Guild Wars 2

While in a match when the new build message showed we got stuck in the map after the match was over. Exited the game to patch up and when I came back we had the “Match in Progress” message. I left HotM, logeed out for over 10 minutes and now the Match in Progress" part is missing and I can join Hot Joins but Ranked and Unranked keep giving me the Abandoning Queue message like when you leave or lose or add a party member.

Love the F2 ability. Instead of feeling like you have to use the stolen item quickly you can use it at your leisure, ie. when it is best for you or if you need to steal again just steal and get a new item. I also noticed with Improvisation you could potentially keep 7% damage increase from Rune of the Engineer from holding a stolen item.

Obsidia.5127:

evilapprentice.6379:

Obsidia.5127:

Shadow.1345:

Obsidia.5127:

Crit Strikes is by far the worst choice. It’s for PvE and I would be shocked if I saw anyone using it in sPvP. I mean, GOOD LUCK dealing with conditions with that build.

DPS showed this as one of the best lines for damage to combine with DA. Unrelenting Strikes + No Quarter for the massive uptime on Fury after getting the foe down to 50% and if you take Panic Strike + Executioner that is pretty much instant death on anyone once they reach that 50% health threshold.

I have to completely disagree with that statement and people that play on a high tier also disagree with that statement.

I guess you are NA.

“High Tier” EU certainly doesn’t take ‘Crit Strikes’ as a serious option at all from speaking to Levin, Sindrener and a couple of others from ORNG.

I would rather have incredible survivibility over some Ferocity… Fury doesn’t even matter as you can get permanent Fury with Pack Runes & Thrill of the Crime anyway.

Did they give you a signed document saying that they don’t take crit strikes? I mean, I wouldn’t normally insist on one, but considering the patch has been like for ~18 hours, I’m finding it hard to believe you’re citing precedent.

Seriously, the patch literally just dropped – neither you or anyone else knows without a shadow of a doubt if SA is superior to CS, or vice versa. You can pretend and be pretentious all you want, whatever you need to get through the day, but let’s just all settle down and see where things are in 2 weeks across all the classes.

It’s just obvious that SA is far superior to CS – Sorry.

We’ll see…

Yes I am from NA and that’s your opinion. Not that you having a differing opinion bothers me, in fact it’s quite the opposite. I find that people having differing opinions on what is superior shows their is some diversity and to me that’s a welcoming sign of things to come. DPS also in the feed did say SA was an option to take instead of CS so again it’s really more about what people prefer. Even in SA line there are things people see as superior, like Venomous Aura vs. Shadow’s Rejuvenation.

evilapprentice.6379:

Shadow.1345:

Obsidia.5127:

Crit Strikes is by far the worst choice. It’s for PvE and I would be shocked if I saw anyone using it in sPvP. I mean, GOOD LUCK dealing with conditions with that build.

DPS showed this as one of the best lines for damage to combine with DA. Unrelenting Strikes + No Quarter for the massive uptime on Fury after getting the foe down to 50% and if you take Panic Strike + Executioner that is pretty much instant death on anyone once they reach that 50% health threshold.

I have to completely disagree with that statement and people that play on a high tier also disagree with that statement.

Glad I’m not the only one who feels this way.

BTW, the 50% in the notes is a typo – it’s 90%, just like karl said. Functionally, it’s permafury, and targets just melt.

Oh really? NICE! So basically > 90% get a baseline extra crit chance and damage, < 90% get permafury and a buff to ferocity. Stack it with PS and Executioner and I can see where that is just some insane single target DPS. I might try it sometime. Right now I have actually been having a blast running a hybrid trap thief.

+1

I love this patch as well.

The changes to conditions have made conditions viable again. Sure the damage is a little crazy right now but they have addressed that and said they will work on it. Getting that middle road between OP and UP is not that easy. Anyone who thinks it is has never tried to do it.

Also from what I have seen it has brought back some diversity to builds. I have seen different builds people have shown to be effective and have even run my own build reasonably effectively (if not a bit squishy). Taking stats away from the trait lines helps with this because it doesn’t make that trait line a requirement for your stats allowing the choice of traits to make that decision and not stat points.

I disagree with the statement that has been seen a bunch that this patch reduced diversity due to lack of adaptability to a new thing and imagination from the people saying their isn’t. I have listened to different theory crafting ideas and find different things that can be done with traits and worked with that. Every meta build was just somebody’s theory before it became meta. Also keeping in mind that the meta is what people at the top tier of talent are doing. 98-99% of the people in PvP are not top tier and don’t work to be top tier like they do, we just play the game.

Hating change is a natural thing. Humans do it a lot because it takes us out of our comfort zone. So many things change and people hate it at first but once you start getting used to it you find it was better than before. You just have to start by not being afraid of being taken out of that comfort zone, which is where the root of hate of a new way of doing things comes from. Fear of the unknown.

Obsidia.5127:

Crit Strikes is by far the worst choice. It’s for PvE and I would be shocked if I saw anyone using it in sPvP. I mean, GOOD LUCK dealing with conditions with that build.

DPS showed this as one of the best lines for damage to combine with DA. Unrelenting Strikes + No Quarter for the massive uptime on Fury after getting the foe down to 50% and if you take Panic Strike + Executioner that is pretty much instant death on anyone once they reach that 50% health threshold.

I have to completely disagree with that statement and people that play on a high tier also disagree with that statement.

The city looks great and is now my favorite city. Excellent job ANet.

Did hell just freeze over? Someone actually asked for a nerf to necromancer?

SA is as they said the support line. It has some selfish traits like Shadow’s Rejuvenation but it’s primarily the support trait line. Besides for 1v1 CS is a much better line for the that Fury up time.

Ponkie Poe.5043:

MomentofWeakness.1246:

snip

Well apparently the base game is worth $0 now because HoT is the full price of the base game when it was new, all this complaining about how just because we have played the game already that we should be “grateful” for everything ‘glorious overlord’ AENet has given us and that if we don’t like it we are just ‘ungrateful entitled players’, so what if we have spent time on it? does that make us less important as players to the extent where we should pay full price again? the free char slot is negligible as you can buy them for the equivalent of $5 USD, Advantage over new players, please it takes all of a few hours in EotM to max a char’s level and earn a ton of gold in the process or just buy gold with gems since we should just throw money carelessly at AENet regardless of what is given in exchange. AENET places no value on the time spent by players in game and having these “Experiences” had in game and that despite supporting the game since its release we should pay a total of double what players who have just joined pay, shouldn’t it cost the same for content regardless of playtime? or is that just ‘too much to ask’ in your eyes? don’t get me wrong i want HoT but it is unfair that people pay more if they have already bought the game.

“Glorious overlord”? That’s a bit melodramatic. It’s a game and if you don’t like it and think the company is somehow oppressing you then by all means you have the right to spend your time elsewhere. There’s FF14 for the price of 12.99-14.99 a month. Or you could go to SWTOR and do the play for free limited version if you find sub fees to be oppressive and still get their “amazing” Living Story content in the form of rakhghoul outbreaks every few months, aka get attacked by mobs in safe areas and trolled by players with the disease.

People who have played before are not paying more. They are paying the same price as everyone else for HoT. You just got to play all this time and will get to play up until release. People have complained that GW2 isn’t getting more players and the company needs to address that, so they have by doing this and people are complaining about what they personally get. It’s childish and selfish.

Let me ask you this, when was the last time a game company ever gave you extra content for free? Because that is what all the living story stuff was over the years. Extra content. For free.

ANet is a business and business need profits to continue and contrary to popular believe by uninformed idiots, most businesses operate in the red for at least half of the year. That means they are operating on loans they have to repay. That means they are in debt not thriving and rolling around in a money swimming pool. Black Friday is called that because that is when most retail businesses finally get out of the red and into the black in that current fiscal year. They aren’t robbing you and laughing to the bank, they are staying in business. Welcome to the real world. This isn’t a utopia and it’s not communism either. It’s capitalism and ANet and NCSoft are businesses, not non-profit organizations.

Sure, Shadowstep > Backstab > Shadow Return & Clear Condi > Stealth > Backstab.

Or… trait with Trickster for Backstab > Caltrops & Clear Condi > Stealth > Backstab.

Revealed being a condi seems like a great idea.

Nomad.4301:

Second is Hidden Thief, another trait that seems good on the surface but is actually pretty useless to D/D for 2 reasons, first if you run the Mug trait currently any damage cause by mug will immediately cancel out the stealth caused by HT leaving you with nothing but 3 seconds of revealed.
Second is a D/D staple and one of the main reasons this isn’t used; the CnD/Steal combo which is universally better to use for stealth due to its high damage and synergy with Mug, running this trait would cause the combo to reveal you instantly.

No it does the stealth after the damage proc.

It is kinda funny how people have been complaining about thieves are going to camp stealth in Shadow Rejuvenation when so many of the smart thieves are going to be taking Venomous Aura instead. Then the QQing about nerfing thieves will roll in hard.

I don’t know why people are QQing so hard over Consume Conditions when you can just Dagger 4 or Plague Signet 10 stacks of vulnerability onto an enemy after you have healed.

Maybe you meant a level 2 mesmer since you have to get out of the starting area first and that automatically gives you 1 level. Plus mesmers die all the time. Don’t have a clue why you consider them unkillable.

Thief requires the L2P buff to be effective. You must have forgotten to get that buff.

Ranger pets can be killed. You just stab them enough times. Not that many people focus on them but still, can be done.

Elementalists have crap for health and even worse armor than thieves. Just wait until they are in lightning or fire and do all the damage you can on them.

Whoever made this rant must have something wrong with their head.

Fay.2357:

That…wasn’t an opinion up for debate. That was a fact. If all classes are down to 50% on vigor, and thieves trait for 100%, then they’re 2x ahead of all the other classes. Math doesn’t lie.

Engineer:
Adrenal Implant: Endurance regeneration is increased by 50%.
And that’s without having to have vigor.

Impact.2780:

I’d pick venom share over shadow’s rejuvenation even without changing my utilities, just to be able to share basilisk venom.

And comments like this make me think that there is some hope for diversity because some people might look past the usual choice for something innovative and might mix things up some.

Myself I chose to run with Shadow Trap and will even use it to drop in the middle of a team fight for those boons + stealth + shadowstep so I will likely be taking Trapper’s Respite over Mug. It’s a hard choice but it might pay off. Only trying it will tell.

But yeah we will still have those that just go straight for the 6/0/6/0/6 PS build.

You all are as bad as those whiny “I’m leaving the guild” melodramatic posters. Nobody that you don’t communicate with regularly via Skype cares if you are leaving. Just leave with some dignity kitten .

Because no one would use withdraw if it had a cast time. The whole point of it is that is evades and doesn’t have a cast time. If it had a 1 second cast time everyone would just use HiS for a stronger heal + damaging condi removal + stealth > stealth attack.

Khandarus.2738:

My build will be another game

Ovalkvadratcylinder.9365:

Remember all the thieves who tried to defend stealth as a not broken mechanic when there werent any Reveal-skills? They told us to counter them with AOE… well kitten just got real!!

As a thief who defended stealth with that same thing I am now rolling my eyes hard at the QQing thieves because I think this trait is totally fair. Quess thieves will have to l2p now, huh?

As for the thieves whining about one trait doing this we also have one trait that counters this sort of and it’s called Revealed Training. So while they may remove us from stealth with Lock on with Revealed Training they are just giving us a little more damage for the duration.

Ah Henry you were thanking the Devs for the changes and now you’re back to your old stuff a day later.

These new traits make for some interesting ideas for builds and some place there are actually some hard choices. I have noticed a trend of not taking Thrill of the Crime which was like unthinkable before but now people are actually choosing not to take it in the future. I really like the idea of things getting mixed up.

DA and CS look like they could pair up for some nice damage.

Deadly Arts
Trapper’s Respite
Revealed Training
Executioner

Critical Strikes
Flawless Strikes
Practiced Tolerance
No Quarter

Shadow Arts
Shadow’s Embrace
Hidden Thief
Shadow’s Rejuvenation

I love running with the Shadow Trap which when triggered and activating Shadow Pursuit gives 5s of Stealth and Fury and 10 stacks of Might for 10s. With Trapper’s Respite it gives and additional 5 stacks of Might of 8s and 5 stacks of Vulnerability for 10s. I’ll even drop this thing right in the middle of a team fight to give me a sudden shadowstep and stealth. The Fury with the traits in CS line will be a nice addition to critical damage.

IP is already that way, what are you whining about OP?

CETheLucid.3964:

But, yeah. Ignoring a live event to continue dialogue?

“The heroes chat about events or some thing of interest while an actual event happens within their vicinity!”

That kills immersion. I’ve had a few bad experiences with that kind of thing. I’m sure better ones exist out there, I’ve just never bothered reaching out.

If I’m particular about things and they’re particular about things, we’ll likely clash and have issues and I don’t need drama. Not that kind, anyway.

On the inverse the events are triggered so often that it would be all they are doing. Just last week my guild was doing an RP event in Caledon that also incorporated PvE and searching for something. We barely even got through regrouping after an event with a Hylek attack and it triggered again.

I think this is a good trait and I main a thief. I like it that not every class has it and no mesmer doesn’t need it because they have mass invisibility along with other stealth abilities. They are part of what this ability counters but mostly it’s thief this is for. Because thief is a hard counter to mesmer doesn’t mean they should get this to counter thieves. 2 professions can provide team stealth and 1 can provide it in a long duration. Now there are 2 classes that can counter stealth and 1 can do it more reliably. To me I think that seems fairly balanced.

As for thieves crying about this being unfair, well too bad, because other classes have been complaining about stealth attacks being unfair. We just have to roll with this and accept that we will have to play smarter when there is an engi on the opposing team. Stop QQing about it. They got their counterplay to stealth and we don’t have to get revealed just for breathing so I think it’s a fair trade.

Solori.6025:

Shadow.1345:

Counterplay it by not getting hit, kinda like how we have been telling people to counterplay stealth by swinging wildly and not getting hit by backstab.

Sadly it wont be that simple.

Caltrops will reveal you, the dodge bomb will reveal you, there mass amount of spammable AoE will hit you.

We now have a class that completely hardcounters our attempts to backstab by throwing out random AoE.
While honestly, I care very little for the woes of thieves ( I am a mesmer main infiltrator)
I am more concerned with how this invalidates an entire trait line basically every 14seconds (20s ICD -6s Reveal).

This will make stealth play vs an engineer pretty much pointless..
So we will have 3 classes that will basically invalidate stealth as a mechanic.
Hopefully A-net gives us something that makes stealth less important to our burst and DPS.

Sadly it wont be that simple.

Which is the same thing non-thieves have said when we tell them to predict when to dodge and spam attacks to counterplay stealth.

Oh and Dagger training is much better and synergizes with the rest of DA much better.

Compared to what was said before there is some disapointment but overall it’s not that bad and maybe some of them were a little OPish, like Hidden Thief not being a blinding powder. Though that would just add another condi to steal.

I think everyone is pleased to see Last Refuge is no longer a minor trait and getting Merciful Ambush in place of it is not a bad thing. Don’t tell me no one has ever wanted to take it in their build but didn’t because it would waste a major trait slot for helping up a downed ally. And we all know we all didn’t care much for Last Refuge without a Vamp rune to save us from auto-revealed at 25% health.

I admit I was looking forward to auto-dodging projectiles with Don’t Stop but that’s actually pretty nice instead.

Resilience of Shadows getting nerfed is understandable as it’s now a minor trait instead of a major one. The Grandmaster one for the pistols not being around was kind of a bummer though.

Oh and 1200 range steal… yes please.

They’re not bugs. This game isn’t a targeted ability auto lands game. It’s if the projectile or swung weapon actually connects with the target. You have to actually play with some skill and sometimes lead targets. If you want something more like what you want might I suggest SWTOR?

Counterplay it by not getting hit, kinda like how we have been telling people to counterplay stealth by swinging wildly and not getting hit by backstab.

http://imgur.com/a/Zrlj3

Confirmed: Engineers Lock-On trait will reveal stealthed targets when damage is done and add 10 stacks of vulnerability. That’s the kind of counterplay I can get behind.

nearlight.3064:

Exedore.6320:

nearlight.3064:

The fall damage traits are still there though.

Yes, but they now activate on events in addition to fall damage, such as being CC’ed. They were incomplete in the original preview.

okay, that wasn’t clear in your original post.

Yeah that’s why I said combining of traits in that sentence. On their own they were garbage and nobody would take them.

Exedore.6320:

Saying the current system has more choice is subscribing to an illusion; at least half the trait selections are never worth taking, and others are overshadowed. The “low-hanging fruit” problem with powerful adept and master traits also hinders balance and variety.

The new system has a few goals:

• Give each trait line a cohesive playstyle improvement and theme. They tend to be along the lines of a class mechanic, power damage, condi damage, self-survival, group support. When you choose a trait line, you’ll have a good idea of what it should be doing.
• Provide meaningful choices at each level. Currently, there are very few true choices at any trait level. You always have the clear best choice or one of two. By making traits which do similar things compete against each other, ANet can add more variety; players can’t just take every damage trait.
• Improve balance. In the current system, each trait doesn’t just compete with its peers; it competes with every trait in the line and every other trait for that profession. That’s too much to balance and you’ll always have bad traits if you’re trying to keep things interesting.

Exactly. By scaling down and combining some traits they are getting rid of those choices that were garbage(like the falling damage ones) as well as allowing for more traits because you don’t have to take 2, 3 or more traits that synergize across one or more trait lines.

The proposals of the OP are nuts. The only way a thief needs to be buffed is if stealth is nerfed because they are paper. As someone said, roughly 2k armor with 14k health, and that is what I run with and I don’t even have Shadow’s Embrace because I don’t run the PS meta and instead run a CS 2/6/0/0/6 build. Still there is a balance announcement coming out tomorrow and we will see what that is all about. A lot of the spike damage issues are more to do with the sigils Air/Fire which I have said before that I really wish they would remove those because of how their existence forces you to use them as a zerker build (which face it, as thief you run zerker or you’re dead weight).

The thing that makes me stand in defense of stealth and mobility being nerfed is that it is all a thief has for defense. Take away that and they are a glasscannon with no defenses and may as well just be pushed out of the game because noone will play them after that. People complain about a thief having mobility and damage so nicely bundled up in a package however they don’t have anything else. People say the class is insanely overpowered because they excel in those areas while ignoring the fact they are horribly underpowered to the point of nonexistent in all other areas.

After playing a thief for so long I jumped on to play a warrior for the first time without even setting up any kind of metabuild and beyond the opening quest hadn’t played much on the class. It felt like I could roll my face on the keyboard and get kills because of how much damage I could mitigate. For fun I made a tanky well build on a necromancer to just bunker points and compared to thief it feels like I am immortal. With 3k+ armor and near 30k hp I just take multiple backstabs and RF from rangers and just keep going as I laugh maniacally. On thief one RF can pretty much eat my health pool like cake at a kid’s birthday party. Hell, wanna know why thieves generally stealth stomp or SS-stomp? Because we can literally be downed by downed state 1 from any class before the stomp animation finishes. That’s how paper the thief is.

Darksteel.8412:

Shadow.1345:

Provost.6210:

There’s something patently wrong with seeing:

BlockBlockBlockBlo-BlockBlock-Bl-Blo-Bl-BlockBlock7000

Yeah there is something patently wrong with seeing that and what’s wrong is that you are just standing there not doing anything while they swing that many times at you.

no what’s wrong is this: the blocker blocks the stealthed player, aka feels hits on impact but thief doesn’t get revealed. This beyond overpowered and needs to be reverted….you stealth YOU need to watch/time your attacks properly…it’s not like thief doesn’t already have one of the if not the highest burst in game and mobility and self condi cleanse next to ranger

1.) Stealth is magic by lore it doesn’t have to fit into your views of reality.

2.) Best condi cleanse? ROFL. What are you smoking and can I have some of that? Necromancer easily beats thief and ranger on condi cleanse with consume conditions, well of power and dagger 4, even more so if you run a MM build. Shoutbow is very viable in the condi cleanse department too.

3.) Good thieves do watch and time their attacks because good players will turn and cleave their kitten when they see that block message come up instead of standing there QQing about it.

Provost.6210:

There’s something patently wrong with seeing:

BlockBlockBlockBlo-BlockBlock-Bl-Blo-Bl-BlockBlock7000

Yeah there is something patently wrong with seeing that and what’s wrong is that you are just standing there not doing anything while they swing that many times at you.

yolo swaggins.2570:

Rym.1469:

Hold on with judgements till the balance patch.

The balance may as well throw itself out of the window for couple professions, including Thief.

One thing I always wanted to see is more amulets working with Thief, not just Zerker or Condi one.

Hopefully these changes make stealth more of an option rather than a requirement.

Yeah and hopefully opens up to more viable build options.

TheBlackLeech.9360:

The issue is the thief’s mobility and escape ability in relation to its damage potential.

There are no other classes in the game that can truly go full mobility/escape AND dps simultaneously the way that the thief does.

Perhaps the solution is to not nerf thieves, but bring the other professions up to speed.

Warrior for example is severely crippled in one aspect or the other (gearing for mobility sacrifices damage potential and gearing for damage potential sacrifices mobility) and they have been reduced to cap holders in pvp.

Anet has already announced changes that instead of bumping thieves down…. will bump the other classes up.

Only time will tell if this brings balance.

True, Warriors can’t have mobility and such high damage at the same time however they can do a lot of things thieves can’t do. In fact mobility and damage are about the only two things a thief can do. They can’t run support beyond +1ing a fight. They aren’t very good for holding a point, if they even really could. Even if they were to try tun some build for holding a point it would mean not using stealth very much or at all because that runs counter to holding a point.

Also, what is wrong with being able to hold a point? Keeping points capped is crucial to winning. I really don’t know why I don’t see it more often in PvP. If teams actually had someone work on holding a point and communicated more de/backcapping wouldn’t be as big an issue and that would then factor into counterplaying thief mobility.

Laraley.7695:

Shadow.1345:

Laraley.7695:

Shadow.1345:

Kageseigi.2150:

Shadow.1345:

Kageseigi.2150:

Shadow.1345:

though the heal from SR is means staying in an area outlined as the thief is here with 5 pulses for 1865 which gives 9325 health

Sorry, just for personal knowledge… how do you get to that number? According to the wiki, there are 5 pulses that heal for 355 + .18 healing power each. Total is 1,775 + .9 healing power.

I love my Shadow Refuge and all, but it doesn’t love me THAT much! :-P

I can only understand those numbers if Shadow’s Rejuvenation and maybe Shadow Protector are factored in… and still, that’s with sitting around for 20 seconds doing nothing. In other words, that’s longer than a respawn.

I got it from what was on the the tab when I moused over it.

Ah, thank you. What traits are you using? Full Shadow Arts?

At that time I was just running Panic Strikes so I only have 2 in Shadow arts and with a Zerker Amulet and Vampirism Rune. Actually now I am running Critical Strikes build again because I prefer the extra critical strikes and I noticed my mistake. I thought the Healing on the tab was how much it healed per pulse becausewith no Shadow Arts it is 1,775. I thought 9k seemed off cause I never seemed to heal for that much in actuality.

Maybe check the information before you’re posting since saying stuff like ‘’sr heals for almost 10K’’ is definitely adding fuel to the fire and not helping the thieves cause. Seing as many people here never picked up thief, the misinformation can spread.

So yes, the healing written on tab of sr is the cummulative healing you’ll get for all pulses, rougly it heals for 350 per pulse.

True though convincing other players doesn’t matter since it’s in the developer’s hands and they would notice that mistake.

I don’t think this is always true. Just look at Elemental Attunement, they tried to make it a GM trait several times, but there was always so much negative feedback and now they’re changing their minds again, I would say mostly because of the amount of negative feedback.

I don’t know what is going on with Elemental Attunement but are you seriously suggesting that they are going to nerf something because someone misunderstood something and just go “Healing over 9000!? Nerf SR into the ground nao!” instead of knowing that it only heals for less than 2k? Do you really think they don’t know their own job that well?

Laraley.7695:

Shadow.1345:

Kageseigi.2150:

Shadow.1345:

Kageseigi.2150:

Shadow.1345:

though the heal from SR is means staying in an area outlined as the thief is here with 5 pulses for 1865 which gives 9325 health

Sorry, just for personal knowledge… how do you get to that number? According to the wiki, there are 5 pulses that heal for 355 + .18 healing power each. Total is 1,775 + .9 healing power.

I love my Shadow Refuge and all, but it doesn’t love me THAT much! :-P

I can only understand those numbers if Shadow’s Rejuvenation and maybe Shadow Protector are factored in… and still, that’s with sitting around for 20 seconds doing nothing. In other words, that’s longer than a respawn.

I got it from what was on the the tab when I moused over it.

Ah, thank you. What traits are you using? Full Shadow Arts?

At that time I was just running Panic Strikes so I only have 2 in Shadow arts and with a Zerker Amulet and Vampirism Rune. Actually now I am running Critical Strikes build again because I prefer the extra critical strikes and I noticed my mistake. I thought the Healing on the tab was how much it healed per pulse becausewith no Shadow Arts it is 1,775. I thought 9k seemed off cause I never seemed to heal for that much in actuality.

Maybe check the information before you’re posting since saying stuff like ‘’sr heals for almost 10K’’ is definitely adding fuel to the fire and not helping the thieves cause. Seing as many people here never picked up thief, the misinformation can spread.

So yes, the healing written on tab of sr is the cummulative healing you’ll get for all pulses, rougly it heals for 350 per pulse.

True though convincing other players doesn’t matter since it’s in the developer’s hands and they would notice that mistake.

Kageseigi.2150:

Shadow.1345:

Kageseigi.2150:

Shadow.1345:

though the heal from SR is means staying in an area outlined as the thief is here with 5 pulses for 1865 which gives 9325 health

Sorry, just for personal knowledge… how do you get to that number? According to the wiki, there are 5 pulses that heal for 355 + .18 healing power each. Total is 1,775 + .9 healing power.

I love my Shadow Refuge and all, but it doesn’t love me THAT much! :-P

I can only understand those numbers if Shadow’s Rejuvenation and maybe Shadow Protector are factored in… and still, that’s with sitting around for 20 seconds doing nothing. In other words, that’s longer than a respawn.

I got it from what was on the the tab when I moused over it.

Ah, thank you. What traits are you using? Full Shadow Arts?

At that time I was just running Panic Strikes so I only have 2 in Shadow arts and with a Zerker Amulet and Vampirism Rune. Actually now I am running Critical Strikes build again because I prefer the extra critical strikes and I noticed my mistake. I thought the Healing on the tab was how much it healed per pulse becausewith no Shadow Arts it is 1,775. I thought 9k seemed off cause I never seemed to heal for that much in actuality.

Kageseigi.2150:

Shadow.1345:

though the heal from SR is means staying in an area outlined as the thief is here with 5 pulses for 1865 which gives 9325 health

Sorry, just for personal knowledge… how do you get to that number? According to the wiki, there are 5 pulses that heal for 355 + .18 healing power each. Total is 1,775 + .9 healing power.

I love my Shadow Refuge and all, but it doesn’t love me THAT much! :-P

I can only understand those numbers if Shadow’s Rejuvenation and maybe Shadow Protector are factored in… and still, that’s with sitting around for 20 seconds doing nothing. In other words, that’s longer than a respawn.

I got it from what was on the the tab when I moused over it.

ronpierce.2760:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

ronpierce.2760:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Nutshel.7264:

Azure The Heartless.3261:

The devs in charge of core balance said themselves on Ready Up that “if you believe thief is OP, you do not play one.”

Funny coming from them. It is hilarious how clueless they are about issues of some classes almost as if they didn’t play them at all – not to say that they don’t but sometimes it sure does feel that way

It’s not funny at all. That’s the main reason they keep nerfing the Thief, they don’t play the profession thus they think it is OP.

Some of us are less concerned with strictly “op” and gameplay. Don’t forget how Turret engineers felt. Design can be a real turn off. Feeling lien your enemy can dip whenever doesn’t feel great, especially as a slow profession like Necromancer. And in some cases, yes, Thief design currently is OP, it does push many zerkers out of use.

Are you sure that the problem is the Thief and not the zerker items?

Would you still feel that way if zerker does not exist?

Really hard to tell. But in a game where objectives are HIGHLY important, mobility to the point of getting from place to place in a third of the time really causes a design block for certain classes that can’t really be overcome (Necro/Mesmer) which hurts their usefulness as a roaming role. Maybe not full mobility balance, but that gap needs closed in many ways.

Secondly, I feel shadow arts of way too toxic by design. I offered a (very rough) alternative to some of the more problematic traits in Shadow arts that I feel would benefit both sides of the debate but it was completely ignored. Thief need better staying power and/or alternative role options and players just want thieves to stop camping stealth and resetting fights until they get the jump they need (which goes beyond just conquest as we move into SH and even wvw roaming).

Some suggestions were:
Change Shadow Rejuvination to “Gain shadow Rejuvination when you land a successful stealth attack which heals and gains initiative every 2 seconds over 6 seconds. (Slightly reduced base healing, increased scaling from HP).”
- This reduces the need for stealth camping and even gives thieves a unique way to combat “tank” using stealth as an active form of defense.

Change Shadow Resilience (50% reduced damage in stealth trait) to "Shadow Cloak: Gain protection for 3(4?) seconds upon leaving stealth. This effect had a 5 second cooldown.

And Shadow’s Embrace to: Successful stealth attacks transfer two conditions to your enemy.

Obviously, it’s a very rough list of ideas, but the idea is to discourage camping and reward effective use of stealth while giving thieves a bit of staying power. I feel this is more proactive design would be much better received.

Those are some nice ideas however here is an issue I see with them. They would actually make the thief more powerful than it already is just to get rid of stealth camping.

In Conquest stealth camping means you’re doing nothing for your team points wise. Fighting 1v1 on a point as soon as the thief goes in stealth the opponent starts capping that point. Even thought it’s needed for the bursty backstab it is actually helping the other team by going into stealth. Instead what you are suggesting is instead of the thief having to stay in stealth and not help with point capture is to make them want to come out of stealth more often and faster to be more effective killing machines.

MadVisions.4529:

Shadow.1345:

Poliator.7021:

For reference, the more glaringly issue of Thief right now in PvP is that have to spec in the Trickery trait line, because boon rip and Daze on Steal (+ the CDR on it) is simply outright strong.

I’m not an expert on this however looking at the core specializations recently I saw some traits that look really awesome. While looking at the system I realized something, though. We may see a change in how people trait the Trickery line.

No kittening way you scream at me? No one would ever not pick Thrill of the Crime and Bountiful Theft, right?

Well look at the Adept line and you have Flanking Strikes. Flank and get Quickness. So hit from behind and you get a boon that lets you attack faster. Quickness for Thieves is huge because they already depend on speed. To get it that easily is a major boon for any D/x build. Except then you can’t get Thrill of the Crime because you only get one Adept Major trait. Eh, Quickness from flanking… no big deal right. Except when you combine it with Panic Strike and Executioner from Deadly Arts and then you’ve got a beastly attack once that enemy hits 50% health. It certainly gives pause to think about wanting to just get those boons from stealing.

Then look at the Master line and you have Trickster. Trickster, bah! Just 20% reduced recharge on tricks and it removes a condition, compared to Bountiful Theft who would want that? Oh wait… Withdraw is a trick which means a reduced recharge on a healing skill plus an extra condition cleansed. kitten … rip boons or more heals and condi clear? again, tough choice. Add in now you could take Caltrops or Roll for Initiative with reduced CDs + Condi Clear as that third utility instead of Blinding Powder or Infil Sig could make people start to rethink those traits.

Of course there will always be testing to see if these are viable in PvP but with just some preliminary theory crafting I can see where there is a possibility for different builds being seen and just hopefully we might see some viable diversity.

Gain quickness. Lose all endurance and reduce endurance regeneration by 50%.
you gain this not only quickness.
also boonful theft is boonful couse it gives vigor. if you replace suff with what you said you gonna end up with a thief without any endurance. but ofc it can be tested and turn out decent who knows!

They also said they will probably remove the Haste portion which is what removes all of the endurance and cuts endurance regeneration by 50%. If they do that that will leave Flanking Strikes as a possible strong contender to Thrill of the Crime. That’s why I didn’t say anything about the Haste part. If they leave that then no, I wouldn’t take that trait because I don’t want to lose Endurance suddenly because I hit someone from behind.

The Vigor part of Bountiful Theft is very nice and makes it a hard choice between the two. Still with how it is setup it might possibly make people have to make choices. Still, until we see it in action and play test it we won’t really know.

Personally I hope we start seeing more build diversity all across the board for classes. Watching the tourney feed you can pretty much know what build they are running without even having to hear the announcer tell you. Yes, it’s a Warrior, we saw the icon, did you really need to tell us he was running Shoutbow like it was some mystery?

Poliator.7021:

For reference, the more glaringly issue of Thief right now in PvP is that have to spec in the Trickery trait line, because boon rip and Daze on Steal (+ the CDR on it) is simply outright strong.

I’m not an expert on this however looking at the core specializations recently I saw some traits that look really awesome. While looking at the system I realized something, though. We may see a change in how people trait the Trickery line.

No kittening way you scream at me? No one would ever not pick Thrill of the Crime and Bountiful Theft, right?

Well look at the Adept line and you have Flanking Strikes. Flank and get Quickness. So hit from behind and you get a boon that lets you attack faster. Quickness for Thieves is huge because they already depend on speed. To get it that easily is a major boon for any D/x build. Except then you can’t get Thrill of the Crime because you only get one Adept Major trait. Eh, Quickness from flanking… no big deal right. Except when you combine it with Panic Strike and Executioner from Deadly Arts and then you’ve got a beastly attack once that enemy hits 50% health. It certainly gives pause to think about wanting to just get those boons from stealing.

Then look at the Master line and you have Trickster. Trickster, bah! Just 20% reduced recharge on tricks and it removes a condition, compared to Bountiful Theft who would want that? Oh wait… Withdraw is a trick which means a reduced recharge on a healing skill plus an extra condition cleansed. kitten … rip boons or more heals and condi clear? again, tough choice. Add in now you could take Caltrops or Roll for Initiative with reduced CDs + Condi Clear as that third utility instead of Blinding Powder or Infil Sig could make people start to rethink those traits.

Of course there will always be testing to see if these are viable in PvP but with just some preliminary theory crafting I can see where there is a possibility for different builds being seen and just hopefully we might see some viable diversity.

Fluffball.8307:

As long as it stops pairing me up with 3 mesmers and a thief.

Or being on a thief and getting two thieves and 2 mesmers as the rest of your team.

ResJudicator.7916:

Shadow.1345:

Again I return to the point you made that made me change my mind from agreeing with you that channeled skills like RF (which does a lot more damage than BS + Sigil Proc) is to dodge twice or counter with an interrupt as soon as it starts. I was with you on the revealing out of stealth until you made the point that “to stop those things do this” which I then applied to stealth attacks. So in answer to your question, yes it does have the same amount of counter play as some other mechanics in the game.

What? That makes no sense. You missed the first part, where I pointed out how you can see the RF attack coming so you know exactly when to dodge. When someone is stealthed, you don’t see the attack coming, so you have to estimate when to dodge (which is inherently less reliable). (People can also stealth out of LOS, in which case blind-dodging becomes even less reliable). You also left out the part where rapid fire has a cooldown.

Also, you also don’t have to dodge twice vs RF, one dodge makes the rest of it do as much damage as an autoattack.

No I got that part and that’s when I realized that just about every way to gain stealth has a tell too and that can be interrupted which is a counter to it. Either way we will just have to agree to disagree on this. It’s not like it really matters if we convince one another anyways. The final decision is with the game designers and since they have merged these threads they obviously have paid attention to it. They will make changes or not depending on their own decisions and testing.

My last part on this because it really is just getting to be a ridiculous thread is that the Thieves are defending stealth as it is for the most part because without it the class is just a lack luster melee class with 12-14k hp and almost no armor. That doesn’t make it as OP as some of the people are thinking. Stealth or not they are still paper and the best counterplay to stealth attacks is to go with the best defense is a good offense strategy.

Sagat.3285:

onevsone.2098:

The combination of Vampirism Rune + Improvisation is a little too much imho, basically a thief can do many mistakes and be carried by RNG + invulnerability and reset the fight, until he can do a good spike, mostly depending on sigils proc.

That’s just runes and sigils having too much effect on balance as usual.

Yeah personally I wish they would get rid of the Air and Fire sigils even though I use them. I didn’t at first but when I saw how much damage other thieves were doing to me compared to what I was doing to them and asked one how they did it. Part of what they told me was to use those sigils for the extra damage. I could not use them but really those sigils have pigeonholed people running zerk builds to have to use them or be worthless.