What seperates thief burst from other burst, imo, is the difference in difficulty to execute that burst. For thief it’s easier to do that other builds/classes.
So how to balance it, I suppose, would be to have the overall damage remain the same, but have it harder to execute and give it more opportunities to be countered.
How this is going to be achieved, i suppose we have to wait and see.
I don’t get how you can possibly justify this statement. The DMG vs survivability of this specific backstab stealth build is far superior to anything anyone else has.
Played a burst damage guardian?
I’ve dropped squishies in seconds on a “glass cannon” guard that has waaay better survivability than these thieves.
Not saying that what thieves have might be a little bit much, but to say no-one else has the damage/survivability is kinda wrong. Since BS thieves do die insanely quickly.
Changing toughness would effect all classes in all builds, which could cause undesired balance differences in other areas. A toughness change is too broad of a change.
A change to backstab is 1 single area that can be better controlled and have little to no alternate effects. It needs to be to backstab.
It’s posts like the few above that makes more and more start to hate the blackgate server.
No no, hackers are the scum of humanity, in any game. I hope Anet deals with the issue as swiftly and account-banningly as possible. It just pisses me off that some random kitten who might have even transfer to BG for the soul purpose of hacking orbs to start kitten(<—— pure speculation), is then lorded over the entire server to negate any work done by the honest players.
It’s also annoying that even though all 3 servers are using “turtling/stacking” and even “portal bombing” (which is as old as WvW), it’s only BG that’s copping all the flak. The hate train is just stopped at the BG station this week.
This is good, it gives great precedence to any future matches. If a server you dont like gets an orb from a hack, even if its just 1 random jackoff on the whole server, you now instantly have a solid case to illegitimise the entire weeks play.
Also with the turtling thing, doesnt siege hit all in the area still? What is stopping your stacked group from placing a ballista or 2 behind your group and killing their entire group in 2 shots each?
they think we are so kittening stupid we need color based armor…..HELLO theres a huuge kittening bracket over the characters name showing RED or BLUE lol….
It wasn’t meant for the players, it is meant for the spectators and casters.
And hopefully Anet will put more time into things that actually matter in regards to sPvP like balancing, ranking, obs mode, private servers etc. over useless crap like this.
I stuffed around with builds in hotjoin yesterday for a good few hours and got into a match that had 4 out of 6 as rangers on both sides, other matches that had 0 thieves in them. Wait long enough and you will get games with any combo you want in them to post a screenshot of.
i don’t thing its just a limited race. ability its in spvp,can’t be racial.
It is racial, I have an asuran thief and he does a flippy jump thing when he dodges. I’m not sure about norn or char as I rarely see char or norn thieves, let alone watch their dodge. I do know it happens to humans and sylvari.
It isn’t an ability, it’s just a visual effect when a thief dodges.
Spvp if you get automatchd is not that bad) picking a server instead might lead to problems of beeing matched to ppl with 10x more experiance.
This, I think hitting “Play now” matches you with people of similar “rank points” which means you will be roughly the same PvP level as those in the server.
Manually picking from the list bypasses this and puts you with whoever else joins that server. Good players or not so good players.
Zyrusticae: “Starcraft 2 is 1v1, and even in 1v1 you still have the choice of 8 different team colors (instead of the same two every time).”
When being observered however they are always red and blue (or at least that’s an option that almost every caster I’ve seen uses), for ease of casting. The guy said that no other games have red/blue colouring, he is wrong.
IMO WvW and PvE are personalised areas because you actually level your character.
sPvP is the most impersonalised area in the game, as you’re auto-given level 80/top gear/utilities, make yourself distinct with your play not with pretty coloured dyes.
This thread further cements in my mind that players will kitten about anything and everything.
I believe I read somewhere that these dyes are put onto you because it makes it easier from a casting/commentary point of view. So later on when obs mode is put in it’s easier to make calls on blue/red than anything else.
How people can find it annoying in the first place baffles me.
On topic, swiftness seems like it’s a “Low tier” boon (thrown around like candy), so having it on a 5 point minor trait seems fair enough, where as vigor seems like it’s a fairly high tier boon, like fury/aegis.
Giving access to it on something as simple as dodge for 5 trait points seem against it’s nature. If it was, say, the 3rd minor trait I could maybe understand.
Yes it does, and even without vigor you can triple dodge->agility->triple dodge for a quick 10-12 stacks and 6 caltrops fields.
Yeah I’m usually at 7-9 during fights because of might on stealth and dodge. Using this could probably get me closer to 13-15 (or more) constantly… Veggie pizza’s might have some competition…
after reading all the posts about how balanced MOA is, and you should just dodge it, and how easy it is to spot and interrupt… I’ve seen phantaram being MOA’ed twice by now.
Either he’s bad, or the arguments fail
make that 3…
Out of curiosity, how many times did he get downed while moa’d?
I would say no, dont report, since there is no way to actually duel in this game besides this method.
Dont quit PvP either.
If you’re only getting put in these servers constantly, try selecting a server from the list instead of using the “Play Now” button. There are hundreds of hotjoin servers very often with spots free.
For those who were complaining about Perma Stealth, this negates that.
Removes one avenue of “Perma stealth” I believe the one they are often talking about is CnD chaining + rendering issue.
Hitting someone with CnD Juuuuust as you pop out of stealth so as not to get the revealed debuff.
I dont see a problem with this tactic as you do next to 0 damage, all that needs to change is the ability to context cap points in WvW.
Frankly I dont really see the need to stealth for longer than 12-13 seconds in most situations anyways (hiding in a WvW keep perhaps?), so anything that would detract crying towards thieves is good in my books.
I’m inclined to believe sigils of strength are more effective if you have good critical chance.
Spose it’s a personal preference. Battle gives 3 stacks at 20s duration, guaranteed every… 9 secs?
Strength gives a 30% chance to get 1 stack for 10secs on crits with likely a 45-50ish crit chance%. Potential to get more but also potential to get a lot less.
You a gambling man?
You know, I’ve never run this build, but talking about it makes me want to try it. A task for this afternoon.
For this type of thing you almost have to go the condition path, wouldn’t you?
I know with just the might on dodge and on stealth you can get about 7-9 might stacks during fights if you trait vigor on steal (you can also trait to get might on steal as well).
Would sacrificing runes and some other traits for this be worth the extra might? Seems like some testing is in order, always glad to hear about alternate builds
Perhaps something nutty like a 0/20/20/20/10 with bersekers am, SB/SB with http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Sigil_of_Battle on both and never stop swapping lol. Then rune for toughtness/vital/might duration, make up for lack of power with massive might.
Perhaps listing thief simply as a burst damage class is the wrong first step since every class has the ability for burst damage, and as well as every class has the ability to go tank sustain or CC/Support or conditions.
S/D just doesnt seem to have been designed to be a burst damage weapon set as much as D/D. It feels much more CC/Support oriented, in which case it kinda makes sense for the AA to be the main damage dealer as you need initiative for support abilities.
However it’s a shame that flanking is so unreliable, it’d be nice to have.
I’d say swords stealth attack is less than the auto attack because of the stealth attack’s utility, being a 2second daze when hitting them in the back. So the point of the skill is that, not a massive damage hit. You can shut down a target quite well in this build in team fights, while still hitting others with AoE auto attacks.
I’ve been toying with s/d the last couple days and am finding it very enjoyable, and dont ever really use flanking strike due to it being a bit on the buggy side.
This would make nearly 0 difference anyway as it would only work on new players. Anyone that is around it for any amount of time will know almost exactly how large the effective area is anyways.
It also helps if you want to stay inside it but stay riiiight on the edge so that it’s harder for people to hit you. the line gives a nice guide.
You either read the stats and die, or don’t read the stats and fight. It, of course, doesn’t matter. It’s just stupid.
Exactly, you can read the stats and die, or keep fighting. Neither have any effect on anyone’s score because the points stop as soon as a team hits 500.
It’s true, you can deny a supply camp/keep/castle while stealthed, however it isn’t 2 minutes of perminent stealth. you can get maybe 20 secs tops with all utils/heal then it’s just chaining cloak and dagger over and over again. Meaning you get stealth for 3 secs then you’re revealed for 3 secs.
I’d say he just kept popping random players/pets with cloak and dagger and ran for a while.
A tip for these situations, when you see a big red circle with a black/grey house over it, the thief just popped shadow refuge. Put all your AoE over that circle because 95% chance he’s inside of it.
Even in PVE? Because its perfectly natural for someone to never be harmed while attacking. If this is your belief, then please just leave. We’re trying to fix a problem, not fuel the fire.
The only thing I object to about your numerous posts is calling it an exploit, when it isn’t. Just call it an imbalanced ability like a level headed person and I, and others, will be much more supportive.
if you honestly believe that Arenanet sat down and said “Lets allow the thieves to never take damage as long as they do this, this and this” then yes, you are correct.
Thanks, I’m correct then, because I think this is working perflects as intended – For PvE.
I think the PvP aspect of it was overlooked during the design phase and it’s power wasnt realised. So yeah, the PvP aspect likely needs to change. It is not an exploit.
I believe it’s because 1 stack = 1 tick per 1 second. So if it has a 7.75 sec duration you’ll get one on 7 seconds but the duration will run out before anything happens in that last .75 seconds.
So once you get passed 7 seconds in duration focus on something else as it’s just wasted (unless you can get to the next full second of duration).
) picking a server instead might lead to problems of beeing matched to ppl with 10x more experiance.