Guild Wars 2

sorrow.2364:

Excalibur.9748:

Well if ANET is smart they wouldn’t nerf a weapon to “oblivion”

For DanH an increased initiative cost of 1 point on LS is a “nerf to oblivion”.

Let’s not forget the flat removal of weakness and shadow return stun breaker please.

Thieves notes are more huge nerfs which will result in pigeon holing the class into using D/P more than anything else. The buff are useless in most case with some few exceptions being the trickery tree + steal, panic strike and the shadow trap.

If you want something effective for every aspect of the game i’d go guardian or mesmer.

I’d suggest avoiding thieves, it’s anet’s favorite anti stress class.

If it’s true, it will probably be limited to 1200 range and as buggy as shadow return.

From my personal experience, there’s some rare random case where sword shadow return (or even shadow step two steps) will bug out and result in just a teleportation.

It’s really rare though.

swinsk.6410:

Pretty sure they are fake because they don’t mention the condi removal on warrior burst skills which is public knowledge.

Cleansing Ire: New Master tier trait with the following effects. Gain adrenaline when hit. Remove a condition for every bar of adrenaline spent.

Yeah it’s a bad, i honestly gave this trait a chance thinking it had potential but no, picking this trait is like enjoying random reveals from last refuge on a stealth heavy build.

The problem is that it’s random, sometime it’s awesome, as you said you’ll escape a potential burst which is strong, you’ll still have to react to the fact that you suddenly randomly changed location but whatever, from my experience that happens 30% of the time.

Because the stun happens randomly it can sometime simply move you 3 inches backward because there’s a wall/pebble behind you. Worse, it sometimes stuck you in random walls or in horrendous location including horrible camera (once it teleported me bellow the stairs in the “forest of whatever” right point (quarry or mine i think, never bothered with their names), i wasn’t able to see anything on top of wondering where the hell i was and died.

Sometimes you don’t even move because, again, teleportation in this game are buggy as hell… That’s anet fault though.

Using this trait basically means you can’t run sr at it’s full potential if you know it’s up because any random stun or whatever while under the sr will end up revealing you. Great!!! I especially love when i almost finish rezzing an ally and it screw everything.

And lastly (i’m sure there’s more but i’m still traumatized from when i used that thing), sometime a fleeing target or one of his allies will randomly stun you which will end up saving his life, yes, this trait can HELP your target in some situations. It’s equally as bad when you’re at 100% hp against an almost dead target, which sometimes result in the target being able to buy enough time for an heal or whatever (Basically it throws you out of position, there’s more scenario where it’s bad like potentially teleporting you in the middle of the enemy team).

Terrible trait is terrible.

Steal change i already said it on another topic, it can have some potential but i’m really not convinced traiting in trickery is worth it in most case. It’s just speculation anyway.

Hard to catch is more effective at screwing you than anything else. If anything the cd reduction is a nerf.

This trait should be removed.

Thieves will be pigeon holed into using D/P if those notes are true. Only thing that interest me is indeed the steal buff but trickery is… yeah not convinced. And shadow trap, sounds nice.

30 points in soul reaping = potentially 3s of stability every 5s.

Weakness from the deadly art trait will probably be massively reduced in duration, or chocking gas will be nerfed. Sword i’m not so sure.

Necro dps is okish. My only issue with necro is the lack of a melee aoe weapon.

I play the class i want with the builds i made myself.

If i ditch a character it’s because they pretty much destroyed the main aspects of the character that i liked (i’m not going to lie the recent teleport changes featuring rng makes me consider ditching my thief it in favor of necro, depends on next patch)

Main hand = crap
Off hand = strong

Well D/P has easier access to stealth, can be used for aoe stealth with blast finishers (extremly powerful tool), black powder itself is a powerful anti melee ability and one of the best stomping skill the games offer. The set also feature a fast ranged interrupt, a FAST 900 range unblockable teleport that does decent damage at that and the usual dagger main hand skill.

D/D has an useless bleed stacking skill that does poor damage, that almost root you in place but offers some evade frames (nobody really uses it and there’s a reason), a slow as can be projectile that can be step dodged that cripples and does no damage on top of having an high cost, and an ability that can provide stealth if you don’t miss (meaning it’s less reliable than d/p in general but can indeed cost less if you never miss).

It honestly not hard to understand why somebody that is actually here to win would never use D/D over D/P.

Thief is ok if you want to solo camps or kill isolated targets. It’s decent in small skirmishes.

Generally i use my necro for zerg fights + small skirmishes and my thief if i want to troll mainly, or capture some camps.

Best thing with thieves is that you will almost never die when you get familiar with it.

You only need to look at the T3 charr cultural light armor in order to see they didn’t really bothered with tail/horn clipping in general.

Charr honestly need a bit of love armor wise, stretching an armor isn’t going to cut it most of the time.

That’s actually how my game is called on my computer since 2 month.

I dunno, when i picture a thief i picture somebody that fights dirty and looking for openings rather than using brutal force. Basically i imagine somebody that use evades in order to position himself or escape, venoms to weaken his target on the long run or even after failing (yeah, not the current version basically), traps to initiate an attack (rather than the current trap bombing that plague every mmo since creation, that include ranger aswell), strike first (stealth basically make this possible) and wait for an opening/counters/dirty attacks (throwing dirt for example, blinds basically) if the fight won’t end fast. Trying to run away if the fight is lost actually kinda fits aswell.

Baiting hits for a counter in order to inflict damage just sound good on that archetype imo, but it would probably feel more thiefly if it was on a bare handed or relativly small weapon set rather than using a two handed spear i guess.

Your blur idea is also pretty good, it’s basically a counter but using mobility to evade and flank rather than a direct physical counter, it’s a bit like fs though but less powerful since it needs to bait a hit.

I’ll just leave this here, this thread is a dumpster anyway.

Dungeon reward vs Open reward is completly out of whack, that’s the main issue.

The only dynamic event that are worth doing are world bosses because they give a guaranteed rare + a chest which hopefully will contain another rare/exo or dynamic event with TONS of easy mobs which promote farming (if they are hard, with how few players do those it will probably be not worth it most of the time). Everything else is crap and not worth your time. 10 minutes defences agains waves of 3 powerful mobs every now and then? 1.80s.

Meanwhile in dungeons, in 7-20 minutes (lets say 7 being cof1 and 20 being arah) you get 1 flat gold from loot and encounters + potential rare/exo/core/lodestones from chest + dungeon tokens (free rares + exo).

I really wonder why the open world is void of players, and it seems anet wants to improve dungeon reward on top of it because they are not on par with cof1 rewards, seriously… Well at least other dungeons will be more populated which isn’t so bad.

The only reason open world is kinda decent atm is because you can sell those dragon coffers (only available during this month) for 3.5s (10s when the event started, it was really broken) which is pretty decent with how often they drop let’s be honest.

Utility skills:

-Venoms: Well venom are weak to begin with and are only really useable with a very specific build, devourer/basilisk being the exceptions i guess. Not much to say, venom being what they are and building specially for underwater being what it is, they will generally be bad choices.
-Signet: Thief signet are good, shadow signet is probably the lesser choice, agility and infiltration probably the best choices if you intend to abuse perma dodge.
-Haste: That’s a really personal opinion, but i really think this utility skill is garbage.
-Roll for initiative: Godly skill underwater for perma dodge abuse and simply for the fact it will render you unkillable combined with withdraw and ink shot.
-Scorpion wire: It can be used i guess, doesn’t change the fact it’s far to weak as an utility skill to begin with.
-Caltrops: Engineer tool kit as the same skill, and can be used underwater unlike thieves. That’s all i have to say.

Conclusion: Well i think everyone knows thieves utility/elite underwater choice is terrible (that’s pretty much the case for every class though). I really think utility skill should have an underwater version no matter what, even if it is not the same skill at all.
Deception aren’t even hard to make:
-Blinding powder? Ink bomb, same effect.
-Shadow refuge? Same skill but a non targetted bubble around you.
-Smoke screen? Ink wall/screen (It could work with leap finishers for stealth!!!)

I’ll bring back caltrops to show that lazyness is pretty much the only reason it doesn’t work underwater (and that underwater in general is kinda lacking) and that thief guild actually follow you underwater but somehow doesn’t seems to know how to use a spear or an harpoon gun, i guess it’s harder than popping out from the void.

That’s pretty much it.

My opinion about the issue.

I’ll start by saying condition builds will probably suck forever for underwater thieves, they need to add another weapon or introduce weapon skill alternatives for each slot on both weapon to adress the issue.

Spear:

-Auto attack: It’s good
-Stealth attack: It’s terrible as you said.
-Flanking strike: needs to be a leap finisher.
-9 tailed strike: It’s good, i completly disagree with you about this skill, if anything i’d like to see more counter skills added on this class in the futur, be it underwater or on land.
-Skill that should be deleted because it is terrible: Skill that should be deleted because it is terrible (same goes for the necro version)
-Shadow Assault: This skill is broken, yes it looks cool and it’s probably the only thing they should keep about that skill, but god is it op. This skill for agility thief builds is basically perma evade, the only way you will ever die is if you’re swarmed and chained with multiple sinks in a row since they actually work against evades (seems anet saw it was op but instead of fixing it, they just made sink counter evade, makes sense… NOT).

Conclusion: Stealth attack need to be buffed at least damage wise, 4 and 5 need a complete rework, 2 needs a small boost (leap finisher would do it, especially as you said if they add smoke fields somewhere, remove the vulnerability because nobody really cares i guess). I feel this weapon needs to have one, if not multiple access to stealth, be it directly like c&d or by the use of combos like hs + bp.

Harpoon Gun:

-Auto Attack: Weak damage and not that good at applying bleeds. Same issue than pistol imo, it needs to shoot faster AND do more damage. That would help with condition and power builds.
-Stealth Attack: My sides… I was actually waiting you to bash that atrocious subpar monstruosity. Complete change, damage is bad (same damage than an auto attack), bleed application is bad, add to that the 1s cast time on top of it… Terrible.
-Deluge: It’s basically p/p unload but a bit more powerfull (not 100% sure about that). It’s a good skill for power builds but because the auto attack is terrible, as a power build you’ll probably spam it over and over. Same issue than p/p, auto attack and deluge balance in damage is out of whack and should be addressed to open room for the other skills.
-Escape: It’s basically the underwater version of the sb disabling shot but with a slower startup, with a touch of chocking gas. Poison should last a bit longer, the projectile should actually apply poison (it could combo directly with the field, like black powder does in order to apply a blind). It’s not so bad imo.
-Disabling shot: same name than the sb skill, except it has an atrocious cast time, doesn’t provide a dodge, does meh damage. This skill actually reminds me of dancing dagger, smae slot, cripples but without the bounces and an atrocious cast time. Basically it’s crap. Coincidence, I think not.
-Ink shot: Good skill, maybe a smoke field so you could use it, swap to spear and use improved flanking strike for a stealth.

Conclusion: Stealth skill is horrible and you can’t access to it unless you use your healing skill or last refuge procs (honestly it’s so hard to access that you’d expect it to be guillotine fist/asura strike reincarnated in gw2 but nope, it’s terrible). 4 is useless. Auto attack and deluge damage balance isn’t good enough resulting in spamming deluge over and over while ignoring other skills being generally the best option.

Do you remember when…

…characters had a energy (mana) pool?

Yeah, it’s called thief.
Seems they only kept it for this class, kinda sad to be honest. Actually thief ini might be one of the reason it got scrapped.

Remember when necro where op? /runsaway

Or can we simply expect them to never be included in the upcoming updates? They have been ignored 3 updates in a row (if not more actually, i think fractal was the last time they were eared of) so i’m interested.

Feel free to troll.

In pve you can waste an utility slot for ambush trap since it’s extra dps(pray you get the melee thief though) or needle trap for immobilize (still relativly useless).

In wvw i guess you could try running a troll build with tripwire+needle trap+S/P+Basilisk/devourer venom+panic strike (30 points in deadly arts) to lock your target in place for a while and use infiltrator strike to start the lock rotation and black powder to suck up the damage while the target is immobilized.

Remember the 1st and 2nd rule of mmo traps:
“traps have to be used directly on top of your target”
“Do not use traps as you would use a trap in real life, it won’t work”

Overall thief traps are what the name suggest, traps (terrible joke – check).

The only real thing i disagree with is haste being in a good place. Honestly even if s/p was made better i wouldn’t use it, the drawback is far too massive imo. Probably my most hated thief utility skill, i’d rather use traps.

It was mostly a bug fix patch as expected, real balance changes should be at the end of the month.

That being said i’m surprised they didn’t fix the infiltrator strike spam bug but whatever.

He is right, shadow art in tpvp isn’t really good since it’s a game mode based on capturing points (that doesn’t allow to stay stealthed that much) and the traitline doesn’t provide any damage boost that thieves need if they hope to burst something. The best traits are basically asking you to say in stealth as much as possible which isn’t that great in tpvp but is potentially broken in wvw.

This traitline need a change of focus in order to be more useful in pvp while reducing the abusing potential it offers in wvw, it would honestly be a win win situation imo.

I think grenades should move as fast as thief cluster bombs, after all it’s the exact same thing but one is infinitly spammable, goes insanly fast and has 1500 range.

The bomb has been planted.

/runsaway

Tried it a bit, the shark spawn often so it might be good.

That being said the ammount of player suddenly going underwater was increasing at an alarming rate so this spot probably just died a bit. Poor sharks.

The real way to fix thieves would actually be to make all their weapon skills worth using.

I’m still puzzled at how a game with so much potential, especially in term of mobility during fights, manage to realize the most boring encounters conceivable.

Pretty much every boss in this game are hp sacks that attacks once every light years, be it one powerfull melee attacks, one or several giant circle that you can either dodge in melee range or completly negate using mesmer + guardian if those are ranged attacks (or even melee actually using aegis, almost exclusive to guardian of course, nobody could figure out it would backfire, just as projectile reflection). They also don’t move at all, they stay rooted, eating everything you throw at them.

Here’s some ideas, why don’t those mobs actually sometimes attacks with fast but less powerfull attacks so staying in place would result in your group to actually move unless they want that attack to destroy all the blocks or dodge you have at your disposal. Why don’t they sidestep when a warrior use hundred blade instead of letting themselves get killed. Why don’t they cast more chills/cripple/immobilize/stun/knockbacks and kite around so staying in melee isn’t always the best option or simply to throw the players out of melee range so the boss doesn’t get destroyed in 3s. Why don’t they have some bullet hell phase (it could be them rushing in the room randomly, throwing tons of unreflectable projectiles or whatever) requiring to move quickly in safe spot until they calm down. Why is there almost no secondary mechanic in order to weaken them, make them vulnerable, lower their damage or whatever (stuff like the dredge fractal boss), those would generally require to move in order to complete them, would add some spice and require some team coordination. Why don’t they actually have multiple phase or simply get a few new moves depending on their hp bars (like lupicus does actually) instead of 2-3 moves.
I’m not going to talk about defiance and unshakable or how underwater combat could be a huge part of the game if taken care off, that should be threads on their own.

So much wasted potential.

Well, i could also say dodge roll/blocks/invulnerabilities/etc > mug, and even more than static discharge since it would instantly negate 100% of the damage potential of the skill. I’ll give you the fact steal is not predictable (instant teleport) and you can actually see static discharge bolts.

Also if mug didn’t crit, you don’t have another go until 45 second, where static discharge being divided in 4 skills allow a crit failure to be less dramatic than a mug crit failure.
Static discharge also has aoe potential with bounces where mug is single target.
Static discharge doesn’t put you in melee range when using ranged weapon, where mug is potentially dangerous when using ranged weapons (especially p/p)
Static had far more damage potential than old mug but was more readable that’s for sure.
Both were10 point traits with a ridiculous damage potential, an argument often used against mug, with people saying none other trait had the same capacity, which was WRONG of course.

I’m not defending mug btw it was a deserved nerf, i just think static discharge deserve the same treatment or need to be moved higher in the tree.

Old mug < Static discharge

Just saying.

As for the thieves trait changes, i’m expecting some useless traits like 5% damage and 5% crit chance on dual skill to be merged (will still be useless though), and hopefully massive changes in deadly art so i’m not forced to pick improvisation (can be godly or terrible, rng at it’s finest), sundering crap or backfighter (50% damage in downed state) after mug.

Also yes, thieves traits are infact in majority terrible. When you always pick the same thing in each tree regardless of your build with one or two exception that kinda shows there’s a problem. Once again, after mug i have to choose between improvisation and backfighter.

That doesn’t mean ranger, necro or ele are in a better or worst state. I’m actually glad anet seems to realize trait diversity is terrible across the board more than anything.

It was working perfectly before you updated southsun cove. The skelks didn’t appeared before a regular timer so you were forced to explore the whole beach before going back to start the rotation again(and sometimes it wasn’t even enough for them to pop back).

The first day of this update i saw unregular skelk spawns which were more than twice what it should have been. After you “bug fix”, there’s like half the skelks that were previously perfectly working in the area with all the skelks nest (i personally find it strange that the less populate area of the beach is what seems to be the central nest, guarded by 1-2 skelks instead of 5-6).

Tripwire, needle trap, devourer venom, basilisk venom, main traits would be panic strike, corrosive trap, master traper and venom cd reduction (you can get improvisation instead if you feel lucky with it triggering with traps for an extra 7s+ of immobilize/cc.

I’d suggest S/P as your main set for initating the lock down using infiltrator’s strike and then alterning all your cc with some auto attacks and black powder to suck up the damage. This build get forked by teleports and stability (well stability will negate tripwire mainly).

Troll build of course.

As someone who farmed skelks the first day of southsun cove release i must say i’m a bit sad. It was my favorite farming spot and was a nice change of pace from cof1 or random dungeon farming.

The mobility, infiltrator stike and arrow mainly. Never really gave a kitten about stealth and I still don’t.
Also initiative (even if i think the ini regen is a bit out of whack atm) sounded more interesting than spamming skill on cd with the exception of a select few, sadly it’s not really the case as most weapon sets are 2 or 3 key wonders, which is the reason i pretty much only use s/p and sb atm, hoping for better days. I still belive initative if done right is far more strategic though, it just needs to be done right.

The only other class i actually enjoy in this game is necro, despise the hate and overall feel of being a bit weak i really like using my necro.

-Initiative cost increase
- 1 Boon removed instead of 2
-Change the pathing so it stays reliable (unlike the old version) but isn’t able to track really far.
-Only allow LS to be useable if FS actually hitted.

That would be my suggestion for that skill, either one or a mix of several of those. It’s honestly currently far to strong. I hate using it on my thief atm, it just feels far too cheap.

I can already feel sb choking gas will also require a nerf if the weakness change really make it through.

I think the only time this trait felt useful was when it proced on traps on my troll trap build (my new favorite), allowing me to add another round of 7s lock down.

Overall this trait is a massive prayer to the rng god, if your lucky it’s pretty godly otherwise it does nothing at all, it should be deleted.

Vuh.1328:

“/cast Signet of Undeath” ?

Sadly the highly skilled thief teleported away.

I don’t know how you can define “awful damage” the average 1.5k thief deals per sword hit

sustained damage is pretty much non-existent

As i said, another priceless thread in the thief forum.

I had 2 pages of arguments with him leading pretty much to nothing

Well, when your “argumentation” is flawed and biased there’s no reason it should lead to anything.
The best you could do is ask a moderator to close this thread, i think it doesn’t really contain anything worth reading at this point.

Feel free to call me stupid again, that just proving my point even more.

As for the topic, i will at least share my opinion.

I indeed believe flanking strike is slightly to strong. I would personally change it to steal one boon, it woud still offer an extra dodge, relatively good damage and a boon steal.
But that rise another issue, which would be the viability of the set as a whole. The problem is that this set is almost only relying on sword skills and fs/ls in order to kill your target, off hand dagger skill being really situational. C&d -> tactical strike can’t really be used as an interrupt which basically make it more an interrupt requiring high degree of prediction (read luck) which often just result in a random daze that pretty much make it a waste of initiative. As for dancing dagger, it simply does terrible damage, is far to slow resulting in it not being able to hit anything sidestepping and the cripple is simply a mediocre bonus, for 4 initiative there is pretty much no reason to use it at all.

My suggestion would be to slightly nerf fs/ls, give some of it’s current power to off hand dagger skill to promote smart use of the 5 weapons ability instead of mainly the first 3 and especially fs/ls. To further promote the boon stealing mechanic as a result to the loss of the extra ls boon removal, i’d add boon stealing to some utility skills (scorpion wire, infiltrator signet or assassin signet would be some example), those are on relatively long cd unlike fs/ls, and could be used on some other set to help those deal with boon heavy specs.

Complains that fs removes boons from boon reliant class (mostly because of regen and protection, those class spam vigor so it being removed doesn’t really matter)
End up saying Protection is worthless.

Another priceless thread in the thief forum.

I only care about sword thieves, but what is there to say?

S/D isn’t so bad but could seriously do with a dancing dagger rework, you know, so it actually has 5 skill instead of 4. That would also help d/d and p/d (a weapon set using two keys for god sake).

S/P is… well to be honest i really like this set (i use it the most) but pistol whip needs either a rework or some love. It could be a really good STEALTHLESS tanky control weapon set if anet actually tried, it’s not that far from being perfect. It’s one of the only weapon set along with d/p and sb where you would actually use your 5 abilities, i think it’s rare enough to be pointed. If you think about it, dagger off hand being kitten as can be might be a reason for this, i won’t even start about pistol main hand, it makes me want to punch puppies.

This skill is unreliable and i suggest keeping that in mind whenever you’re using it (because if you’re using sword main hand, you have to use it anyway).
You’ll either:
-Get stuck inside random walls
-Get randomly teleported between 0 and 1200 range but with a generally decent pathing.

Basically this skill now suffers from the shadow trap syndrom, meaning it’s unreliable and buggy.

Now if you think trading a reliable “bugged” skill for a arguably even more bugged AND unreliable skill is a step in the right direction, feel free to think so but don’t expect to be taken seriously.
If it worked as it should i would have to agree though.

Yup, pretty much.

http://i.imgur.com/AzRuvaT.jpg

Trying shadow return for the first time to see how terrible the return pathing will be now, stuck inside a wall.

Gj.

I wouldn’t be surprised if infiltrator’s strike gets nerfed soon (called it, the amount of threads about this skill increase day by day), as will black powder instead of hitting the obvious broken trait that is infusion of shadow.

As for pistol whip, in the last state of the league when it was asked they avoided answering with “yeah, but if you remember well, release pw was op as hell”, that says it all.

S/P futur is grim.

1) Build diversity
2) More than 1 build per class
3) Did i mention more builds?