@ Maug:
Some good points but…
Blocking doesn’t allow you to completely reposition in a fight. Stealthing does.
Blocking doesn’t allow you to get off a high damage attack with no visual cue. Stealthing does.
They are apples and oranges.
If you want toughness but still berserker damage, take a look at how Osicat does her gear … Berserker’s with Cavalier (same toughness as knight’s) thrown in. Amusingly, SevenMirror does Knight’s with Cavalier. Cavalier seems quite popular :-p
Also, I’m not saying that Thieves should play tanky with Knights, just that they can. I’m only saying that they get the same mitigation from it as Ranger’s & Engineers, 7% more than Mesmers, Elementalists, and Necros, and 7% less than Warrior and Guardians. From there they have to use what they have to further mitigate damage. They don’t just go “poof” into a cloud of red mist when they arent’ stealthed. That 7% is not a large amount.
You are correct through about the % of a warrior’s total hp. The warrior will take more hits before going down because of that hp pool, but that warrior is going to be taking more hits than the thief who is able to stealth (as long as the thief gets away from whatever is hitting it while stealthed, of course).
@DanH
Nah, several pages back I said that I think it’d probably be best to fix culling first and then see, but that there are signs that some changes are likely to still be warranted after the culling fix. Been discussing those signs since.
You dodge rolled twice for avoid auto-attacks and then got Bull Charged + Frenzied + Axe Auto-attacked … perhaps you should save your dodge rolls for non-auto attacks.
It doesn’t prove anything about whether or not a tanky thief works since you weren’t making good use of your active defenses with your stats. If you hadn’t been wearing that, you’d have died to the frenzy burst. If you had successfully avoided that burst then you’d have had an upper-hand in that fight since she had to pop a 40 sec and 60 sec cooldown.
That fight largely boiled down to proving that it was decided by that one instance as the rest of the fight is you trying to recover from that point but being unable to because the Thief ability to easily escape and reset a fight was removed from you by your agreement with the warrior. Had no agreement been made you simply would’ve reset the fight and combat back … likely before bull’s charge and frenzy were off cooldown.
nerva, where’s more videos?! :-p
You and Sol are giving me Ranger video withdrawal ;-)
I’m still very curious to see how this build turns out since it is much more direct damage-focused than any other builds we usually see.
I’m still very curious to see how you skirmish/roam with it as it was definitely useful in large fights.
@Columba:
Yeah, several of the thieves in FTF and PURG have admitted the same thing … though I didn’t stop there … I tested it myself as well … as have a few other guildies.
@Cynical:
(1) If you are unable to keep from getting hit by someone who can’t see you while you can see them, that is a failure on your part. The fact that she knows you are nearby doesn’t really change that much.
(2) The issues with the Thief that I mentioned previously (I gave you a list, it’s very simple) translate from 1v1 to 1vX to small skirmish to large battle. I’ve admitted thieves have trouble in large battles largely because many of you run squishy and stray AOE kills you.
(3) Perhaps you haven’t noticed me say anything about Thief sword being OP despite the fact that it gives a ton of maneuverability for escaping, closing, even stunbreaking. Why don’t I gripe about this? Because I recognize that being good with Thief sword requires skill. How? Because I tried it and wasn’t doing in 5 minutes what I see sword Thieves do. When it comes to the dagger stuff, it took 5 minutes of getting use to an entire class before I was able to do what I’d seen.
@Maug: I’m not trying to argue that a Thief can place protection, etc. on themselves and block like a madman. I’m saying that they can be tanky through use of something like Knight’s gear, stealth, and evasion (both dodge rolls and weapon skills if applicable). For example, I know several thieves like to take the blind-on-stealth trait to help in this department.
@oZii: If you’re behind and her stuff is not even on cooldown, waiting for your cooldowns doesn’t put you any farther behind. She wasn’t waiting on cooldowns so any time in the fight that you are getting yours back was only in your favor.
Secondly, you shadow stepped back for what reason? Open your eyes and realize shadow stepping into her axe is a bad idea. That’d be like me blinking away on the mesmer only to swap right back next to the warrior when I want to buy some time for cooldowns … doesn’t make much sense.
Third, you’ve often said, duels don’t mean anything, so why are you trying to show yourself failing horribly at a duel to try to prove a point?
Fourth, that axe arc is only in the front 180.
So, because of arbitrary rules you forced yourself to follow, thereby limiting yourself, you weren’t able to get behind her? Out of range of her axe? Okay… lol.
Now, how about that whole only 7% mitigation difference?
You mean she had no idea where you were while you were stealthed but you could see her so could move away from her? Wow! Novel concept!
I’d have thought you would’ve already “not sucked” at that from being a Mesmer first, but I guess not.
Now how about you talk about those other points … or you still going with that tactic of ignoring the points that prove you wrong?
How am I reaching? You show yourself get stomped by a warrior who mainly stayed on you auto-attacking.
I ask how you somehow have less mitigation than a warrior when all the info on the web shows that the warrior can only, at best, have 7% more mitigation if you do Knight’s/Cavalier. If you’re going to go through my statements, don’t skip the ones that you don’t an answer for … you’ve been doing that for almost a week now as you do garbage like nitpick the definition of “tanky”.
What does you getting stomped prove other than that you aren’t good at avoiding damage while stealthed and being chased by a warrior with an axe.
I’m not saying you should strive for all vigor and regen, you aren’t a Ranger and hence not built for that. This is why you have stealth. While ranger is actively dodging attacks from a person that can see them, you are supposed to stealth and stop getting hit (which you failed at vs that warrior).
(1) Warrior’s don’t have access to protection, just like Thieves, yet you hold them up as being able to be tanky. I’ve shown that they can get only 7% more mitigation. What is allowing them to be tanky that you can’t do? By your definition, it can’t be Endure Pain (90 sec cooldown btw) which is akin to Mesmer distortion (though inferior!)
(2) Simply having a boon at random times isn’t the same as having near 100% up-time on it.
(3) Having things and not using them correctly proves nothing. Otherwise I could “prove” that Bull’s Charge + Frenzy + Hundred blades “doesn’t do anything scary”.
(4) Soldier’s gear has quite a bit less toughness than Knight’s.
(edited by Sebrent.3625)
Hey Mr. Straw Man, it’s a combination, not a single boon. Vigor doesn’t make you tanky unless you make good use of having twice as many dodge rolls as usual. Regen doesn’t make you tanky if you just take large quantities of damage quickly.
You can continue to try to nitpick what “tanky” is, but it still stands:
By your definition, the Thief is only 7% less tanky than a Guardian or Warrior. Back to the 10,000 vs 9,700 damage example.
Tankiness involves all your abilities. Blocking, dodging, regenerating, blinding, etc. all make someone “tanky”.
But, anyways, back to on-topic. It doesn’t matter which definition you go with. It has already been shown that Knight’s gear makes a Thief quite capable of taking hits and doing good damage.
<edit>A build that is tanky from dodge rolls and avoidance? Go look in the Ranger subforum at the sword+dagger/shortbow builds.
They have quite a number of ways to gain vigor, the two weapon sets have 5 dodges built in (4 in sword+dagger, 1 in shortbow), ways to gain regeneration, 2 sec prot on dodge, and they take play around in any of the Soldier, Rabid, Apoth, Cleric, Knight’s type gear depending on preferences.
(edited by Sebrent.3625)
One thing that I did think about that the pet dodging wouldn’t fix is when you have to dodge AOEs that get placed on a large majority of the map and don’t all fall at the same time. You’d run out of vigor dodging for yourself and your pet as you have to get each to dodge different AOEs.
Because you explicitly mentioned Knight’s gear. If that wasn’t part of “doing crap damage” then why did you mention it as part of that statement?
Mesmer can be tanky … but part of their tankiness is using distortion.
Ranger can be tanky … but part of their tankiness is using their extra dodge rolls built into weapon skills.
… and so on for each class …
Wearing something like Knight’s gear helps you be tanky because the times you are taking damage, you are taking less. This isn’t other MMOs where tankiness is largely damage mitigation from gear.
Your tankiness as a Thief is your ability to dodge roll more than most, stealth, some skills with built in evasion (if you use them), interrupts, and whatever gear you’re wearing.
I don’t see how this is so hard for you to grasp.
It should also be pointed out that Protection does not reduce condition damage. It only affects direction damage which means it affect critical damage.
WvW is suppose to be a esport? I thought that was mentioned for sPvP where thieves are not top of the food chain.
Same classes and same skills. Anything one class can do differently in WvW (food, etc.) another can do as well.
We’ve already gone over why Thieves aren’t top of the food chain in sPvP … it’s largely due to the inability to contest a point while stealthed coupled with the thief’s apparent dependence on stealth.
How do they force the meta of taking toughness and vitality? Necro’s and mesmers forcing me to take condition removal I think they need a nerf! The burst from p/d condition thieves is definitely a problem.
This would be a good point if it wasn’t true that every class in the game can run a condition build (except Guardians … another design failure in my opinion).
To you thats the same as knights gear doesn’t do damage? You gotta be kidding me right lol.
Yes. If I say “put on X gear and this weapon and you’ll do crap damage”, that’s how people would interpret it. In fact, those posts are all over the forums about various things and that’s how people interpret them.
I never said that knights gear makes you better at keeping people in place than zerker gear.
Yes, I know you didn’t. However, in the discussion of Knight’s gear doing damage, you brought up that sword+pistol requires that you need to keep your target in place and that Knight’s doesn’t matter if you don’t have a target (scroll up). I simply replied that I wasn’t aware that Knight’s affected that since the topic was “Thief in Knight’s gear” or, more generally, “tanky thief”. Neither of those affects keeping a target in place for pistol whip.
Seriously, what are you reading what you want? Some one else read it right (outside opinon) but you read it wrong now your trying make claims that you read it right. Rofl.
Honestly, given the above, I’m wondering this about you. You were the one that brought up “you must keep them in place to do damage” … not me.
Go try it with S/P pistol if you find it amusing. Tell me how it goes for you as you mix it up with warriors, guardians, ele’s in melee range duking it out old fashion style with S/P that blackpowder is really going to save you there!
I don’t believe I’ve said anything about Sword+Pistol thieves pretending to be warriors.
This is a great example of straw man though.
Just roll sword/pistol and pistol/pistol or shortbow and take no stealth abilities all knights gear. See how well that plays out for you. Can you do it yes but you pretty much became a warrior with crappy damage who has to go sit in the back when your cooldowns arent up
l2R I hate to say but seriously. I never said you can’t do damage in knights gear. I said if you roll S/P and P/P and shortbow in all knight gear you would become a warrior with crappy damage.
Where did I say knights gear does no damage?
See above, I used bold to make it easy on you.
Saying that is the same thing; just more long-winded with your version.
Also, you expanded the whole “tanky thief” to be “tanky thief with no stealth”. No one has said anything about completely taking away stealth.
In order to do damage with S/P you have to keep the target in place to spam pistol whip.
What difference does it make if knights gear does the same damage as beserker gear if you don’t have a target to hit?
I’m sorry, but when did wearing Knight’s gear instead of Berserker make you less able to keep a target in place? Lol.
Also, I’m amused that the tactic with sword+pistol is “spam pistol whip”. Especially since we’ve already covered that the other Thief tactics are:
Here’s the thing, Cynical, everyone can get those bonuses, food, oils, etc.
It isn’t just duels that Thieves are pulling off crazy crap, it’s in skirmishes as well in on the periphery of large fights.
I have not asked for every class to have everything other classes do. I simply think the Thief should adhere to some of the basic tenets of the game that others have to.
I also think that the Thief provides far too easy rewards for very little skill or risk (depending on what level you’re playing at).
As I’ve said before, Thieves are not a problem for me personally.
They are a problem in the game in that they alone force the meta (see: taking toughness/vitality).
They are a problem in that they have high damage attacks that have no visual or audio cues to give people even a 0.5 sec to react; instead forcing people to guess when to do so.
They are a problem in that they are “supposed to spam” (as stated in your post), which is just bad gameplay in a game that is supposed to be esport quality.
They are a problem in the fact that a good thief can continue to lose a fight while continuing to threaten your character (reset, come back, reset, come back, etc.)
These are not problems with any of the 7 other classes. They are a problem with Thieves alone.
Except he did say those things, magicthighs … which makes it not a Straw man argument.
A thief is squishy because its squishy. I can roll p/d in full carrion but I am still squishy. Just because I have 20k hp doesn’t mean I am not squishy. If you roll p/d full apothecary your not as squishy you just have like 12khp and dont do alot with your condition damage but you heal good. Then your basically a troll build.
Just roll sword/pistol and pistol/pistol or shortbow and take no stealth abilities all knights gear. See how well that plays out for you. Can you do it yes but you pretty much became a warrior with crappy damage who has to go sit in the back when your cooldowns arent up.
A thief is squishy because they are wearing squishy gear … works the same for all classes (imagine that!).
You can do very good damage wearing all Knight’s gear (several people out there do this with several classes, including Thief).
He claims otherwise. Since there is evidence in several videos out there that contradicts his claims, his claims are fallacy.
Since he did make those claims, this isn’t a straw man argument.
Nice try but failed execution.
It doesn’t change how it works. You have a different base hp/armor than a warrior, that’s a duh that I don’t think I should have to cover every time.
You wearing full Knight’s makes you have almost the same damage mitigation as the warrior and the difference, as shown, is negligible.
You can try to nitpick the language I use. I’ll stick with the fact that your arguments that [(1) A thief can’t be tanky & (2) You can’t do damage in knight’s gear] were another fallacy.
Hey Cynical, I’m well-aware of how toughness works. I’m also aware that Mesmers (light armor) are doing quite well in Knight’s armor … as I previously posted. Watch some of SevenMirror’s stuff.
There are also Engineers and Rangers that are wearing +toughness gear.
If you actually know what the differences are between light, medium, and heavy armor it’s a ~14% difference between light and heavy. ~7% difference between medium and heavy. So what’s the issue here? for every 100 damage you’d take, a warrior takes 93. 1,000 to you is 930 to the warrior. Oh no, he took 70 less damage than you. I guess that warrants you being stealth for a majority of the fight while he has to stay visible and dodge roll attacks from people that can actually see him, lol. Just like Rangers, Engineers, Necros, Elementalists, etc. do.
But yeah … If you could backstab a Thief for 10,000 damage, you’d only backstab the warrior in the same set of gear for 9,300. Lol! You sure told me! :-p
The argument that all the skills that are on cooldowns are so much more powerful than thief skills that use initiative is absurd. Go take a look at the various skills out there. You’ll find both good, average, and bad skills on the various weapon sets all with cooldowns.
As far as being tanky in Knights … plenty of those Thief vs Zerg videos show Thieves in Knight’s gear doing great damage. Heck, in the Mesmer forum we have Grimm/SevenMirror who runs in Knight’s gear and does quite well. Knight’s has good damage. It’s not Berserker power and crit dmg but you have a ton of damage mitigation in Knight’s. The fact that you’re a Thief doesn’t magically change how the same gear available to everyone works.
I never said that Thieves are the only reason people take toughness/vitality. However, Thief is the only class where people’s advice is to take those stats so you can fight against the Thief. The reason the advice is so is, as I and others previously mentioned, because you can’t see some of the Thief’s burst so reacting to it is a non-option outside of guessing (lol).
Heck, non-stealth, compare Steal as a closer to Bull’s Charge. I see that warrior sliding towards me. The Thief simply changes from up to 900 range (1,200 traited) from me to instantly next to me. Elementalist Ride the Lightning, Ranger Swoop, etc. are just like Bull’s Charge. People see them.
Yes, in sPvP, players have access to all pets.
However, there is also WvW, another form of PvP.
Recent posts have ANet mentioning they are thinking of WvW as a form of end-game content.
Much earlier posts by ANet had mentioned that HoM rewards would not give in-game advantages to players.
Ever since Rangers were no longer allowed to take 2 pets of the exact same type, having access to the HoM pet rewards has been an in-game advantage.
Those without the Black Moa cannot have 2 Moa pets with a Daze.
Those without the Rainbow Jellyfish cannot have 2 Jellyfish pets with a Chill.
Those without the White Raven cannot have 2 Birds pets with that great burst damage.
Those without the Black Widow cannot have 2 Spider pets with a stun.
These are in-game advantages for Rangers with the appropriate number of HoM points when we were told people would not have in-game advantages from HoM points.
What you guys are faily to grasp about the “building against thieves” being different from the regular “building against burst” is the fact that since other classes are actually visible with all their high-damage skills, people can counter burst through use of active skills like dodging, blocking, blind, interrupts, etc.
Against a thief, we have to guess when you hit steal, backstab, etc. and that’s assuming you came at us from a direction we were looking on our screen and not already stealthed from hitting someone/something else nearby.
I don’t have to stack vitality/toughness to survive a glass cannon warrior. I can simply see and react to his burst attempts.
10 points in Arms = +50% Bleed Duration
Rare Veggie Pizza = +40% Condition Duration
get 10% from 10 points in Strength, Sigil of Agony, or some Runes.You’ve now hit the cap (100%) for bleed duration and only used 10 to 20 trait points and your food.
With 100% bleed duration:
Sword auto-attacks is a 16 second bleed
Sword throw is a 24 second bleed
Longbow immobilize is 6 24 second bleeds.
You can bleed on-crit from 5 pts in Arms.
You can bleed on-crit from Superior Sigil of Earth.Condition removal doesn’t mean much when auto-attack is stacking 1 to 3 bleeds on the target per hit and other abilities are putting 4 to 6 bleeds on them on fairly short cooldowns.
Uhg, don’t ever get 100% bleed duration! Why!?
If you’re hitting 25 bleed stacks, that just means you’re wasting your damage! If your bleeds never have a chance to drop off because they’re replaced, that’s just as bad as having multiple bleeders in your group! Not to mention anyone else applying minor bleeds basically gets their damage cut off too.
If anything, you want pure condition damage to get the best damage out per-bleed. Until the devs fix bleed stacks/condition damage, the best place to sit is around 18-20 stacks of bleed with spikes reaching 25. When you start sticking to 25 stacks, you need to start stacking that burn duration. If that’s covered, you need poison. Confusion is not that good in PvE but nice in PvP so pick your situation.
Guys, you’re assuming that you’re going to get 25 stacks of bleed on someone consistently and that you’re trading large amount of damage per second to get a 100% increase in duration.
Please go to gw2buildcraft.com and check out that you don’t really get that much otherwise. Also, please realize that 100% duration increase is a 100% damage increase. Does it take more time? Yes. But making bleeding do 5 more damage per second with over 100 more condition damage is nowhere near that. Even with 25 stacks that’s only 125 extra damage per second.
Additionally, that extra condition damage affects your cripples, immobilizes, burning (now the longbow’s burns are 3s each instead of 2), weakness, etc. +50% condition duration when an immobile/slow-moving target is a dead target for a warrior? Yes please.
Lastly, long bleeds keep your target from resetting the fight. If every auto-attack you put on your enemy puts 16 seconds of bleed on them, that’s another 16 seconds they have to wait out before they can reset the fight.
Or they could, you know, cleanse.
I get that more duration helps your other conditions too but the post I quoted had Agony sigils, +bleed trait and runes…none of which affect anything but bleeds. Going for high condition duration with the prospect of applying many different conditions? I agree whole heartedly. Going for specifically 100% bleed or close is rather a waste. You might get more outright damage by improving something else…like direct damage…i.e. a sigil of air or fire to eek out some extra hits with your crits.
What I discussed did not make use of two sigils so you could still take sigil of fire or sigil or air. In fact, even using 1 sigil was one of three options for gaining that last +10% condition duration. One of the other options was simply to have 10 or more points in strength, a trait line that increases your power and has some great traits.
I agree that one would be pretty crappy for thieves. If they did anything like that they would have to give them the first second or two immunity from it breaking and even then I’m not sure it’s fair … most stealth is 3 seconds (4 with shadow arts trait).
Two would be nice and makes sense for the same reason specified by TheGuy.
Ha ha, I’m with you there. Only thing in that last post I disagree with is the 3 warriors.
They have to chain together some CC in order to do something to me. Warriors wreck targets that aren’t moving :-p Moving targets generally live. If I create a gap, they have to close it and they can’t spam a single ability constantly to keep doing that. If they hundred blades, fail. whirlwind, good job. Blade throw, decent as well. Rush, lol it’s buggy but I won’t dog them too much. Burst skill? LMAO (for greatsword).
See? The noob thieves just know they can hit 2 2 2 2 2 2 and the person will either blow several defenses to get away from their gangbang party or they’ll get a kill.
Wait, dying as a class is an indicator of playing it to its full potential? I’m calling shenanigans!
Sort of. If you never die, why is that? Did you run instead of try to stomp a guy you downed in the middle of a guild group? What if you could have pulled off that stomp? Wouldn’t that have been better? You will never know because you didn’t try. Most of my Thief deaths are from trying to stomp when there are decent players around. Yea I die doing that quite a bit, but the times I pull them off and get away make it much better. Those are the types of memories that cause QQ posts on forums, not playing conservative and running away when you think you might go down.
Stiv, what you’re talking about is more “pushing your limits” or “testing your luck”. Everyone dies. With thieves it’s usually because they get too aggressive or their escape route ran them into a group of good players.
Whether or not you die is a poor indicator of whether or not you are playing your class to its fullest. If it was a good indicator of this, all those mouthbreathers out there are bloody gurus :-p
The fact that you think Rangers are a complete faceroll class because you “lvled” one up pretty much tells me everything i need to know about your opinion on the subject.
and Thieves the weakest class in Pve?
Rofl…
i will give you that thieves blow kitten underwater (at least in my opinion)
On land though…No..
Yes, Ranger is a simple class with a low skill cap. Especially in PVE.
But enlighten us, who and why is weaker than thieves in PVE? Particularly high end PVE.
OMG, you want to talk about high-end PVE? What is that exactly? The high level fractals? Do you have even a clue at the issues currently facing Rangers there? Perhaps you should take a look over at Robert Hrouda’s posts (ArenaNet Dev, since I assume you’re ignorant of this as well).
Here’s a glaring one, pet’s dying extremely easily in dungeons because some areas even calling the pet back isn’t sufficient (Ranger controls over the pet are very primitive).
Pets having no Agony Resistance even though the Ranger does.
All pets suck in this game. Ask the Necros if they have any sympathy for the Rangers. But that doesn’t mean that the Ranger is any less useful than the Thief. If you think pets are dieing easily, what do you think is happening to squishy thieves in melee range?
Well, the bad thieves die in melee. The good ones make good use of dodge rolls, chain blinding, etc.. Other thieves decide they will use range.
Let me know when Ranger suddenly can change their class mechanic the way a Thief (or any class) changes their weapon sets.
And before you mention “Ranger has ranged pets!”, that doesn’t help against the AOE circles that attack people at range or the projectiles bosses send out at every player and their pet. Not all bosses have only melee skills. Heck, even without talking about bosses, look at the fire circles on the cliffside fractal. The pet isn’t smart enough to stand in that small space so it just dies to the fire.
There is a big difference between beta and BWEs.
There is an even bigger difference between playing in BWEs and participating in bug reports, reading up patch notes, testing them, and providing feedback.You don’t know anything about me, my experience, what I do for a living or what I did during the beta events. Programmer btw, for many years. I know a thing or two about bugs.
Given how uninformed your answers are on here, you’re probably one of the programmers my group gets fired each year after we show all the holes in your crap for the 20th time.
Oh really … let’s take a look around then shall we …
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Video-Infinite-Stealth-dagger-pistol-SB/first#post1511492What was that you said about “if you played thief, you would know these things” … what does this say about you?
Also, if you read the previous posts, mesmer illusions and ranger pets were brought up. Both are trivial targets to continuously cloak and dagger on as are the multitude of NPCs in WvW.
Really? That’s your “perma stealth” example? Clearly we’re talking about different things here.
First of all, it is not “perma stealth” in combat. It’s not even “perma” (anything that requires constant active refreshing is not perma). But I do agree that it’s cheesy and lame, and can be game breaking if used right. I wouldn’t have a problem if devs found a way to prevent it (a simple cap on stealth duration would suffice), but seeing how that “utility” is one of few (only?) reasons why anyone would ever want a thief in their dungeon group, some compensation would be required at the same time.
But coming back to what I was saying, in combat “perma stealth” is not possible aside from the culling assisted method that I described. The method that you link does not allow ANY attacking since 1) it ends the stealth immediately, 2) puts a reveal debuff on you.
Btw, if anyone does try using this tactic against you in combat, what exactly are you doing while those clearly visible smoke circles are down with a big “ATTACK HERE” target over them?
That’s exactly the stealth I was talking about with Engineer that ArenaNet said “we don’t want this” and removed. Again, if you had actually taken part in helping the game’s development, you would know this… or if you had even paid attention to the patch notes.
Engineer has never had anything close to C&D or BlackPowder + Heartseeker. While what they were able to do was like BlackPowder + Heartseeker in that it was a combo, they did it with smoke bomb which is on a 25 second cooldown so it was nowhere near what the Thief can do.
Please try harder to make sure you know what is being discussed before you chime in.
I completely agree that I should die 2v1 if they are my skill level. It’s just against the really bad mouthbreathers that Thieves are still actually dangerous. Horrible players playing other classes don’t really bother me and they don’t seem to bother others either.
Hunter’s Shot can give pet perma swiftness… which can make a big difference in the amount of damage your pet lands on human foes.
Mind grabbing the steady longbow in mists and testing that on the running golem? I imagine you’ll still find that it isn’t a big improvement … especially if the golem had a 25% movement signet or swiftness their self.
I’m not for reducing the pet’s contribution to the Ranger’s damage. I go condition damage, my pet tears face with direct damage and it works really well. They can apply pressure while I’m tanky or being defensive. It works really well … when it works. That’s the issue … when it works.
Pets hitting moving targets in PvP is an issue. Pets staying alive in dungeons is an issue.
Pets staying alive (reasonably) in large fights is an issue.
If you solve these issues, we’re pretty golden … at least silver ;-)
I’ll try to find it. I believe it was in one of their video interviews that was on the frontpage of guildwars2guru. If you find it before me, feel free to post it … date night tonight with the wife (I know, on server reset day, I’m a horrible person!).
As I’ve said before on several posts now, I personally am not having trouble fighting thieves 1v1. A group of 3 noobs that pop haste and spam heartseeker is a different story. I see those thief groups becoming somewhat common and it’s ridiculous. When a group of 3 noobs pops quickness on any other class I don’t care and still kill them. 3 Thieves is bloody annoying. Down one and they will get stealthed by their 2 buds and teleport away to be rezzed. It’s VERY easy to do. If it was hard to do, I wouldn’t mind and I’d commend them … like I do good engineers.
I disagree when caught 1/2 health by a non-thief. I roam solo a good bit and there are plenty of times a non-thief jumps me in the middle of me fighting someone and I escape quite easily. Thief is a different animal because they stealth enough to be very hard to control and they are far faster than me (i’m a bloody mesmer!). My one record on getting away on this is running all the way from the enemy’s north camp to just past Hills (east keep) before the Thief finally ran me down (with his friends dragging butt way behind) … and this was with Focus traited and Centaur runes. I don’t know how many times I crippled him and then pulled him back with Temporal Curtain but it was just never enough. I even tried changing directions and juking with clones but his speed was more than enough.
Elementalist is very fast and can be equally annoying, but when they ride the lightning is the best time to escape from them. You change direction and good day. Thief also has 1,200 range shadowstep, steal, etc.. If they are a sword thief, good God. I will admit to jealousy of Sword thieves. That’s a beautiful weapon.
I agree that full tanks are often useless, unless it’s something like a bubble guardian, hammer warrior, etc. intended to push a zerg, CC, cause mayhem, etc.. Those are some of the thankless heroes of WvW where most people are simply “duh, I hit stuff”, lol.
1v3 shouldn’t be any contest and you shouldn’t be able to get away regardless of their class if even 2 of them are even average players. But you’re correct… and I’ve also been able to get away in such situations… including vs thieves (imo it’s not that hard to do as a mesmer with proper stunbreaks/stealth/invuln). I’ve gone str8 into groups of 5+ and been able to get away on all of my 80’s… but in both situations I would put their skill at about the same as grazing cattle. Sorry that I wasn’t more clear about what I meant. Again… I don’t think the game should be balanced based off of those.
And dude… GW2 > RL… your wife will still be there after GW2 isn’t around anymore… get your priorities str8… :P
I agree that it shouldn’t be balanced around 1v3, but 3 mouthbreathers shouldn’t be able to just target me and bash 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 to kill me. Distortion is great but only 4 seconds at most and then I have blurred frenzy for another 2 and maybe another 4 if I’m traited and can get out 3 more illusions quickly. Blinking away they keep hitting it and leaping at me, it’s ridiculous. I have gotten away plenty but there are plenty of times I haven’t as well and it’s ridiculous that hitting 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 does that.
When a group of 3 mouthbreathers just auto-attacks me and uses everything when off-cooldown it isn’t nearly as effective and they are at least using multiple skills that include even some CC.
That’s the advice of a non-married man … i prefer to not have to sleep with one eye open.
The problem with this is I do play another class that I now consider my main (getting any ascended junk I get anyway).
I feel your pain here … I hate getting non-ascended rings now … I only have so many globs, vials, etc. to put into the mystic toilet and magic find at higher levels in fractals is frowned upon and I sure as heck don’t want to be weaker anyways.
Thieves can get away a good amount depending on how conservative they play. If you aren’t dying occasionally on your Thief you aren’t playing it to it’s full potential. Thieves have great mobility and juking with stealth but we aren’t the fastest.
Wait, dying as a class is an indicator of playing it to its full potential? I’m calling shenanigans!
The fact that you think Rangers are a complete faceroll class because you “lvled” one up pretty much tells me everything i need to know about your opinion on the subject.
and Thieves the weakest class in Pve?
Rofl…
i will give you that thieves blow kitten underwater (at least in my opinion)
On land though…No..
Yes, Ranger is a simple class with a low skill cap. Especially in PVE.
But enlighten us, who and why is weaker than thieves in PVE? Particularly high end PVE.
OMG, you want to talk about high-end PVE? What is that exactly? The high level fractals? Do you have even a clue at the issues currently facing Rangers there? Perhaps you should take a look over at Robert Hrouda’s posts (ArenaNet Dev, since I assume you’re ignorant of this as well).
Here’s a glaring one, pet’s dying extremely easily in dungeons because some areas even calling the pet back isn’t sufficient (Ranger controls over the pet are very primitive).
Pets having no Agony Resistance even though the Ranger does.
I’ve been with the game since BE1. Nice try at discrediting people who don’t agree with your bs.
There is a big difference between beta and BWEs.
There is an even bigger difference between playing in BWEs and participating in bug reports, reading up patch notes, testing them, and providing feedback.
Perma stealth is a myth. The closest thing you can get is CnDing after letting stealth run out on its own. With talents, that’s 4s after every CnD. So “perma stealth” = CnD every 4s, which requires having both initiative and a target to land it on. Outside of culling bug (which is getting fixed in next patch) that never has and never will be perma stealth. There are other tricks that can grant you extended stealth by chaining some utility cooldowns together, but it’s still far from perma stealth.
If you played a thief, you would know these things.
Oh really … let’s take a look around then shall we …
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Video-Infinite-Stealth-dagger-pistol-SB/first#post1511492
What was that you said about “if you played thief, you would know these things” … what does this say about you?
Also, if you read the previous posts, mesmer illusions and ranger pets were brought up. Both are trivial targets to continuously cloak and dagger on as are the multitude of NPCs in WvW.
I’ll try to find it. I believe it was in one of their video interviews that was on the frontpage of guildwars2guru. If you find it before me, feel free to post it … date night tonight with the wife (I know, on server reset day, I’m a horrible person!).
As I’ve said before on several posts now, I personally am not having trouble fighting thieves 1v1. A group of 3 noobs that pop haste and spam heartseeker is a different story. I see those thief groups becoming somewhat common and it’s ridiculous. When a group of 3 noobs pops quickness on any other class I don’t care and still kill them. 3 Thieves is bloody annoying. Down one and they will get stealthed by their 2 buds and teleport away to be rezzed. It’s VERY easy to do. If it was hard to do, I wouldn’t mind and I’d commend them … like I do good engineers.
I disagree when caught 1/2 health by a non-thief. I roam solo a good bit and there are plenty of times a non-thief jumps me in the middle of me fighting someone and I escape quite easily. Thief is a different animal because they stealth enough to be very hard to control and they are far faster than me (i’m a bloody mesmer!). My one record on getting away on this is running all the way from the enemy’s north camp to just past Hills (east keep) before the Thief finally ran me down (with his friends dragging butt way behind) … and this was with Focus traited and Centaur runes. I don’t know how many times I crippled him and then pulled him back with Temporal Curtain but it was just never enough. I even tried changing directions and juking with clones but his speed was more than enough.
Elementalist is very fast and can be equally annoying, but when they ride the lightning is the best time to escape from them. You change direction and good day. Thief also has 1,200 range shadowstep, steal, etc.. If they are a sword thief, good God. I will admit to jealousy of Sword thieves. That’s a beautiful weapon.
I agree that full tanks are often useless, unless it’s something like a bubble guardian, hammer warrior, etc. intended to push a zerg, CC, cause mayhem, etc.. Those are some of the thankless heroes of WvW where most people are simply “duh, I hit stuff”, lol.
Heck, engineer was changed because they could perma-stealth with their smoke field and mine kit (back when it was a kit) or bomb kit … yet ArenaNet is allowing thieves to do it now several months later. That doesn’t sit right with me.
It doesn’t matter if it doesn’t sit right with you. Thief is meant to be a stealth based class, engineer isn’t.
They removed it because they didn’t want perma-stealth in the game. That was their stance during beta. Here we are several months later with Thieves with perma-stealth.
They didn’t want people with perma-stealth, they wanted a dynamic stealth used when fighting … well … lol.
If you were actually around during beta and took part in finding bugs, reading patch notes, and providing feedback then you would know these things.
Most KB’s don’t have any sort of animation you could react to. It’s a guess and most will blow their two evades right away.
Well, my thief should just use his longbow knockback, I guess, lol.
My mesmer’s focus is great for this, it doesn’t have an animation, but the greatsword most definitely does as do most other knockback skills i.e. hammer warrior spins.
You knock them out during the 3rd second ftw. It’s even better if you stand at one edge and auto attack/aoe that spot and you have a good bet the thief is not on that side of the circle.
Why would I wait for the 3rd second? They’re gaining might and initiative on each tick, healing while stealthed, and removing conditions while stealthed. I knock them out ASAp if I have focus. Greatsword, it’s hit or miss. They can easily dodge.
My personal favorite on my memser when their SR far away from me is to fire up GS#5 then blink to the refuge so that the KB hits instantly when I teleport (similar to C&D+Steal). 90% of the time, it works every time.
That’s awesome … some of us already blew our blink when they jumped us with basilisk venom since the other options result in us eating backstab and other nastiness in the rear.
Also regarding the 2 init back on stealth, that’s trollspecing. Blind and con remove on stealth are much more powerful. Healing in stealth is mandatory.
It’s not just trollspecing. I’ve seen people with tons of toughness but not much healing and no reliable retaliation/confusion get whittled down by this crap.
i remember that the devs cant adjust something drastic in PvE because it will affect WvWvW
maybe a split skill would suffice to balance things out?
Oldgrimm, I think this would be a quick and easy solution that has the potential to bite everyone in the butt later on down the road as then they would have a larger base to try to balance. It’s more things to maintain, juggle, etc.. It does remove the dependencies on each other though.
Honestly, I think Thief needs to be given some more tricks and some of their stealth tweaked.
Heck, engineer was changed because they could perma-stealth with their smoke field and mine kit (back when it was a kit) or bomb kit … yet ArenaNet is allowing thieves to do it now several months later. That doesn’t sit right with me.
Greatsword auto-attack combo has you evading for 42.85% of the auto-attack chain (0.5 + 0.5 + 0.75 = 1.75 sec attack chain … 0.75 / 1.75 = .4285…)
So you’re invulnerable for almost half of the auto-attack chain; assuming that you don’t miss any of the attacks.
Honestly, Prysin, I don’t think things shouldn’t be designed around everyone having high-end gaming keyboards. That excludes people from being able to enjoy it even if they want to as not everyone can afford or wants to learn how to use a Razer Naga (just an example since it’s what I use).
Welcome to the conversation, TheGuy. Perhaps you should read some of the other posts before jumping in …
It’s already been stated that we’re well aware that the Thief build has trouble against tanky builds, particularly ones with retal / confusion. I won’t expand on it any more because I’m tired of typing the same things over and over again to a community that can’t or refuses to scroll up and read.
Most of you stealthy thieves are traited to regain 2 initiative when you stealth. This makes C&D 4 initiative. You regenerate 3 initiative in the 4 seconds you’re stealthed. 4 – 3 = 1 initiative. Not a very high cost. Even if you come out of that after 2.6 seconds it’s only a cost of 2 initiative.
Stability is overrated. You know what people do to someone with stability? Cripple, immobilize, chill.
Elementalist is a bad class to use as an example because ArenaNet has even said that that class is a bit too much at the moment. Notice, they nerfed ride the lightning to be 33% longer cooldown than it was before (15 * 1.33 = 20). Furthermore, you can see the Elementalist when he does mist form so groups usually just follow the mist and kill the few seconds later that the Ele pops out.
Stealth is extremely powerful in that you lose target and can’t follow them either. Add to that the fact that it does so much for the Thief thanks to the Shadow Arts line and it get a bit ridiculous. When it comes to people pushing a Thief out of Shadow Refuge, most thieves are smart enough to dodge roll in their shadow refuge and/or stand behind the enemy that rushes into it to try something. If you don’t, I’m sorry that you fail at successfully using shadow refuge.
@Oka: don’t just jump in without reading. How many times do I have to post that I would be fine with buffing something else the thieves have if that would allow them to be better in PvE while fixing some of the garbage in WvW. I’m well aware of what Thieves can and can’t do.
@Cynical: yes, I know that’s 10 pts in Acrobatics, just wasn’t clear when I typed it. It isn’t very hard to get. Most go even farther dodge roll more which also works wonderfully which dropping caltrops when you dodge roll (yes, I know this is a trait too).
(edited by Sebrent.3625)
10 points in Arms = +50% Bleed Duration
Rare Veggie Pizza = +40% Condition Duration
get 10% from 10 points in Strength, Sigil of Agony, or some Runes.You’ve now hit the cap (100%) for bleed duration and only used 10 to 20 trait points and your food.
With 100% bleed duration:
Sword auto-attacks is a 16 second bleed
Sword throw is a 24 second bleed
Longbow immobilize is 6 24 second bleeds.
You can bleed on-crit from 5 pts in Arms.
You can bleed on-crit from Superior Sigil of Earth.Condition removal doesn’t mean much when auto-attack is stacking 1 to 3 bleeds on the target per hit and other abilities are putting 4 to 6 bleeds on them on fairly short cooldowns.
Uhg, don’t ever get 100% bleed duration! Why!?
If you’re hitting 25 bleed stacks, that just means you’re wasting your damage! If your bleeds never have a chance to drop off because they’re replaced, that’s just as bad as having multiple bleeders in your group! Not to mention anyone else applying minor bleeds basically gets their damage cut off too.
If anything, you want pure condition damage to get the best damage out per-bleed. Until the devs fix bleed stacks/condition damage, the best place to sit is around 18-20 stacks of bleed with spikes reaching 25. When you start sticking to 25 stacks, you need to start stacking that burn duration. If that’s covered, you need poison. Confusion is not that good in PvE but nice in PvP so pick your situation.
Guys, you’re assuming that you’re going to get 25 stacks of bleed on someone consistently and that you’re trading large amount of damage per second to get a 100% increase in duration.
Please go to gw2buildcraft.com and check out that you don’t really get that much otherwise. Also, please realize that 100% duration increase is a 100% damage increase. Does it take more time? Yes. But making bleeding do 5 more damage per second with over 100 more condition damage is nowhere near that. Even with 25 stacks that’s only 125 extra damage per second.
Additionally, that extra condition damage affects your cripples, immobilizes, burning (now the longbow’s burns are 3s each instead of 2), weakness, etc. +50% condition duration when an immobile/slow-moving target is a dead target for a warrior? Yes please.
Lastly, long bleeds keep your target from resetting the fight. If every auto-attack you put on your enemy puts 16 seconds of bleed on them, that’s another 16 seconds they have to wait out before they can reset the fight.
Between your idea and improved AI for pets, Vox, Rangers could avoid their pets being insta-gibbed (assuming the Defy Pain did actually prevent going 100% to 0%) as it would allow the Ranger to see their pet’s health drop to almost dead and the icon for Defy Pain pop for 2-3 seconds. That would let them know that they have 2-3 seconds to swap their pet or tell it to get it’s butt back to them or it’s going to likely die very soon.
Any of these in particular that are your favorites? ;-)
For my Mesmer to reset, I have to blow some cooldowns. Often two against fast opponents (most anyone not a mesmer, lol).
Elementalist ride the lightning, blink, mist form. 20+ cooldowns.
Warrior is a different animal, i’ll give you that I can make a warrior pretty darn hard to stop … unless people are spamming cripple/chill/immobilize on him.
Thief simply stealths and is done. Thanks to Shadow Arts, Thief stealths and now they are removing conditions, gained might, healing, and maybe moving +50% speed.
The Warrior and Elementalist have speed but no stealth.
The Mesmer has stealth but no speed.
The Thief has both stealth and speed.
I like how the advice for Rangers is “be a trap build”. That’s great. It’s what I do, but being pigeonholed is pretty cruddy.
My advice would to be reroll another class until ANet fixes rangers.
That’s why I have my Mesmer and Elementalist :-p
Engineer and Warrior coming soon ;-)
QQ more. Game never has and never will be balanced around WvWvW.
This happens in sPvP matches too where it is supposed to be balanced. A thief can simply leave the fight. Thankfully, they made it so Thieves can no longer contest points while stealthed.
Also, “so what, it’s never going to be balanced” isn’t really a great answer for people discussing whether something is balanced or not. It’s pretty much you admitting that it isn’t.
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