Just a note, the quickness changes to rush skills was actually BECAUSE of warriors and others with similar skills complaining that it screwed up their skill ranges.
Please don’t. The permablind builds that it made possible were not skilled and were not fun, just a bunch of F2 spam.
There was that bug where you could spam F2 and it would blind every time you pressed it, but that was fixed in like 12 hours WELL before HoT. The smokescale causes all attacks on it to miss with smokefield, but the field itself does nothing but act as a combo field. You can stand in the field and hit the ranger just fine. Good try though!
Except it wasn’t, it was in the release as well.
Also, no shortage of projectile finishers on Ranger. Not like it’s hard to combo a field when you’ve got shortbow spam or LB 2. Blind is cool but not when it’s applied every 2 seconds. That was what was happening on release.
THe biggest issue I have with dragon hunter traps is that they can judge intervention then drop their unblockable undodgable trap on you and THEN drop the nuke traps and longbow skills. If you could at least dodge through the edge of the pull trap I think the class would be in a better place, but as it is now the DH is too binary-it either nukes a squishier class, or loses to a sustain class. It’s less about skill and more about build.
The problem with Dragonhunter is that it beats anything with low survivability and/or stab sources without counterplay and is easily beaten by anything with sustain. It’s not balanced, it’s binary.
Been playing D/P for a while, and since HoT release I seem to have gone hugely downhill with my results from this. Would appreciate some tips on how to play it against the new builds, or whether there are simply too many reveals and other counters to make it viable any more. Thanks in advance!
Well, from what ST has said, that seems to be the only explanation within game mechanics. I had never observed that trap behaviour before. Useful to know, I might have to pull my trapper hybrid out again… and smash my head on someone with permastab.
Alright, lets do a step by step shutdown of the (not even 24 hours after HoT) Nerf Thief thread:
List of unblockable skills:
-Choking Gas. K that’s poison. Poison can’t do 15,922 damage in 3 staff attacks. This is also a (gasp) shortbow skill.
-The blind on Shadow Shot. Does not damage, applies blind, is not a staff skill.
-Larcenous Strike, sword/dagger. Does damage, however requires step 1 skill to deal damage else step 2 (LS) is not usable.
-All of our traps are unblockable.
-Impacting Disruption. Its a trait, requires interrupt. Is not staff accessible.
Thats it, that’s all of them.
Now mr.op- you were running yolo glass berserker, were you not? 15,922 is Revenants base hp margin after all.
What I believe to have happened is Tripwire was used to knock you off your block (because its unblockable), and then the Staff thief slammed you repeatedly. In your combat log, were you crippled? Otherwise, everything you have stated is false.
tl;dr- The only way op was hit through block is if the thief hit him with tripwire trap. Tripwire is an unblockable 3 second knockdown, capable of ENDING his block. From there and those 3 seconds, the staff was allowed to shred.
Edit: I would like to say that that then when would be rather ingenious. I may have to use this little trick. I honestly never thought of using Tripwire as a block-breaker.
I was not pure glass berserker (who the hell yolos berserker in this condi meta?!), but I was already damaged to about 75%.
You’ve suggested a plausible explanation, assuming that tripwire will trigger if deployed on a stationary target. Is this correct?
Oh, also, thank you for acting like a human being.
I have a thief. I’ve made many posts about how awful thief has had it for quite a while. (Far too long) Because it’s true. Honestly, my reaction to being nearly one shot by the trapper when I wasn’t blocking was “Huh, traps are actually good in general now. Yay thief”. However that DOES NOT EXCUSE having overpowered abilities either. Now, if there’s an actual counter to massive damage through a block apart from “Don’t use block it’s bad now trololol” which is lovely to make an entire part of the game irrelevant (yes, revealed is similar but once again, no excuse for bad design just because it already exists), then feel free to actually point it out.
Also, god forbid any class than thief uses stat sets without toughness! Obviously the build is bad! Oh wait I was blocking and that’s meant to stop most attacks of that magnitude.
And you wonder why the devs don’t come into this forum, because the moment someone says something is SLIGHTLY too good you turn into a bunch of toxic whiners. Congratulations, you’ve made me ashamed to play the class.
I’m not complaining I lost, I’m pointing out that being able to do vast amounts of damage through blocks is ridiculous.
Actually there is. Like I said, revenant. Which is how I was able to beat the trap thief trick the next time he tried it (Glint heal inversion to soak up the big hits).
The issue is the damage potential of Daredevils unblockable skills, which can kill you while you’re stuck in a blocking animation. sPvP situation and he did well over 15k through a block.
And if you want to look through my past post history, I’m well aware that thieves have been bottom of the pile for some time, but that doesn’t excuse terrible balancing the other direction.
Now, I’m happy that thief has finally got a little love. I got my kitten exploded by a trapper thief in sPvP. And I shrugged. Probably a little ridiculous given they did a 17k crit shot from halfway across the map, but meh. I should have seen it coming and spammed all my dodges and blocks. Or something. Plus I know the cooldown on those traps. Fun gimmick but he wasn’t going to do it again soon. And I got him with some cheap tricks that only Rev can do the next time he tried it. Might be more mad if I hadn’t been rev, come to think of it.
But when a daredevil can do 15k damage to me in about three staff attacks WHILE I’M BLOCKING, there’s something a little wrong about the class. Sure, have unblockable things (Steal for one, and Mug should crit). But don’t have them be able to do that much damage through blocks.
Been noticing that at least one ranger I’ve fought today has literally had about 90% blind uptime, is the F2 spam bug back or did one of the new traits break beastmastery with synergy?
I’m an ele player myself, not D/D though, and I literally don’t understand how to counterplay D/D with any class except by being better at being DD than they are, which is nearly impossible. The burst and condi of them is still insane, and the survivability while in water is still extremely high, and they have good sources of stability (earth armour and auto earth armour) so CC isn’t even an option. How the hell do you beat this build?
I’m fairly new (Shark going on Phoenix) to the PvP scene but looking to improve, regular ranked player looking for a dedicated guild or team with Teamspeak or other voice software specializing in PvP to learn from and play with. Best classes are probably thief and ranger but play all current classes. NZ timezone (GMT+12+DST)
If a paid expansion offers options in a competitive setting that are better than the options available to free players, it’s P2W. Kinda the definition.
Kind of wrong too. An expansion usually brings a ton of stuff. Higher level. Better gear. More abilities. In gw 2 levels and gear doesnt matter for spvp. Not that we have a higher level cap either. What we get is different. Not better, just different.
You can argue whether or not THIS expansion is P2W. But if elites give players a competitive edge (which this weekend at least they have), then the HoT expansion is P2W in regards to sPvP.
I fully agree that the biggest problem right now is the condi meta, but unlike the poster above I don’t see much hope of it going away. Reapers with their massive chill hits that are almost impossible for thieves to remove, berserkers are going to be another addition to the burn blasters, scrapper might stacking combined with FT buff, I’ve noticed a huge increase in death to fire this weekend. Both on thief and other classes, but thief is most noticable because of lack of good condi clear.
This is still one of the biggest problems to having fun in PvP, is ending up 4v5 because someone quit or their computer crashed. Unless you had a good lead, or are a hugely imbalanced team, you’re going to lose. You’re probably going to lose badly since they can afford to crash every point against you. Long story short, it’s not FUN.
So, I think there needs to be some kind of compensation for remaining active in these matches. Perhaps something like 50 end-of-game points per minute spent without a full team. Perhaps extra containers. Perhaps an achievement with some worthwhile reward although that could be farmable/abusable. Just give us SOMETHING for beating our heads on a wall that isn’t our fault.
If a paid expansion offers options in a competitive setting that are better than the options available to free players, it’s P2W. Kinda the definition.
On topic, thieves are rapidly losing the dueling game to other classes, aren’t actually that fair ahead in mobility of several other classes (Warrior mobility builds, smart rangers, mesmers with Sig of Insp), and either sacrifice survivability for burst, which their abilities encourage, and get melted in teamfights if you dare break stealth, OR you get SOME survivability, and can’t do damage because your weapons and traits are so heavily slanted towards burst and stealth.
This is when I point out I have an engi main and am honestly looking forward to scrapper when it comes live, and yes I DO play it PvP and am aware it is one of the hardest professions to master. Yes we’ve been middle of the road for a bloody long time, but that doesn’t mean throwing the hell out of balance.
No I wasn’t playing a CC warrior at the time.
Like I said, I’m not sure whats been going on but I have seen more than one scrapper actually teleporting, and YES I know what the leap looks like and NO IT WAS NOT A LEAP. I just figured it was a gyro function.
Yes it was 3v1 and they basically went through rotation of ElixirS, gyro stealth, gear shield and back to heals, and took barely any damage when they weren’t invulnerable, and their stealth gyro had far more survivability than I normally see and see described. Maybe I ran into someone cheating under the guise of beta classes. Wouldn’t understand why but shrugs.
Well either they’re hacking or something else weird is going on, since I’m seeing multiple scrappers that are basically doing shadowstep and return. And no it is NOT the hammer leaps.
The biggest problem with the power of chrono is the double greatsword burst. I have suspsicions the player I had the most trouble with today was macroing, since he was literally hitting me with every skill on the greatsword in under a second, but I imagine a good human player could still make pretty good use of this burst, which if you combine everything can reach well over 20k in a single sPvP burst.
Oh, plus the amount of teleports they have on top. It’s like fighting a shield warrior combined with the best parts of a shadowstep thief..
And their stealth covers all allies. They’re too good at too many things at once in sPvP
Between the ability to stealth, several invulns, some of the best heals in the game and high block availability the Scrapper can just be far too tanky, while using blast gyros at the same time for damage output and CC. As much as Iove the engi this is a bit ridiculous, especially in PvP, where I’ve seen scrappers unkillable by three people focus firing.
It’s almost like the nerfs were more cosmetic than mechanics!
JK, they do hurt a little but D/D ele is still one of the best builds in the game as far as I can tell from fighting them, in fact they’re honestly better because I can’t just sit in their ring of fire and negate the effects any more. :P
Honestly, d/d ele’s aren’t hugely scary in offensive power, but they have the highest defensive power of any non-bunker spec WHILE having second tier offense at worst which makes them the problem. Looking at where all the survivability and sustain comes from is in my opinion the way to reduce the pervasiveness of D/D cele.
Why? We wouldn’t be able to do any more spam than we already can, in fact if it cost initiative to swap instead of having a cooldown it’d be even less.
The problem, at least to a recent comer to playing the class, is that by all looks, the old S/D acro build ALREADY fucntioned like the elite spec, got nerfed into oblivion, and then given back to us as an elite spec that doesn’t change the class from what it used to have.
Simply put, if someone is executing ridiculously long chains of instant cast skills with no delay reliably you can suspect them of macroing. SUSPECT being the key word. The only time I’ve ever been suspicious of macros was a particular thief who was way, way too fast at comboing his own fields and chaining attacks.
That said, knowing your own class lets you throw awfully fast chains that could look like macros to someone unfamiliar/untrained with the class.
As I stated, if you have these they come from your traits and utilities, not the D/D set. I listed what the other sets bring that D/D doesn’t.
I don’t think you’re Entitled enough to say such thing, stating all your previous post Sword/dagger Thief.
….as former D/D thief that switched sets due to the set’s inadequacies…. am I just not allowed to point out facts? What would entitlement have to do with anything I’ve said? I literally listed the mechanics available to S/D and D/P to which D/D does not have comparable access.
I don’t think D/d works the same as the other weapon set including S/p and P/d (did i play all the Thief weapon set in this game has to offer,wrong?), i am sure you’ll going to agree with that Sword/dagger Thief.
I honestly don’t understand the point you’re trying to make.
It is not my problem if you lack understanding, former D/d thief.
His point is he got touched by thieves as a child and wants you to pay for his therapy.
(Also his point is that your personality and skill level is obviously determined by your weapon choices or something like that)
Anyone that thinks the community is toxic, i dare you to play CSGO on casual(20 people in a game) with voice comms enabled, i even learnt how to curse in Russian.
If you are so sensitive just disable the entire chat and the bubbles over the head. IMO, the game is too fast paced to chat, they should implement dota like chat wheel or better ping system.
I’ve said it before and said it again, an option to disable chat is the worst idea ever and is likely to kill non-group matchmaking.
Well, any more of an option than currently exists. It’s actually really easy. Wonder if that’s the problem, and team chat should actually show up in every chat.
Give me a blacklist and I won’t have to rage in chat. 90% of my raging is players that refuse advice and DON’T get it right on their own. If I had a blacklist then I could block and forget instead of having to vent frustration since I know I can’t avoid these people.
Also if someone is raging at you in particular, check if they blocked you straight after or not. If they blocked you it means they’re all show, so you can just laugh at them.
I also see many thieves when you have 2 or even 3 thieves not bothering to work together and spike out a target.
Also to the guy saying about 4 mesmers, there was a reedit post where there were 4 mesmers, same look, almost identical names in the queue, was pretty funny. They lost most of the time though, 5 of anything is generally a bad comp.
I think I played these guys once, IIRC was when I was running a Lock On engi so bad things happened to them.
I’ve seen some fantastic 2-thief teams, but normally they’re premades which I assume are using voice comm.
As someone mentioned, if you’re in a 2 (or more) thief/mesmer team, you need to stop assuming you’re going to hold points with equal numbers. You won’t. However, you CAN rotate and gank and keep enough of the enemy team on respawn to hold points for longer than they can. I remember a 3 thief 2 mesmer team where one of the mesmers spent the whole time screaming for people to hold points, so of course people got slaughtered. Those of us who ignored his ranting actually did fairly well, but of course we lost with someone trying to enforce that play.
You think flamer reveal is bad, try a power mortar reveal! (from an engi point of view, haven’t actually run into it on my thief).
Things to note with reveal: You have to pass up some other fantastic traits for it. As noted, it does have a cooldown so if you can force them to burn it early, DO SO (perhaps the p5d2 stealth is the best way to do this). Most of my Lock On kills were thieves that didn’t stealth aggressively and held it for escape on 25% health, which I promptly revealed and finished off.
If you can rely on engaging at range (say p/d) you’ll also do a lot better, since you’ll either be out of flamer ranger or at a distance where I have to randomwalk mortar shots because of travel time. At close range, if I’m running reveal and you try to stealth, you’re dead because I can then reply with most of the scary engi skills-the more positional uncertainty you can create against a reveal engi, the better.
The thing about reveal is it complements explosive tree, which gives 5% bonus against targets with vuln, so between the vuln stacks and that trait the engi will be hitting far harder.
Finally, if you’re up against a reveal engi, orbital strike is the scariest skill in the game.
I have to admit even in the current meta I thought thieves were overpowered in their burst ability, then I tried one out and started understanding what they were doing to me. There’s still a couple of thieves out there I struggle with that I see regularly, but for the most part I can at least force disengages even 1v1 just by knowing the likely skill usage, since we have such a small variety.
The paired thief burst is still a problem but honestly any paired class that understands how to work together is a huge issue-even the slow burn of a condi necro can splatter you when they overload clears with two of them. Hell, I remember splattering a medi guard in about 2 seconds with the combination of my DPS engi and a burst mesmer recently. He knew we were coming too which is even scarier. Thieves are only scary when you don’t see them coming.
Also, on swap sigils at least already have ICD (9 seconds), probably because of the Warrior traitlines. I’m less sure about traits but there aren’t exactly many.
Sure, going dp pd would give you a nice burst and swap and burst ability, but you’ve sacrificed the single best thing a current thief has-shortbow, and your burst burns up over half your initiative bar.
That’s not quite true. The problem with shadow trap is that it calculates the range based on WALKING distance, not straight line.
If you activate from a point technically in straight line range but not in walk range, it goofs up into obstacles.
Regardless how it calculates, you still have to have a clear path.
No you don’t. You have to have a walkable path of less than 10000 units.
That’s not quite true. The problem with shadow trap is that it calculates the range based on WALKING distance, not straight line.
If you activate from a point technically in straight line range but not in walk range, it goofs up into obstacles.
