Just apply a check if the revealed buff is already in place, if so, dont rebuff it. If it isnt in place, apply it.
There is no way how you can refresh your revealed debuff anyway since that would mean you can stealth while having the revealed debuff which doesnt make sense.
Med armor, if you want to look like a cowboy or ghetto pirate, wear it!
There is really less variation in med armor. Alot of trenchcoats, alot look the same and only some look different.
The init system is pretty bad in my eyes. You need to limit the abilities of a thief since he can spam it. Due to that you dont have any hard CC in your weapon sets.
I would think that a combination of CD and Init could work. Give every ability a cooldown and if you want to ignore some of the cooldown which is left, you use some of your init.
For instance heartseeker:
CD: 2 seconds
if you use it with 2 second CD left, you need to spend 4 init, if there is 1 second CD left, 2 init.
Every unspend init on the other hand should buff the thief abit (more dmg, maybe abit movement speed, maybe armor, whatsoever… just buffs). That means the more init he uses to spam stuff, the weaker he gets. It would still open the possiblity to use skills on demand and depending on the situation, while removing the usefullness of spamming things. At the same time abilities could be reworked and made stronger as the core mechanic would still rely on cooldowns.
Since every init would buff the thief, they would even think twice if they use an ability now or prefer to wait abit more and weaponswapping would also be more useful.
I would also revamp steal (got an idea for it aswell) and maybe even give thiefs the possbility to switch off with mainhand weapon for a certain amount of init to offer them a different skillset since that “special” swapping would only work decent for pistol/dagger | dagger/pistol Anet could include a few more combinations like pistol/sword… only dagger/dagger, pistol/pistol and shortbow sadly wouldnt gain anything from it.
Well, besides backstab, most ppl whined about stealth. I guess we will see a stealth nerf soon.
After that maybe Deathblossom.
Engineers can do it too, Warriors can do it too.
Its not only the thief who can instagib players, its just the class with which it is pretty easy to do it. But on the other side there arent much viable playstyles for thiefs. You cant support much, you cant fight proper on range, you cant heal, you cant control others… basicly only the dmg role is left for them.
http://mystarbucksidea.force.com/
Good example of a suggestion/idea section. But I think the OP meant something like that anyway.
I would even extend it that good ideas get tiny rewards like 100 gems.
The culling bug really needs to get fixed before any big change at stealth can be considered.
It will just be very hard to fix it I think as its a result of an anti-cheater mechanism… maybe they could remove that mechanism in wuvwuv while still leaving it active in sPvP, tPvP.
Droping AoEs wont work that well as the thief just needs to get close to one person, use cnd and can move out of the aoe.
Something which the zerg could have done was cuddleing up and standing in each other and then AoE the tiny spot at which you stand. Otherwise random AoEs wont work that well if the thief doesnt try to engage you at all, espeacily not if he runs around with 20k HP.
The thief in the video was obviously trolling the zerg just, as the dmg he will do is very low.
The only thing he archieved was delaying the enemies to cap the point, but I think that you shouldnt be able to stop capping when you are stealthed… it doesnt work in sPvP/tPvP and I have no idea why it does work in wuvwuv.
10s stealth which you have only in the refuge, if you leave it too early you will get the revealed debuff. Shadow refuge offers in the end only about 4 seconds of stealth, the remaining time you need to stand in the circle which basicly screams to everyone and their mother in pvp “come on, place all your aoe nukes here!”
I notice this issue aswell pretty often in WvW, mainly at primetime. You dont even have to be close to a big battle to notice it, just on an area with alot of players and fighting.
I think the issue is related to the server “slowing” down. The CD on your skills are calculated clientwise, so you always see how much time is left without a network delay, but the server itself has its own countdown for your CDs.
If there is now alot of action in WvW, then the server can hardly handle it and the CDs on the server take longer as the ones on your client.
That is also the reason why some abilities, which you dont use right of the bat in a fight, always seem to work. Other abilities which you use pretty often in combat tend to fail though.
You can try it yourself when you notice that skill lag again. Just wait 10-20 seconds and try to use your skill again, now it should work “without” a big problem… except the execution lag from the server.
You seem to have forgotten an important aspect of “sidewards” gear progression… you can only get gear for a different spec, true… but what if you have now 3-4 different sets for different specs?
You have more power, you feel stronger as others since you can adept your character better to different situations. Just change your build and gear and you get new strengths and weaknesses, adapting yourself to other situations and performing with that better at those.
Different expensive/hard to get armor skins are also some swag to show off, even when its just pure visual.
You also get the feeling of beeing “better” in pve if you just die less. If you do a instance and die 20 times, while your team dies 20 times too, you will feel equal. You will feel supreme if you die only 5 times while your team dies 20 times and with that you again have satisfied your need to be “better”.
I also didnt noticed the randomness you describe in PvE. Every mob and boss have their pattern and often also their tiny move which shows you that they are about to do something devastating, but the time to react to them is pretty short.
The custom teamcolor pattern which nldixon already mentioned sound pretty neat. That way you could notice specific tournament-teams according to the colorscheme they have.
Maybe unique tournament colors which you can unlock for your team could be added then aswell
If you want to focus mainly on support, you wont get around to use venomshare, otherwise there is not much you can do except sometimes stealing to give all some buffs, or shooting through your smoke screen.
As support thief you dont have much choices and it pretty much boils down to trait deep into shadow arts to get venom share.
Venom share means that you share all the venoms you will apply with your next hits to your teammates, so all their hits will apply the same venom with the same effect.
A venomshare-build looks like this:
http://www.gw2build.com/builds/simulator.php#1.7.10.3.0.20.0.0.0.0.0.157.158.176.178.0.0.0.454.458.462.0.0.0.483.489.492.0.0.0.515.0.0.30.0.30.0.10
Your venoms apply weakness, you also have a weakness venom, your venoms will heal yourself and others if they apply them (not for much, but still) and Protip: use venoms with bouncing weapons. You only consume one stack of them and your bouncing attack applies the venom to several targets. Means: mainweapon = shortbow
You can also try to use smoke screen in your utilty bar and shoot through it to apply more blinds aswell as stealthing your teammates for some heal from time to time. Or you can use the offhand pistol for a smoke field and switch to shortbow after to apply some blinds and area stealth.
You wont have much mobility with that build though and you shouldnt expect that big numbers from your hits as you lack points in critical strikes for burst dmg.
Edit:
Oh and as support-thief you should get used to spam clusterbomb into combofields. That is basikittenhe only real big thing a thief can bring into a group… spamming clusterbombs into combofields for combo effects.
(edited by Panacea.4927)
To make it short, make it possible to disable traits in your traitwindow. With that I dont mean the ones you can choose, but the ones you get automaticly.
Somtimes you just dont want to vanish into stealth when you are at 25% hp, sometimes you dont want to drop caltrops when you dodge and I think there are other classes which sometimes want to have some of their traits disabled.
The utility skills need longer to recharge, weapon skills stay unaffected.
I didnt read all suggestions, so I’m not aware if that one was already suggested.
A option to save trait combinations
With every 10 points into a trait line you are able to choose one trait to tailor your build more to your need, but often you have to change this build and adapt your char to special needs which might occur.
It is rather annoying to search all traits and take the ones you need and later change it back again, a set of trait combinations which you can save and switch to it out of combat would make things much easier.
For example:
Your normal build helps you at your normal solo play and at clearning non unshakeable mobs in instances. Lets say for that you need in traitline 1 the traits:
VI
IV
IX
Maybe you now have a fight which requires you to blind the mobs more often, or you want to switch to a more supportive role, if you want to do that you need to change your traits to lets say:
I
VII
X
But for that you have to search every trait and select it. It can be abit annoying to change your setup with that, as you need to search every trait quick. To solve that the set would safe the combinations you have choosen. Selecting the set changes your trait fast so you can switch to special roles on the fly.
Of course resetting your traits means you lose all safed trait combinations.
As it is rather a option to spare time and for your own comfort, I even think that you can buy sets slots in the cashshop.