability duration was changed.

Basilisk Venom- Kind of the least “elite” skill out there but it’s chosen for its opening potential for almost all thief builds. I suggest adding “remove 1 boon” because the use of it during a fight isn’t as powerful as before a fight. During a fight enemies will either have stability or be prepared to stun break or have a fix on you to keep you from getting that combo off again, atleast this way you can deal with 1 of the problems.

Thieves guild- These guys look great for a split second and then they just fall off. The long cooldown and the weak effect they have to offer being both low on survivability and utility makes them the least ideal choice for any thief. Either look into buffing them with things like stealth (possibly upon activation and during the fight for a stealth attack), throwing down a smoke screen, the dagger thief using death blossom as a method of evasion, and both attacking much quicker to help with focus firing a target down. As of now they are far to predictable and easily killed off, that needs to change and simply lowering the cooldown won’t fix it at all.

Nephrite.6954:

+1. Yup totally agree with this, then again pain response is now an adept.

So is shadow’s embrace in SA

+1, valid suggestion although I never like proc effects that kinda just go off on their own.

MrKahwk.9524:

Toxsa.2701:

Thief really doesn’t need to worry at all when their new OP Shadow Art line comes live. Mesmer would never be able to kill you anyway.

But you do have to worry about double Moa form after the patch :P

This is very true and also the fact that condition teef will be even stronger soon will hurt the condi weak mesmer greatly ^^

Great, so we’re being pushed into playing condi stealth thief just to deal with them :/

The amount of effects they can get on interruption is going to be insane if these changes go live, I’m worried to even know what changes their skills will be receiving. Bottom line, thieves will have to always be high alert for a lurking Mesmer.

As much as the new traits looks to of made a ton of builds broken to kitten, we should really wait to see what they do with the weapon/utility/healing/elite skills entirely and also what changes to runes/sigils and overall gear including pvp amulets.

There are a lot of things to consider other than traits, not to mention the fact that trait lines no longer grant stats which, in some cases, made up for a great part of a build, most importantly boon and condition duration which are not stats commonly found. How will they reimplement these lost stats into our gear? Who knows, but I bet it will be a bigger change than people expect.

naphack.9346:

Really, put in infusion of shadows and if the 2 initiative proves too much, just reduce it to 1 initiative upon entering stealth.
Just why does this trait stick around?

There’s a middle ground I can stand by.

Last refuge counter’s itself, please address it once and for all. I doesn’t matter if it sometimes works the way it should, the fact that it can and has caused players to reveal themselves should be grounds for removal. No minor trait should have the slightest negative effect.

I’d rather see better healing options for thief made first before any nerf is brought to SR. There are 2 with nice concepts but both of them don’t keep up in a pvp environment, and with the removal of stats in traits (healing power in this instance) SR got a nerf still.

Even with the few cool changes thief might be getting, I still think we’re behind in what the others’ got like guardian having their own panic strike and an all in 1 medi trait, or engineer having a quadra blast finisher and having a multitude of traits made baseline, or necromancer having an even stronger DS power build. Then again this is all a preview and I’m sure they will tweak things a bit, I mean they kept last refuge :/

Pretty Pixie.8603:

Primer blog:

“Each profession’s attributes will be updated to have half of their functionality be part of a specialization and half of their functionality will be a baseline for that profession. For example, elementalists now have a base attunement recharge of 10 seconds, which is reduced to 8.7 seconds when the arcane specialization is equipped.”

I would think that durations, class skill cooldowns etc are all covered by the above quote.

That pertains to class attributes like pet recharge, virtue recharge, steal recharge, attunement recharge, etc. It doesn’t say (nor does it not say I guess) anything about condition and boon duration and that’s what confuses me.

I’d hope they maybe add them into runes slightly and maybe as a 4th stat for some armor sets but then again it could cause more harm than good when you got the choice to pick everything you want vs being restricted by your trait line stats.

Far to early to say but from the sound of it, I think there will be heavy imbalances by the time this is released which is not a bad thing if it has the balance team watching over it very closely and adjusting anything out of wack quickly.

The second I finished reading the brief breakdown on the new specialiizations, I started to worry about what it meant for the trait lines granting condition and boon duration. It was said that the trait line stats (excluding the profession mechanic trait line bonuses) that these stats would be added both naturally and through gear but neither of those are something that give condition or boon duration without giving up a big stat value (giver’s).

My question is, will the traits, runes, and sigils that grant bonuses to these durations be addressed to make up for the potential 30% loss? If not this could put a serious dent in a LOT of builds.

I use OH axe and it has basically 2 uses in total. Since you have sharpened axes already, you know how quickly adrenaline gain is so mix it in with a skill that hits incredibly fast and you get your burst skill back almost instantly. Additionally you can get quite a bit of fury time since the #4 cleaves and is a double hit in itself.

As far as adrenaline gain goes, sharpened axes honestly is, on its own, a solid option (for pve purposes). If you know how to dodge and what your up against to avoid being downed instantly, you can go pretty zerker with this and GS choosing slashing power over axe mastery and just melt targets. Over course go with what you’re comfortable with because a dead player does less dps than a full magi’s and that’s a fact.

Simple fix for the auto attack problem

1. Reduce bleed duration on auto attack (3 seconds?)
2. Increase the power scale on the auto attack (no clue, .45?)
3. Increase the bleed duration from sneak attack (5 seconds?)

Since condi thief utilizes stealth, give the stealth attack the higher bleed duration and leave the auto attack as a filler. For p/p power it gives a little more kick or even p/d hybrid.

Still have 4 other skills to fix though :/

There are better ways to address this, even w/o reveal this is a bad idea. A lot of the builds that have access to blocks through a skill or aegis already wreck thief, there is no need to add more tools for them.

I’ve seen people suggest an additional cost of initiative to reuse stealth skill if you missed it the first time, or disable your stealth skill and revert it to the auto attack but above all retain stealth effects. It keeps the builds that utilize stealth from simply falling off to a whole list of skills they run into daily.

Is it just me or does last chance seem more appealing? I never really saw a purpose to using dual wield agility for a mere 10% attack speed even if it is on 100% of the time, quickness is just so much stronger not being tied to a negative effect.