To beat d/P be ready to interrupt after you see a smoke field.
If you interrupt heart seeker they don’t stealth and use 9 initiative. That is d/p’s weakness
Anything more than a 4v4 is too WvW like, you just run a zerg, because you’re so much stronger together.
The downside is thieves are glass, with no stability, and have 2 utility skills basically predefined on their bars because CC rocks their world.
The meta forces Direct Damage thieves to be what they are within their design. Some people don’t like it, but ANet designed them to be a mobile hit and run profession, and they nerf ed ele which was it’s only competition in mobility way back in the day. Thieves being what they are is in part by design and in part by the meta not allowing them to be much else.
Sorry if you don’t like, it’s a learning issue when people don’t know how to handle them, not that they are unfair. We know this bcs teams in 5v5 aren’t comprised of 5 thieves.
Except zerker thieves aren’t glass. A fresh air burst ele is glass, they either pull off their burst or they make a mistake and die. A zerker thief either pulls off their burst or they make a mistake and then escape, reset the fight, and try again. Yes. Woe is the “glass” cannon thief lol.
I don’t think anyone’s arguing against a high mobility class. They’re arguing against a high mobility class with no downsides that doesn’t require a quarter of a brain cell to use. Also how many times now has Anet proven that they don’t have a clue what they’re doing? You REALLY wanna stick with the whole “that is their design” argument when their “design” philosophy shifts at the drop of a hat?
Yeah and you didn’t see 5 hambow teams either, probably because a thief was absolutely required as a roamer lol. Somehow that makes pre nerf hambow a skill based balanced build that everyone thought was just peachy? Hyperbole doesn’t help your case, unless your case is to look like you aren’t actually thinking about any of this. Come back with an actual argument that isn’t just an extended cover for an idiotic “l2p” post.
Thief isn’t required as a roamer, it’s just the most mobile roamer. Decap engi can roam just fine, because you have to send 2 players to counter it in a timely manner.
All I’m pointing out is that ANet decided to make thief the only profession that does what it does, they nerfed RTL forever ago which let ele do the very similar things as thief, specifically stating they wanted thief to be more mobile than other classes and be able to escape, because they couldn’t vs ele when it had a 15 second RTL with 1550 range.
Saying it’s broken, isn’t true, because it works as designed. Some people just don’t like the design decision.
Initiative needs to be slowed by chilled (25-33%, not 66%), and there needs to either be a 2 ini cost increase for each consecutive use of the same skill or a SWTOR style energy management system where if you blow an entire initiative bar it’ll recharge much slower than if you pace and manage it. Stealth needs more counterplay beyond blind aoe as well. Every class should have at least one revealed applying ability and any ability used in stealth should remove it, but at the very least make it so that blocked/evaded/invulned stealth attacks reveal the thief. For the love of god make at least one aspect of the thief class require some small modicum of skill.
There’s too many brain dead mechanics on thief that ignore the rules applied to every single other class. Spammable z-axis teleports, so many baked in evade/stealth/blind defenses that there’s no drawback to going glass cannon (warrior and mesmer can pull this off to a lesser extent and that should be addressed as well), a plethora of get out of jail free cards that let thieves reset a fight or harass someone endlessly (sorry thieves, but defending a point from you ad infinitum is not the same thing as actually winning against you), ridiculous burst with no tells or risk that can one shot other glass cannons, and the list goes on and on and on, there’s almost no feature of the entire class that isn’t broken or a ridiculous double standard in some way. The whole class is a complete failure of design imo.
The downside is thieves are glass, with no stability, and have 2 utility skills basically predefined on their bars because CC rocks their world.
The meta forces Direct Damage thieves to be what they are within their design. Some people don’t like it, but ANet designed them to be a mobile hit and run profession, and they nerf ed ele which was it’s only competition in mobility way back in the day. Thieves being what they are is in part by design and in part by the meta not allowing them to be much else.
Sorry if you don’t like, it’s a learning issue when people don’t know how to handle them, not that they are unfair. We know this bcs teams in 5v5 aren’t comprised of 5 thieves.
ANet could do something like they did with RA in Guild Wars.
Give teams the option to keep playing together in solo queue. Perhaps for up to 3 matches, regardless of result.
If people choose to keep playing together their match counter starts going. Unless only 1 person wishes to continue.
If anyone doesnt choose to not continue with a team then they pop out into the heart of the mists.
Then after 1 person has continued playing with a team 3 games in a row give the whole team the option to go into Team Queue.
Anyone that accepts is queued for Team Queue, any open spots are filled by the existing system.
Anyone that declines returns to the heart of the mists and can jump back I to solo queue.
This would at least start to get people playing together, and allow time for some initial chemistry to form. Players that feel the work well together will likely friend up, or team up, which will help facilitate interactions hopefully leading to more teams being made.
Is this an attempt to manipulate the rune market?
Would like to see movement abilities on weapon skills
(Infiltrator’s Arrow, heartseeker, Rush, Fiery Rush, Ride the lightning, leap/savage leap….)
These all need to require a target.
The land speed difference over 25% signet or swiftness is overpowering. They are not being played as intended either. Fix this, and the problem disappears.
RTL, savage leap, and infiltrator’s arrow are not affected by movement speed.
You’re assuming there is a problem with classes having skills like these usable without a target.
Odd opinion imo.
snip
Basically what I keep seeing as the underlying arguments from not just you but anyone that feels the if a problem is 1 or multiple of a couple of things:
These are all opinions. No person’s opinion on these things is invalid, but understand that these opinions do not somehow mean the thief is OP or make it require a redesign.
The thief is not the best option in every situation. It is likely the best hit and run class in the game, but it is not the best at everything. Also both teams can use a thief. Again If ele still had a 15s RTL, people wouldn’t be as upset, bcs this snowflake syndrome some people have about the thief wouldn’t be directed towards changing the thief, it’d be directed at making the classes they like do what the thief and ele can do with mobility.
(edited by Shockwave.1230)
Thieves can run glass/zerker builds while maintaining plenty of survivability purely due to stealth, mobility or evades.
Any other class running a glass/zerker build is rendered completely pointless as long as a thief is around.
That is the problem.
Warrior, Guardian, Mesmer
Glass/Condi specs
All making appearances as glass cannon/glass condi in the meta recently post feature patch. Check the ESL tournaments.
Not a good platform to argue from.
Sounds like the snowflake argument again imo, “Thief is OP because it’s got high glass burst Direct Demage and high mobility! Thief is too much of a pretty and unique snowflake. Make it uglier or make more classes prettier like it!” Nevermind that every team can take thieves.
1) It has nothing to do with reaction time, but with the fact there was NO time to preprot, because the sin would just teleport in, spam hisd 1-4 and port out. Kinda like what you see in GW2. 2) The only effective method at fighting such cheese was bringing a couple of very specific skills for self defense (and either gimper your own mobility, or take high cooldown skills which provided defense and also some mobility), so your point on self-defense is void – it was there and available, but it’s a pretty good indication something is amiss, when a single class forces all the others to adapt.
3) You also ignore the fact thieves have virtually no cooldowns, while the same does in no way apply to dodge rolls and defense skills on other classes (with necros being the best case in point on low dodge roll availability, and ds facetanking only works when they amounted a fair ). 4) Dodge rolls and active/passive def skills are in abudance not because of teleports but because of no dedicated healing class.
5)As a matter of fact, teleports (unlike leaps) are a terrible addition to any pvp game, simply because they have cheeze embedded in their very essence – they trivialize positioning, trivialize map designs, and can trivialize much of the content in pve (especially in synergy with stealth).
1) An aftercast, creating a delay between a teleport and inflicting damage, has nothing to do with reaction time? Really?
It only has to do with ignoring pre-prots? Because people didn’t deal with pre-prots via disenchants? They didn’t deal with it by tactics such as feigning their spikes either?
2) My point about readily available self defense is void? Because every build in a team comp had these skills? Nope.
Because self defense skills weren’t counterable? You mean stance breaker’s and disenchants weren’t widely used? I must have been watching the wrong metas.
Because 8v8 with splits isn’t completely different than 5v5 with splits in how valuable self defense is?
Because dodge being an instant invincibility isn’t way better than ANY self defense available in GW1?
I’ll give you this. It’s not just that self defense is readily available, it’s that a higher quality of self defense is readily available versus teleports in Guild Wars 2.
3) Thieves have virtually no cooldowns? You mean their their resource pool isn’t 10 units deep and doesn’t take 10 seconds to recharge when exhausted? You mean that over the course of a team fight, any other profession can’t use at least twice as many resource dependent skills as a thief?
Resources don’t apply to self defense skills in GW2? You mean that dodges don’t take 10 seconds to recharge, or 5 seconds to recharge when buffed? You mean that the meta doesn’t have professions with dodges plus 2-3 other quality defensive skills?
4) Wait you mean defenses to counter teleports are in abundance now? So I don’t have to use sarcasm to point out obvious things that defeat your own argument, because you already did so yourself?
5) You mean that your lone opinion on game design is more important than the developers who have designed a game that has sold millions of copies?
I must be a scrub at everything or something.
(edited by Shockwave.1230)
It’s really strong on a 4/x/x/x/6 split for P/D with Infiltrator’s Signet, Shadow Refuge, X utility, and Basilisk Venom.
Frequent steal + guaranteed recharge of a utility skill if you spec the other utility for a trick
Another funny observation from a GW to GW2 comparison:
Since their implementation on GW, assassin along with their teleports were a regular nerf bat target, because they’d most often make map positioning and map designs in general completely trivial and spikes virtually unprottable (also because their chain combos are largely armor ignoring due to low base weapon damage and high attack bonuses from skills). The issue was more or less settled only after an aftercast was added to most teleports, so instant and ez mode spikes were no longer an option, or at least had a relatively high cooldown to them. Yet a couple teleports which haven’t been nerfed remain to this day, and can STILL post problems in some parts of pvp (pve is infested with ports anyway).
How someone could possibly have thought that taking a 180° turn on that matter was a good idea, and even decided to add in stealth and eliminate cooldowns, is beyond me, but here’s the result, so take it or quit, because you won’t be seeing a change in that stance on Anet side.
Prot reaction time was the issue that was addressed by aftercasts, and there was no downed state to recover from a spike and no dodge rolls/readily available self defense.
Teleports in this game are countered by dodge rolls/active defense skills and the downed state. Mesmer, Thief, and Guardian all have readily available offensive ports. You can’t even argue snowflake about this.
(edited by Shockwave.1230)
They unfortunately botched this, and admitted to it in a thread.
They apparantely always intended on giving a “piece” of armor, and not the whole set.
They will be updating the tooltip to describe the reward as a piece, if they haven’t already
1) Because when compared to every other zerker its not hit and run, its hit retreat hit retreat hit run or hit hit hit hit run.
2) And the fact that thief is balanced around idea that if they exhaust initiative for one thing then they cant use it for something else makes them broken.
3) As i said previously in theory it would be fine that if thief exhausts all initiative for killing someone then he has no defense left, but if hes in situation where he doesnt need any defense then he just did OP dmg output with no downside.
Same with infiltrators arrow, if he uses all ini to get to point then he cant kill anyone on that point and that would be balanced but if there is noone on the point then again he used all initiative in OP way while having no downside to it.
4) On any other class you take risks, if you use that lightning flash for decap you cant use it to run away, if you use that fear to interrupt you cant use it get melee off you, you use that immobilize to stop someone from coming to you, you cant use it to stop him from getting away.
5) And others take these things in consideration yet with thief its all up to him noone knows how much initiative he has and will he be able to interrupt your heal or do you have to use stability to protect the heal etc.Maybe another solution would be adding initiative somewhere on portrait so you know with what you are dealing and what to expect (same should be done for death shroud cause atm when you engage necro you have no idea how much life force he has and that gives RNG aspect to battle too)
1) So the actual problem you have isn’t that the thief can do what it can do, you have a problem with the thief being a snowflake class, in that other playstyles don’t have comparable hit and run tactics.
This is why I wish ANet would have just scaled the elementalists Ride the Lightning with toughness, the higher your toughness the higher RTL’s recharge. The reason they nerfed it is specifically, because they wanted only the thief to do exactly what it does (which at least one class needs to do to allow for creating numbers advantages/decaps). Keeping RTL at 15 seconds for recharge and 1550 range allowed elementalists to be insanely mobile bunkers, which would make them a clear favorite in taking up the mobility role. That’s why scaling RTL with toughness would have been a good option.
Just to be clear again, there’s no problem with the thief being a snowflake, people just don’t like that their class can’t do what the thief does, and it’s a lot easier to argue the thief is somehow OP because no other class has comparible mobility. Actually Warrior and Ranger do, but they don’t have blinks, and ele does too, but not as frequent access to that mobility.
2) This is called a resource pool, and has been established in numerous games for decades. There’s really nothing to talk about here.
3) These are examples of effectively managing your resource pool. A similar concept applies to all other classes. It’s called managing your resources, whether those be mobility resources, defensive resources, offensive resources, utility resources that can be used multiple ways, etc. This goes back to point 1 and 2 where some people feel it’s unfair that the thief is a snowflake with a resource pool and can exaust all their resources into 1 task and temporarily be useless at everything else.
The point about exhausting all your initiative on mobility would be valid if you could lock the other team out of using a thief as well. People just don’t like that the thief is the only class that has the mobility that it does with blinks. If ele still had a 15 second RTL with Lightning flash, you wouldn’t see people saying thief is OP, because of this. You’d see people saying Ele and Thief can do this, so why can’t my class.
4) On thief if you use up your initiative to fight, you can’t use it to get away. Like point 2, there’s really nothing to say about this.
5) Necro doesn’t show death shroud available, warrior doesn’t show adrenaline available, elementalist doesn’t show what attunements it can swap to, mesmer doesn’t show what shatters it can use. Engi doesn’t show what Toolkit skills are off cooldown. Ranger doesn’t show when it will be able to swap pets. Guardian doesn’t show the recharge on it’s virtues. You can’t just make a couple class mechanics completely transparent without making changes to rebalance all of them.
tl;dr
I think this will summarize everything fairly well and I get it, people don’t like that there’s a snowflake class. To put it bluntly, people either want the snowflake as “ugly” as some of the others or they want some of the others to be as “beautiful” as the snowflake.
OP:
Thief was meant and designed to be the most mobile profession. Our style is get in, hit hard and gtfo. It’s the only profession with that style yes, but I find it challenging (for both the thief and when I’m playing against one). We were designed for superior mobility, hence the popular spot as roamer in teams. We are able to rotate fast, but our team fight capabilities suck. We can’t do kitten in a group fight if it wasn’t for our teleports, unless we figure we will spam shortbow, but then the team is better off with a warrior…
Yes it was designed with that in mind, but thats not how it works.
Thief gets in tries to burst, if he fails he gets out and tries again or just tries to burst 2 more times.
Its not about how thief works its about how it works under different conditions.
Lets imagine initiative as cooldown.
Infiltrators arrow every 6 seconds would be fine, but 3 infiltrators arrows in row is broken.
Basicly all thief balance issues revolves around initative, if you use infiltrators arrow to get to your teammate and then use pistol to interrupt stomp then its fine, but if you use all your initiative to decap point before any class can get to you from middle and then already have enough initiative to avoid any fight its not fine.
Same if you use your headshot to interrupt heal then its fine, if you use 3 headshots just because enemy is going down in hopes that maybe he heals then its not fine.
If you land your pistol whip when target cant dodge, teleport out of it then its fine, but if you PW 3 times and then land it 3rd time not because you caught target in bad position but because he already used hes defenses on first 2 then its not fine again.
And even shortbow 3, you can use it to avoid every incoming shot if you time it but then again you can spam it with eyes closed and you will still avoid everything.By logic then true assassin in this game is zerker elementalist, you go in land your burst and go out, 1 try 1 chance, if you fail one of these things then either you did nothing or you died, in both cases you have to wait quite a while do repeat it.
I seriously dont even know how this could be fixed, maybe if only first 3 weapon skills would work with initiative system and 4,5 would have low cooldowns.
Why do you feel hit and run is an OP tactic?
Why do you feel thieves exhausting their initiative pool with spam and being vulnerable/offensively useless for 7 seconds is OP?
Why do you think PW spam isn’t counterable with only positioning/movement/risk on the thief’s part? It is. I’ve described how to counter PW in a few threads.
The scenarios you describe are not without repricussions. Hit and run makes you useless to your team while running to avoid damage. Exhausting initiative makes you unable to burst effectively. PW can be countered via blinding the windup, walking straight through the thief or staying Max melee distance and side stepping directly away, there are numerous other defenses that require defensive ability usages.
I’ve done 6v6 and 5v5 tdm at courtyard. Those feel too much like WvW, where you are just like a havic group that keeps spacing to avoid AoE. You have to build for a group, and use party buffs / Heals to be most effective. There’s no reason to do side fights or split bcs you are so much stronger together. Also brining mostly warriors, guardians, and engineers is pretty much all that makes sense since you can just war banner and heal up. The other strategy is to create a zerg of Ai with Mesmers, Guardians, and Necromancers.
If a tdm game type is implemented 3v3 is probably the sweet spot. 4v4 is questionable, because it seems like it’d run into the same problems as a 5v5 or 6v6
Eh, not really. I think it’s pretty fair to preemptively cast stealth to potentially counter a stomp, especially because most of the time this will only last, what, three seconds after being downed, during which the vast majority of classes will lose that stealth if they do anything.
Ranger and Engi can precast skills to rez too. Must be a medium armor thing
Why?
15 characters
Does stone heart work with conjures?
The only thing stopping thieves and mesmers from being absolute terror is the capture point system. Stealth is just an insane mechanic that has no counter to it.
Even in a capture point system – it’s just not fun to fight a thief or a mesmer but their impact on the game is of course much less because of that system.
I’m not sure how to make an equivalent… I guess Mesmers and Thieves are the equivalent of someone going with a ranged top laner in blind pick League of Legends. You just have the most frustrating, often boring time imaginable but you win the game because you build tank and the enemy team is paper thin due to a ranged top laner.
Stealth is fine in objective based game types that require “baby sitting” game play. King of the hill, VIP (assuming the VIP can’t stealth for more than 4 seconds and is always revealed after stealth), capture the flag (assuming the flag carrier can’t stealth), etc.
However, team death match is a game type where you couldn’t limit stealth without making it unreliable/unviable (unless you designed all the maps to be a size that it’s near impossible to disengage from combat). You also couldn’t leave it as is, because a team with a thief or mesmer could cloak the team to create the opportunity to instantly spike down 2 enemies.
(edited by Shockwave.1230)
Diamond skin is useless vs any build that isn’t pure condi. If you find a diamond skin elementalist and you happen to be a pure condi, then fight him with a team member. Condi bursts will melt 99% of builds. When you run into a hard counter you have to adjust.
PvP is not just a 1v1.
^ You don’t always get Blindness as your Combo on this skill: if there’s an older field underneath you, you’ll combo with that instead.
Is the projectile blinding even without the smoke field? I’ve never tested this.
D/D
0/2/0/6/6
Celestial Amulet
Strength Rune
Battle
HydroMancy
Definitely a solid build
This thread haha!
Scenario: Closedefender sees 4 enemies and 3 teammates mid.
Closedefender makes mid an equal fight. Thief counts the persons in combat.
Notices enemies close should be free and moves out of the stalled midfight.
Closedefender sees it exactly whn the thief starts moving but reaches close only after the decap and gets trolled for life.:-)
Solution a) AFK on close and lose the midfight
Solution b) get ur own thief
Or have any other class that can roam do so, doesn’t just happen to be a thief. They just happen to be the most mobile. Decap engi can roam on conquest mode too, because their decap method doesn’t revolve around mobility, it’s cc. You can also hunt thieves down on sw/f & gs + ji builds. There’s also the other roaming comps I mention above.
I didnt say it makes you think differently it makes you play differently it makes you play in a way that requires no thinking.
Close bunker just sits afk, any roamer just sticks with team and becomes dps, any positioning from glass cannons become pointless, following what skills are beeing used becomes useless.
In normal teamfights i have to think when to engage in melee when not is enemy have thief i just have to sit in range and spam lifeblast, i can ofcourse go in melee and telport from that warr and line of sight that mesmer but there is no way your gonna get away from thief.
Every match with thief makes you play safe, and playing conquest with taking no risks is boring.
If enemy team has roaming ele then you need to either have situational awareness to get close before he decaps or counter and kill him, if they have thief all you can do is sit on point whole match cause any decent thief can decap close before someone from mid gets there, and ofcourse you cant kill thief who doesnt want to fight.
Is there a reason that you wouldn’t apply this strategy to a thief as well? If a thief is heading to your home to decap, then you can send your roaming class to prevent the decap.
If a thief is going to decap your home, then you can also use another strategy, spike the squishiest remaining class in the team fight, since you have the numbers advantage. Then send your roamer to decap their far. While your 4v3 mops up at mid.
I don’t see how this is a “Thief Problem”. It seems like people just don’t know what strategies to use against ANY roaming class.
That’s awesome and sucky at the same time. They can fix this by queuing dailies to trigger after a match is over. Or by queuing the experience and applying it after the match is over.
@OP
Thief is just one of the classes that can roam. If it’s not thief that was the roamer it would be a gs/sx warrior, gs/sx Ranger, d/d ele, or some other mobile comp. Those three comps provide close mobility to the thief, but lag slightly behind.
Decap engi can do the same thing but in a different way. It will just cc you off point until it’s decapped .
This is just a strategy you need to account for and figure out. Without this is PvP would loose a lot of flavor IMO.
Somewhat ironic imo, I’ve been running into a few Team Comps that are completely AI builds. Mesmers, Guardian, Necro comps with Shatter/Phantasm hybrid builds, Spirit Weapon Builds, and Minion Mancer builds. The number of AI is overwhelming.
Thieves don’t really excel at anything.
The reason they receive so much more hate is because of stealth, which makes them extremely hard to kill. If Thieves just died like any other class would in a similar situation people would be much less hateful towards them.
It’s just that ANet, in their limited wisdom, has created the single worst stealth mechanic in any MMO I have witnessed. Even MMOs with perma-stealth had more compelling counter-play to stealth.
But in GW2 you can spam stealth almost ad infinitum, as long as you’re in combat, while blinding and healing yourself in the process. Stealth doesn’t limit the Thief in any way, it has no opportunity cost. In fact the exact opposite is the case. Stealth enpowers the Thief so it’s always a good idea to use it.
Stealth in GW2 is a great example of poor game design and the fact that it remains unchanged, even 2 years into the game, shows that ANet don’t really have anyone who really grasps this type of problem.
Can you please compile a list of combat functionalities that have this “opportunity cost”?
The only one’s I’ve seen from what I think you are talking about are the frenzy utility skills.
It seems to be that 99% of combat mechanics empower every profession.
The best way to tell if a class is OP, is to see if it is clearly the best option in the most frequently occurring scenarios. I won’t touch on WvW or PvE, but thief isn’t the best option in most scenarios, no profession is, which means ANet has done at least a decent job at making most professions viable.
Something thief does excel at, is creating numbers advantages, because of it’s ability to disengage and it’s mobility.
Power Block was originally stated to not affect thief skills or any skills that have no cooldown. It also puts stomps/rezzing on a 10s cooldown. Right now it’s actually pretty awesome, but very likely soon to get hotfixed. At the most, I believe the only thing that needs fixed is locking out Rezz/Stomps.
You’re right though. There IS a chance that this behavior is intended, but its highly unlikely… which is a real shame considering the trait is in an excellent place right now.
These are obvious things you’d QA. There’s no way they didn’t know that at some point the trait was doing this. The way it would be considered a bug, is if a dev put a code build in with the wrong version of the trait.
Otherwise it’s intended, or their QA was on vacation.
The fix to waypoints could be to have two kinds of contested icons. One that’s a bit greyed out for when you are cross zone, and the normal contested icon.
The point of the cross zone greyed out icon is to be a warning that this waypoint MIGHT be contested. If you load in and it is, then the game should identifiy the nearest in-zone non-contested waypoint and take you there, then open a UI message advising you that the waypoint you tried to visit was contested.
The existing icons should have their functionality be unchanged. In zone waypoints that are contested, you still can’t go to.
I’d like to this trait impact combat functionalities different.
The functionality categories would be:
The cooldown inflicted should be different between these two, but a cool down should still exist. The cooldown on functionalities with a recharge time could still be 10 seconds. The cooldown on functionalities with an instant recharge could still exist but not be overly punishing, something like 3-4 seconds.
I play thief, and I would prefer this type of ability stay in the game for the mesmer, because it adds depth to the combat. There’s a player with more of a control ROLE, than just being damage or bunker, even though they will still be just as much a bunker, dps, or balanced.
I play thief mainly, and I can honestly say I hope they don’t change Power Block to not affect auto attacks and initiative skills. It would give mesmers a place in the meta, and the numbers could be tweaked until a balance is found.
It’s something very different than damage, damage, damage, tank, tank, tank. It potentially adds a really solid control role.
Added:
I think Power Block should affect functionalities without cooldowns differently than skills with cooldowns. Maybe it affects auto attacks, initiaitve skills, rezzing, and stomping for 3 seconds, and all skills with a recharge for 10 seconds.
(edited by Shockwave.1230)
get two stacking sigils.
Put one on your water weapon. Get an extra w/e weapon. Swap your w/e weapon and the water weapon will prevent your sigil stacks from dropping.
Burning Speed: This skill now evades attacks. <—- even when the dev’s first announced this on twitch I said, “wth are you thinking?” Must revert this as it’s way to high of damage attack and a gap closer to have an evade. There has to be a cost to using it.
There doesn’t. There’s no cost to using most skills, only a few have negative impacts.
If it hasn’t been suggested yet, the wardrobe should provide and option to display wielded weapons.
The devs stated in a live stream that existing characters would be grandfathered into the new system. Is there any reason to believe characters with these manuals wouldn’t be able to use them?
Added: ready up episode 8 I believe was the live stream where they discuss the new trait system grandfathering existing characters in.
You cant use the manuals after the update because you will be automatically unlocking them at specific levels now. And the grandfathering comment was regarding the new system of unlocking the traits (fighting a particular boss, etc) where existing characters would not have to do that.
That’s unfortunate for me, my three characters in their 20s have the master and grandmaster books in their inventory.
The devs stated in a live stream that existing characters would be grandfathered into the new system. Is there any reason to believe characters with these manuals wouldn’t be able to use them?
Added: ready up episode 8 I believe was the live stream where they discuss the new trait system grandfathering existing characters in.
(edited by Shockwave.1230)
I just assumed everyone would buy their trait manuals for existing chars by today, and we’d be able to use them even after the new system goes live. That’s the tone I gathered from how ANet kept saying existing characters would be grandfathered into the new system.
51ish is what you’ll be
The “Downed Easily” argument is completely ignorant. With a D/D+P/D setup you’re able to 1vZerg if you play smart enough, and keep enough bleed stacks to get several kills off. Running at least 10 in SA (which you should run 30 if you want any sort of sustain), you have blind on stealth, and dodging within stealth will create caltrops that won’t reveal you. Steal from an engie, Dealth Blossom/Heartseeker through the Gunk field and you’ll have Chaos Armor and spread AoE Confusion. It’s a VERY strong spec, and extremely underappreciated. I stopped playing it because I don’t feel that being invincible is very fun, and some opponents take ages to down.
1vZerg with lots of kills?
Pics or it didn’t happen.
I expect the upcoming evidence to be the 1 dying numerous times and the zerg trampling his corpse
It’s too easy to cleanse thief blead stacks. They don’t have lots of cover conditions. Even if they did have cover conditions though, condi is DoT damage, so it doesn’t make sense to build a thief that way, since they won’t be able to survive attempting to apply constant pressure.
This is such a BS argument. Nobody has 100 cleanses, and a thief can easily reapply those stacks. Combined with Devourer Venom, a thief can safely stack 20 bleeds with no issues, while a bleed warrior (which is more than viable) can only stack 15 each burst, which is very easily telegraphed. Warrior has torment, but thief has poison on autoattack and steal. Thief also has a massive AoE bleed/cripple which ticks Signet of Malice. In a team fight you can be the determining factor, and running Celestial on said spec you can crit 6k backstabs while bleeding for near 1k per tick. Don’t knock it because every other thief on these poison forums tells you that bleed thief is garbage.
It’s not an optimal tactic for a thief, because you need to sustain yourself. Viable and optimal are different. It’ll work in some scenarios, but it gets downed easily by burst just like any other thief build, the biggest difference is it lacks blinds and mobility, so it can’t disengage at will. Those two things it lacks are why it isn’t optimal, especially in PvP.
Hi ! I always wondered why anet decided to do different gear types… They could have made a system where you distribute your stats on your own. Instead of being forced to buy a certain gear you’d just have the ’’base’’ gear and change your stats as you want ! (like in gw1) I know it’d be hard to go back but an expansion (so all actual gears are outdated) set a new base of gear right ?
What do you guys think about it ? Why did they choose that ? I don’t like to have different armor sets in my inventory…
It was probably intended to be a major time/gold sink. I think though for the majority of the playerbase they end up just doing work arounds, like getting greens/yellows to try different sets, and then getting exotics of whatever distribution they like the most.
I just follow a simple rule now, get a set of all knights and and all berserker gear. I make it a bit more complicated for the low health professions (theif, elementalist, guardian)
I’m not sure what to what to do about Mesmer’s steal, as I find their stolen ability to be fairly balanced. The issues with the match up lie elsewhere.
A lyssa proc with twice the boon duration on half the CD. Such balance.
Still, I agree — there are other issues with the mesmer/thief match-up that are more important than consume plasma.
Consume Plasma isn’t a lyssa proc, no conditions are removed.
Excellent point — we all know thieves slot lyssa runes for condi clear, not burst setup.
It all depends on the situation. Condi cleanse vs some builds, boons for other builds. There’s also the option to precast venom ahead of a fight in order for it to be off cd a second time during a fight.
I’m not sure what to what to do about Mesmer’s steal, as I find their stolen ability to be fairly balanced. The issues with the match up lie elsewhere.
A lyssa proc with twice the boon duration on half the CD. Such balance.
Still, I agree — there are other issues with the mesmer/thief match-up that are more important than consume plasma.
Consume Plasma isn’t a lyssa proc, no conditions are removed. If you build a mesmer for 1v1, then you probably aren’t going to care to deal with the boons unless you’re up against guardians or ele’s, but you have the option to use arcane thievery or null field.
All the classes are viable, there’s a couple scenarios where some aren’t as good to use in a specific game, but they’re all viable.
Has SupCutie not registered?
ranged skill that ignores LOS (and thus most positioning),
Lets clear this up now before you continue to make a fool of yourself speaking about a class that you clearly don’t play.
Things that happen when you are out of LoS or blinded and steal:
-You are teleported to your target
-Thrill of the Crime procs giving you fury, swiftness and a stack of mightThings that don’t happen when you are out of LoS or blinded and steal:
- Gain vigor
- Get healed from mug
- Gain 2 initiative
- Poison
- Daze
- Deals damage
- Gain the steal ability
I only knew about some of these, thanks for the complete list. It’s unfortunate that there’s so many hidden behaviors to mechanics.
As a start mesmers are slow but at the same time EXTREMLY mobile. No. other classe have the same spawny mobility exept thiefs and in some ways we outmatch even them. Its al about learn to use the tools we have. Straff is one, give extreme agility and take ages to master. The amount of obsticles and terrains it can climb are unmatched. Another is portal, and ofc traited blink.
We are in general better at mobility in running or fighting than in pure chasing. For chasing you need to use staff smart combined with blink and cc, if you can get infront of target staff blink in front of it and keep preasure.
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=H4Iz8XI_Jg4
/Osicat
How do you seemlessly teleport forward with staff?
Added
I hunted down your other mobility video, didn’t realize staff 2 moved you directly away from whoever you had targeted, even if they’re behind you.
(edited by Shockwave.1230)
OP, what thief build do you need to counter?
It sounds like it’s S/P | SB
Counters to PW are positioning and tells.
Stay on at max melee range when in melee, ranged classes are easier to fight S/P with.
Watch for the PW windup from range, because it likely means a teleport is coming.
Vs pistol whip use damage mitigation tactics such as dodge roll, use a multi-block DoT, invulnerability, evade skills etc.
If at point blank melee range vs an incoming PW, do a blind/block and run straight forward (doesn’t work if PW is combined with mug, but you’ll only take about 1500 damage with this method)
If at max melee range vs an incoming pistol whip, side step away and angle your camera so that the perpindicular line to your line of site is aligned with the thief, this allows you to move away in the most efficient manner without using a dodge roll.
If you are caught in a pistol whip, and you want to reduce the damage by half then spam dodge.
Dont worry about Infiltrator’s Strike combined with PW. Unless the thief has power traits the immob only lasts 1 second. When the PW stun expires the immob will already be gone. If I’m not being focused or low on health I prefer to eat 3500 (combined between IS and %50 PW vs glass) then dodge out, (It’s the thief trading 9 initiative for 3500-4000 damage, a very inefficient exchange, bunkers especially should keep this in mind since they take even less damage).
The counterplay exists, people just may not be utilizing it.
Added
Also keep an eye out for quickness on an S/P thief. After quickness triggers its gone for 30 seconds, a quickness triggered PW removes the option to reduce the damage by 50% with a dodge.
(edited by Shockwave.1230)
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