I’m fairly certain if the devs wanted stealth attacks to be attached to a cooldown, they would have made them part of the class skills (F2 perhaps) like warrior is. When a warrior misses he keeps his adren, like we keep stealth. his burst skill F1 for that weaponset goes on cooldown (he can still swap and use his other burst skill), backstab is not an F skill, it is an autoattack, Does any class have an autoattack that goes on cooldown when it misses?
Sebrent, not gonna quote your whole breakdown post to avoid a wall of text. Excellent work though. Just wanna point out, my comment was originally aimed at number of weapon skills used by thief vs any other class, i’ve not entered into this necro aoe discussion at all, nor do i intend to.
the necro example works just fine for the comparision to my point, except you didnt include weapon swap skills, which could a little less than double total skills used. This follows for any class vs thief, and as i stated before, is the cost of having a single resource pool vs having 8. its got upsides and downsides. but thieves cannot by any means use more skills than any class, which was my original point, and your wonderful breakdown shows nicely
To be honest this isnt that difficult to understand. Everyone keeps comparing backstab/stealth to many other skills and F mechanics from other classes, in order to ‘prove’ that backstab/stealth should reveal or be unvailable after miss/block etc. The problem with this argument is that backstab/stealth is NOT other skills/mechanics. It does not work like them on purpose. Your point about warrior burst skills? those dont require stealth or to be behind your enemy at melee, so lets remove the need for stealth and position from backstab, full damage from any angle, because hey other classes skill dont work like that
Redo your math sebrent, your wrong as usual. you convert cooldowns to init, but dont convert init regen at all? well thats just plain lazy. since classes with cds each tick on their own, that would be 10.64 init per second for cd classe, so even your giant 30 init skill would be less than 3 seconds to reuse. go back to your mesmer forums, you failed here
Just to add to what Ralathar stated, trickery is not entirely a DPS loss, at 20 pts its a loss, at 25 pts it can be close to breaking even so long as you manage init well. depending on where you took those points from of course. I usually run 0/30/0/15/25 s/d shortbow, and have been running this since beta (some trait adjustments here and there, but always s/d shortbow)
I like how you post a video about how great thief burst is, and the video uses both mug and haste, from before both have been nerfed by 50% or more. nice try but fail
I already answered this in that other thread, but I’ll answer you again.
Mug is far the highest damage number in there.
With the haste, take their attack speed and reduce it by 25%. (+50% gives you 150% which is 50% less than the previous 200%. 50% is 1/4 of 200%.)
The damage numbers still stand and the speed isn’t that much worse.
At least your class was given something in exchange for their quickness nerf. Mesmer got nothing to compensate for the nerf to Time Warp. Ranger got nothing to compensate for the nerf to the trait Zephyr’s Speed.
How was the thief trait for quickness improved? I must be seeing a glitched version of patch notes, as i dont notice any change to our trait either.
Thats a vastly one sided view. Does a necro’s second weapon set go on cooldown when he uses his skills on the first one? for a thief it does. Can a necro have 8 cooldowns all ticking down while a thief only has one init bar slowly regening? Its been shown many times all classes can use more skills than a thief does, that is the price of being able to use a skill more than once.
We’ve touched on this topic a bit here:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Thief-attacking-in-stealth-and-not-revealed/first
- I don’t think a thief missing backstab because they are out-of-range should reveal them
- I do think a thief’s backstab missing because of blind, block, dodge-roll, etc. should reveal the thief. The backstab did not miss. It did “hit”, but was countered so that “hit” is transformed into an “evaded”, “blocked”, etc.
This would make sense, if warriors lost adrenaline when they fail a burst skill. If mesmer had all clone and phantasm abilities put on a GCD anytime they miss a shatter skill. Etc Etc
I like how you post a video about how great thief burst is, and the video uses both mug and haste, from before both have been nerfed by 50% or more. nice try but fail
Until they apply Spvp stats and gear to wvw, and remove all food and pve items, that argument will remain valid
I’m not intentionally hating on mist form or any other single skill. I’m just pointing out that a game mode that allows players of ANY level, with ANY type of gear, ANY consumable from pve, cannot by design ever be balanced. All you can do is try to balanced around stated objectives, which in WvW is capturing camps/towers/keeps primarly with side goals of killing/walking yaks, scouting etc. And i think with those stated objectives, stealth is fairly balanced.
I do think thief is WAY to reliant on stealth for everything however, would love to see thief given more gw1 assassin type builds/skills
TheGuy, is stealth balanced in WvW. NOTHING is balanced in WvW. WvW by design is an unbalanced enviroment. Is it balanced that a blocking char or mist form ele, or mesmer with distortion up still counts as taking a supply camp but a thief in stealth does not? No its not balanced. because WvW by design is unbalanced
Actually I dont think its unintended that wall skills dont stack, as there are other non-stacking buffs from certain traits, that otherwise could be stacked. ie. many classes can stack regen all day long. Thief has two ways to actively apply regen, Hide in Shadows the heal skill, and shadow protector trait, HiS regen stacks with everything, Shadow protector doesnt stack with anything
Actually in the last Sotg the devs stated that they were looking to possibly up thief base damage in return for lowered burst. We got the burst nerf. but no compensation. As far as thieves have the too high damage, we HAD very good burst, and still have fairly good burst, but our sustained damage has and is at the bottom. some of the lowest base skill damage of all classes
But he can swap weapons and use another burst skill with no CD and not having to recharge the adren.
- Swapping weapons takes the time it takes you to backstab again.
- Swapping weapons can be seen by the opponent.
- The burst skill of the weapon swapped to has a cast time AND an animation that can be seen.
- The warrior is visible the entire time
Additionally, look at the burst skills of the warrior’s weapons. They function quite differently from one another.
Backstab also has a cast time, so the burst/swap CD is even (The times are not even, but warrior bursts do are more powerful than thief stealth attacks) Yes swapping weapons can be seen by the opponent, just like you saw the thief go in stealth.
But he can swap weapons and use another burst skill with no CD and not having to recharge the adren.
Actually it does function like others, when a warrior misses a burst skill the adren is not used, when a thief misses a backstab the stealth is not used. Its been working like this since beta for both classes, I would say, working as intended.
/thread
10 points trait in shadow arts … high up-time on regen.
15 points in acrobatics … thief can dodge 3 times with the same amount of endurance that others can dodge only twice … can dodge 6 times with vigor in the time someone else can dodge only 4 times with vigor.
Thief has multiple weapons with built in evasion. Many classes do NOT have this.
If you need to use blind on a champion mob to avoid being hit, lol. Also we’re talking mainly about PvP here. The context of the discussion has been quite clear on that. Additionally, if an opponent takes the time to swing at air in the middle of a fight with me just to clear blind, then lol. There is a reason many of the top thieves in sPvP and WvW are taking Cloaked in Shadow (a blind when you stealth).
Why is it that Thieves complain about their Vigor-on-heal trait but Ranger’s love theirs? Especially when the Ranger Vigor-on-heal does NOT stack with the Ranger’s passive endurance Regen while the Thief’s Vigor-on-heal works beautifully with their dodge trait?
Ranger gets 2 seconds of protection on dodge roll. That’s really “high” up-time. Thief can steal protection from others … and any other boons. Mesmer protection is on Staff or 3 sec every 15 seconds and requires gaining regen from some source. Not really high up-times.
The way they are alike is that the classes use ACTIVE defenses instead of largely relying on passive defenses like the Dagger+Dagger ele (protection, regen, soothing mists, etc.).
Stealth is 100% mitigation unless:
- The thief is stupid enough to stand in melee range of someone with a melee weapon
- The thief is stupid enough to stand in the AOE their opponent is throwing down
How do you backstab or tac strike without being in melee range, I havnt learned that trick yet?
If your mesmer misses a part of her aa chain it does the same attack again. Attacks from stealth are also 1. attacks. I see nothing different/wrong here… plus sorry but as I mentioned before you had a chance to stop the combo before when they entered stealth… and you can still avoid it after via positioning (you can force them to frontstab easily enough)/dodges/blocks/blinds/invlun.
You just can’t sit there and blind/block the thief once AFTER c&d to cause revealed.
Incorrect. If shatters are blocked, they still go on cooldown (and you lose your illusions!)
If you dodge, line-of-sight, block, blurred frenzy, etc. when a Mesmer is casting an illusion on you, it will go on a FULL cooldown and NOT summon the illusion. I.E. the Mesmer is punished (or you’re rewarded) by you “playing well”.
Changing your facing rapidly while a thief is stealthed only works on bad thieves.
Backstab is far from an auto-attack chain skill. It does immensely more damage. If you want to tree it as such, then let’s lower its damage to that … then we can talk about it being unblockable, lol.
Right now, if I wait for 2 seconds and hit my block, the thief can hit me twice. Once to make my Mesmer block end and a 2nd time in order to land their backstab. That’s silly.
You’re saying that “I have a chance to stop the combo”. Well, on the same hand, even more so since they are stealthed, the Thief has a chance to realize their foe has Aegis, is blocking, is dodging, etc. and not gain the revealed debuff with what would be a fruitless backstab.
Why should others have to realize what the Thief is doing but the Thief doesn’t have to realize what others are doing? That is a bit hypocritical.
Actually backstab is quite comparable to auto attack skills, not only does it occupy the same skill slot, has a casting time, a position based requirement. As for your comment about backstabs damage, you seem to forget that warrior axe autoattack has HIGHER damage than backstab, on a free AA with 0 position or stealth reqs.
First, stick with the main points:
- The thief staying stealthed does not matchup with the mechanics an entire patch was devoted to in January
- The way it currently works, the non-thief is punished for “playing well” while the thief is rewarded for “playing poorly”.
Now to your points, Travlane:
- Thief has blind … works like Aegis (actually, better since Signet of Might’s change)
- Thief has evasion … works like a Block (actually, better since Signet of Might’s change)
- Thief can dodge roll more than any other class given 15 pts in Acrobatics
- Against most opponents, stealth is complete damage mitigation as many builds don’t have spammable AOE/melee that can reliably hit a melee target
- Thief has teleport, stunbreak, and condition removal on a weaponset … the only class with a single weapon skill that does all of that … and the only weapon skill that is an actual stunbreaker.
Thief is not squishy. When visible, a Thief works largely the same way a Mesmer or Ranger works … they use dodge rolls, evasion, their own CC, blinds, etc. to simply not take damage. This is one of the ways they are a higher skill class than those who just go kitten 100% up-time on protection" and is the part I respect.
However, the Thief only has to do this while visible, which can be less than 50% of the fight. Mesmer has stealth but nothing close to that degree. Ranger doesn’t have it either.
A bad or average thief is a much bigger danger to others than a bad or average non-thief … hence the abundance of thieves seen in PvP. Baddies aren’t swarming to the class because it’s underpowered.
The thief is not lacking in defensive capabilities and they can save them for those 3 sec periods where they are visible. Others are visible for 100% of their fight and don’t have twice as many as the Thief.
Blind is better than aegis? so Aegis is reduced by more than 90% against champs and bosses? i missed that patch. Aegis can be removed by any attack on air, whether or not a player is targeted, whether or not a player would be hit? I missed that patch also.
Thief has evasion, So does every class. Things that everyone can do, are not specific thief defenses.
Thief has very good uptime on vigor with a very specifc trait and heal combo, and must use the heal on CD every time to maintain it, usually wasting the heal and cc removal. Many other classes have perm uptime on vigor, thief does not win here either
Stealth is 0% damage mitigation, except on pve AI and perhaps noobs and bads, and even then its still not damage mitigation, its target avoidance, since we always take full damage in stealth. Unlike every single other class that has access to prot, invuln, block etc
Yes thief has the only weapon based stun breaker. Your 1 for 5 so far, at least you got this right
Thief works like mesmer and ranger? so thief has High uptime on protection and regen? I missed that patch. Thief has on demand distortion now? I missed that patch too. Thief can dodge roll, very awesome, if thief was the only class that could dodge, but EVERYONE can avoid damage by evading, this is not specific to thief, your just pointing out that we literally have NOTHING else except the base mechanic given to every class
Your problem Seb is that you assume stealth is supposed to work like all of those things. Stealth is its own mechanic, it is not a boon, it is not a sigil or signet buff. Stealth is Stealth, and works via its own mechanics. Thats all there really is to it, you cant compare it to things that are completely unrelated and hence irrelevant
There seems to be a mistaken perception that stealth ends when a thief attacks or when an attack lands. This is FALSE, stealth ends when a thief deals DIRECT damage, not Condi, not a missed attack, direct damage only. This has always been the case, not a bug, working as intended.
/thread
On par with warrior long bow, ranger long bow, and ele staff abilities.
Thief SB is on par with long bow and staff now? Awesome! I missed the part where they adjusted Shortbow range to 1200-1500. Ohh wait they didnt? Guess its not on par then is it now?
It may or may not be related, but I had this happen once in WvW, except it was a guardian and all the mobs at the supply camp he was guarding that became untargetable. It was strange as i could move away and target distant mobs and players, but I could not select the guardian or any other mob inside the camp. I am a thief, he was holding the camp against me. Not sure if it was a strange skill interaction that cause it or what. After a few minutes i logged out and back in, ran to the camp, he was still there, and i could target him and the mobs.
From my experience the combat systems always rounds stun (daze counts as stun) up. so when you use sigil of para which is only a 15% increase on the natural 2 second daze from tac strike, it becomes 3 seconds, when i experimented with the daze from steal, it seemed to get bumped to 2 seconds. but i could be wrong.
I’m not arguing gimmethegepgun, I’m reading. goto the arenanet website, read the description of thief, goto the wiki, read the part about profession mechanics, no where is init listed as a thief mechanic. its not an argument, you are wrong.
Mug is 504 dmg base, Backstab at 808, the third chain in warriors axe combo is 858, which one is greater? Crippling strike is 437, so mug does slightly more damage than a thief auto attack, but considerably less damage than a warrior AA. I run s/d also, though i dont put 30 points into the condition line for a weapon that has no damaging conditions. I still saying spending 30 trait points for at best a 2 second daze on a 32 second cooldown is a terrible trait
Ele can carry all weapons and change weapons just like everyone else
death shroud isnt required, minion masters can avoid if they so choose, a thief cannot avoid initiative.
I’ve seen pets in Tpvp do more damage than backstab, so clearly up for dps
Class mechanics are the Function bar skills, check the wiki
Thieves do in fact use magic, The same magic as mesmers, its called denial magic. Can look it up in both wiki’s though its more clearly explained in the gw1 wiki
I wouldn’t mind additional F2+F3+F4utilites, but as a 10/30/0/0/30 S/D Thief here, I’m definately more than happy about my F1.
My Steal gives:
+900ranged unit insta gap closer even if I’m cc’ed
+3 Ini
+big Mug dmg
+Might 10s (party)
+Swiftness 10s (party)
+Fury 10s (party)
+Vigor 10s (party)
+strips 2 boons
+Daze 1s (2s para sigil)Only F1 yea. I feel that’s super balanced for 30s cd.
1. Your still cc’d after
2.Used as an opener, this is wasted
3.Big damage? same as sword auto attack, much LESS than warrior axe auto attack
4-7. Very small radius, great if your whole party stacks up so one aoe wipes you
8.awesome trait, too bad its stuck so deep into the condi line
9.30pt grandmaster trait for 1s daze on a 32-45sec cd? when i can get a 3sec daze every 5 seconds with sword? or use offhand pistol for anytime interrupt.TERRIBLE trait
and its a min cd of 32 not 30
Have you considered that other professions need to spread their traits according their profession mechanic and they also have traits that they do not want or traits that they want/need but that are not in optimal trait line.
- Elementalist need to juggle attunements and do combos with his/her own fields to do max dps. It is not option, it is what you need to do. And you also need to be able to adapt to the situation not just roll trough attuments and spam 1-5.
- Mesmer needs to keep producing clones to feed shatters (btw, shatters are pretty much mesmers only real form AoE dps) and their shatters are useless if AoE keeps breaking clones. They also need to sacrifice their phantasms (max dps illusions) for shatters.But these things just define how professions plays… they are different ways of play. We don’t want every profession to be same with different names (see what happened for wow classes, that is not good). Thief may have only one button and initiative but our steal can serve many purposes even if we don’t sink any trait points into the mechanic.
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Firstly, Steal is a stun-break. There are a lot of mobs in PvE that enjoy knocking you down and keeping you down in stun-lock. Steal enables us to break-stun absolutely freely. No wasted utility slots, no wasted initiative. Get out of Jail free card. Wonderful.Another great thing about Steal is the fact that the cooldown initiates the second you activate Steal. So you press F1, you acquire an item, you can keep this item for the whole duration of the cooldown, use said item and then use Steal again straight after. Obviously this has it’s advantages, specifically when dealing with a tricky set of mobs.
Whenever you acquire an item from Steal don’t use it directly. If it’s a good one like Feathers or Cyclone Axe save it for later as opposed to wasting it.
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Then there is the initiative system, that is the one you usually need to think when you select your traits as thief.From the devs point of view the initiative system means that you need to balance the Thief’s ability to spam the same ability multiple times, against the fact that it’s the only class that has all it’s abilities sharing a cooldown system. The former requires that you tone down the ability’s potency, so a Thief can’t just instantly spam kill things; while the latter pushes you towards increasing an ability’s potency because the Thief’s options drop significantly faster compared to other classes. These are two juxtaposing needs which need to be balanced very carefully.
Other thing affecting to the initiative system is that there are several situations in which you are not activating skills at all, i.e. dodge rolling, using your 1-chain, being in stealth, being dazed/stunned/knocked down, being not in range of somebody at all for an attack, using utilities, dagger storming, stomping/reviving, etc.
This game isn’t about a Warrior and a Thief standing toe to toe and spamming abilities until one of them runs out of cooldowns and loses WoW-style. Breaking it down like that makes it seem like Elementalist is easily the best class in the game and there’s no point playing anything else simply because they have 20 moves to fire off in rapid succession.
Just to keep misinformation from drowning the forums, steal is NOT a stun break. It is an instant cast ability. It is not the only ability that can be used in such situations but is not a stun break, ie blinding powder. You can use it when knocked down, but it does NOT break the knockdown, just puts you at your enemies feet, still on the floor.
Why would the cooldown not start when you use the ability? Is there a skill out that that doesnt go on cd when you use it? As example shadowstep goes on cd when first used, not when you return, so this seems pretty consistent, nothing special about steal.
Initiative is wonderful, but its not a genuine class mechanic as it comes with its own drawbacks. Yes we can use whatever skill we need at the time, but we are able to use far far less skills overall, and our skills are much weaker. As an example, our signature damage move, backstab, does the same damage as a warriors axe autoattack (3rd strike)
The problem is the thieves ability to get out of combat via stealth and back into combat while their opponent is still stuck in combat… giving the thief a full health bar during re-engagement.
It’s a joke. The “Revel” buff did absolutely ~nothing~ to skilled players. Rotation changed by adding in an auto attack (oh my!), but that’s it.
There is still ~zero~ downside to going full glass cannon.
More importantly, the Dev’s comment about “Just AoE” for their ‘hard counter’ is a joke: I should just walk around swinging my sword blindly to counter a stealth thief…. I mean, really? How ~LAME~ can you be?
Good job talking when you don’t have a clue how the game works. Stealthing does not remove combat… ever. You can agro a mob, use refugee and afk near the mob and you’ll never leave combat as long as the mob lives and you’re near.
Clearly you missed the point, so let me spell it out….
Yes, stealth and ~staying by the mob~ does nothing for getting out of combat.
Stealthing and port/blink/leap (whatever you feel like calling it) 1200 range, however, does. It gives you full health and full initiative while you walk back into combat.
More importantly, you can apply a condition or agro mobs and train them into your opponent and then do this… leaving your opponent in combat while thieves have the luxury of getting out of combat.
Maybe it’s you who doesn’t understand the nuances of the class.
[EDIT] I do not want a thief’s damaged nerfed… I never have, but stealth needs a big fat kick in the nutz.
First off, if the thief gets far enough to reset his health, YOURS will reset also. its a two way street. Also, being outside of combat does NOT affect initiative at all. You dont suddenly get full init for leaving combat, you dont even get a regen boost. Same way cooldowns dont recharge faster out of combat.
Please do not make thieves defense revolve around blinds, unless we are going to get rid of unshakeable. having your defense only work 10% of the time would be pointless
Since CnD is not a ranged attack, your not predicting they will gap close, you know they will. So what your saying is you see thieves on a regular basis activate CnD at 900 range and then DONT step to you via steal/inf sig? really? You dont have to be psychic to know what comes next when a thief starts cnd with BV on their buff bar. its not prediction its common sense. Get some.
If you see him use CnD via the very obvious animation, your not predicting, your reacting
Was he a Sylvari? They can glow all sorts of colors at night. If not that I have no idea
I’ve never had BPS be anything more than a minor annoyance to me. Yes sometimes they’ll back out trying to force you in, thats what shadowsteps are for. I dont know, its strong in PVE against trash mobs but otherwise i’ve always found it to be pretty weak
I don’t know why all of a sudden people are so focused on bps. I play s/d and encounter d/p Very often and s/p now and again. You can stand outside the tiny aoe and melee without getting blinded at all except the initial shot. It’s really not that effective
This has been the standard 25/30 since launch. I don’t know what you’re doing different besides d/p and most Thieves have been using d/p in tournaments because it has always been superior in tournament play. Thanks for making a video though, will help new players.
ya and any direct melee build gets pwned by d/p cuz they’d just kept wasting init on misses.
Yeah, not really though, the bps field is so small when i fight the lame fotm d/p thieves, i can stand outside the blind field and hit them with melee without getting blinded
It may be that you take full damage from attacks while stealthed, but a really beautiful aspect of it is that the other person doesn’t actually see when they’ve hit you. No damage numbers or anything like that appear for them.
If you’re willing to take a hit or two, it isn’t hard to make your way past them for a Backstab even if they are flipping out attacking the air.
First all chain attacks will advance to the next step so you can SEE when you’ve hit, in addition, while damage numbers may not float in the air above nothing, your combat log will show the hit and damage. just gotta pay attention
That would be shadow return, which is a different skill, as its the same shadow return that is attached to shadowstep, though each has a different uptime on the return portion. However it should be noted that return has worked as such since beta, if anything, the tooltip is wrong. Its a takeoff of the tooltip from shadowstep, (which is 1200 range)
Infiltrators Strike is 600 range, and thats exactly the range it works at
If you start channeling an ability before someone gains stealth, then the ability continues to hit after they gain stealth.
Why should this be different for stomps?
You got it all backwards my friend, what needs to be fixed is that ALL channeled ability should break when someone stealths
Solution is simple really, swap the trait with IoS or one of the other first tier traits, so everyone gets a trait thats worthwhile at 5, and the people that for some reason like this passive trait can choose it for 10
Yes guardians and eles both have same (bottom) tier of health as thieves, the difference with guardians is heavy armor, aegis, protection, blocking skills etc, eles perm protection, invulnerable abillity etc. we have stealth/evades
I use all Valk armor slots, and Valk weapons, all zerk trinkets and ruby orbs on the armor, I end up with like 17.2k hp (about what a full zerk warrior ends up with) however i still get 120% (122 with full ascended jewelry) crit damage (with food also) around 60% crit chance. Mind i use practiced tolerance and 20 pts in acrobatics also. Its still essentially a GC build because of the focus on damage, but i gave up a little precision for Vit to make it more survivable. ( i make up the loss with food, sup maint oil, and butternut curry)
1. Expeditious Dodger stacks. Go through a temporal curtain and then dodge, you’ll notice it stacks. Temporal curtain is the skill that doesnt stack (otherwise people could just walk back and forth through it for massive swiftness uptime) So yes it is by design that the mesmer wall buffs dont stack (veil works the same way)
2. Dont spam the autoattack button, make sure autoattack is turned off. and sometimes deselect your target before stealing for stealth, this will prevent most of the issues. If you think dagger is bad, try it with main hand pistol, its even more glitchy.
I would say its not exactly by design, but not entirely a bug. its just how the mechanics interact
I dont think its too effective. I think its exactly what it needs to be. As you pointed out mesmer portal can do the same, except for 20 people, yet our single person abillity is the OP one? really? not to mention you can achieve similar distance with shadow trap. Seems to me working as intended. Also in addition to watching the skill icon, it also puts a infiltration buff on your buff bar, letting you know when return is available
The 4th second doesnt force anything except another auto attack, stealth spammers do just fine. can still CnD all day long. whiterose your assessment is just absolutely wrong. If they would have changed stealth how they said in the sotg THAT would have made a difference in pvp encounters, but the fourth second? does nothing but throws off the timing a little