Guild Wars 2

Oh Almighty thiefs from the Thief Section, help this poor folower in times of need.

My mouse 3 button (scroll button) stopped working and I lost my Keybiddinbg for steal.
I’ve being using it for a year already and no matter what I use as substitute, it doesnt seens to work the same way.

Any suggestions?

Damage and Critical damage works the exact same way on sPvP.

Only PvE and WvW got affected.

Bhawb.7408:

The reason balance is so desired is because this game is amazing, we all want it to succeed. But when you play the same profession every day, you’ve spent hundred or thousands of hours on it over almost two years, you know every single weak trait, every single weak skill, every single thing about your class that isn’t quite where it should be.

So do you go on the forums and kitten with ANet about how awesome the game is? No, you have to talk about the future of the game, which assumes the game isn’t perfect as is.

I agree with that.

In fact, I do believe that the players that actively post on forums are the few selected group of players that actually care enough for the game. Gratz for all of us.

But we are just a minor part of the community. Voices and opinions here are the voice of the minority. That will never change.
Not saying it isn’t important. I just pointing out that not everything said here as “a problem” may actually be a problem in the eyes of Anet or the majority of the community.

In fact, that makes me remember of the queen arena event.
Personally I loved that arena. We had tons of topics discussing real strategy and build to beat one single boss! On Guild Wars 2?! Who could ever imagine that!

We also had 1000 topics complaining about how hard said event was. That’s reality.

In all due sincerity.

I completely and utterly disagree with the opinion of 90% of the players that post in this topic.
In fact. I believe that most of the playerbase disagrees with most opinions that cross around here. But I won’t bother myself with numbers I don’t have.

As far as PvE goes, we have a lot of people complaining about how easy and uninteresting the content in this game is.
I would like to point out that for the “normal player” (read: casual, plays 2 hours a day, may or not have ever played a MMo before GW2) there are dungeons and PvE content that are hard or inaccessible.

Some people say that the old “punchbag mobs” could be as much creative and cool as some of the new mobs goes (this is new, players of game X using another mob of game X as example, never saw that before).

Creative? Cool ?
Why don’t you sit on a low lvl map, close to one of these events (like the Toxic Alliance flowers and watch how many players actually try to finish it.
Some of these events stay up for hours without completion meanwhile others event around are completely 6~10 times in a row, until some randon players decides to save the poor caged engies who aren’t going to die anyway. For drama’s sake.

I am sadly announcing that, IMO, the “vision” that you guys have is simply annoying. It doesn’t matter how much I like a challenge, I don’t want every mob on GW2 enter Dark Souls mode because they “could be more creative”.

In sad if not hilarius, to watch a new player on any guild asking for help to kill a boss, and the first question he receives is:
- “if the champion is from events or a normal map champ”.
- “Oh wait, this is a <insert living world event here> champ, those take too long to kill, kill boss Y that it’s easier and give the same exp”.

I am totally for ANET adding more game modes and dungeons for “hard core PvE players”. But doesn’t make the game a frustrating experience for everyone else because you think that the current farmable content is boring.
Believe me when I say that some people take grind as a *relaxing and mindless * experience. And having to think and use strategy to kill every mob/champ is far from that.

Now on class/PvP balance. Really..
Just…
Really

I’ve being playing MMos for exactly 13 years now. That’s not much, yes.
But I am yet to see a game community that doesn’t spend all day complaining about balance on foruns.
The awesome, cool, unicorn world of “Balance” that you guys complain on this section:
Never saw. I don’t see. Probably never will.

atheria.2837:

Tspatula.9086:

This should never have been allowed.

I want to know why this is allowed at all.

It makes no sense that I never see some thieves and then am not able to use any “downed” skills at all to even have a 10% chance of getting up again.

No F2 Ranger pet works, so a pet can’t smell or sense a thief….

Right….. Just… Right….

Congrats dear Ranger.
Guardians, Mesmers, Necromancers and Elementarists can counter a stealth stomp.

atheria.2837:

Thieves are given something that no other character can do, kill without many being able to stop you – unseen.

Let me share you a secret, you need to be at around 120 radius of the target to stomp it.
You “unseen” looks pretty visible to me.

But then again, I must be an ESP. I can see invisible stuff.

After running a few simulations I changed to runes of Speed.

Same speed bonus + chance of swiftness and some extra Hp.

My damage loss isn’t memorably, I lost like 2 points in Crit Damage and like 40 points of power that I can recover trough food.

Oh and cheaper. Way cheaper.

They could make a “Soul Bound” Lootbag that will automatically receive any bounded weapon by preference.
Pretty much the same way that the current materials and equipment lootbag works.

Carighan.6758:

Aedrion.6483:

If all the skills listed here were actually bad, only 10% of the skills in the game would be good. The idea behind the thread was a good one but I’m afraid you just openened the floodgates for all the QQ in the world. :P

The thread actually shows rather well why your playerbase is a terrible source for balancing input in a MMO. :P

Its quantity over quality.

If this topic has 1000 posts and 10 players complain about one skill than its QQ.
Now if 800 players complain about another skill than it means it’s worth looking at.

Evilek.5690:

Black Powder is so OP lol You hit all attack when you use brain.

Just a note from someone who deleted his Norm Thief and make a human.

You weapon range =/= attack radius.

But it is true that most classes can hit a thief inside blackpowder.

Condition Builds doesn’t have problem with blind.

If that’s so annoying for you, you may use one of those or change to a class that excel at those.

Stop making excuses about one specific Condition that for some reason affect your build more than affect others. If you hate blind, build yourself to counter it.

Crit Damage got a hit last update, so most thieves are hitting less with Backstab.

People are working now on maximizing Might stacks to cover the damage loss.

RedSpectrum.1975:

Grimwolf.7163:

RedSpectrum.1975:

Major point is Traveler runes are obsolete for DD builds so Fleet Shadow may see some more love now so I have to agree with Dee Jay as 50% (it says 50 but is it 50 or just 33?) movement in stealth helps a ton in combat. I’m not saying strength runes suck I’m jut saying they are expensive atm so I may go with wurm for now :p I’m considering salvaging my old Valkyrie with the travel runes and out the money toward new valk gear and runes

It is only 33%.

*flips desk, kicks trash can, throws papers everywhere, tears pictures off of wall and throws around,lights laptop on fire and then room but first takes selfie

Wrong.

As was discussed on this topic fleet of Shadow DOES give 50% speed on Battle.
Outside battle is 36%, slight faster than swiftness.

Have in mind that every player loses speed when it enter battle. A FoF Thief walks slight faster than a non-battle player without any speed bonus.

This build is Gold.

I just can’t understand why dont you simply use Full Dires ?

lordhelmos.7623:

Rune of krait basilisk spiking from stealth requires a stunbreaker, condition clear, and heal (if backstabbed) to counter. Unless your a psychic and can dodge stealthed attacks.

Spread the word, the world is full of ESPs.

Fortus.6175:

This is exactly what he and all thief players have been demanding of everyone; to build their builds specifically adn solely for countering thieves, disregarding everyone else. .

Try walking around without a stun breaker to see what a hambow warriors does to you.
Try walking around without ConD clear to see what a Necromancer does to you.
Try sticking close to a Engineer turrets to see how many red rings show in your foot.
Try staying still in presence of a Ranger to notice that the Pet actually hurts.
Try not paying attention to red rings with a Elementaris around.
Try killing a Guardian that doesn’t want to die. Alone.
Try fighting a Mesmer that knows how to hide in their own clones.
Try walking around without Vitality around a Thief around to see what he does to you.

No one says that you need to build around Thiefs to PvP.
But if you don’t, good luck if you find one.

the sober ninja.6539:

WvW thieves thinking they’re better than Caed and Jumper? I mean come on. For one thing, when you fight a really good thief, you can’t just OoC like pretty much every thief does in WvW — cheap tricks like that don’t work on high tier thieves.

There’s a handful of high skill thieves in this game, and it’s pretty safe to say that most of them have played an awful lot of sPvP. After all sPvP is the place where you get the most combat experience per unit time, period.

In all due seriousness.
Thief builds, gameplay and tactics changes a lot on both game modes.

It’s kind of a waste of time to compare players.

Seens that you are quite new to the game. Welcome to GW2

I could ask the person below me to post some updated videos of Eng gameplay, it will prolly change your idea on engies.

randomly.6395:

Even on a P/D heavy condition build, the krait runes provide conditions that a P/D setup already has access to. Poison on Steal > CnD > Sneak Attack > Shadow Strike.

You’re still better off getting the extra condition in the form of confusion from perplexity runes. Krait runes aren’t doing much.

I’m not even going to touch on the fact that these runes are garbage for a backstab build.

^ This in a nutshell.

Why in heavens would you use kraits on a backstab build?

I mean, a P&D Build can use the very same strategy in a more effective way.

Aza.2105:

Happened to me awhile ago. Here is the damage log:

I think I was wearing a cleric amulet, with 13k hp. I’m amazed Anet allows that type of skill to stay as it is.

Did a few check ups. With 20 stacks of Might I can hit for 13.060 on a Target Golen – Light. If you add a few vulnerability stacks than yes. I can truly confirm this is possible.

Though you need to have a few stars aligned to make that happens on real combat.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

The question is, what have you learned from those defeat?

Now there is a question that really fits the Thief section.

I could quote that down for further use.

HHR LostProphet.4801:

AcidicVision.5498:

Sunshine.5014:

Saying it’s a glass cannon complaining about another glass cannon is missing the point.

The point is: insta-gib from stealth is toxic. It’s the same thing for fresh air ele, although you can at least see the ele coming. 13k backstab from stealth is toxic. A thief is not a normal glass cannon. It’s a glass cannon with constant access to stealth and teleport. It has way too much advantage.

It’s not missing the point. It is the point. 13k damage isn’t flat across the board. The attack does not ignore armor or protection.

It only exists because the target was also built as a glass cannon and had insufficient burst protection.

• You think 13k backstab is a problem?
  yes
• Do all backstabs hit for 13K+ ?
  no
• Why does it hit you for 13k+ ?
  low toughness
• If you spec conservatively into toughness does it still hit you for 13k?
  no
• Is 13k backstab still a problem?
  no
• Were your choices enabling 13k backstabs to be a possibility?
  yes

Thieves punish and counter-play pure damage or burst based builds. If you didn’t play one of those builds then the thing you claim is toxic wouldn’t exist. Essentially, players are just mad another player is doing to them what they intentionally built to do to other people.

So as soon you see a thief in the enemy team you have to build full bunker just to ensure not to get hit for 13k? That doesn’t seem like a viable tactic. You can avoid every other class by just don’t walking near them. But if a thief decides to hunt you down, he will catch you, no matter what you’re doing. So the only viable “tactic” is just building super tanky. If the whole enemy team is forced to react to just one pick on your team, this pick will probably considered being OP in any game, sincethe whole team has no other choice than reacting to his pick.

sPvP thieves don’t hit for 13k.

And if you really have problems with thieves on sPvP, you are just bad or not build right.

And for WvW….
Well if you can’t detect someone approaching you in an open field map, you may want to check your culling settings in the Option menu.

1º: Its 10% overal DPS. Loss on criticals is around 15~30% depending on your build.

2º: 15 ferocity = 1%. I believe they mentioned in the last ready up. It’s official information.

Can’t really say I can take this topic seriously anymore.

This is actually hilarious to read after the backstab damage got nerfed by around 30% this patch.

Please, continue playing the exact way you are still playing.
Thiefs are in need of more free kills now than ever.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

If you’re looking for buffs, you’re looking at the wrong places. Example;

Warrior:
Merciless Hammer: Damage to stunned and knocked down foes has been decreased from 25% to 20%.
Healing Signet: Reduced the passive heal by 8%.
Pin Down: Added a new warm-up effect. Increased the cast time from .25 seconds to .75 seconds.

Those are buffs for every other professions including Thieves.

That until you met a Warrior with Skullcrack + the new Sigil of Paralyzation.

Pro-tip: Start walking with an extra stun breaker.

luckyny.7468:

First..I am not as good at playing this game as most of you. But I do enjoy it . I do have some experience with having an 80 warrior, necro, and mesmer. I started a thief before the patch and I am at level 24. I was just barely able to defeat anything that was at the same level I was let alone 2 enemies at the same time. Now after the patch with S/P and SB I am barely lossing any health on anything that is at the same level and beating anything 2 levels above me in PVE. I have 0 % ferocity and using mostly power and vitality armor at this level, but for some reason have an easier time after the patch. Maybe I don’t know no better because like I said I am not one of those real good players and I know nothing about all these numbers evreyone is throwing around but I am doing good. Maybe when I get up to 80 I will know what the complaints are all about. justme

Try using Pistol 5# + Sword Basic Attack.
If the mobs are meelee, you can kill 5~6 mobs at the same time, easily.
You may add a Minor Sigil of Fire for some extra AoE damage.

Another good stuff is using Shortbow + Signet of Malice.
Use Poison field + Sb 2# for area damage + weakness (pretty much cut enemy damage by 50%).
If you need heal, spam Sb 2# so you can score a few extra ticks of healing trough the signet.

Grinding thief is insanely ease once you understand our mechanics. Its even easier than other classes, since we can rely entirely on weapon attacks.

Long time ago, when I still used a Full Glass Thief (those who actually hit for higher than 10k), I asked a Warrior friend why he wouldn’t use the Warrior Full glass cannon build, since I saw a video of a Warrior hitting for 12~20k with it on players with full exotics.

He answered that it was a joke build, and none actually uses it.

Ever since I play a full stealth build, because I believe Full GC thiefs lack in their own areas of interest.

LordByron.8369:

In PvP you have to stay in a small area, in www invisibility is possibly stronger than invulnerability.

You can see an invulnerable player, see how much invulnerability is left and prepare a tactic both offensive and defensive.

Stealth lasts for 3~4 seconds.
Only exception for this rule is Shadow trap, that lasts 1 second more, for… reasons?
Shadow Refuge are 4~5 stacks of stealth, but its still 3~4 seconds each.

And you can take measures against stealth, a lot of people do it already.

Anything but Norm.

The fact that my arm length was bigger than my skill actual range kittened me off so much that I remade my thief from scratch.

AikijinX.6258:

There already is a global wide Thieves guild. The thing is you need to be highly skilled to join.

Tell me more about it

Oh my god!!
I got blocked my Who-knows-who for playing Thief in a game mode that Thiefs suck.
I’m feeling so terrible now.
I wonder if I may need psychological help.

?~?~

Pro-tip:
In a MMo like Gw2 the chances of you meeting the same person on a PvP or PvE once or twice is so freakin low that you shouldn’t really bother yourself with this kind of stuff.

Person in question prolly got farmed by a Ranger after blocking you and never logged on sPvP again.

Can’t we work on a Global Wide Guild?

80~90% with Fury is possible and easy on full zerkers.
Only way to get higher than that is prolly on full assassins.

Ironically, it’s pretty easy to get 100% crit% on upleveled characteres.

BlackBeard.2873:

My ele can’t wait until “Stone heart” is a thing, and will likewise enjoy the snack.

I shuddered when I saw that.
That was the smartest counter to backstab ArenaNet ever added in the game.

Hayashi.3416:

In short: Only guardians can’t. There are guardians the thieves can’t kill but those can’t kill the thieves either; it’s a permanent stalemate.

As a Guardian and Thief main, I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.
Thiefs are free kills, since 90% of the time they are using berserkers and are squish enough to be killed in full bunkers.

In fact, being killing thiefs with Guardian since before revelead was added.

Hayashi.3416:

If I had a gold for everyone I see in WvW who stops attacking the moment a thief goes into stealth…

Oh lord, I can’t +1 that enough.

Looks like your usual berserker build with the wrong traits.
Can’t go wrong really.

Trait choice is strange though.
First because it doesnt have 30 in Critical Strikes,
And the fact it uses acrobatic on a stealth build.

McFribble.2349:

Basically put, when I see the thief, I think of a pickpocket, a lock picker, trap disabler or a brawny highwayman ready to shake someone down for their currency, not some flipping ninja popping in and out of visibility. If Anet wanted to bring back the Assassin from GW1, they should have made it a separate class.

There is a severe lack of mud slinging, tripping, and intimidation type skills that come with your common crook. As is, I seldom see a thief who doesn’t map Smoke Bomb, Shadow’s Refuge, or both to his skill bar, since “stealth” is apperantly the thieve’s class skill, and Mug takes a backseat as a free teleport every so often.

I would like to see skills that make the thief more diverse than your standard ninja/assassin that is in every other game, since that really isn’t the reason I rolled this class to begin with. The trap skills in this game are all underwhelming, and tricks are no where near good enough to go toe to toe with the deception skills.

The problem is that a “Pure thief” concept always ends up in a weak characters.

Pickpockting we are already doing.
Lockpicking is useless since there are no locks to pick.
Disabling Trap is useless because traps are useless in the most part. (and if you could see then, none would fall for then anyway).

Thief in its pure form is a subclass on games that have that kind of system, but as a main class it simply doesn’t help at anything.

In the end, on every game Thiefs must be “fused” with some ninja/assassin/rogue/ranger class or they become a subpar doesn’t-help-me-kill-the-boss-faster class.

Interceptor.2653:

^ There are undoubtedly Warrior builds that could “not die” to condition spec — maybe Hammer/Bow for some CC and range ability? — but a P/D Thief will just leave if they can’t win. We’re talking about a build that lives in stealth, here. Disengaging is a cinch.

That’s a completely different problem altogether.

I don’t really believe any class in this game can clean conditions as fast as a P/D Thief can apply. Again that’s the whole point of the build after all.
(it’s not like you can stop a necromancer from aplying conditions on you either way).

Besides, the whole “This build can kill thiefs easily, that build can’t” is a endless discussion that we should not even start.

I bet there are builds of warrior that can kill a P/D Thief as easy.

Carpboy.7145:

Fun fact: the 10% less DPS is from a maxed out party, that means 25 might, 25 vuln, warr banners, frost spirit, and spotter. That will hardly have ANY impact on pvp and WvW.

I feel sad to think that people really believe that.

I am going for the worst case scenario, and that total party DPS will get a way bigger nerf than just 10%.

Not like PvE matters.

Just throwing an idea.

Why not add those following effects to Venons?

Hallucination
Dwayna’s lament
Melandru’s Sorrow
Grenth’s Touch

Last for 10 seconds, Can’t be cleaned. Don’t stack.

Meanwhile we are at it. Roll back Thiefs reveal to 3 seconds.
Thanks.

Arganthium.5638:

Steal is fine, it has a lot of mobility and a lot of utility to go along with it.

hihey.1075:

The only thing I’d like to see changed about steal is it going in full cd if you don’t have anything targeted. It should go to kitten cd like when you try to use it on a target which is out of reach.
Everything else is fine imho. It’s a free, pseudo-stunbreaker (it saved my life in many occasions) and a teleport.

There aren’t range markers in this game, and Steal doesn’t produce some kind of circle that tells you whether or not you’ll be able to land the skill. This change would completely break the mechanic. Anyways, we already put Steal on CD if we don’t have a target in sight whatsoever. The 5s penalty for being out of range is quite enough.

There are range markers in this game.
Its a really small red bar below the skill icon that marks if you are in range or not.

Wish it was more visible, but it’s there.

The more i read, more i think you have no idea of what you are writing.

Lets start with you last post. Shortbows were greatly nerfed as far as vertical movement goes because of how thiefs could abuse it. In PvP and WvW.
In fact, WvW is the reason your super jump idea is bad. We don’t want thief skipping siege walls AGAIN.

Also, it looks like you wanna make GW2 some kinda of fighting game of sorts.
Most of the suggestions here are impractical both in gameplay and server limitations.

Skilled gameplay is fun and all at 1vs1. But in a Zerg vs Zerg at WvW it becomes a mess. In fact, PvE would also be a mess.

GW2 isn’t another C9. We are talking about two completely different MMo genres here.
That’s why the game looks to go in the opposite direction of you suggestion.

nicknamenick.2437:

Wanna play your build? sure but you suck against every meta build.

Wanna play meta build? no, ok get lost and deal with it.

that’s Guildwars… it sucks

Wrong.
You can play any build. But every build has Pros and Cons.

Also, randomly picking your stats and utility skills won’t make your build effective. If your build doesn’t have any kind of synergy, you are in trouble.

style.6173:

Turtle Dragon.9241:

style.6173:

Easy fix for the issue. It should have 2 parts.

1. Puts you into stealth for 3 seconds at 25% health ignoring any existing revealed status
2. Next attack does not cause revealed flag

Play around with the recharge to make it balanced and this should work for everyone.

2. Consecutive Backstabs?

you are missing the main point though. That’s why you adjust the recharge. It’s not like someone can plan for 2 backstabs (and not everyone uses dagger mainhand). Sure it could happen once in a while, but it isn’t that big of a deal.

It is a big of a deal. Brokenness of multiple backstabs were the reason Revealed was added after all.

I agree with the non-stealth ideas. A AoE blind or a Smoke Field would be simply gold for a 5 point trait.

The reason why Zerker gear is popular is because PvE is in a general way, too easy.

Every game, every class, every RPG, players always build themselves with the bare minimum threshold to survive, and add every last point to DPS.
Since PvE content is in a general way too easy, people just build for full offense.

Take Tequatl as an example. Crits doesn’t work on him. If every dungeon boss were to have that characteristic, do you think people would carry on zerkers?
In fact, if every boss were to be as hard as him, people would actually feel forced to use a more defensive gear because it would be extremely hard sustain yourself without some sort of defense.

PvE on GW2 is extremely forgiven. I am not saying that we don’t have hard content here, we do.
But other games have longer dungeons, unforgiving scenarios and bosses with absurdly high HP and skills that can one shoot even a unprepared bulky player. Can you even list any boss like that here?

BTW, if we really start having more dungeon bosses that zerker doesn’t work, people will just start using Soldier, Dire and Carrion. Which are the next in line following the same logic.
If they bother doing the dungeon at all, the only dungeons in the game that offer any challenge are often ignored for the easy “Zerk-friendly” ones.

A suggestion…

TL:DR
Healing Signet
Passive: Grants regeneration Every 3 seconds if damage is received.
Active: Heal yourself.

The Pros:
- Can keep the regeneration the same way its now. In fact, you could buff the Active.
- Warriors keep their clear advantage at the beginning of the fights. Which I find it’s good and it fits well with the class

The Cons
- Passive Regeneration won’t gonna work when the Warrior is invulnerable to damage, or running away.

Long Version

My suggestion has the objective of keeping the HS strong points, at the same time giving HS Warriors a clear weak point.

With the new passive effect, warriors that don’t receive a certain amount of damage every 3 seconds the Regen effect simply won’t gonna work. That said, in fight, warriors will have the exact same sustain they have now.

The first difference is that, warriors won’t be able to regen while running. Since if they don’t receive at least 1 damage every 3 seconds, the regen won’t gonna work.

Second difference is the reason of the change itself. The trait Defy Pain, Endure Pain and the shield skill Shield Stance.
Meanwhile those skills are active (as well as rolls and anything that may give the warrior invulnerable) the Passive effect of HS won’t trigger. That’s because the warrior won’t receive damage meanwhile using those skills.

On the other hand, any damage, including conditions, will proc the regen. So warriors can still use HS as sustain against ConD, since the regen will proc even if they have a single Bleed stack. This makes warriors have control of the skill, choosing when to heal and when they shouldn’t clean their conditions.

This way, warriors will keep their advantage at the beginning of the fight, like other people complained above (which for me, its a good point for warriors), but it will fix the “miracle comeback” every time they reach 25% HP. Since they have access to almost 14 seconds of full invulnerability and regen free time (2 endure pains, Shield Stance and 2 Rolls).
Warriors with HS will be forced to think if they should thrown everything at the enemy to kill then, or if they should use the immunity to run away. Like any other class. This will also raise the usefulness of the other 2 heals, that will work naturally midfight.

That’s my suggestion.

More like you never died.

Your are fighting a build that sacrifices absolutely everything for survival. It would be strange if you could kill him alone.