Guild Wars 2

Taril.8619:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

IMO, Condition Damage > Condition Duration in terms of Bleeding. But in terms of Vulnerability or Cripple on the other hand, Condition Duration please.

Any condition that deals damage should be spec’d Condition Damage and any condition that stacks non-damage debuff (i.e. chill, cripple, vuln) should spec’d Condition Duration.

So if your goal is to stack bleed, then go for intensity instead of duration.

In general, Duration is far superior to Damage for conditions (As long as they’re not cleansed)

Since 1 extra tick often does much more damage than is gained by similar effort into condition damage.

For example:

Bleeds do 42.5 damage per tick base with a scaling of 0.05 * Condition damage. With a 4 second bleed (The duration of P/X bleeds) it will tick 4 times for 4x 42.5 = 170 damage. 25% extra duration will give it an extra 42.5 damage over the duration whilst it would need 212.5 condition damage to be equivilent.

This discrepancy only further increases the more condition damage you already have:

1000 Condition damage – 92.5 damage bleeds.
Would need 462.5 Condition Damage to be equivalent damage to 25% condition duration. 925 Condition Damage to be equivalent damage to 50% condition duration.

But as said previously, P/X Bleeds are 4 seconds long so they only benefit from Condition Duration at the 25%, 50%, 75% and 100% marks, anything inbetween gives no benefit.

As far as I can tell, 100% bleed duration is not possible to achieve in PvP (I can get up to 95% but with a pretty bad build) but 75% is (2x Centaur, 2x Krait, 2x Afflicted runes + 2x Agony Sigils + 10 points into Deadly Arts = 75%) which would give 7 second bleeds.

In short, as long as you can get the highest of the plateaus you’re aiming for, any more condition duration is wasted and best served going for extra condition damage.

My position is this;

If it takes 4 seconds to deal 170 dmg (42.5/tick) and you can deal that same amount of damage on the first tick with 850 Condition damage, then Condition Damage is better than Duration — that is with +0% duration. Even if it is cleansed, the damage is done and if not cleansed, it will simply compound over time the more stack of bleeding you add on.

Now let’s compare the effort to achieve the damage in comparison to duration.

+25% gives extra tick = 170 (4s) + 42.5 = 212.5
To get +25%, we need to have 10pt in DA + 2 Centaurs

To achieve that damage within the 4s tick, we only need 250 Condition Damage.
250 Condition Damage = 220 (4s)
To get to 250 Condition Damge, we can easily get that amount (+ more) with a carrion amulet (+798 Condition Damage).

By one amulet, we just added damage comparable to +75% Condition Duration — which again the full damage is done within 4s of bleeding with Condition Damage while Condition Duration will take 7s-8s to deal that much damage.

Now to get +75%, according to you, you need all these;

2x Centaur, 2x Krait, 2x Afflicted runes + 2x Agony Sigils + 10 points into Deadly Arts

All that is equal to ONE carrion amulet. Any extra Condition Duration only makes Condition Damage look even better.

Keep in mind also that there are many passive protection against Condition Duration and few, if none, passive protection against Condition Damage. Condition Damage is either mitigated by Regen or completely removed, but they are easy to reapply.

IMO, deal the damage as soon as possible rather than trying to put it off.

The lag on zones is due to the spawning Chests for the SAB event on top of the spawning of the listening posts for the Living story.

Typically, GW2 only uses 800Mb – 1Gb of RAM on runtime but after April 1st when SAB went live, it’s racking up 1.5Gb – 2Gb RAM on runtime.

This issue is similar when the spawning bombs in Queensdale lags the Bandit Cave.

Now there’s 3 issues that I suspect here;
1) The quantity of the Chests in any zone requires a large amount of RAM to keep track of their location. Not only that, each Chest contains 5-6 mobs so the quantity of the Chests in any zone compounds the demand out of our RAM chip.

2) The frequency of the Chest spawn is ridiculously fast. There were Chests spawning 2-3 from one another and re-spawns within 20s-30s after being opened.

3) The loop routine in the codes is poorly written that it continues to loop without checking for status first. When this happen, it generates a compounding number of bytes in the RAM that a variable or variables just keeps increasing in size. A simple If…Then inside the loop may fix this issue.

As for unrelated cause to GW2 is my Nvidia driver. The lastest driver from Nvidia had caused a lot of issues in the past and this may also be the issue. I have to roll back my drivers numerous times due to a lot of glitches and lag in the game.

As for loading time, this is a server-side issue so no matter how much you upgrade your computer, it’s not going to help. Buying an SSD to improve GW2 should not be the case here considering that it should run efficiently with the minimum requirements.

IMO, Condition Damage > Condition Duration in terms of Bleeding. But in terms of Vulnerability or Cripple on the other hand, Condition Duration please.

Any condition that deals damage should be spec’d Condition Damage and any condition that stacks non-damage debuff (i.e. chill, cripple, vuln) should spec’d Condition Duration.

So if your goal is to stack bleed, then go for intensity instead of duration.

Thundercleese.4210:

That HiS cast time can get you killed. A smart enemy will interrupt that and you dead.

An even smarter enemy pours bleed/poison/burning on you and you can’t do anything about it because you have Widthdraw.

Either way you’re dead.

So what’s the point of stating the worst case scenario? Basically what’s your point?

LOL I remember early on after I switched to Withdraw from HiS in the fractal with the giant. Jumping up to the next seal location, somebody drops the hammer and I pick it up and take a decent amount of damage.

Better heal that up!

I’m sure it looked pretty crazy to my party, at least I didn’t fall to my death.

I’m trying a 15/30/0/25/0 build with S/D, D/P, SB. I rely on Sword 2 and Shadowstep to clean damaging conditions. CC Conditions are a breeze though.

I highly doubt the effectiveness of your condi removal versus HiS.

Battou.7832:

I’ve been using Withdraw in WvW for the longest time now. It’s just better at getting you out of sticky situations, whereas HIS just makes you invisible while still being in a bad situation. As for lacking condition removal, this can be taken care of by speccing into Shadow Arts. In fact I find speccing into Shadow Arts to be better at mitigating conditions than HIS alone.

That’s true. There are situations that I needed the CC removal from Widthdraw, but that’s all Widthdraw does, unlike Hide in Shadows, you can also use it to Sneak Attack.

The condition removal in SA requires you to be in Stealth and only happen after 3s if you are still in Stealth. Hardly a comparison to HiS.

I rather see our skills tied to positioning rather than Stealth.

I want to backstab even without Stealth as long as I am behind or the side of my target because that’s really the only reason why we build around stealth in the first place.

Selver.1307:

Step 1: map turn 180 to something accessible.
Step 2: be running away, stop and hit said key simultaneously.
Step 3: withdraw immediately after.
Step 4: use said key again and continue, alternatively you can hold right click to control facing.

Its not random – you ALWAYS roll opposite your facing.

It’s more like;

Step 1: map turn 180 to something accessible.
Step 2: dead

>.<’

Compare that to;

Step 1: Hide in Shadows — see yah!

Bunmaster.9734:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

The damage from P/P is not from Unload alone. You have to couple it with condition damage also — atleast 25pts in DA. I used to run with 25/30/0/0/15, P/P and D/D build.

Then you should also know that +10% also applies to your daggers. P/P + 10% dmg is still inferior to D/D + 10% dmg.

That’s not really a good comparison since P/P used for the first half of the target’s HP and D/D for the last half. Unload + condition damage will do the job very well in bringing the HP down to 50%, then switch to D/D where Heartseeker shines.

You should not narrow your views into one weapon set, rather expand it that having both P/P and D/D allows us to play as if we have a D/P or P/D weapons sets also.

It’s cool and all untill you are in a sitatuation trying to run away from your pursuers and rolled back to them and get killed.

IMO, we should be in control which direction to roll to, otherwise I’m sticking with HiS.

Scootabuser.4915:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Scootabuser.4915:

All bets are off when you start sacrificing DPS for survivability. At that point you shouldn’t care about maximizing your DPS because your doing so much LESS damage then you could be anyways, why bother.

Well I can argue that survivability is DPS since you do zero DPS when dead.

Might not be high damage, but dependable damage.

Survivability for a lot of player comes from skill, not HP.

I beg to differ. Just by looking at this forum, it is contrary to what you’re saying. Survivability is both passive (tough, vit) and active (dodge, evade, position) — which is skill based.

Not everyone has the same skill level, thus they compensate by building in favor of survivability. Most of the time, that extra 100 HP is the diffence between dealing DPS and zero DPS.

Sure you can use experience and skill for survivability but that’s only against predictable encounters, but once something unpredictable happens, that extra beef can buy you enough time to react.

The difference is, you choose the active survivability to gain high DPS that only few, not a lot, can probably run with high efficiency.

Talk about red herring and straw man tactic. :/

And here I am thought it’s something else more informative.

Ever wonder that maybe, just maybe, that the drop of activities in AC after the patch is just a coincident? That maybe, just maybe, those who runs AC simply exhausted the content and got the items they want?

Aside from the Greatsword and the Shield, the rest of the skins in AC are meh.

aladore.3945:

I’ve leveled my Thief to level 80. Until this point in the game, I’ve been using solely a double dagger, and double pistol combination while utilizing traps – this has been working wonders for PvE – which I enjoy doing most in GW2.

Today, I thought I would attempt other weapon combinations. Naturally, I decided to use an alternate weapon configuration with my preexisting weapons. Thus, I decided to go with a pistol in the main hand, and a dagger in the off hand.

lol, exactly what I did with my thief

Here’s a example scenario I’ve tested out;

1) Select a target;

2) Steal (f1);

3) Cloak & Dagger (5);

4) Sneak attack (1) then Shadow Strike (3);

5) Vital Shot (1) then Body Shot (2).

As a rule, I never initiate with Steal.

Here’s what I used to do;
1) Spec for Infusion of Shadow and Hidden Thief (SA – Adept V, Master VIII)

2) Start with CnD (5)

3) Sneak attack (1) then Shadow Strike (3) – wait for Revealed debuff – Vital Shot (1).

4) Steal (F1) (you will be in stealth)

5) Sneak Attack (1) then Shadow Strike (3) – wait for Revealed debuff – Vital Shot (1).

6) Repeat

I don’t use Body Shot (2) nor Head shot (4) unless I’m in a group.

Selver.1307:

s/p is great for clutch interrupts, the AA being just as good as PW is disheartening, but hey. that’s more Ini for ranged interrupts/blinds. I never was a fan of stationary evades, but I think I mentioned that once.

Since they lowered CD on blinding powder a while back it became an instant favorite.

And I disagree p/p requires 30/30/x/x/x; looks like Silver’s making it work

I will second Ambush trap is great shenanigans for pve.

It really is a trade off. 30/30/x/x/x (or atleast 25 in DA) provides both raw damage and condition damage, which I believe is more effective than multiple Unloads. And there’s the othere side, to be able to Unload multiple times.

Also the 30/30/x/x/x is coupled with using D/D on the second half to finish things off quickly.

Note that I said for it to be “effective” meaning this is because relying on Unload for damage also exposes the Thief, not to mention that it is blockable and can be reflected, and the most reliable damage that bypass all these is condition damage.

EDIT: Simply put, relying on Unload makes it easy to shut you down.

The damage from P/P is not from Unload alone. You have to couple it with condition damage also — atleast 25pts in DA. I used to run with 25/30/0/0/15, P/P and D/D build.

Yeah CnD have a 1/2 second window for you to activate Steal.

Roaming in WvW is not as fun as it used to anymore, even after trying to adapt to the +1s revealed by going S/D and P/P. There’s just no other way to mitigate the damage received nor prevent the damage dealt from getting healed.

Sure fights are longer and more interesting and fun, but lengthening the fight usually never ends in our favor.

I want Sneak Attacks to be available outside Stealth as long as the attack is coming from the sides or back, then they can nerf stealth to the ground for all I care.

“Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot,
Nothing is going to get better. It’s not.”
~ Dr. Seuss, The Lorax

swinsk.6410:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

I don’t know what it is but I can’t seem to get it to trigger.

Can you post your build and what weapon were you using?

I’ll try to replicate it and run some more test.

Sorry for late reply.

No problem, I had a busy weekend also.

I was 10/30/30/0/0.

I downed some ranger but was taking big dps. Last refuge triggered and stealthed me. I ran away while using hide in shadows to stack stealth.

I realized I couldn’t make it back in time to stomp but I had enough time if I could instantly port to the downed guy. So I stole to him and spammed f to try to stop auto-attack.

Instead by guy did back stab.

I haven’t really tried it since.

So you’re already in stealth and not stealth by using Steal (meaning you’re not spec’d in Hidden Thief), right?

What weapon set were you using at the time?

It really comes down to your play style and the Thief profession have skills to compliment that style.

Silver.4798:

@ Sir Vincent III

I was thinking of S/D*** rather than S/P because of CnD, which would make going into SA viable rather than DA. But the reason why I went with pistol offhand is the AoE of PW and Blinding powder. P/P can’t really deal with mobs very well esp if they get close to me so I’m trying to think of ways to compensate.

• I don’t have a lot of experience with S/D, if you know of a way to deal with mobs with S/D, please let me know!

P/P requires 30/30/x/x/x to be effective IMO, so I would only spec for DA if I use pistol Main Hand and it is my main weapon set. I have P/P as my off-set just in case it’s too dangerous to get in melee range. But kitten D, I’m currently using 0/30/20/20/0, which requires my to be frugal in spending my Initiatives.

Swords already have a cleaving capability (meaning able to hit multiple targets within a cone area in front of the Thief), so PW is not really that great anymore now that Anet botched Haste. S/D is all about controlling the mob using Dancing Daggers, IS/SR, and CnD. Always initiate with CnD because it gives you indication how many mobs responded to the attack, because thanks to the Feb update, mobs stares at you while you’re in stealth, then you get a good look at how many mobs you’re dealing with. I never use IS as an initiator, rather I use it to transfer from one mob to another.

I personally bring Ambush trap skill as a staple while leveling up when dealing with mobs.

Lemmming.1749:

phor.7952:

Lemmming.1749:

It /tends/ to occur more often when having the pistol autoattack on, but will still occur regardless.

Well correct me if I’m wrong, but steal isnt’ supposed to STOP your autoattack if you’ve already activated it correct? It simply won’t START autoattack automatically.

So if you’re having trouble with stealing while your autoattack is already activated, I think that’s intended and you need to just hit esc to stop autoattack before stealing.

Yeah but it still occurs regardless. Personal opinions aside on whether or not it’s stupid to have to choose between stealthing after a steal and using autoattack (hint: it’s stupid), the bug still isn’t fixed.

Stealth breaks still happen all the time, without giving the burst-shot stealth attack, but still providing a nice 4 second period where I can’t re-stealth.

Also I played around with it some more, and it seems the animation is at fault. There’s only a really tiny gap between pistol #1 attacks that are considered not attacking – if you manage to steal in that gap, you’re fine. Otherwise, either 1) the pistol #1 attack finishes its shot after the steal/stealth jump and ruins your stealth, or 2) the pistol #1 attack has already begun before the animation has started, and the entire sequence runs to completion and still ruins your stealth.

Hmm, you might be on to something here.

I doubt it’s the anination though, rather, it might be due to the speed of the projectile from the pistol vs the speed of the shadow step from Steal. It seems that shadow step from Steal is faster in a fraction of a second that if you Steal before your recently fired bullet hits, it will break stealth without the benefit of Sneak Attack. This is definitely one possibility.

If the combo field treats Heartseeker as a Physical Projectile, then it is possible that the bullets (also a physical projectile) behaves the same way. The behavior is more noticeable in the Warrior’s skill “Bull Charge”, where the physical projectile (which is the warrior) has to travel the posted time (rather than distance to target) of 1s often seeing a warrior in the Bull Charge animation for the given casting time duration — even though if the skill should have connected already in the first 0.25 of the second.

So in the case of Steal, while the bullet is in transition (and Vital Shot has 1/2 second casting time, meaning the bullet travels the full 1/2 second regardless of proximity to target), the stealth from Steal triggers then the bullet hits and kicks the Thief out of stealth. It might not even be related to auto-attacking at all.

I was too busy the last couple of days to read the forum but I will definitely test this tonight.

I don’t know what it is but I can’t seem to get it to trigger.

Can you post your build and what weapon were you using?

I’ll try to replicate it and run some more test.

Teamkiller.4315:

Am I calling them OP? No. However, what I am saying is that they suddenly are immune to half the enemy’s dps, especially physical projectiles, in stealth, and enemies cannot reliably hit them with gap closers until it’s too late and they can escape.

Rinse and repeat.

Thief has enormous staying power, sorry, but you really should play the class better if you don’t think so.

Escaping is proof that thief has lackluster staying power.

You’re just contradicting yourself.

No, your staying power is still awesome. Now your enemy just has to burst you in 4 seconds instead of 3, and you also have the benefit of dodging and weapon evade skills.

You’re not going to argue that staying power is bad for a thief.

As for DPS, like I said, I don’t particularly care for the nerf nor necessarily feel it’s justified, but your staying power? That’s still pretty darn high.

Do we also need to define what “staying power” means?

You are very lucky. Not many other classes can get away quite like a thief and reset fights.

Again, proof of a lackluster staying power.

Keep it rolling.

Right, because I play a guardian main, so my opinions don’t matter, this is obvious.

Or, maybe, because I disagree with you, my opinions don’t matter?

Huh

I never said that your opinion don’t matter. I just don’t believe you and your opinion because your opinion is too narrow and brushes off the fundamental problem.

Hence why good thieves have 30 in SA. Also, good glass thieves don’t get caught very often, because there’s this mechanic called stealth.

Sigh. I can rez too your know. (rollseyes)

You see how your opinion has no bearing in addressing the issue?

Not necessarily, you have 1 extra second to burst a GC. You have a much higher chance of killing a glass cannon. Glass cannon DPS also goes down.

It’s already down.

Staying power is reduced, for thieves that invest in staying power line, they are still pretty survivable compared to other classes.

Too much contradictions.

What’s the problem? Don’t say PvE, cause OP isn’t complaining about PvE, and I’m not saying the patch is even justified. I’m just mentioning that the nerf to staying power isn’t classbreaking. Jeez.

Nobody says that it is a classbreaker, you just made that up.

Do I have to link very obviously available Vids for you to actually like acknowledge anything?

It doesn’t prove anything concerning staying power.

That’s like having one witness to prove a murder.

Quickness nerf affected warriors the most out of any class. So did Omnom nerfs. Other classes were affected at a comparatively negligible level for the Omnom nerf, because their staying power are all significantly higher than the warriors’.

Does that mean they aren’t cross class nerfs? No it doesn’t.

Omnom is not build breaker. Quickness nerf is not build breaker and Thieves are not complaining about that either.

All your arguments are only relevant to your world view.

Likewise, you can only see it from a thief’s perspective, it seems.

Another baseless statement.

I really hate linking things but I did link the video.

And I shouldn’t have to link another one, but in one of the SoTG the devs mentioned that thieves are easier to play at lower levels than other professions, while the opposite is true at higher levels.

If you’re going to brush it off and force me to give more evidence I’m going to be quite annoyed, but I can find it if needed.

What does the ease of playing the profession got to do with the topic?

You mean like…give evidence?

gasp

Which you’ve given none of so far.

You’re the one making all these ridiculous claims, thus the burden of proof is all yours.

Volrath.1473:

That is not boon hate its boon removal i believe. boon hate benefits from you opponent’s boons if you remove them you will deal less dmg i guess…

I rip what I hate.

So yeah.

I would bet that it will be in CS replacing Critical Haste. It would proc on critical hits then removes a boon on target with 5 seconds cooldown.

Silver.4798:

Problems to which I have no answers for:

1. Improvisation, the VII trait in the DA trait line, what does it mean when it says I get +10% damage when wielding a “bundle”, does ALL my utility slots have to be signets including my heal? Because I really don’t like Signet of Malice to be honest, I’d much rather have withdraw or hide in shadows. Although the 12 sec cooldown is pretty sweet as I’m traited, it’ll recharge faster than any of my other signets…

Bundle are environmental weapons which includes the one you have stolen.

2. Defense, particularly consistent source of healing. I’m really worried about this, I don’t really have an answer yet. I suppose with my traits in acrobatics I can dodge around quite a bit so that helps some…

I’ll get cooking on this build as I wait for some feedback!

I personally use S/D due to the balance of dmg and def.

Nevertheless, interesting build.

In addition, what about the broken traits?

Teamkiller.4315:

Look back at what this quote chain was about, and you will see. It has nothing to do with the “fundamental problem” of a smidgen less dps in PvE, which again, I already said needs fixing.

The fundamental problem is the staying power like the OP said. To compensate for that, the Thief are given a lot of DPS.

With the changes on revealed, we get laskluster staying power and cummulative broken negative effect in our DPS.

Whether it is in PvP or in PvE, the negative effect of stealth in our DPS is significant, noticeable, and annoying.

I don’t really notice it, however. And I do not PvE with my thief, which again, I already said needs tweaking.

Whether you notice it or not is not relevant. The fact is, it’s there. And I disagree, it is noticeable.

Again, he’s complaining about staying power, not PvE, which for the third fourth fifth time I’ve already said needs fixing.

Thief has no staying power. You get caught, you’re dead. You said it yourself, GC breaks like glass.

So now that with extra 1s of reveal, it is now a guaranteed anti-GC, right? But that is not the case, instead that extra 1s only nerfed the DPS.

Again, back to the fundamental problem.

Thieves can zerg surf and get kills if they are good, whereas a good guardian or mesmer would die?

In your opinion.

Very very minorly, except for mesmers who are still affected minorly.

But that wasn’t the issue HERE, the issue is him refusing to acknowledge the stealth nerf as a cross class nerf that happened to impact thieves the most.

The problem here is, you got it all wrong.

The nerf is targetted on Thieves and it just so happen that other class are affected also in really negligible level.

You are arguing based on your narrow perspective rather than trying to see it from our perspective.

Where did I say trust me and REFUSE to provide evidence? If you don’t trust my word just ask for the evidence.

The only “evidence” you have shown is your opinion. So what makes your “evidence” better than my “evidence”?

If you want me or anyone to trust you, then you have to present and acknowledge facts instead of trying to brush it off by saying “trust me”.

I’ve only used the words “trust me” twice in this entire thread. One time is that thieves can output enormous dps still. I can go find a thief in SF to practice on my 3.2k armor guard and screenshot the damage if you need.

That doesn’t prove anything. The fact of the matter is you seems to be confused on what DPS means versus to what Burst damage means.

DPS requires staying power that relied heavily on Stealth. With the 1 second extra reveal, we have to run away/dodge/evade/etc until we can stealth again. We stay, we die.

The second time is saying you have it better than a lot of other classes when it comes to cooldown management.

It is impossible to trust you when you say things like these because it is baseless and non-factual.

Clearly you think you are extremely clever in turning my “reasoning” around on me when you just fabricated an argument you say I made.

Lol.

I have not made an argument until now and I don’t have to fabricate anything since everyone can read what you posted.

You brought up mesmer as a class that can zerg surf as well as a thief, so prove it.

You asked the question. I answered. And I asked, “what’s your point?”

If you didn’t get my point, then I’ll explain it so you would understand.

Any profession can survive a zerg if they know what they are doing.

That’s my point. What’s yours?

I already gave you the definition in an earlier post, how much do you want to bet I don’t know what it means, especially when the definition is on the first sentence in the link.

If you understood it, then why are you calling my post an Ad Hom?

Clearly you do not understand.

Because they are important.

So are you telling me that you blow all your CDs everytime you swap weapons?

If not, then I am correct to assume that you are full of it when you say that Ele manages 20 CDs. Because at any given time, they are probably only managing 5-8 skills in between attunements, similar to weapon swapping professions.

to be completely honest, from an objective point of view, your posts to me have much less substance than your posts elsewhere…or even your EARLIER post to me. It really seems like you’re just trying to be witty while avoiding arguments.

I try not to bother so much as to reply to posts such as yours in a normal manner since honestly, you are dead wrong in many levels that it’s ridiculous to point them all out.

If you really believe what you believe then so be it. But you are not going to convince anyone with your narrow perspective/opinion — may it be PvP, PvE, or WvW

Teamkiller.4315:

Pretty sure I’m not deluded. Want me to link some of these builds for you?

And what would that prove?

The fundamental problem is still there.

BV unload steal-mug backstab HS if low, otherwise autoattack BP HS (restealthed from here)

I beat the majority of other thieves 1v1 with this.

Now tell me, how is that rotation affected by the Stealth nerf?

It didn’t. So your perspective of the problem is too narrow.

Because thieves need more dps?

Thieves have the highest single target dps in the game, and still do, especially now that frenzy HB took a massive massive nerf.

Again, narrow perspective.

Again, find me a video of any other class zerg surfing other than a thief.

I can link you a bunch WITH thieves, if you’d like.

Your staying power is enormous.

“staying power is enormous” YET “zerg surfing other than a thief”

Lolwut?

Notice you picked the only other class with reasonable access to on demand stealth? cough affected by revealed too cough. Also, they have nowhere near a thief’s staying power.

You keep on saying that other classes are affected by reveal too yet you have not posted in what way they are affected.

Instead, you just want us to “trust” you. Wow.

Thief is almost always one of the last to survive, staying power was extremely high before and still is.

I disagree. Trust me, you’re wrong.

See that?

Fine, find me a video of a guy who consistently zerg surfs as a mesmer. And gets kills while he’s at it.

After you find me a video of a purple unicorn with bat wings.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem

lol you don’t even know what that means. :p

Typically, the last two weapon skills have 20-40 second cooldowns.

Ready to go? Don’t make me laugh.

And you use them why?

Because I’m not crying about the nerfs? Right…

har har.

Teamkiller.4315:

The change to RTL did not affect all other Ele’s build unlike the change to Stealth.

You’re way off on this one.

Of course, because the mobility evasion thief builds I see on this forum and occasionally use are actually nonexistent and I’ve been imagining things.

Must be.

Yes, you are a victim of your own dillusions.

Because the Devs agree in the recent SotG, Thieves needs mobility.

It is obvious that you don’t play a Thief because it’s not just about rotation.

I don’t use that rotation. You saying there’s only one thief build?

Pick a rotation. Go on, pick one. Oh, pick the one that YOU use.

We’ll see.

That extra 1 second that we cannot sneak attack is a cummulative drop in DPS. It doubles the negative effect every rotation — it’s not just 1 second.

Yeah, I know it’s a cumulative drop in dps. Compared to what other classes took to their quickness skills, especially warrior, and the engi’s grenade nerf, yours is trivial.

LOL! You agree that it is cumulative drop in DPS and you call it “trivial”?!

Wow. Just WOW!!!

Talk about out of touch.

And again, I’m not telling him to stop complaining about dps, even though the builds you are describing are BURST builds and not meant for as high sustained dps, I’m telling him to stop complaining about your staying power.

Again. You have no idea what you’re talking about.

So please, pick a build, rotation, whatever.

We’ll see.

Tell, me, when you run with other classes, who is most likely to die if you get overrun? Who is LEAST likely to die? What is the ONLY class that can zerg surf and live?

Mesmer.

There.

What’s your point?

Thief is almost always one of the last to survive, staying power was extremely high before and still is.

I completely disagree. (see last response)

I completely disagree. That “simple initiative bar” is shared between weapon set. Once you mismanage that, you’re SOL.

You don’t get it. One initiative bar is easier to manage than 10 weapon skills on 10 different cooldowns. Additionally thieves can see their initiative bar no matter what the set. Other classes can only see 5 out of 10 at any time. (in the case of Ele it is 20). Thieves have it better than other classes. Trust me.

I don’t trust you because you don’t know what you’re talking about.

Typically, weapon swapping has ~10s cooldown, and by the time you burn all skills in the current weapon set, the other set is ready to go.

It’s laughable to see that you think Ele manage 20 CDs at all times. lol.

A lot! You being a Guardian do not share the pain nor care about our pain, so you can say all you want but what you’re saying has no bearing in the Thief forum.

Again, I PvP consistently on thief, and it is my favorite class to PvP with. I still PvP with it on a regular basis despite this nerf.

Irrelevant. Your posts says otherwise.

You don’t even understand the fundamental problem.

you blow it out of proportion.

You’re the one who have to include other classes into the discussion.

Teamkiller.4315:

What I meant, the point that you seem to have missed, was that before the RTL nerf eles learned a rotation. After it they had to change and adapt.

The change to RTL did not affect all other Ele’s build unlike the change to Stealth.

You’re way off on this one.

It’s the exact same with the thief. Before the revealed nerf you had a 3 second rotation. Now you have a four second rotation. You seem to be upset that now you have to re-learn a rotation, yet eles had to do that as well.

It is obvious that you don’t play a Thief because it’s not just about rotation.

That extra 1 second that we cannot sneak attack is a cummulative drop in DPS. It doubles the negative effect every rotation — it’s not just 1 second.

You are the only class in the game that does not have to manage individual cooldowns, rather, one simple initiative bar. I’d say you have it better than you’re making it out to be.

I completely disagree. That “simple initiative bar” is shared between weapon set. Once you mismanage that, you’re SOL.

That was pretty obvious. You seemed to have tried to say that because I play guardian as a main that I should say nothing.

Guess what? I play a thief. Guess what else? Even if I didn’t play one, I’d have to fight them from time to time. So, again, what does me being a guardian have to do with me being on these forums?

A lot! You being a Guardian do not share the pain nor care about our pain, so you can say all you want but what you’re saying has no bearing in the Thief forum.

You don’t even understand the fundamental problem.

Scootabuser.4915:

All bets are off when you start sacrificing DPS for survivability. At that point you shouldn’t care about maximizing your DPS because your doing so much LESS damage then you could be anyways, why bother.

Well I can argue that survivability is DPS since you do zero DPS when dead.

Might not be high damage, but dependable damage.

In psychological level, I rather not be turned into anything, especially a Moa — it’s just humiliating.

Dasorine.1964:

tbh the biggest damage reduction comes from the fact that a large portion of people simply stop doing anything the moment a thief goes stealthed, they don’t try to be evasive, they don’t try to AoE they don’t even spam auto attacks.

This is why thieves can destroy groups of new players while experienced players can kill thieves that rely just on stealth easier than most any other encounter.

Well that is a problem outside the realm of Thieves.

The risk is still technically there its just for many the moment the thief vanishes they stop putting up any sort of threat (hence removing any risk for the thief)

Of course there is a difference between how easy it is to keep the threat going for each profession but I’ve not seen any profession that lacks any options at all.

I guess instead of Reveal debuff, once the Thief comes out of stealth, they are tied down with an apple in their mouth in a silver platter. :/

Mackapacka.9462:

The dmg is low and stealth debuff need to get reverted to 3 sec again. The 4 sec debuff screws our rotation. Thief got no support thats good/better then other professions. And our dmg is now lower then most professions by a large margien, on top of that we are one of the harder pve professions to play and can easily get 1 shotted in some exp mode dungs. Why bring a theif instead of a warr?

Sadly if u wanna be able to play this game in non noob grps its time to reroll warr or mesm…..

IMO, thieves should be able to disarm traps in dungeons. I mean, what kind a thief doesn’t know how to disarm traps. :/

Dasorine.1964:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

The idea of a “glass cannon” is for it to break after dealing a lot of damage. But glass cannon Thieves aren’t breaking after massive damage and that’s the problem.

I think the nerf will be on the survivability of glass cannons, since they have to break, rather than targetting the damage output of the Thieves.

But that’s just me.

The question is though, why these glass cannons don’t break afterwards, people claim its because stealth is overpowered but it doesn’t actually prevent that much damage against people that know how it works, so what else is it causing these glass cannons to reduce all this damage?

First we need to figure out what type of damage source we want to use to break the glass. Only then we can find out what type of protection glass cannon Thieves uses to preserve themselves.

In GW1, they added after cast (which I hate btw) to give a window of opportunity for the victim to respond to the attacker. In GW2, they sort of aiming to deal with stealth the same way by adding a 1s after cast (which I definitely hate since after cast in GW1 is only 1/4 of a second).

With the extra second of reveal in place, are the glass cannon breaking as expected? Afraid not. Instead, the nerf ended up reducing the damage output of the glass cannon rather than exposing them to danger.

I personally don’t know what the solution for this problem would be, but as Thieves, we know that this is the problem with glass cannons — too much reward for little risk when it’s suppose to be high-risk-high-reward.

Grimwolf.7163:

Seriously, just cripple/chill/immobilize the bird and they’re 100% defenseless long enough for even a Bunker to kill them. You can’t even use a utility to break out.

You can say the same thing with anything, bird or not. If they target to spike you, you’ll die regardless.

Imagine a Thief using S/D used IS (immobilized) on you and triggers BV, even if you break stun, you are still a sitting bird waiting to die. But more likely the Thief will also daze you preventing any stun break.

Then the Thief can do it again in “fourty five” sec (untraited) compare to the long CD of Moa.

In the worst case scenario, either one will end with your death, but Thieves can cause a lot of devastation especially when traited with Venom Aura.

EDIT: Seems like the overzealous filter didn’t like “45”. scratch head

Sifu.6527:

What do you guys think?

Elementalist, if they choose to, have no CD because all they have to do is switch attunements while waiting for CD. Same goes with other profession who switches weapons while waiting for CD.

Thieves on the other hand, without Init, it puts all weapon set on CD, so switching weapons doesn’t bypass the CD unless Thieves will get Full Init after switching weapons if your proposed change is implemented. Doubtful that will happen.

/sidebar rant
IMHO, if the problem is in WvWvW, then the fix should be in WvWvW exclusively. Same goes with xPvP — exclusive fixes.

I hate the fact that the fixes is across the board that affects other parts of the game, especially the non-competitive part of the game.

All I’m asking is, the GW2 Devs should learn from GW1 — do not wait until people leave the game before separating the fixes between competitive and non-competitive. A lot of friends left GW1 because of that and the separation of fixes came way too late. Please don’t make the same mistake.

If the problem with stealth chaining is in competitive play, please keep the nerf bat swinging in towards that direction.
/sidebar end rant

Back on topic. Simply put, your suggestion will Init-starve my P/P build.

Stooperdale.3560:

Am I right in thinking that before the patch stealing would apply a venom, but after the patch stealing does not apply a venom unless traited with mug?

Before the patch, auto-attack is initiated after Steal, which applies the venom. After patch, auto-attack no longer happen after Steal, thus you need to have a damaging effect to apply venom, either by spec-ing Mug or just start auto-attack.

Scootabuser.4915:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

There are other factors in your build that can influence your result.

Example: Procs coming from Opportunist and First Strike can be a balance tipper, plus the procs of Critical Haste.

So yeah, on paper it looks that way, but if you add into your calculation the probability of your traits proc-ing, I assure you, you’ll get a very different result.

I’m glad you brought those up, in a standard D/D build you only need infusion of shadow to be initiative stable (and that was with a 4 second rotation), so opportunist is not applicable.

First Strike ties into that, you should never drop below 6 init unless you miss your CnD.

Finally, critical haste is a VERY VERY small portion of damage, it’s defiantly there and worth it, but mathematically it’s insignificant to comparing 40% and 60% crit-chance. Same with sundering strikes, the internal cool-downs do a serious number on the actual effectiveness of the abilities.

Fair enough, but my point with Critical Haste is, it favors Executioner than Hidden Killer.

With high enough Crit Chance, the probability of triggering Critical Haste is high and every time it triggers it boosts the numbers in favor of Executioner.

Either way, I favor Executioner over Hidden Killer anyway since I use S/D.

swinsk.6410:

I haven’t used auto-targetting since like the first few days I played the game. I hated it and turned it off.

Ok. I’ll do some test tonight and gather data to try to pin-point the culprit.

But as far as the topic goes, “Steal skill: No longer initiates autoattacks” is true.

But I suppose it should also stop auto-attack if Hidden Thief triggers.

The idea of a “glass cannon” is for it to break after dealing a lot of damage. But glass cannon Thieves aren’t breaking after massive damage and that’s the problem.

I think the nerf will be on the survivability of glass cannons, since they have to break, rather than targetting the damage output of the Thieves.

But that’s just me.

jkctmc.8754:

I have no issues on my Thief, quit crying, learn to play the class and all will be good. We still need a damage nerf. I’m STILL killing targets in three seconds.

You should not be having an issue.

Funny how you contradict yourself by saying that you have no issue yet you have an issue that Thieves need damage nerf because YOU are killing targets in 3s.

Wow.

At most an Elementalist will give you some trouble, and be hard to kill, but should every class in the game be easy to kill for us? Enjoy the fight, and quit looking for the head shot, boring type of play. If you want that, go back to FPS games, we want good players with skill in MMOs.

Imagine that. If the current state of the Elementalist is already “hard to kill” then why in the world you want a damage nerf?

For the sake of all that is holy, I hope you’re opinion is not shared by many.

Sovngarde.7502:

And since yes, I do realize the mild irony inherent to this post, I shall follow it up with the following: My thief is pretty low level (ie. still in Caledon Forest). When I’m fighting mobs, I do alright against single target, even veterans, as long as they are alone. But send in a couple adds and I usually get turned into delicious thiefburger. Is it a failure of my playing? It is an intrinsic failing of the class that it can’t handle multiple targets from an incoming damage perspective? Is it because I’m only level 11 still? Have I been coddled by the powerful necromancer downed-state lifedrain? (Seriously, what even is that 1 key skill on thief downed state? Am I throwing my internal organs at them?)

P/D should be your weapon set of choice when leveling up since it has the most skill in keeping targets away from you. Only use stealth when necessary.

If you have not spent your Skill Points yet, you should rush for Ambush trap skill since it is very useful in evenning the odds, especially fighting multiple mobs. If you don’t have enough Skill Points I suggest to visit other starting areas for extra skill points. You have to have Ambush, I think you need 26 skill pts to get it.

And always choose your battle, if you see adds that you think you cannot handle, just run away and drop aggro. There is no shame in running away, after all we are Thieves and we call it “Tactical Retreat” or “Baiting”.

Good luck.

Someone has to QQ so you don’t have to.

Welcome to the Thieves’ den.

Lokheit.7943:

~snip~
First: Get rid of stealth attacks (wait, later there is a justification and compensation for this).

In first place, stealth attacks don’t make too much sense. Stealth isn’t exclusive from Thieves. Anyone can get them with combos, there are area stealths and there is another entire profession with as many stealth skills as we have. ~snip~

I disagree.

Just because other people drive cars, doesn’t make them a Race Car driver.

You get what I mean?

These stealth attacks are part of the so many mini mechanics the Thief have to try to compensate for not having a strong single mechanic, but honestly they don’t make as much sense AND they force a lot of builds to play around those stealth attacks.

Again I completely disagree. No one is “forced” to use stealth.

You can either rush in, stabby stabby, then stealth away and wait for CD.

Or you can stay in the fight longer using tactical skills (evade, dodge, shadow steps).

In the days of GW2Guru before the official forums opened I was on the wandagon of those who though stealth skills where a bad idea and that they would force to specific playstyles and always the same skills and builds just to get access to them (and 5- we 1- were- 1- right- 1-5).

Nobody was “forced”. It was attactive at the time when stealth takes advantage of culling. Now that culling is gone, the gimmicky stealth builds are gone too, so as those who rides the bandwagon.

~snip~
This way it would really be Cloak (hit to become invisible) and Dagger (a significative dagger strike).

The term “Cloak and Dagger” is derived from an attack coming from the shadows, or some one attacks and cloaks themselves after the act. The cloaking can happen either before or after the attack. The purpose is to hide the identity of the attacker.

So having the thief “cloak” then “dagger”, doesn’t makes sense either because according to you “stealth attacks don’t make too much sense” so why propose a similar mechanic?

All you did was reverse the order and encumber the Thief to perform two steps to eventually having the same result.

So, you would ask, what’s the difference now? Well, the difference is that making it a 2 steps skill, you can make the time Backstab is ready to be pressed longer than what the stealth lasts (it still does extra damage from behind, but you’re visible for some time if you didn’t use it before). You can’t loop Cloak and Dagger with right timing for virtually perma-stealth, as you need to use step 2 of the skill (it could even get the revealed debuff by itself) and this wouldn’t change D/D playstyles that used it without exploiting.

Tadaaaaaa!! CnD loop problem solved!!

Hardly a solution.

Using your idea, what’s stopping me from staying in stealth and not ever use the secondary function?

Talk about broken perma-stealth.

- P/D

Why would you need D/D if you can backstab with P/D, plus those Vulnerabilities?

Again bad idea.

Comment:
I am simply not convinced with the premise of your suggestion. You have not properly illustrated the NEED for the change, thus this change is NOT NEEDED.

I’m sorry to burst your bubbles but this will create an environment worst that the current state of the game.

You can’t just make change suggestions looking from one angle, you have to look at the big picture from different angles.

iNaddict.8021:

I think i understand what is happening here.. And its a case of misunderstanding.. Yes mugs break stealth when you are already in stealth.. What Volrath and I was referring to is the CnD (Cloak and dagger) to mug chain..

You cloak and dagger first and click mug while cloak and dagger is still being casted…

So CnD then mug.. but when it lands.. the mug dmg part will land first before cloak and dagger thus, cloak and dagger will still stealth you..

understand?

It’s not a misunderstanding, you were simply talking about something unrelated to the topic.

The alledged bug is breaking Hidden Thief (Shadow Arts trait – VIII) after a Steal due to auto-attack. It’s not about CnD -> Steal (Mug).

swinsk.6410:

I can confirm this is broken and I do have mug.

I stole to a downed player in wvw this morning while in stealth and spammed f.

What did my guy do?

He landed backstab on the downed player….

I had that happen to me before and I turned off Auto-Targetting from the Options because of that.

I suspect that the Auto-Targetting is the suspect here.

I’ll test this out when I get home later today.

Volrath.1473:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

If you have spec’d Mug, you will be revealed if the Mug dealt damage.

It’s not a bug.

you are wrong Mug never broke stealth because the dmg was applied before the stealth.
Unless that was also changed recently, i cant tell because i do not have trait points in Deadly Arts.

You can’t really say that I am wrong when you have not tried it recently.

I was wondering the same thing last night and I just tried it tonight and it still breaks stealth after Steal.

I removed Mug, no problem. I put on Mug, it triggers and kicks me out of stealth.

It’s not auto- attack since I’m not attacking after reveal.

iNaddict.8021:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

If you have spec’d Mug, you will be revealed if the Mug dealt damage.

It’s not a bug.

Mug Dmg goes before CnD so it does not reveal you.

What — Are — You — Talking — About? CnD?

Kryshade.6075:

Yes I can only strip boons from stealing so there is that limitation, however FS only removes 1 boon so the initiative spent to do that is high. I’m also not sure how high the damage of FS is. I do know that standing around in a fight is not a good idea for any thief because AOE’s will destroy us.

The context of using S/D is setting up your target for your team mates to feast on. So comparing that to S/P, I was suggesting that S/D is better or more viable in that regards.

Yes, trying s/d would be outside my box as I haven’t played that build much. From my understanding though it’s reliant on stealth which just got nerfed as well so maybe not as effective anymore either.

Not so much reliant on stealth since the main usage of the set is evasion, not stealth. The synergy of boon-stripping and daze (prevents re-casting boon) is superb IMO. By the time Revealed falls off, your target is flattened on the ground.