Guild Wars 2

You need to post a video of this. I wanna see how ridiculous this is in-game xD Whether good or not.

PopeUrban.2578:

Serious Thought.5394:

Pistols need 1200 range. Period. The set alone would become an ACTUAL CHOICE if they were not 900 range. Seriously. The assassin class has no 1200 range weaponset? wtf is this prejudice

Anet would tell you they don’t want thieves to have 1200 range sets because of our disengage.

That’s less of a decent reason looking at some of the elite specs and rev though. Rev has crazy potential range and disengage, and engi/ranger got some very mobile specs without really losing range.

Thief disengage>Revenant disengage. That’s the difference. Thief can port away wherever they choose whereas Revenant needs a target or spam their dodge utility/staff 5 which leaves them extremely vulnerable.

Also I want to point out that S/D Thief for me has been performing really well. D/D Eles arent as bad to fight so far and Mesmers haven’t even been able to touch me.

So for me, this patch is pretty good as of right now. Though we did need some love in the D/D department.

It seems that Superior Runes of the Centaur are not applying swiftness on heal. Not sure if this is everywhere but in Heart of the Mists, I can’t seem to get them to work in or out of combat.

Well it looks like Thief didn’t get all the love we were hoping for. Now before we all decide that it’s because Anet hates us, let’s at least see what happened.

Ele and Mesmer traits which have given us a really hard time such as PU and Blinding Ashes have finally been nerfed. This means that we will stand a better chance against these classes which have outperformed and destroyed us.

Pistol damage has been increased. While this does not make P/P entirely viable it does allow for some potential bursty builds with it.

Potent Poison buff. It seems like the potential for a D/D condition build is getting better now with the buff to Potent Poison and with Daredevil coming out, I feel like it might be a very interesting and viable build to run.

Expeditious Dodger will now give us increased Swiftness up time. I might not have to run Runes of the Centaur anymore hahaha.

So while none of these added the stuff we wanted like blind on CnD or FG buff, it did finally nerf the two most OP builds in the game currently which should allow us room to do more. Not saying what they did was enough but let’s give the current meta a shot and then we can decide if what they did was good enough.

I admit that I am a little disappointed in the balance patches on paper but I’ll hold off on deciding if it’s good or not after testing the waters for a bit. Sound off on whether you guys feel we’re performing a bit better or not!

I think Acro could really use an HP increase. Also, one of the things we’ve been asking for is making Cloak and Dagger blind baseline. This would be huge for S/D and up our survivability quite considerably.

Aside from that, I don’t really miss old Feline Grace and I don’t think it’s really necessary if you know how to play S/D right. I’d much rather get the CnD blind baseline, HP increase, a slight increase to sword AA damage, and have Expeditious Dodger apply 5-6 seconds of swiftness.

Thief is fun, S/D in particular is awesome being so actively engaged in the fight by using your evades and what not to survive.

Out of all the other classes S/D Thief has got to be the most fun I’ve had in the game and the fact that I only have to run a Sword and Dagger as opposed to weapon swapping every 9 seconds to something else is awesome.

The only other class that has had a similar effect to me is Revenant and I feel that in terms keeping you on your toes in a fight, Revenant and Thief are on par.

Eh, I still have a ton of success PvP’ing with my S/D Thief, believe it or not. I’m not even talking about +1’ing either so I’m not as negative as you guys buuuut we do need some love. I am confident we’ll bounce back up though. Luckily, if we don’t, I still got my Revenant’s ascended gear all ready hahaha.

Despite being fairly satisfied with how the animations currently look….

GIVE US THIS LEVEL OF ANIMATION QUALITY PLEASE!!!!

tobascodagama.2961:

Are you kitten kittening me? That’s not an overnerf at all, it’s an entirely appropriate balance change.

The only people who needed the full 40s of Stealth we could get from old PU were WvW Roamers, and kitten ‘em. How many times do we need to explain that the game simply doesn’t allow for roaming as a balanceable playstyle?

I don’t even run PU on my Mesmer and I can roam just fine in WvW so idk how this would totally destroy a stealth Mesmer in WvW. This would bring them more in line, imo, as stealth on a Mesmer should be complimentary and not overwrite your entire playstyle to play more Thief-like.

I think its still useful for the 4 and 5.
50% damage reduction is still gonna do considerable damage with Zerk armor. Though I do think that 50% damage reduction might be a little high. Definitely still gonna be viable in PVE, though as 1 Ice bow could destroy a burrow with just the skill 4 if running power. Now your teammates actually have a reason to attack and do the other half of the damage that the Ice Bow had removed.

Yeah or outplaying a Shatterupt Mesmer AND D/D Ele on Tranquillity with a Sword/Dagger set by skillfully evading all their hard hitting moves while interrupting their cap and stalling for a minute and a half until your team gets there to turn the tide. Good feeling.

Shortbow worked really well with Staff for me. However, I am gonna be trying out S/D+Staff next BWE. I came up with an Acrobatics/Trickery/Daredevil build using Assassin’s Reward which combined with D/D’s heal on evade minor trait should provide some pretty nice sustained healing.

The idea is that I can use Staff offensively and for mobility while S/D I can use defensively. It sounds pretty good on paper at the moment but we’ll see how it performs in the next BWE.

Well if you’re fighting a Necro on a D/P Thief, it shouldn’t be too tough of a kill unless the Necro is really good or you’re doing something wrong. Even on my S/D build, I can take on condition and signet Necros without too much trouble and that lacks the immediate burst of a D/P.

Well Monk-like in the terms of being similar to a Shaolin Monk with their mastery of bo staff. But philosophy-wise, no they are not similar.

Arctarius.2649:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vttqLNf_2Ps

Made this compilation / Mix today of some music i love from MoP in preparation for daredevil. hope they live up to this musics call, and i hope the devs listen in for some inspiration. Walk with the winds.

Thanks for the mix! It’s pretty awesome Definitely gonna be whacking people to death with my staff while listening to this!

That’s not it, really. I run Ether Renewal on my ele and I’m nigh unkillable too.

ronpierce.2760:

May not be entirely what you’re looking for, but I actually touched on this sort of idea in my thread:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Thief-Suggestions-From-a-Non-Thief/first#post5514927

The idea here being that rather than SA focusing on passive play, it benefits from utilizing stealth more frequently and aggressively, allowing the thief to get more benefit from assault rather than constant fleeing. My ideas also shape ways to allow thieves to remain in combat longer. It’s not perfect, but might be worth reading just my “Shadow Arts” section of suggestions.

That said, I’m not too keen on getting every benefit from reveal, as I don’t think enemies being smart should “buff you”, but the idea does make it so that you are less reliant on being in stealth for long periods, making reveal less impactful, and getting a bit of added defense if you are revealed.

Yeah that’s kinda the idea I had too. Cowering in stealth is the main reason I dropped SA in favor of Acro for a more engaging playstyle back in the day, though now that needs work too. Hiding in stealth all the time really cripples Thief playstyle imo as it rewards stalling in stealth.

I think the benefits should be balanced between reveal and stealth. Basically this would make it rewarding for you to reveal yourself more often but also reward enemy players if they manage to dodge you while in stealth and prevent you from self applying reveal. This would also help reveal skills and traits on other classes be more for preventing a Thief from gaining access to their stealth skills and being able to damage them and less for being able to score an easy kill on a Thief player. In this way, Thieves would be able to fight back with increased toughness from reveal without running away but enemies would also profit from being able to damage the Thief as well.

… and instead made traits that buff Thieves while they are NOT in stealth.

Part of the problem with more reveal coming into the game is that while we are revealed, we are practically useless. So here’s an idea, similar to the Revealed Training buff, why not give us more buffs+removal of a number of conditions every time the reveal effect is applied to us? Combined with Revealed Training, this would provide incentive not to hide in stealth forever.

I really think that Anet needs to find a balance for us to be useful while being revealed as much as we are while we are in stealth. Stealth is not our special survivability mechanic anymore so jumping back and forth from stealth and revealed should be, imo.

Stealth skills can be balanced to not allow us to perma stealth and instead just let us set up our stealth attacks or reposition strategically while the Reveal buff can provide us with buffs we desperately need in order to actually want to reveal and stay engaged in the fight.

Just a thought but being able to manage going in stealth and revealing would be a much more interesting mechanic to our class than just hiding in stealth because we die if we are revealed.

Your thoughts?

On the brightside, every time I manage to survive a Mesmer’s mindless interrupt, shatter, and invuln spam and beat them, I am given every right to gloat and laugh at them. (Though I usually keep it to myself or my guild, haha)

Same goes with Eles. Hilarious when an Ele face rolls through their attunements after I’ve used Infiltrator’s Return because they think I’m in stealth and they think their mindless aoe spam is gonna kill me.

On the downside… That feel when I look down on Ele and Mesmer players when I used to consider those skill based classes….

Amante.8109:

I can understand why Engineers might find the Gyros underwhelming (although I’m fairly sure Bulwark Gyro will see a lot of play). Literally everything else about Scrapper is amazing, though, so the complaining is pretty silly.

When DD was revealed, there was quite a lot of QQ from the Warrior forums that Daredevil had better Physicals than they did. Idk I think perspective makes a big difference in how you view all these elite specs. I did quite a lot of buildcrafting before and during the beta weekend and found cool builds that I could run with all the specs. Hell, I even thorougly enjoyed Tempest as I found something viable that could take on most if not all meta builds.

But say you could change the Daredevil, what would you change? Aside from animations. All my changes would be minor number things like making Fist Flurry a bit faster and AA on staff better.

jaif.3518:

I have no idea how we can be so far apart; the daredevil spec seemed great to me, and a lot of cool build ideas came to mind.

i do hope they work on staff a bit: its promising, but a bit rough (many have noted specifics, wont tangent here).

Regarding scrapper, i wasnt impressed with gyros, though i reseve judgment until i try them. Hammer seemed quite cool, though.

Haha the irony is that if you go over to the Engineer forums, they’re complaining that they don’t like their elite spec. Yet, here we are thinking it’s better than what we got xD

Yeah the fire line is the real issue I think. Blinding ashes is on a 10s ICD seems extremely reasonably imo. Also Ring of Fire might be fine with 2 stacks or else it just becomes like skill 4 on focus, lame.

Serious Thought.5394:

“Thief is the class most beaten to a pulp. Players who choose this profession will play as the most difficult and frustrating character class ever designed. Cower as your enemies profit from your damaging and crowd control abilities more than you do. Flee, as they turn their attention on you and with one skill blast most of your life away. And remember good old Zero, practice the Fetal Position or you main find it is no longer practice.”

How’d I do? Not gonna lie, I’m pretty mad right now. Did that whole tryhard as Thief thing, then went lazy mode on my Mesmer which made me realize I can play half afk on Mesmer and do more than when I try on my Thief despite the high amount of games (ranked and unranked) I have on Thief compared to Mesmer.

Hahaha the whole bit about enemies profiting more from your cc abilities than you do is so true XD Made another post about fighting a Shatterupt Mesmer. That Mirror of Anguish bs… oh boy. Description is pretty accurate too.

Yeah, I’m all for mature discussions about how to fix the class. The problem is without hearing from the devs about changes or being reassured we are being heard, people tend to get very upset. I don’t like seeing people talking smack on the devs and acting like its the end of the world but I get where they’re coming from. I’d prefer people could approach this forum emotionally sound but seeing as how I just got my kitten handed to me by a Mesmer who I outplayed various times but my S/D Thief just couldn’t keep up with mindless accidental blinds, aoe bursts, invulns, stealth, Mirror of Anguish which is such a stupid OP trait, and mantra cc’s…. yeah, it’s hard to stay emotionally sound when coming here and seeing no ray of hope for the Thief outside of the Elite Spec(for me).

Fire Circle isn’t the only problem but it certainly is a part of it. I remember a time when playing Ele took skill… now you get damage and survivability handed to you on a silver plater and while winning a fight against an Ele isn’t impossible, it’s a steep uphill battle. Whenever I hop on my D/D Ele, I just get so bored. The fights are so easy to win and it’s not even satisfying. Either way, balancing is coming and hopefully when they do, I’ll know that when I win with my Ele, it’s because I outplayed them and not because I mindlessly applied burns and blinds while facerolling through my attunements.

Amante.8109:

Rain.9213:

Hahaha what? The Daredevil doesn’t have unique effects, flavor, and animation?

If you were feeling charitable, you could consider Daredevil as technically meeting the barest possible definition of those words. After all, Daredevil has one (1) non-recycled animation, so that meets the requirements of “unique animation”, right?

All jokes aside, it is extremely likely that Daredevil will receive a lot more changes between now and the release of HoT… but not in the way that most people are hoping for.

The source of people’s frustration and disappointment with Daredevil is the blatant, visible lack of passion behind its development. While it’s easy to blame this on Karl, I think he was merely the one passed the hot potato that is designing and balancing the Thief profession. For whatever asinine reason, it seems to be a job that no one wants.

This is why people are frustrated. No amount of number adjustments and minimal mechanical changes can replace a desire to make Daredevil fun. Until we have someone in our corner who is excited about playing the Thief profession itself—rather than going through the motions of fulfilling a bullet point on the back of the box—a majority of Thief players will continue to find the profession unsatisfying.

Unfortunately, I see a very low likelihood of this changing anytime in the near future. While I hate to say it, if things don’t come together for Thief in the first month or so of HoT then I’ll be finding another game to occupy my finite money and time.

As I said, Scrapper hammer animations are recycled as well! So are Chronomancer’s, Tempest, and Herald Shield. In fact a lot of classes have recycled animations!

As for it not being fun, I found Daredevil to be more than what I hoped for. I haven’t had that much fun on Thief since I first picked up S/D Acro.

The only issue I had with DD was the auto attack and some clunkiness in the animations which are not that hard to fix. Idk if I’m the outlier but if I am, great! I’ll be one of the rare Staff thieves

Honestly, if Thieves had gotten rifle or some other form of different stealth play, I probably would have stopped playing it in favor of Revenant. But I felt Daredevil was very solid and extremely satisfying.

Temus.7086:

I just watched the Scrapper ability reveal, and I can’t understand why elite specializations that have been revealed both before and after the Daredevil seem so full of unique effects, animations, and flavor compared to ours. Balance aside, where is the creativity in design or satisfaction in using the abilities of daredevil (staff especially) compared to ALL of the other specializations that have been revealed? As a thief main, I am jealous and frustrated, and just want to understand WHY this striking difference in quality has occurred.

Hahaha what? The Daredevil doesn’t have unique effects, flavor, and animation?
Daredevil felt like an acrobatic, stealthing, teleporting GS/Hammer warrior to me in all the right ways. Plus we got to pick between 3 different traits that change our dodge to fit our build and the only skill in the entire game that can instantly kill a player without sending them into downed state as long as you time it properly…

I mean, I know the animations on staff and the dodges need a bit of work but the spec overall played really nicely.

I also want to point out that most of the Scrapper’s animations are recycled as well just have added effects on top.

Haha, I can’t believe people are disappointed with this. Considering Engi is already an extremely versatile and strong class, getting a few more fun toys to play with seems like something to be happy about to me.

The Hammer looked really cool, stealth gyro was cool, and I like the stacking toughness+superspeed regen traits. The other gyro’s are not that great, sure but as someone else in this thread said, YOU DONT HAVE TO RUN THEM.

Glad I play S/D where being revealed isn’t as bad xD Then again… I’m playing post patch S/D….

:x

Gaaroth.2567:

we do not clense, we resist..i like that..only bit of flavour left on mallyx!

This. We take conditions and then laugh at the poor saps who think it will stop us.

Even Herald’s heal skill counters conditions pretty well.

All that said, I am kinda sad that Mallyx did lose some of his flavor. I really liked being able to load up with condies and then go super saiyan and send them all back.

So Mallyx was changed so that condition clearing allies wouldn’t mess with Mallyx’s abilities. I can understand why they did this but now that playstyle is the same as every other condi spec.

Here’s my suggestion. If a player is running the Corruption line, they will be granted the ability to gain “Demonic Stacks” that will be applied every time a condition is applied to the player using Mallyx. These corruption stacks will buff the heal skill, work with the utilities in different ways to either apply more resistance, send out more conditions etc, and will make the Elite also send out more conditions as well. Same as the way conditions used to interact with Mallyx.

The idea here is that since getting your conditions cleansed by an ally can mess you up, why not just have a specific type of effect that will be applied by each condition you have received while in Mallyx so that even if your conditions were cleansed, you will still be benefitting greatly from having corrupted yourself.

If this change were to happen, they could revert Mallyx’s skills to the old playstyle and not have to worry about those conditions being cleansed. They can even change the duration of each of those stacks for balance and cap it at like 10 or something so you don’t get condi bombed and have a bajillion of them.. It would act similarly to Vicious Laceration on Revenant or that trait on Arms Warrior that increases condition damage with each stack.

SchmendrickTheMagician.8247:

Not a single shout trait? What the hell, Karl? None of them are usable… MAYBE the fire one but only because it’s a low cooldown fire aura…

Actually. Aftershock, the heal skill, and now even Rebound are really good, at least for my Aura DPS build. The fact that Rebound can now save allies or apply Auras adds more Fury and Swiftness uptime for me. Aftershock and the heal I already liked a lot since the last BWE. Aftershock hits pretty hard and the immob+proj reflect is awesome. It flowed really nicely into my D/F build as I was able to land both Breath attacks and Burning speed with ease as well as escape tricky encounters by aoe immobing and running. The heal skill is just tons of sustain.

I do think that the aoe weakness on shouts could use a bit of a buff in terms of duration but aside from that, 3 out of the 6 shouts for me are pretty good. I run Lightning Flash and Armor of Earth in my other two utility slots.

I run a venom share S/P build in Fractals and it works really well.

After playing Daredevil, I’m very confident my main will stay Thief but if any really dumb changes wreck the class, Roy’s got my back with Revenant.

MercenaryNote.8506:

Rain.9213:

Rym.1469:

Simply list existing effects from Legendary weapons on Revenant’s skill you found (I will add them up here) and then…

Suggest your own ideas how Legendary weapons could affect our skills!

I will start:

• Flameseeker Prophecies

1. Legendary Shield changing the visual of Shield #5 – Crystal Hibernation.
Now turns caster into actual crystal instead of old version.

Does anyone have a screenshot or video of this? I MUST SEE IT!

It was a suggestion, not an actual thing.

Ah my bad, totally misread that hahaha

Nice! First person I’ve seen to make an Interrupt Thief work Good fights man.

Rym.1469:

Simply list existing effects from Legendary weapons on Revenant’s skill you found (I will add them up here) and then…

Suggest your own ideas how Legendary weapons could affect our skills!

I will start:

• Flameseeker Prophecies

1. Legendary Shield changing the visual of Shield #5 – Crystal Hibernation.
Now turns caster into actual crystal instead of old version.

Does anyone have a screenshot or video of this? I MUST SEE IT!

I mean, I do have trouble with them but I just time my attacks and evades and usually win. In WvW at least. In PvP, you will probably end up losing the point if you try to win against an ele so it’s usually better to just disengage and backcap.

Someday though, Ele’s will not be able to score easy decaps on Thieves… I look forward to that day if it ever comes.

Bloodyx.5946:

JoshSoCal.4516:

Hello I was just wondering if anyone could give me some helpful tips on the Thief. I never play rogue type classes in MMOs but decided to try a Thief as it looked different from other styles of rogue types. I am willingly to be patient with the class and learn a lot. Please leave any helpful hints or tips that I can use.

You can also add me in game. I’m usually on after 5pm PST as I work during the day. Thanks for all the help in advanced!

JoshSoCal.4516

just quit or go to another class. we aren’t rogues. we don’t even do that much damage. and on top of that, we only have 1 viable build… its really sad.

While it may be true that we only have one viable build in PvP, Sword/Dagger still has a nice place in WvW as does Pistol/Dagger.

Same can be said of PvE. Sword/Pistol is very good in Pve with both Venom Share or just full DPS.

So don’t drop this kinda quitter mentality to a new player. We should be encouraging him to stay and learn the class.

First thing you need to learn about Thief, don’t expect to survive a lot of damage. You’re gonna have to retreat and evade quite a bit. Since you just started out, I recommend using Dagger/Pistol+Shortbow as it is the strongest weapon set for Thieves right now that doesn’t require too much effort to deal damage but you’re still gonna have to dance around other classes as Thief is in a bit of a bad spot at the moment in terms of PvP.

You almost always want to use Trickery in your build also as it recharges Thieves’ Steal faster and increases you initiative so you can use your weapon skills more often.

If you’tr using D/P, you should also try using Shadow Arts with the Shadow’s Embrace and Shadow’s Rejuvenation traits as they will keep you alive longer. Some people like to use Acrobatics instead but it requires a bit more experience to use effectively.

Lastly, I would recommend Critical Strikes to increase your critical damage and have more access to fury so you can get critical hits more often too but Deadly Arts is also optional if you dont mind giving up critical damage in exchange for some useful traits.

Yeah the lack of blind on CnD really hurts /d sets.

Arctarius.2649:

Rain.9213:

Haha pretty awesome edits man! Glad to see yet another successful Staff user
Also fantastic choice of music! Mind sending me the list of songs you used in your video?

Thank you, and yes I can , The first song is called: Enfin Apparu , and the second song you may have to find on your own. I got a special Japanese album from a friend by the artist name Tutti sound, all the names are in Japanese on the album list, but by looking up tutti sound on you tube i was able to find most of the songs i have on my album.

Awesome thank you!

Maybe in the next beta we can have a duel or two!

DeceiverX.8361:

I just really dislike how the primary source of damage and mobility on the weapon is through the same skill.

The fact that spamming 5 is often a good thing to do for damage makes me cringe a little, seeing as HS-spam is just as poor by design.

Depends on the situation. Against smart players, spamming Vault is going to get you no where except drained of initiative.

Hahaha this is hilarious!

babazhook.6805:

Rain.9213:

I love them. I have them on my S/D Acro set right now with Don’t Stop and I have near invulnerability to cripple On my Daredevil they also work really nice though as you can Hide in Shadows, gain swiftness, and speed right over to the enemy for a knockdown or vault. The power is really nice too and on Staff, it’s crucial to be able to stay on the enemy so -cripple duration and swiftness helps a lot. You can also have permanent out of combat swiftness with Thrill of the Crime.

I found Runes of speed work well too given we need that vitality that said…

Regarding the Kick in for the swiftness when healing on The Centaur Runes. Do you gain tnat swiftness as soon as you start the heal or as soon as you finish? I am wondering how they would work with the new heal as in get one channel off have swiftness and run.

It happens after you finish your healing skill. I considered Runes of Speed as well but I really like having that bit of extra power from Centaur and -50% cripple is a nice bonus.

Yeah some of the stuff on DD is a bit clunky and it does need some work but overall, staff a really effective weapon! Idk why people are hating on it.

And thank you for watching

Haha pretty awesome edits man! Glad to see yet another successful Staff user
Also fantastic choice of music! Mind sending me the list of songs you used in your video?

uglydan.1638:

My PP works just fine.

I’m glad I’m not the only one who got that xD

I love them. I have them on my S/D Acro set right now with Don’t Stop and I have near invulnerability to cripple On my Daredevil they also work really nice though as you can Hide in Shadows, gain swiftness, and speed right over to the enemy for a knockdown or vault. The power is really nice too and on Staff, it’s crucial to be able to stay on the enemy so -cripple duration and swiftness helps a lot. You can also have permanent out of combat swiftness with Thrill of the Crime.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/revenant/Herald-1v1-Montage-Video

Mesmer fight was a little “meh” but aside from that I think overwhelming all the other fighters with the raw power of a Revenant really shows how strong this class is. You can also see how good the Glint heal really is

I didn’t get as much Revenant footage as I hoped to get this weekend due to work being in the way so sadly, not all the fights were amazing but hopefully this helps show off the power of Herald!

Especially the part where the Ranger comes in and Rapid Fires me while fighting the Guardian xD Thanks for the HP bruh.

https://youtu.be/Ft9E_ZKlxwg