Anyone who complains about GC thieves is just bad. I’m not saying that playing one is hard. Bads can prey on bads pretty easy on a GC Thief. Dying to one outside of extenuating circumstances? 100% bads.
After playing last night, even if it was working I don’t think I would use it. I miss the 50% fall dmg too much and am not willing to give up either of the other two acro traits.
This change is going to entice me to remove my 50% fall dmg and also replace 25% runspeed with blinding powder so I’ll be slower over the distance unless I use all my end and init chase and I won’t be able to ninja off cliffs anymore. Still torn.
They have to make boon stealing work on shields/immunity and junk like that or at least dispel them to be useful. The yellow boons come too easy for removal to be really useful. If I could get rid of Arcane Shield now that would be useful. Does any prof have access to that kind of dispel?
For the price of the split second of making sure you have a decent ground target you get an extra free stunbreak/condition removal/re-position in the next 20 seconds that there is almost no reason not to use.
I’m mainly a WvW player. I’ve always gone 2/2/2 afflicted, centaur, krait for the 45% bleed but now days it seems like more people are learning to run condition removal in WvW so hitting 100% doesn’t seem quite as needed as trying to maximize condition damage (they also fixed double bonus bug). I still want to hit 75% with food.
I have 30% bleed duration without food. So I need at least the 10% duration from runes to hit 75% with the 36% food (a lot cheaper at the cost of 10 cond dmg). That pretty much opens up any rune set that has condition duration or bleed duration.
The problem is they all seem to kind of suck. The best looking one seems to be the one that has a chance to fear when hit but that’s dungeon tokens, that gives 10% duration along with cond dmg and a seemingly useful 6th ability. I’m currently using full Afflicted which has a seemingly useless 6th ability.
Other options seem to be Mad king (which are stupid expensive) for the ravens when you pop Guild or the one that summons a necro minion. Has anyone tried that one?
Yea, I’ve done that before as well. A ton of people build up on the other side.
Using Tripwire though at the top of the well is great for getting the fountain users because as they jump out of the well they can’t see the trap until they hit it and are brought out of stealth. There is just something more satisfying about killing a fountain user than any other in the JP.
Just wanted to share with fellow thieves who like to trawlololol if you plant a tripwire at the on the lip of the well (as they are jumping down) in the EB-JP it will pop all the stealth fountain users and put them on their ars for you to farm carebears.
No mater what the power level of thieves are relative to the rest of the professions there will always be people calling for nerfs. It’s just the plight of stealth classes in MMOs. Even if thieves were the weakest class in the game, someone would be able to kill an up-leveled noobie in WvW who would make a forum post about how unfair stealth is.
If you like the stealth archetype just stick with it for the entire roller coaster ride of power because it always happens.
No thanks. It would remove some of the utility of Steal such as stomping other Thieves. This combo is no problem for seasoned players to counter anyway.
Was this a TC Thief in the EB after midnight or so? I remember messimg with a CD group and having a ele cast meteor shower. I also leveled up from a event Imust have had something to do with previously and that popped me up from downed. 2nd time that’s happed to me lol
Doing this would destroy any strategy in the game. Spying would be very fast and easy. The matter of harassment is also an issue.
Spying would be faster and easier, how exactly?
Because you could randomly msg someone who had this option on and say “hey bro want me to spy for you?” then they go “yea bro what is your zerg up to?”
Oh wait, that will happen like .000001% of the time. Any real spying will be with direct messages with people they already know either via in game whispers or out of game voice/msging. This argument along with harassment are bunk.
Not sure why that is. I don’t even try to chase a d/d ele because it’s so annoying. They will endlessly outrun you, get in range of a keep door then stand their ground and even if you do down them, they mist form inside the keep and self rally.
At least with stealth you can try to predict where they are headed and set up a lockdown or keep dpsing.
Mainly because targeted skills still work, immobilizes stuns etc remain effective, you don´t need to re-acquire target, you can immediately see if it´s worth it to chase…lot´s of reasons.
Though by far the biggest reason in my opinion is that stealth forces players to guess where thief might´ve gone. It´s not about skill anymore, just down to pure luck.
None of that stuff works at 2K+ range that they get in about 2 seconds :P
I don’t think it’s true about stealth. I use C&D on stelathed thieves with a lot of success to mess them up. It’s particulary easy on Glass Cannon thieves. I also kill them while in stealth with ClusterBomb AoE. Maybe playing one gives me more insight as to where they will be, but it works.
I ran into a group last night that was built to murder me. The mesmer had greatsword and sword/focus, guardian had all his knokcback/pull toys and a warrior that spammed killshot whenver he was at full adren. I never once got stealth from my SR I was bounced around like a ragdoll and hit by 12K killshots when I was on my back.
ITT: People don’t like it when players can escape.
Yea, D/D eles and even warriors are just as good at fleeing as a Thief if not better.
Thieves are more frustrating because stealth is a lot more annoying mechanic than endless mobility skills.
Not sure why that is. I don’t even try to chase a d/d ele because it’s so annoying. They will endlessly outrun you, get in range of a keep door then stand their ground and even if you do down them, they mist form inside the keep and self rally.
At least with stealth you can try to predict where they are headed and set up a lockdown or keep dpsing.
I do not support this change back. The reason being is that if the enemy wants information on your movements, they only need to “make a friend” and get said information. Obviously you can still contact people from other servers by using their account name. If you were “friends” you would have written this down and still be using it for communication. It was removed not because of harrassment, but because it was a game breaking communication system. It would be like someone hacking a military computer system and gaining access to all military movements…you can see why that would be devastating.
While it is great to smacktalk your opponent, which is the primary reason a cross chat would be wanted, it also takes away from the game at the same time.
What he said. I don’t think it’s an issue of harassment. It’s an issue of opening up a game wide opportunity for everyone to act a jerk/troll and reveal strategies/positions to enemies. Then the whole concept of wvwvw battles are lost. Yes this may still happens but only on a small scale with dedicated jerks/trolls. Let’s not open Pandora’s Box.
Maybe include the enemies name on their tags but that should be it.
This does happen in vent/mumble/IM or whatever. They could easily make this behavior against TOS and if it actually did happen in game, it would be logged an could be used to ban offenders unlike the other methods currently used.
I do think most of you are taking the Meta a bit too serious. Balance the possibility of a cross world spy who wouldn’t have been one already without in game whispers to the enemy vs the amount of fun many people would be having due to an optional cross world chat. If people are going to spy, they are going to spy.
True, however D/D eles are not nearly as good at killing people, while warriors never kill anybody…they just help a lot of people to suicide.
Really? D/D eles are great at fighting multiple enemies and bailing as soon as there is too much pressure. I think they are better than a thief for 1v5 types stuff due to all the AoE. HUNDUD BURRDS? (I think the Warrior should yell that in the Heavy’s voice anytime they do that move)
I believe we have a way to talk to our “Enemies” and that way is… wait for it……..
Forums. If we are open to talking to enemies in W3, You will have a lot of Nonsense in chat. You would have chat spam. And believe it or not, you will have people shouting out positions/strategies/Insults/and maybe random “GG’s” or “Nice fight” Imo it is fine the way it it. Id rather see the random /bow /wave even /laugh.
This idea only allows whispers. It doesn’t open /map up to the other side… Even if it did, you can also customize tabs however you want.
Tell me, how is it going to hurt you when you can just shut everyone in WvW out by an option? I see absolutely ZERO harm in doing this. For players that want to communicate, they can. For players that get their feelings hurt easily, they can turn it off.
Passive aggressive insulting of people that don’t share your viewpoint. Nice.
You can get the id’s of people from other servers on here, if you need to. Some of my guildies ended up having an impromptu 1v1 matches against an enemy guild and the first thing both sides did to talk about it was go and post in the match thread.
I ask again…
How is having the OPTION to receive messages from others in WvW bad? Please answer the question and not evade it.
My working theory since no one ever answers this:
They don’t want to have to feel bad about themselves for not turning it on? So they would feel compelled to use this option even thought they don’t want to?
I am not sure why people would be opposed to this, it meets the needs of both sides of the discussion, same idea as the language filter. If you are not interested in tells from the enemy you leave the ‘no messages from enemy server’ on. If you want messages from enemy server then you turn it ‘off’, basically you need to opt in to get them.
You could even do this without providing names if you like, folks can right click the portrait and an option will be added below report for ‘whisper’ so those that are not opted in can stay anonymous as well.
Some times when an idea you do not like doesn’t impact or hurt you in any way, you can support it because people of your gaming community would like it.
I don’t get it either. Only thing I can think of is they don’t want to be judged by the other side based on the fact they would be opting out of the system even though they would be completely anonymous. Same goes for an option to show your name. Is that it? I really don’t understand all the NOPES when it’s optional. Someone enlighten me please.
I am with the OP. It was great before the change. Now we can’t chat with others or say good fight.
It’s funny how the OP specifically states this should be an option and people still say NOPE I’LL BE HARASSED. Same with an option to show your name. I don’t understand why options are bad and they want to keep others who would enjoy this feature from having fun with it.
Yeah but in UO, you also had one button to counter it : Detect hidden.
And a thief fighting a Ranger if it’s hard to stay perma stealth with C&D
And if they miss, they also have OH kittenkill to invis.
Perma stealth isn’t hard to achieve, even with C&D. We are in WvW, it’s a war, you aren’t in 1 vs 1 fights. You can always attack somoene that don’t expect it.
True but you just had to re-hide instantly. There was no cooldown or anything.
I will give it to you that Rangers are borked.
It is also true that the more players the easier it is for a Thief to stealth due to zerg mentality. This isn’t usually true of 5 or 10 man guild group though.
To your main question though. I really enjoy fighting other thieves. My two favorite things are hitting them while they are in stealth with C&D and countering SR with shortbow cluster-bomb/bleed spam. It’s great seeing them appear downed 15 seconds later then finishing them on the first try by using steal or shadowstep to teleport to their new location mid stomp. (btw anyone with an instant teleport can do this mesmers, guardians whatever)
And also, there is a reason why they removed the hiding in combat in Ultima Online
I’m still wondering why Anet wanted to remove perma stealth from the game, and just replaced it with something even worse. And even worse, thief can still perma invis with certain build and combo field.
It require more work then the usual perma stealth, but they can still do it in combat.
Well yea in UO everyone had 100 hiding and it was just 1 button push to go invis. In GW2 to have functional stealth combat build you need to hit an enemy with a melee attack that has a small animation and can be avoided. A missed C&D = no stealth and -6 initiative. It’s on the player to avoid C&D or not be in a position where they can use it on mobs or whatever.
The other build with perma stealth requires traits to support it and those traits are outside of the damage lines. They also require a dagger main-hand pistol offhand which is no good aside from utility (without a dagger offhand as well) outside of a power/pres build. So basically it’s a build that can stealth and not kill anyone but people who have green arrows or are terrible. I doubt these will exist much anymore now that camps can’t be trolled.
You can make a d/p build that has glass cannon stats and is very viable but won’t be able to perma stealth.
I had a fun fight with a Thief today. The entire fight took place on one of the bridges and maybe I would have had a chance if I ran a trap build but I doubt it. At least I survived long enough to get 3 barrages off not that it mattered because I was spamming tab the rest of the time and didn’t come up with a target once. Not one time in in a little over a minute of fighting was I able to target the Thief. Kind of hard to win a fight that way.
This particular thief must not be too good. Most thieves put my ranger down and I can only get barrage off once. I wish I had been recording it as it probably looked funny as heck with me tumbling and running about with the briefest flickers of something there but then not there. I must have looked like a crazy man running away from a swarm of bees that no one can see.
Honestly a Ranger is the one prof that has every right to complain. Any thief with a offhand dagger will get free stealth at will vs your pet and there isn’t a thing you can do about it. That’s why they need to patch in an ability for rangers to “dismiss” their pet for a buff of some sort. There is zero and I mean zero chance to beat a p/d thief as a Ranger. If Rangers are pulling it off it’s because the Thief is bad.
I play MMORPG since Ultima Online, and it’s the first time that a class/player can SPAM invis during a fight. Most game only allow stealth as an opener, and few permited a not spammable invis during fight. But Most of them had a way to detect invis by being too close or using a skill.
It’s my opinion, not a fact. I might be the only player to feel like this in WvW. And this is not a thread about balancing them, it’s about the invis factor.
Nope for the very reason you state, the invisi spam is ridiculous, especially combined with their burst.
I didn’t notice his comment about UO. That’s kind of funny since I played UO from beta on and you could hide in the middle of combat in that game for the first year or so. Everyone had 100 hiding. You could cast Invisibility whenever you wanted as well.
People just need to learn the new mechanic. It’s unique to this game. Stealth is part of the Thief’s flow of combat and the way they access buffs/healing/dmg/debuffs and a lot of other things for many builds.
Culling is a real problem in huge zerg situations but that’s about it.
And then a guildie told me about a video showing a single thief taking out 25 people at once… haven’t seen it yet, but plan to look it up soon.
This made me chuckle quite a bit. If this actually exists (which it most likely does not), it would not be indicative of the power of the class…but rather the wholesale ineptitude of the other players he/she was facing.
Totally agree.
Im a thief, i can tell i kill a lot and die a lot.
Im not a pro, just consider myself over the average.
OP is warrior, the only one, if the warrior player skill is average, i cant take him down in a 1vs1. Just spamin skills or with a greatsword i cant get close without receive a lot of dmg, with range weapon i cant do too much dmg, and he can escape from me, all this if he is a player over the average.
Mesmer 1vs1 is a tie for me, if the mesmer is a good player.
Elementalist is hard only against those who played well and have too much aoe with too much dmg. I saw just a couple of that kind.
Guardians i dont know …
Necros and Rangers need be buffed :S
Enginer is the one who need be buffed more than all :S:S:S
Guardians are stalemate if they are good. Rangers do need a buff and an option to hide their pet for a self buff or something. You just haven’t run into really good necros or engies yet.
Yes, thieves are my favorite to fight, especially burst ones because people think they are so OP.
I just said it in another thread but if a thief is stealth spamming you it’s because he’s hitting you multiple times in melee. I know P/D seems like ranged but they are no threat at range. They need to melee you to dps/stealth/heal/removeconditions/blind.
If you are a ranger, I’m sorry the pet options are dumb. Otherwise, drag the fight away from the 50 coyotes or the arrow cart and kite the thief. Dodge/block/immune cloak and dagger and you cripple this play-style.
Just going to throw out a fairly simple counter to 1 condition thief vs many players if those players can’t stop the Thief or force them to run for whatever reason.
This steathspam play-style requires the wearing down of a single target. Identify who the target is (pretty easy) then have people stand around/on him. This will block dps/bleeds and force the thief to swap targets, just switch up who is standing on/around the dude. There is no way a thief should be downing people with brains that are in large groups but it happens all the time. Usually due to the “target” freaking out and trying to run away when he should crowd himself with his allies.
The other counter is to dodge cloak and dagger. It’s the most important skill to dodge. Good players dodge/immune/block cloak and dagger in 1 on 1’s but when there are a lot of enemies they all just assume they don’t need to bother. Everyone needs to be prepared to stuff the next C&D. 2 misses in a row forces a utility like SR.
On that note be ready to counter Refuge with either AoE or push/pulls. It’s crazy how a thief can SR in the middle of 20 people and no a single one has a push/pull? Or if they do it’s 3 seconds too late. Some of it is predicting when the thief will be using SR and that comes with some experience but if you anticipate it you can counter the move completely.
Swapping to short-bow to catch them we can’t dps enough to kill them. If you use d/d to chase you won’t have the time to build init or swap back before they are off to the races again. The only way to down them is with a thieves guild and a lucky scorp wire pulls but they always should have outs.
I’ve had good success chasing D/D elementalists with Infiltrator’s Strike, especially if you can follow it with a cripple.
That wouldn’t be a condition build unless you use that on swap just for chasing?
edit: I guess the OP didn’t specifically ask for condition build help so this could work. I would still think the ele would have an out but that depends on cooldowns and whatnot. btw I really wish you could cancel the “return” part of inf strike.
Speaking only vs good d/d eles (there are plenty of bad ones that are easy) as P/D condition I can usually get them to run but it’s very very hard to finish. They can reset a fight as easy as we can. The only way to have a chance is to be able to save shadowstep to chase them at the end, but even with that they can get just out of range. Swapping to short-bow to catch them we can’t dps enough to kill them. If you use d/d to chase you won’t have the time to build init or swap back before they are off to the races again. The only way to down them is with a thieves guild and a lucky scorp wire pulls but they always should have outs. They can just bail as soon as you pop TG and come back later or just kill them with AoE pretty quickly.
“Beating” them which is stomping or just getting them to run is fairly simple. Just dodge any attacks that charge at you like the very end of ride the lightning (they almost always follow up with the KD) or the fire charge. Watch for the lightning stun shield. Always use 3 auto attacks on their arcane shield. When they do their big Earth AoE just dps them and learn the timing. Even if you get out of range, you want to evade just before it pops because they will port to wherever you are. Always stunbreak the root or if you get hit with a KD, their lighting whip spam hurts.
The thing about a D/D ele is we have a shot at beating them if they are dps geared and all their bunker comes from cooldowns. If they also have bunker stats with vit/tough just forget about it. It’s an endless stalemate. Lucky, most of these guys run a lot of dps equipment because they can get away with it so we have a chance.
I think outside gold sellers are part of the problem. The design is flawed since if people want gold, instead of buying gems and converting them to gold which would drive gem prices down, they go to Chinese gold farmers. Then when they want gems, they use that gold to buy gems driving gems prices up more (or buy them with cash which does nothing to their value). Gems will keep going up and up until they get so expensive it makes gold farmers obsolete and farming not worth their time which may be a good thing. In the meantime, buy gems with cash to support A-net.
Insanely useful for insta breaking backstabbers. Can’t back stab me if you can’t get to me, oh your up against me again 3 bye bye
It’s actually really fun against BS thieves. Let em stealth, backtrack for a second or 2 so they think you’re an idiot (assuming they started in front of you), then shadow strike. 9 times out of ten, you’re out of melee range and did some damage to them while they were stealth. It’s amazing.
I still prefer C&D in this case. It does more damage, gives you stealth and then you can re-position and sneak attack them.
Or they could just fix the bug where last refuge doesn’t cancel your current action.
No instants do though. Same thing would happen with blinding powder if you did it manually. The trait just needs to be changed. Just have it drop the same blind field as black powder shot at our feet or something.
Last Refuge: Use Blinding Powder when your health reaches 25% (90-second cooldown). – this put the thief in stealth for 3 seconds.
If a Thief uses a dagger offhand and is the middle of Dagger#5 (3 second stealth on hit) animation and takes damage that drops them below 25% health this trait will put them in stealth an instant before the Dagger#5 hits. That hit becomes an “attack from stealth” giving the revealed debuff.
I died to this at least 5 times tonight. I’d rather just turn it off. Wouldn’t hurt anyone.
I’d like to suggest that everyone is able to select “disable trait” for any trait on the traits selections/options. Some of them are mandatory for the line and do more harm than good.
Mostly for me with the black swirls at the feet and sound. You can hear where they go in and out and see it with the swirls. I think but am not 100% sure that if you are stealthed and you blinding powder the smoke aoe effect is visible. It’s also loud.
