Guild Wars 2

There is guild in the Mesmer forum consists of players that frequent their forum, they call it OMFG – Official Mesmer Forum Guild – or something like that.

Talk about Clone Wars.

I doubt a zerg consists of Thieves can top that — but it would be entertaining to see.

Gulesave.5073:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

I’m sorry to disagree but both the short duration and the long cooldown of the venom makes it a horrible choice for condition damage build.

Agreed. Venoms are a rounded hinderance, pressure and maintenance build using a touch of condition damage among several other factors. Currently, the condition damage is just too small, especially since the two damaging venoms are intended to exert passive control via their damage.

Venomous Aura is directly responsible why venom is so horrible. You may perceive that the condition damage is too small only because you are not looking at the bigger picture. In a group setting where boons are shared, having a 25 stack of Might, plus 25 stacks of Corruption, then sharing your venom via Venom Aura makes the total condition damage over the top. The reason is that not only the Thief is applying the venom but 5 other people also. So a single shared Spider Venom will apply 25 stacks of Poison.

So the real problem with venom, and the reason behind it’s horribleness, is Venom Aura.

Add all the non-venom damaging conditions such as the abundant bleeding and even extra poison in many ranged builds, plus anything you get from sigils or runes, and condition damage will indeed help apply some pressure to your slowed opponent between all your mid-power attacks.

If that is the case, what’s the point of your suggestion?

Also, this is about flexibility. Venoms should be useful with every weapon type. A melee thief can make better use of the power attribute we get from traiting, while a ranged thief instead needs condition damage just to make their weapon skills half as effective as they’re intended. This becomes a gross missed opportunity for build diversification, and a problem in promoting venoms as a viable build outside the single function of extended lockdown, which is of limited use outside PvP.

Adding another trait wouldn’t necessarily promote diversity and flexibility. All it will ever do is add functionality on the currently existing builds. Just because your proposed trait is implemented doesn’t mean that a condition build will suddenly shift to add more power or crit or healing power. It is more than likely that a condition build will stay as is because it is now even better.

EDIT: Corruption not Bloodlust

At low level, practically any stat works but around mid-leveling, 35-45 ish, you may want to consider taking specific stats. Power is priority #1 until you get to level 80 where you can get creative on your builds.

S/P is good a start, solid damage and straight forward, but if you favor mobility, D/D is your best weapon set. Same with range weapons, if you want mobility, take a shortbow, else you can use P/P.

I personally like D/D and P/P when leveling a Thief up — I’m currently leveling my 3rd Thief, currently level 22 — so it’s really up to you which weapon matches your play style.

There’s plenty of room for nerfing Thieves.

• As for the shortbow, I agree that it needs more nerf. For instance, the Skill #3 should either evade or cripple, but not both.

• Also the Skill #5 should require a target since what’s the point of the blind effect if Thieves use it to run away.

• And Skill #2 should also require a target and explodes on impact knocking every one down if they get it.

• The cost on each skill should be a flat 5 initiatives because they are all equally useful.

• Rooting is also necessary after using the Skill #3 just to be consistent with other #3 skills in other weapon set.

And I’m just getting warmed up.

• Travel time of the projectile needs to be slower. The same speed with the Guardian’s Scepter’s #1 skill.

• Choking gas should deal damage so that the Thief will be revealed when used from stealth.

• Detonate Cluster should be automatic. It should detonate on impact as mentioned above or it detonates after traveling after a set time. Three seconds (3s) travel time would be enough.

If these are not enough, there’s always the pre-cast and after-cast delay that we can add to further nerf this weapon’s skills.

What: Black Powder
Why: The Thief should also be blinded unless they are wearing an infrared goggles. So no more stomping those poor and pathetic Warriors after using Black Powder. It’s not fair to them.

There should be a tooltip when you hover your mouse over the word “Unique” that states “You can only equip one foo-” (reference to Mordekaiser, LoL champion)

1: Mostly PvE, some times WvW, rarely PvP

2: Beta – 1,000+ hours

3: About the same amount of time

4: I have 2 Level 80 Thieves: one main and the other just for trophy and another Thief trophy currently at level 22 — it never gets old. Leveling a Thief is fun compare to other professions.

5 : The direction of the balance team is infuriating because nobody in their team plays Thief so they have no basic understanding on how the profession works. Also they are too focus on PvP interaction (sPvP, tPvP, WvW) without regards on how it affect players in PvE.

Also there should be a “Bug Squashing Team” because the Thief profession is littered with bugs. Squash the bugs, then balance the profession.

Yup, getting carried through dungeons is the best way to learn the Thief profession because your team will not mind when you go into melee without thinking — they’ll rez you anyway. If your backstab is not pulling aggro, you’re not dealing a burst damage nor you understand what a burst damage is — that much is an indication that you’re being carried.

Elthurien.8356:

I really think Caltrops should have been updated when Torment was introduced to the game. Instead of a double bleed stack it should do one bleed and one torment to simulate how painful it is to continue running around with shards of steel embedded in your foot.

The thing about Torment is that, it’s an effect that is not physical unlike Bleed, Poison, and Burning. I believe this is the reason why Hide in Shadow doesn’t remove Torment because it’s more like an illusion or mental effect than physical.

So having Torment in Caltrops just doesn’t make sense unless of course we coat the Caltrops with hallucinogen venom to induce Tormenting images to the victim.

Einlanzer.1627:

Slightly off-topic, but it always felt to me that Caltrops were a little too strong relative to other skills, making it operate almost as a crutch, at least in PvE. It almost seems like making it just do 1 stack while buffing weapon skill coefficients would make the class feel better overall.

No need to fix what’s not broken.

Besides, regardless on what we feel, Anet doesn’t care.

Interceptor.2653:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Stealth is a defensive mechanism to prevent re-application of targeted conditions and targeted damage for as least the duration of the stealth.

Am I speaking a different language, here? Stealth-based survival is not useful to people who cannot stealth. I have no stealths on my bar whatsoever. I can combo Black Powder and Cluster bomb if I really wanted to, that’s about it.

My point is, with that benefit from stealth, why don’t you carry at least one?

Never mind that stealth is highly vulnerable to AOEs and non-targeted damage + conditions.

Eh? So you go in stealth and not move? o.O?

HiS gives you a higher effective health. Pain Response has a horrible cooldown of 60s, HiS has 30s cooldown meaning you can remove conditions more often on top of a high healing on use.

Update your notes: Pain Response has a 30s cooldown, not 60s.

Hmm, you’re right. Not sure where I got that 60s. I stand corrected.

Also, Pain Response has a long-duration Regeneration on it (10s vs. 4s). While HiS has a burst heal on it, Pain Response is not a Healing skill. PR lets you run something like Withdraw or Signet of Malice, which are superior heals to HiS past 15 seconds. Withdraw also throws in things like Vigorous Recovery, and the #4 skill on Lyssa.

That much is true, I agree. However it suffers from not being able to control Pain Response.

Also Pain Response triggers and goes into cooldown even if you don’t need it just because you drop down to 75% health. :/

If I am under 75% health, I’m pretty sure that I could use a 12+ second regen.

That’s not the point. If it triggers and it is put in cooldown, you lose your condition removal for the duration. HiS gives you the control when to remove and not remove conditions. Just like Last Refuge and Hard to Catch, it’s not a good game play to lose control of your Thief.

Not 25 pts, only 15. Since I spec 30 in Trick, I already have 10 in DA for Mug. So that 15 pts can either go in DA for more damage or in Acro for mediocre damage.

But I don’t go down 10 DA all the time, so it’d be 25 points for me. And since I run 25-30 Acrobatics and you don’t, that seems like an important difference.

So let me guess. Based on what you posted so far, you’re running a 0/10/0/30/30?

25/0/0/15/30 is for sustain engagement. Not sure what you’re talking about here.

I’m talking about the part of the game where you’re not dueling a single person, and the sustain in 25/0/0/15/30 not equal to the task.

How so? 30pts in Trick gives me a lot of mobility to sustain a non-single person engagement. Just to be clear, I main S/D set.

No. It’s not worth it when you do the comparison of benefits. You have to ask yourself what you get for every point your put into a trait.

Who is “you” and “yourself” in your example? It’s you. Not me, not the generic thief, but you personally.

I apologize. I failed to consider that there are Thieves like you who simply add points into traits without reasons and considerations that I am under a false impression that all the things that you have posted so far are nothing but cowpie.

My bad.

Then you’re not in need of survival because SA has the best survival traits.

Only if you are a stealther. If I have no stealths on my bar, than 30 SA is kind of a hilarious waste unless I’m using venoms, because there’s no survival there for me. Except Last Refuge, I guess?

I guess Thieves has less chance of survival when going into stealth that’s why you don’t pick up at least one stealth skill. You don’t have to be a stealther to use stealth.

What do you pick in 10 CS? Furious Retal? If so, you already have access to Fury with 10 Trick that can be triggered every 21s (or less).

Whatever I need at the moment.

- Furious Retaliation: 100% Fury uptime (Thrill is not enough for this by itself). Also allows me to drop Thrill for Long Reach without running totally dry on Fury access.
- Practiced Tolerance: 1300-1500+ health for an Adept skill is a pretty good deal.
- Signets of Power: if I am running a couple signets or more, this is 5 stacks of 13s+ Might on activation. A really good way to get Power in a hurry. Helps a lot for ones that I am using anyway, like Infiltrator’s.

And obviously besides the Adept skill, you also get the Precision/crit and Keen Observer.

Furious Retal has a 10s duration with 30s cooldown and only when target goes below 50%. Thrill gives you Fury every 10s if you spec SoH. So dropping Thrill for Long Reach is funny.

I’m curious what’s the stats on your build.

I never really use Devounom since it’s inferior to IDnom. It’s the only venom with one effect.

Spider poison deals damage + reduce healing.
Ice Drake slows movement + slow skill recharge.
Skale vulnerability + Torment.
Devourer immobilizes only. It should also cause cripple IMO.

So I get it when someone has a negative view on Devounom.

However, with your weapon set of choice (S/P) it is a perfect choice.

Ironically, the one who suggested that you should bring Shadow Refuge is obviously the liability — he would need you to rez him. lol.

Dahkeus.8243:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Aggro

^ do some reading. Burst really matter that much.

Have you read it yourself?

You might want to look at the section “Gaining and losing aggro”

Yes, I play a thief. I’ve played sword specs, dagger specs, etc. in fractals and every dungeon in the game. A backstab doesn’t make that much of a difference in aggro.

Yup you’re right. Hitting a boss with a 2x crit damage back stab doesn’t make a difference in aggro — if you’re using toothpicks.

You can step into melee if you’ve gotten any decent understanding of the game. Thieves are squishy and yes, you will die at times while learning, but that’s how you learn.

Horrible suggestion. You need to be mindful of the status of the OP — he’s level 22 for goodness sake.

0/30/0/15/25 is defensive because of:
– defensive stats from Acro investment
– Feline’s Grace giving the extra dodge
– Bountiful theft giving vigor

So that’s defensive, 0/0/30/30/10 is offensive build then — got it.

This gives defensive tools without being a huge sacrifice to dps.

So it’s an offensive build then?

If you need more defense than this, wear some valkyrie gear.

Ok, so it wasn’t a defensive build after all.

While under level 80, pick up pieces with vit and/or toughness in addition to gear with precision/crit damage/power, but just avoid condition damage and healing.

The OP isn’t new to the game, he’s new to the class. Playing at ranged will teach no more about how to play the class than running on his guardian will.

With your suggestion, he’s better off playing his Guardian. Thief requires opportunity before going into melee range and should know when to get out of range…no wonder you die.

Interceptor.2653:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

But we’re talking about survivability so in comparison, we have better chance of survival with SA than with Acro. Even if you don’t use stealth, having Hide in Shadow to remove 4 conditions is a plus when it comes to survival.

Nope.

Pain Response in 20 Acrobatics gives you similar condition protection at around the same rate, but it’s automatic and doesn’t require that you pick a bad healing skill. Someone with 20+ Acrobatics has a counter-measure for bleed/poison/burning (and a much longer Regen buff), but is still able to run Signet of Malice or Withdraw for far superior healing/utility.

HiS buys you a bonus condition. That’s cool. But worse than Acrobatics for the non-stealth Thief. If you don’t really benefit from stealth, and don’t even have something like Hidden Assassin for synergy, what’s the point?

Stealth is a defensive mechanism to prevent re-application of targeted conditions and targeted damage for as least the duration of the stealth. HiS gives you a higher effective health. Pain Response has a horrible cooldown of 60s, HiS has 30s cooldown meaning you can remove conditions more often on top of a high healing on use.

Also Pain Response triggers and goes into cooldown even if you don’t need it just because you drop down to 75% health. :/

I’m addressing the benefit of taking Fluid Strikes (25 Acro)in comparison to taking Exposed Weakness (25 DA). I concluded that it’s more beneficial to take 25 DA than 25 Acro, meaning, there’s no reason to go pass 15 points in Acro.

If we’re stipulating that you’re putting 15 into Acrobatics regardless, Fluid Strikes only costs 10 more points than your sunk cost. Exposed Weakness requires that you spend 25 points in Deadly Arts.

Not 25 pts, only 15. Since I spec 30 in Trick, I already have 10 in DA for Mug. So that 15 pts can either go in DA for more damage or in Acro for mediocre damage.

To have 25-30 pts in Acro, I will going to be able to use Trick else I will have no damage thus I will have to put the 30pts from Trick to either DA or CS.

Anyone can use a hyperbole when they have ran out of counter-arguments.

It’s a true story. I have run 25/0/0/15/30 before, and you cannot survive sustained engagements to the extent that you can with a more Acrobatics-centric setup. I have to use builds that allow me to do the things that I want to do.

25/0/0/15/30 is for sustain engagement. Not sure what you’re talking about here.

Nobody is dictating how the class should be played, we are merely having a discussion whether 30pts in Acro is a good idea. I’ve shown by comparison that there’s no benefit to go pass 15pts, that the 15pts can be used somewhere else with more benefit.

In other words, that it’s not worth it to you. But nobody ever says “that’s not worth it for me”, because that doesn’t sound as cool; they have to try to make some broader point that doesn’t doesn’t necessarily apply.

No. It’s not worth it when you do the comparison of benefits. You have to ask yourself what you get for every point your put into a trait.

For damage, add the 15 pts in DA. For survival, add the 15pts in SA.

I’d be out of my mind to put 15 points in SA. There isn’t a single stealth on my bar. What is the point?

Then you’re not in need of survival because SA has the best survival traits.

I’m not sure where else do you put your points in if you don’t have at least 10pts in DA for Mug. :/

Mug seems to be an obvious choice if you spec Trickery.

Mug is very good, and I sometimes run 10 DA, but it’s not the be-all end-all. 10 CS is also strong, even though it doesn’t synergize with Steal.

What do you pick in 10 CS? Furious Retal? If so, you already have access to Fury with 10 Trick that can be triggered every 21s (or less).

Dahkeus.8243:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

D/D is really bursty and will give you troubles in dungeons or world group event because as soon as you deal that back stab, you gotta run because you just took aggro and will die in one swipe.

My suggestion, for a less painful leveling, is to reserve Sword main hand for boss fights since your damage is regulated by the slow attack speed and will not pull aggro as long as you manage your damage output. Having high DPS typically means that you will die a lot since you’ll be pulling aggro left and right. So save your D/D set for mobs that you can kill quickly and use sword for a longer fights or when in a group.

Umm…what? No, that’s not how it works. Aggro is something that’s factored by a large number of factors, including toughness, current health, etc. Damage is a factor, but you’re not more likely to get aggro simply because of one ability doing a bit more burst than your auto attack.

Which part of “burst” did you not understand? A burst is a massive increase in your damage output that is definite to generate a lot of aggro despite of other factors.

If your “burst” damage deals a much damage as a Warrior’s auto attack, then you might want to take a look at your ability to burst.

The only reason a sword will prevent you from getting aggro is simply because it does less damage. If you’re in a bad group where your dps is so much higher than the rest of your group that you’re primarily holding aggro, you can simply start dealing less damage and you’ll accomplishing the same thing as running into the fight with a sword.

lol. Sure if you say so.

Also, you don’t need to stick as ranged while you learn the class. If anything, you’ll learn the class faster by jumping in as melee because sitting at range won’t tell you what moves are deadly to melee and which aren’t.

Sigh. This is almost like trolling. Do you even know how to play a Thief? You can’t just jump in there like a Warrior. Sheesh!

If you’re too squishy, just wear some more defensive gear (Valkyrie or Knight stats) or change your spec to have more defensive traits. 0/30/0/15/25 is a good defensive spec to use if you’re worried about being too squishy.

lol, yup, a troll. How is 0/30/0/15/25 a defensive trait? I have no idea.

Anyway, do what you think is good for you.

WolfiKurisu.6894:

If that is the case, then why make it 30 × 2? Why not just 60?

Actually you are dealing 15 bleed dmg per second per stack, so the tool tip already added them together to show 30 bleed damage to represent 2 stacks.

You can verify your bleed damage per second by looking at Vital Shot (pistol #1).

Also, does anyone know how often/when the caltrops take effect? Is it when the enemy stands on one of the visual caltrops, or is it step based or something?

As long as they stay inside the AoE circle, moving or not, they will take damage every tick. And according to Wiki, it ticks every second.

Interceptor.2653:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

If I would focus on survivability, the right choice would be SA and not Acro. You get more for your 15 points in SA than going all the way to 30pts Acro.

Shadow Arts isn’t really that useful for people who don’t stealth or use venoms. You’ll get Toughness and some Healing Power, along with an Adept skill that’s OK-ish. Acrobatics is better if you’re mostly being active in combat.

But we’re talking about survivability so in comparison, we have better chance of survival with SA than with Acro. Even if you don’t use stealth, having Hide in Shadow to remove 4 conditions is a plus when it comes to survival.

Fluid Strikes is interchangeable with Exposed Weakness, but with Fluid Strikes, you don’t get the Power boost and condition duration from DA which synegized well with Exposed Weakness.

It’s not clear here what this has to do with survival. Nobody is calling Acrobatics an offensive trait line, but there is an offensive trait past the 15 that you’ve already invested in it.

I’m addressing the benefit of taking Fluid Strikes (25 Acro)in comparison to taking Exposed Weakness (25 DA). I concluded that it’s more beneficial to take 25 DA than 25 Acro, meaning, there’s no reason to go pass 15 points in Acro.

Yes, but spec-ing for 30 Acro is a really bad trade off.

Says you. Not a week ago I was grinding out a Garrison capture against superior numbers, and there were AOEs flying around everywhere with nary a place to hide. I’d have gotten pasted across the floor like a booger if I’d been running your trait configuration. This is just a matter of opinion, naturally, but I feel like I contribute more when I’m alive.

Anyone can use a hyperbole when they have ran out of counter-arguments.

I don’t disparage the glassy thieves their delicious cake, but let’s not pretend that there’s only one way to play the class.

Nobody is dictating how the class should be played, we are merely having a discussion whether 30pts in Acro is a good idea. I’ve shown by comparison that there’s no benefit to go pass 15pts, that the 15pts can be used somewhere else with more benefit.

For damage, add the 15 pts in DA. For survival, add the 15pts in SA.

5pts into DA will make your Steal deal ~1140 poison damage instead of the base 840 damage.

It also lets you do more damage when you have a Venomshare Thief in your group, or a Guardian, and it helps with shortbow conditions, and assorted other things that I care very little for. I’d prefer to take literally any other stat over condition damage, including Healing Power, but I spec Trickery anyway because I want what’s at GM. C’est la vie.

I’m not sure where else do you put your points in if you don’t have at least 10pts in DA for Mug. :/

Mug seems to be an obvious choice if you spec Trickery.

Guardian as tank is a misconception. Just because they wear heavy armor doesn’t make them a tank. They instead make everyone else tanky through their boons with aegis, protection, and hp regen.

If you want a tank, Warrior is your only choice since they can dish out a lot of damage to keep aggro on them and can take a lot of punishment due to large health pool and heavy armor. Guardian has a pathetic damage output thus will have a hard time keeping aggro and they cannot take a lot of punishments in comparison to a Warrior. Once their protection and aegis ran out, they are too squishy due to their pathetically low health pool. They are the best support class however, but they are not tanks.

D/D is really bursty and will give you troubles in dungeons or world group event because as soon as you deal that back stab, you gotta run because you just took aggro and will die in one swipe.

My suggestion, for a less painful leveling, is to reserve Sword main hand for boss fights since your damage is regulated by the slow attack speed and will not pull aggro as long as you manage your damage output. Having high DPS typically means that you will die a lot since you’ll be pulling aggro left and right. So save your D/D set for mobs that you can kill quickly and use sword for a longer fights or when in a group.

Interceptor.2653:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

That’s the thing, it’s not worth it trying to build around it.

I’m currently running a 25-0-0-15-30 because there’s not enough reason to go beyond 15 in Acrobat.

That’s just a choice that you’ve made. It’s not that Acrobatics doesn’t provide anything, it’s that you don’t like it. Going past Feline Grace to 30 Acro gives you another 1500 health, 15% boon duration, Fluid Strikes, and a pair of Master/GM traits (which include Pain Response and Quick Pockets, if you don’t like AR). It certainly makes you more survivable than 15 points in either DA or Trickery.

I never said that it doesn’t provide anything rather it’s not worth it. If I would focus on survivability, the right choice would be SA and not Acro. You get more for your 15 points in SA than going all the way to 30pts Acro.

Fluid Strikes is interchangeable with Exposed Weakness, but with Fluid Strikes, you don’t get the Power boost and condition duration from DA which synegized well with Exposed Weakness.

Builds always involve trade-offs.

Yes, but spec-ing for 30 Acro is a really bad trade off.

I go 30 Trickery too, even though I might as well be lighting the 300 condition damage on fire for all the good that it does me overall.

5pts into DA will make your Steal deal ~1140 poison damage instead of the base 840 damage.

You see, 25 in DA and 30 in Trick is a good pair; and 15 in Acro for mobility.

Deathspike.1870:

Blind or a stun breaker?

Stun breaker happens after the fact, but blind completely ignores the effect.

For example, a blind Warrior will fail to interrupt a Thief from stomping them with Hammer Toss knockdown.

A well timed Blind can ignore a lot of disables.

What posses you to suggest this?

“Dancing Dagger – Increased cost from 3 to 5 initiative. Damage increased by 33% (up to 66% from 50% of the original). Now stuns first foe hit when hit from behind for 0.25 seconds. Increased aftercast by 50%. (optional:) If stun is triggered, no additional bounces are applied.”

This is horrible.

You said to “tone down Trickery builds” yet you suggest a lot of increase in Initiative cost. You just made D/D the most expensive weapon set.

I don’t agree with these proposed changes at all.

EDIT: I sure hope that these changes will be PVP ONLY.

Lightsbane.9012:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Lightsbane.9012:

Maugetarr.6823:

Lightsbane.9012:

“you really think your damage will decrease simply because of cooldowns? are you serious? you’ll still do 7k backstabs. you’ll still do 12k unloads whether the cooldown is 0 or 20 seconds. i guess if the thief gets cooldowns, it won’t be the players the thief kills that need to ‘l2p’”
i’ll laugh my kitten off the day arenanet finally realizes that their two most appealing classes are incredibly broken(thief and warrior) that being said, rogue and warrior classes are always the strongest in every mmorpg to date. although being able to stealth every 3 seconds is pretty new.

PS: i can’t wait for this post to be flamed.

Actually, damage would most likely need an increase if they were given cooldowns. Right now backstab has a multiplier of 2.4 from behind. A warrior’s eviscerate has a multipliers of 2.0, 2.5, and 3.0 depending on the adrenaline level. Heartseeker also only has a multipler of 2.0 at it’s highest level (under 25% health), while final thrust has a multiplier of 3.0 at under 50% health. Our utility skills would also need a buff using Headshot vs. Magic Bullet as an example. Whether you want to believe it or not, our skills are already balanced around repeated usage and would need buffs if they were balanced around CDs.

if used properly, heartseeker is fine with a ~3s cooldown. i mean you’re really arguing that both warrior and thief are broken. strange thing is, warrior does all of this with cooldowns and a ton of interruptable skills. their risk of failure is higher than a thief’s risk of failure to hit, since dodging something you can’t see can be kind of hard.

If that would happen, HS better insta-kill my target.

i guess 7k crits aren’t high enough. most classes would kill for this without cooldowns. engineer for example. i mean you really must not wvw much if you think a 3 second cooldown is alot.

It’s ok. Most people don’t really understand how Initiatives works that’s why they say things like “without cooldowns.” Obviously you don’t play Thief.

Lightsbane.9012:

Maugetarr.6823:

Lightsbane.9012:

“you really think your damage will decrease simply because of cooldowns? are you serious? you’ll still do 7k backstabs. you’ll still do 12k unloads whether the cooldown is 0 or 20 seconds. i guess if the thief gets cooldowns, it won’t be the players the thief kills that need to ‘l2p’”
i’ll laugh my kitten off the day arenanet finally realizes that their two most appealing classes are incredibly broken(thief and warrior) that being said, rogue and warrior classes are always the strongest in every mmorpg to date. although being able to stealth every 3 seconds is pretty new.

PS: i can’t wait for this post to be flamed.

Actually, damage would most likely need an increase if they were given cooldowns. Right now backstab has a multiplier of 2.4 from behind. A warrior’s eviscerate has a multipliers of 2.0, 2.5, and 3.0 depending on the adrenaline level. Heartseeker also only has a multipler of 2.0 at it’s highest level (under 25% health), while final thrust has a multiplier of 3.0 at under 50% health. Our utility skills would also need a buff using Headshot vs. Magic Bullet as an example. Whether you want to believe it or not, our skills are already balanced around repeated usage and would need buffs if they were balanced around CDs.

if used properly, heartseeker is fine with a ~3s cooldown. i mean you’re really arguing that both warrior and thief are broken. strange thing is, warrior does all of this with cooldowns and a ton of interruptable skills. their risk of failure is higher than a thief’s risk of failure to hit, since dodging something you can’t see can be kind of hard.

If that would happen, HS better insta-kill my target.

Gulesave.5073:

~snip~
If everyone is trying to play venoms up for their control aspects alone, I think I see another reason why so many people complain about them being weak.

I’m sorry to disagree but both the short duration and the long cooldown of the venom makes it a horrible choice for condition damage build.

Interceptor.2653:

…but does anyone going down the Acrobatics line ever do that anyway? Acro is not a high-damage line in the first place: you have Fluid Strikes and PoI, and that’s about all she wrote.

That’s the thing, it’s not worth it trying to build around it.

I’m currently running a 25-0-0-15-30 because there’s not enough reason to go beyond 15 in Acrobat.

As expected, Trickery is next in the chopping block.

The combination of Increase Init regen, 15 initiatives pool, 2init on steal, reduced steal cooldown, Thrill, Bountiful, and Sleight are just too much for many people especially those who play Warriors.

QQ, thieves now have too much initiatives to spam 3s and 2s.

Cynz.9437:

So why exactly does tow line daze my character when i use it on target? The tooltipp doesn’t contain any information on it neither does wiki.

The Thief is trying to imitate the Warrior’s spear skill: Harpoon Pull. Unfortunately, Thieves don’t have the strength to make the pull so they get pulled instead.

Every time something is getting pulled or pushed, you get your skills disabled for the duration of the pull/push.

What’s troubling is, we have Ink shot from our harpoon gun that gives us shadowstep yet we require a tow line with our spear?!?

You need 30pts Trickery for Condition Damage. You will need 30pts in CS for “dealing decent damage”. You need 30pts in SA for survivability. You need 30pts in Acro to efficiently dodge attacks. And 30pts in DA if you want to use Venom.

Unfortunately, you only get 70pts. :/

Interceptor.2653:

foste.3098:

Increase the health you get per initiative spent (maybe to 75 or so), since if you go 30 in acrobatics you most likely won’t go for shadow arts and so you don’t get extra healing from healing power (since thiefs don’t generally take gear with healing power).

I’d like the base heal to be increased as well, but nobody is stopping you from taking some Healing Power. A couple pieces of Cleric’s or Magi’s are both perfectly defensible for a 30 Acrobatics spec. Two ascended rings with major HP gives you a substantial boost to the healing on AR.

I guess if you really want to do it, you surely can — but that’s a good way to waste resources to purchase ascended items. The significant loss of damage output just to make a crappy trait to work to me is not worth it — because we all know, in a couple of months or so, Anet will nerf Thieves again and leave you out to dry because Anet wants Thieves to die as soon as we show ourselves.

The HoM Fiery Dragon Sword skin causes burning — but not burning damage.

foste.3098:

Increase the health you get per initiative spent (maybe to 75 or so), since if you go 30 in acrobatics you most likely won’t go for shadow arts and so you don’t get extra healing from healing power (since thiefs don’t generally take gear with healing power).

Secondly make it heal the thief for a set amount (say 2k hp or so) when his initiative reaches 0, and give this effect a 30-60 sec internal cooldown.

Anyone else have any thoughts on this trait cos most people agree it is so not worth the 30 points.

Also sorry if there are other suggestions like this, in which case i just wasted 10 seconds of your time.

Not gonna happen. The point to spec-ing Acro is to avoid damage so you’ll never see a good way of healing yourself in this trait tree.

Dual.8953:

Are venom’s focus really Condi damage? True most of them apply conditions, but only two of them actually damage. I figured they were more about Control because 4 of them have effects that debilitate/discourage movement and the last utility one suppresses healing.

QFT

It’s all about control. You don’t need venom for condition damage build.

KeyOrion.9506:

The more overused a specific combo becomes, the greater increase of a possible nerf to that combo.

That maybe true in the case of Thieves — never happen to Warriors.

lol @ these

“Yes, I’m not ashamed to say that you Dredge lovers are nuts. You’re bad and you should feel bad.”

“Plus, I can always trick people with poor math skills into skipping if I want to by scaring them with numbers and forumlas.”

ahahaha

lordkrall.7241:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

If Zhaitan really is dead…Orr should have sunk back into the ocean floors since the power that rose Orr have dissipated with Zhaitan’s death — and yet, Orr is still above water.

Hm?
There is no reason to assume that it is Zaithans power that holds Orr afloat, only that it rose because of its power.

Yes, it rose because of its power, without that power it will sink again….unless that source of power is not gone afterall, which explains why Orr is still infested with the Risen.

What if Zhaitan is not dead and his being or essence are simply absorbed by other risen, like Tequa’ for example, just to become the new Zhaitan?

How then can we recultivate Orr?

You don’t need to walk into position since the delay between the stun and the slashing part had been shorten, thus you are interrupting your PW by trying to move.

I don’t know why someone would not recommend melee weapon in fractals…that’s like saying let the Dredge stack boons and watch your teammates die. Heck, I’d steal those boons with my S/D and buff my team and myself to godhood.

@OP

D/D is power+crit weapon set, it’s too costly to go condition damage with it.

I think it depends on the zone because I only feel like running with weights when I’m in a zone where champion train is going on or an event like Jormag is up.

lol @ OP

I did the same thing but for a month, but what brought me back to GW2 is the Dodging. I just can’t play other MMOs without the ability to actively dodge attacks — combat is just never the same anymore.

Other aspects of a game like art, interface, etc are all subjective, but dodging is universal — it’s a must have in any combat…at least for me.

OmaiGodman.2098:

Well, they DID add one new healing skill for each profession, which is something. But other than that, I don’t think I can see any skill that wasn’t there around the time I started playing.

There’s actually 2 healing skills per profession.

However I was hoping more than that like having to unlock different weapon sets for each weapon set we already have…like having the weapon set #2 as default skill set for your chosen weapons. So for example, as a Thief, we can have set#1 and set#2 for a P/P weapon set, then we get to choose which set would be the default.

But alas, we get what we get.

If Zhaitan really is dead…Orr should have sunk back into the ocean floors since the power that rose Orr have dissipated with Zhaitan’s death — and yet, Orr is still above water.

Proven.2854:

Death Blossom hits 3 times per second and costs 4 initiative.
In 15 seconds, Death Blossom can be activated 6 times.

This means Deathblossom can do 18 hits in 6 of those 15 seconds.
A single auto-attack chain completes 4 hits in 2 seconds.
When not using Deathblossom, auto-attack can do 16 hits during the remaining 9 of those 15 seconds.
That’s 34 hits in 15 seconds under perfect conditions.

You can’t do both auto-attack and Deathblossom in the same 15s time frame, thus your “34 hits in 15 seconds” is inaccurate — even under perfect conditions.

Rascalking.9845:

Auesis.7301:

No, it doesn’t. It pulses physical damage continuously.

Just tested, it pulses for an extremely low amount of damage. I’ll admit my mistake. They should honestly change it though, pretty stupid figuring the whole premise of the skill is to give conditions + etheral field.

I think the difference is that Throw Gunk is considered a projectile that requires a target that causes an AoE effect or field, while Choking Gas and Caltrops are ground targetting AoE.

Burnfall.9573:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Burnfall.9573:

He answered, “look this is all we can do, so get over it”

So…….

Isn’t this the same way Arena.net look at thief class?

Not even close. To the tree trimmer, it is profitable for them to come back several times a year to trim the tree. There is no profit on “trimming” the Thieves because the nerfs we received is similar to “plucking out the tree.”

no

when you pluck out the tree, you pluck their roots

no matter what trimming (nerfs) thieves get, they are still OP?

like the tree branches; they’ll keep growing.

wouldn’t you agree?

The thing is, what they nerfed was never “growing” back. :/

Burnfall.9573:

He answered, “look this is all we can do, so get over it”

So…….

Isn’t this the same way Arena.net look at thief class?

Not even close. To the tree trimmer, it is profitable for them to come back several times a year to trim the tree. There is no profit on “trimming” the Thieves because the nerfs we received is similar to “plucking out the tree.”

What: Stealth Stacking Duration
Why: I once saw a perma-stealth Thief…

Typically, you would want to use Steal on your 1st target and Infiltrator’s Strike on your 2nd target.

But if Steal is in CD and IS is already used, I try to cripple my target using Dancing Daggers until either skill became available again — otherwise I’m SoL.