First set is better for defense for sure. 2nd better for offense. I guess that’s how I would decide.
im also torn between these two options also,
im chosing these two combinations,
2680 armor + 15030 hp vs 2423 armor + 16235 hp
so whats better?
I think some information is missing. Based on this the first choice would seem better but that’s because it has more stats.
The difference in toughness between the two is 257 stat points and the difference in vit is only 120.5. So the second one has ~136.5 more stats elsewhere? Then again, I have no clue some stats are weighted differently on gear?
My personal counter is ~20K health, ~2600 armor, instant AoE blind+ stealth and passive teleport on CC every minute.
I’m at 21K health and ~2,500 armor.
I can’t speak for other classes but the engineer has traits that allows you to survive the thief’s initial burst and get distance.
I’m not saying that I never die to a thief, but I played for 3+ hours last night in EBG and I did not die to any thief from a steal/C&D/backstab. Matter of fact, I almost never die to a thief anymore from a steal/C&D/backstab, and before my switch ~3/4s of my deaths were to thieves.
I’ve gotten my thief up to level 41 now, and probably won’t level it much further. That said, if I were to finish it I would not spec full glass cannon.
The one skill that I really have my eyes on is hard catch. I’m not experienced enough with the thief to know if going that deep into acrobatics will completely kitten you.
For those of you with experience, how does an acrobatics build play out?
I run 30 acro and like it. I wouldn’t do it as a melee based thief though. It gives vit too which isn’t a bad thing. It could be dropped due to it’s randomness but it saves me more than it hurts me. Sometimes it puts you in positions that are less than ideal, mostly when chasing someone who hits you with something that activates it. Sometimes you end up closer, sometimes farther away.
I love 20 Acro for Pain Response too but the only amount of Acro I absolutely could not live without is 15 for Feline Grace. It could be our best trait.
I’m doing what Dee Jay said.
All 6 armor pieces are Power/Vit/Tough and every other piece of gear is Power/Vit/ConDmg aside from the back piece which I’m saving for currently. I’m going to get the Vit/Tough guild one.
I think it’s pretty effective. Stealth is the main defense but when caught out of it I can tank quite a lot of damage.
You have 10% from traits, 40% from Veggie Pizza, you just need 50% from any combo of sigils and runes.
I’d go:
1x sigil of earth (bleed on crit)
1x sigil of agony (10% duration)
2x krait
2x centaur
2x afflicted
—
45% total
Puts you at 105%. You can save money and not use a Sup sigil of agony or whatever but now you have 100% duration and a chance to bleed on crit.
PM MrSilver.5269
Here is what he said, my favorite quote on these forums:
“MrSilver.5269:
I hate to admit it, but I was here QQing for the better part of the last week or so. I then decided to roll a thief just to play around with the mechanics to better understand the class.
I only got to level 31ish so although I’m no expert, I now understand the class much better now, and went back to the drawing board to change my entire engineer spec. I was hesitant to do so because I was concerned as an engineer I would hit like a wet noodle. Yes, my damage did take a slight hit, but not as much as I thought due to a mechanic of one of the engineer’s utility skills that evens the playing field considerably. The funny thing is that the solution was sitting right in front of me, and I just didn’t see it.
In any event, the long of the short of it is that by figuring out how to counter the thief, I stumbled upon a MUCH more durable version of the engineer that I am REALLY enjoying playing.
So, I’m here to formally apologize for my QQ.
SORRY!!!!!”
My personal counter is ~20K health, ~2600 armor, instant AoE blind+ stealth and passive teleport on CC every minute.
(edited by Stiv.1820)
I recommend the trading post. You’ll be able to look through all the different stat combinations you can get there, albeit it’ll probably take you some time to acquire the gold to pay for them.
Be sure to place orders on your exotics rather than buying instantly, as it can save you a fair amount of cash on each piece.
This is what I did. Use the site I linked above to find the gear with the stats you want. Find the different ways to get that gear. The same stats can be from drops, crafting ,bought off TP for gold, karma, badges or your order. Splitting up the currency helps get it faster. For instance you can get power/vit/tough/ gear from the warrior order (if you picked it) for gold, WvW for badges and some pieces from Karma vendors in Orr. Splitting the 3 gets you stuff faster.
Figure out looks after you get all your stats from gear.
Stiv.1820A recent patch made all borderlands share puzzle rewards as far as I could tell. You can do 1 borderland and the EB and that’s it per day.
I thought it was just me forgetting timers… Can someone else confirm? I won’t be able to do puzzles this match up.
No It’s not the case. I can confirm the day before yesterday I did it in all 3 borders. Didn’t get the time to do it yesterday. I encounter that case only in one night which is several days back. They are considered different maps so there is no way jump puzzle are treated differently.
Yea it happened right after the patch that fixed the vault door. They must have fixed it.
Increase the % of damage absorbed for every point of toughness AFTER a certain amount is obtained, like 1500.
Armor is already a sliding scale depending on your attacker’s power. Higher Toughness/Armor scales better vs higher power. The system just makes it so full bunkers don’t do completely ignore-able damage.
I’ve also wondered why they don’t show enemy names in WvWvW. Was that ever explained?
I personally believe they did it to protect people’s egos. There are masses of people who feel bad when they die and can be identified who may not even WvW due to it. They are shielded by their anonymity. That’s why there should be a toggle in options to choose “show your name in WvW”
It prevents griefing as well. Lineage 2 is the grand daddy of this games Siege system and there use to be so much trash talk and people taking screen shots and posting on forum of them “owning” people.
It’s part of community building. Server forums, @ posts. You don’t have to click on them. What possible argument is there against a toggle to show name? That you don’t want to see the subject of a thread you don’t have interest in? That’s 90% of current threads for me..
I’ve also wondered why they don’t show enemy names in WvWvW. Was that ever explained?
I personally believe they did it to protect people’s egos. There are masses of people who feel bad when they die and can be identified who may not even WvW due to it. They are shielded by their anonymity. That’s why there should be a toggle in options to choose “show your name in WvW”
As soon as they stealth + clone it’s a matter of zooming out and watching for the black swirl a couple seconds later. The real Mesmer appears near that a second after. You can also drop target and then nearest target @ the swirl to target them before they show up on your client.
But when you are planning to siege Stone Mist Castle and 10-20 people leave for the jumping puzzle it doesn’t help. Im just saying the reward drop should be less.
But I planned to win this week’s WvW but everyone on my server did the holloween thing… It’s just an alternative that players can choose. It doesn’t take very long unless it’s your first couple times.
Don’t use the F key, I almost never use it. The downed state is not so much another stage then just the last bit of your health bar which you don’t need a dedicated healing build for. Control and burn until everything is dead then loot. I agree with the disparity in downed state skill however, there really should be a stock arsenal of skills for everyone and more designed for helping your friends tick away at another group, otherwise, if you go down to two or more players on your own you should be dead, and if you die, you should be dead and the map should come up.
I was more talking about the skill involved in reviving. He said some groups are “better at reviving” which amounts to moving to point X (perhaps casting a field or stability) and hitting F.
You can do all 4 jumping puzzles once:
-24 hours after you looted the chest
-Per character
-Also immediately after a new build for the game is patchedI got like 100 rams, balistas, trebs and arrow carts along with 20 golems just from doing the jumping puzzles. Exceeded 1000 badges of honor.
It adds up very quickly. Though the time spent to get them is equal to the reward.
What im trying to say is i think the rewards should be diminished if you read in the prior posting someone has 1000 badges and a bunch of siege. What i have noticed is people the do the jumping puzzle dont use the siege in WvW they just want the badges. It’s so annoying for a commander to try to get together a force and in the middle of typing out the strategy someone puts: “Free port up to the jumping puzzle come quick its easy and it free badges” then about 10-20 people just leave and go to the jumping puzzle. It’s fine that there is a jumping puzzle but make it drop badges less often and drop less siege and more weapons.
I do the jump puzzle but am 100% in WvW otherwise. If I’m near a zerg that needs rams I drop them. If we are being dominated and want to hold a single camp I fill it with Ballista & Carts.
Jump puzzle is small scale PvP for people like me who enjoy it as well as siege for PvPers who are poor. The badges are the reward for being king of the hill.
-1 for removing it. I have seen smaller groups take out larger forces simply because they were better at reviving their side than the other was.
It would make thieves even more power than they already are. A group of 4-5 thieves could perma-stealth and wipe out any entire army of 100 people because they would never have to risk deathblowing someone. They just all attack the same person, that person dies, repeat on the next.
Thief burst is getting nerfed next round (maybe all classes). It’s stated by a dev in the thief forums. Taking that and assuming a fix to culling in the future you shouldn’t have this concern especially in an organized group.
The problem with downed is there is zero skill involved. Someone went down, run over and depress the F key. Sheer coordinated numbers win regardless of skill.
How about they treat stealth like they do Mist form? and Tornado….take skills away….(Mist utility can be used, tornado nothing)
If stelath were exactly the same as it is now accpet instead of invisable we were immune I think that would be a huge buff. Loose positioning for total immunity.
You can’t change the stealth mechanic without re-writing the profession. It’s where we get most of our boons and is designed to give us the ability to get great positioning.
If anything could be nerfed for thieves besides the burst (which may be toned down for everyone) it would be shortbow#5 in that it currently ignores root/stun. Remove that aspect from shortbow#5 and I think all is good.
I see where the confusion was, I didn’t mean the immunity part of mist form. I meant the part that takes your skill bar away.
So effectively while they are stealthed they can’t attack, this makes it more a defensive move than an offensive one.
Lots of time I do use stealth this way to “take a breather” but forcing it would remove every weapon-set’s #1 opener which is the basis of every thief build.
I think when the spike dmg nerf comes it will help a lot.
Spike dmg will likely be toned down across the board based on what the dev said. It didn’t read to me that it only was targeting thieves.
The only other thing that should probably be toned down for Thieves specifically is shortbow#5’s ability to ignore root/stun. I know everyone who uses it will tell me to chew foil but that one skill alone is a get away crutch that we shouldn’t need and causes a ton of indirect Thief QQ.
(edited by Stiv.1820)
It scales with how many coordinated players are in the group. You can say it’s great for 10 vs 30 and it is if the 30 are just randoms, but if the 30 were as coordinated as the 10 then there would be no chance for the 10 ever, even if they are much more skilled.
How about they treat stealth like they do Mist form? and Tornado….take skills away….(Mist utility can be used, tornado nothing)
If stelath were exactly the same as it is now accpet instead of invisable we were immune I think that would be a huge buff. Loose positioning for total immunity.
You can’t change the stealth mechanic without re-writing the profession. It’s where we get most of our boons and is designed to give us the ability to get great positioning.
If anything could be nerfed for thieves besides the burst (which may be toned down for everyone) it would be shortbow#5 in that it currently ignores root/stun. Remove that aspect from shortbow#5 and I think all is good.
How about they’re in stealth and you can hit them with a kd or a stun. This is exactly why theorycrafting is pointless. Are there counters to thief abilities? Yes. The problem isn’t saying what to do in what situation the issue is an ability sways the balance in the favor of a thief disproportionately (given the burst).
A-net has stated they would not make the same mistakes as previous mmo’s in duplicating the perma stealth imbalance. The “perma” stealth from other games would be preferable to this one, because once out of stealth it requires the use of a long duration cd to get back into stealth. Constantly jumping in and out of stealth and doing the type of damage they do is not balanced by any means.
Stealth doesn’t stop K/D and stuns. You can still land them against a stealthed target. If a thief stealths against a warrior with Bull Rush for example, the warrior can BR and it will still land. It takes ~1 second for all abilites to stop tracking a player when stealthing.
It is quite clear you don’t know how stealth functions and assume it’s some cloak of shadows in which the player is immune to all CC and damage.
rofl…I know you can land a stun or kd when someone is in stealth…the answer to stealth is to blindly swing and use cd’s to potentially kd or stun a player that may or may not be there?
I’ll compare my playing time and experience in all professions against yours any day.
No, you anticipate when they will be about to use stealth and apply those conditions before they do it. Then they go into stealth and you keep blasting that area because you know kitten well they are stuck there taking all your dmg.
If you are a build that can’t 50%-0 a thief (glass would be 7K hp at best) in ~4 seconds of root/daze/whatever (there it is again!) then that’s how you decided to build, many builds can do 7K in 3-4 seconds.
1. Fix the bug that plagues it, correct the rendering issue.
Any combination of the following:
2. Lengthen the revealed debuff (if fixing the rendering issue isn’t an option, then this debuff should be lengthened substantially).
3. Movement reduction while in stealth
I’ve come to terms with thieves being bursty, the trade off needs to come from the built in survivability of stealth and with its current form there is no trade off.
There is a movement reduction applied while in stealth. I’m not sure what it is though.
There isn’t. There is no difference between stealth and not stealth aside from the various boons from traits and not being visible. You still move, take dmg, get knocked back, stay rooted etc as normal.
I see a bunch of, “Dont nerf me bro”.
Nerfing thief damage will not be the rise of more bunkers, it will be the rise of more classes being able to go DPS.
When we dont have to fear being bursted down in >3 sec. by a kitten player playing an OP class….thats when this game will start to shine.
And then all you other bad players that keep asking for stupid nerfs will find something new to complain about, and repeat the cycle of forum warrioring.p.s. I play a thief along with 4 other classes.
This isn’t about nerfing damage. It’s known that is going to happen. OP is talking about nerfing stealth which is a thief’s only defensive mechanic (aside from evasion which is global).
The counter to stealth is just root & dmg. Any thief at 50% health should be eating a root or Moa or whatever. Once all breaks are down a root is death. Sure they can stealth but they can’t move or dodge and still take damage like normal.
So defined in your counter, “…or whatever” That’s not a real counter. How do you beat a warrior, “well you do whatever when they’re at 50%”. How do you beat a shatter mesmer, “well you know, you do whatever when they’re at 50%”
Let’s look at your suggestion though, what do you do if you don’t have a root or moa?
You do “whatever”. How about a knockdown? How about a stun? How about a Daze? If you don’t have “whatever” then it’s like me complaining as a Thief I can’t stomp people due to lack of stability. I need someone else to do that for me (but like someone said above, I’m sure you have access to some sort of “whatever”).
(edited by Stiv.1820)
Love your vids Slic. You and I have nearly the exact same build, only i’m 25/0/30/15/0. I have a couple of questions for you though. Do you find Leeching venoms to be better than the condition removal of Shadows Embrace? 2nd, is Pain response worth taking another 5 points out of Deadly arts and subsequently losing the 10% damage when you have a condition up? My spec tends to jump between 25 in DA and 25 in Acro, and it’s always been for the 10% damage increase. Maybe I’m just locked into the mindset that the 10% is beneficial. Also, it’s good to see that you’re on SBI now, maybe I’ll see out out sometime. I’m always up for some JQ bashing.
I’m not Slic but the answer is hells yes! You only loose 10% on the DD portion of Pistol#1, Dancing dagger and C&D (and whatever DD steals you get) but gain an awesome defensive ability that you don’t even have to think about.
I think the real problem is that they made getting badges of honor required for legendaries, seeing I hate pvp I just run the jumping puzzle nacked to get the badges without having to fight anyone, and I know I’m taking up slots of people that actually want to help and contribute but I’m just making the most of the system Anet set up… if I didn’t need the badges I wouldn’t be there.
Why do you need the badges? Power/Toughness/Vitality Gear for your PvE? You could run Ascalonian 20x for this gear anyway. Your argument has too many holes.
Remove all PvE from WvW.
No thanks. The puzzle takes up no time if you do it a lot so the “taking slots” argument is pretty weak. What it really is, and what it’s likely designed to be is a area for smaller scale PvP. I have a blast PvPing every time I do the puzzle. You can tell it’s part of the design by all the built in player activated traps and rocks to pick up at the EB one.
I’d really like a non power based system as well as detailed here:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Stiv-s-ultimate-WvW-progression-system/first
I have to say though, what they have is really amazing. I’ve can’t remember the last time I played a game other than Counter Strike for almost nothing but pure enjoyment of the gameplay. Some console games like Dark Souls perhaps but they still have progression in a way.
Adding a boatload of stats and toggle show names would do wonders for a lot of people.
“They were ramming their own door. Yes, their own door they were ramming”
I’m all for removing it from PvP completely. Hate the mechanic for PvP, love it in PvE.
It’s great for the zerglings and the organized 5-10man groups. It just completely removes the ability to outplay (and ultimately win) larger groups as solo – 3man or so.
The counter to stealth is just root & dmg. Any thief at 50% health should be eating a root or Moa or whatever. Once all breaks are down a root is death. Sure they can stealth but they can’t move or dodge and still take damage like normal.
Well I think the worst downstate skill are :
Engineer, Necro and Ranger ( Ranger I just heard of, didn’t play them, but I know when I down a Ranger it will be easy to finish off)
Engineer : Pull skill, rarely useful. Single person interrupt. the 3 skill is nice, but it have the same effect then guardian instant #2, with a bit more damage. It’s not that it’s so bad, it’s that others have so much better.#1 does minimal damage, tho it has some nice debuf.
Necro : Only one interrupt, a 1 second fear (Btw if you take the AoE fear traits on downed stats, it sometime make #2 downtate fear goes on cooldown for no reason?(and sometime it doesnt work at all)) with casting time on a single person. #3 damage got buffed, but it still only poison people. You rarely get to use it, and when you do I would personnaly prefer something to cancel/dodge finisher. #1 is a fast hitting life leeching attack. It’s not that bad, but it won’t save you, except in pve. I have to say that #1 and #3 damage got buffed, but they are still subpar since we only have 1 interrupt.
Ranger : Pet can rez, but I don’t know much.
Elemental got buffed and got there #2 as mist form, a really annoying skill.
I thought Anet would nerf downstate skill, since I don’t think it should be as strong as Thief,Mesmer,Warrior and Guardian abilities. They should nerf it to necro/engineer/ranger level. But last patch, they chose to buff Elem/necro downed. Weird choice.
You can hardly think of the elementalist downed state change as a buff. Elementalist easily has the worst downed state. They can turn into mist for one second, it has a 20 second cooldown, which basically means that it can only be used once. It is simply like a teleport that is slower and tells people where you are going.
In WvW you now have an invincibility tether in range of any keep since you can go through doors in your downed state.
You don’t have to come to terms with the burst. From a dev re: backstab dmg:
“Just wanted you guys to know we’re looking at this specifically right now. We will probably bring down the raw spike DPS for some builds, but we’ll be careful to increase other areas to compensate.
IGN: Chaplan
“Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.”
-Arthur Schopenhauer
"
Stealth is our only form of protection. Fix rendering first then revisit after the “burst nerf” that is coming (not sure if it’s only thief or all burst in general).
Really annoying mechanic for people who like to run solo or duo in WvW. You can outplay a group 2v5 all day for instance but you aren’t going to ever finish one if they are coordinated with reviving.
I would think in a game like GW2 where they want player skill to matter, they wouldn’t have such a mechanic that punishes people for trying to fight outnumbered.
A recent patch made all borderlands share puzzle rewards as far as I could tell. You can do 1 borderland and the EB and that’s it per day.
dude it’s bug abusing, name me any Rogue class in history of MMO who is able to kill you while stealth-ed…come on…name it..
Not sure if this counts but when DAOC was released all the assassin style classes would not exit stealth as long as they 1 shot people which they could do pretty easily back then. Good times.
Badges of Honor- Is the system good where it is at, or does it need improvement?
in WvW
Posted by: Stiv.1820
Jump quests in WvW are king of the hill mini-games with a reward at the top, not just a daily quest you get to do for free badges/siege. Why do you think there are so many player activated traps and all the rocks to pick up in the EB puzzle?
Stomping people at the top of the EB jump quest right before the chest just activates all the awesome, evil pleasure centers of my brain. I imagine each one is like the OP and it just makes it all that much better!
^Pics or didn’t happen
It happens. I’m not going to discount one or two skills acting differnlty than others of the same type but you can be rooted in place while spinning during DS and it’s a sure death.
Yea the direct comparison stuff doesn’t really work since they don’t compete all that much for gear “slotting” and the two combined blow one or the other away.
All I’m saying is based on what is available for gear, don’t just tunnel-vision +con dmg. Use whatever you need to + food to get to 100% duration first then figure out how to max the +con dmg if that’s what you want.
The bleed clearing is a good point but we stack them so fast for Vital especially. Also with all the positioning and sometimes staying in stealth for close to it’s full duration the 100% is almost always helping.
The root immunity thing needs further investigation or input form people in the know. During the frey I’m not sure exactly what skill I’m getting hit with but something stops me dead (I continue spinning) after I’ve already begun spinning/moving. Maybe it’s a particular skill or two? Not sure.
As far as I can tell only + condition dmg adds to bleed ticks. Nothing else. The only reason Might adds to dmg/tick is the buff itself adds + power and + condition dmg. So no percent buffs or vulnerability type things (+20% when <50% health for instance) will up your ticks.
(edited by Stiv.1820)
Thieves are my favorite target personally. I get a e-ner when I get to chase one down who thinks they are going to get away.
It’s only tough when there are 3+ coordinated and all using refuge. It becomes impossible to stomp any of them with alternating refuge to rez even if they suck and you can down them all day long.
It boils down to I think the downed state is an awful mechanic in PvP (WvW more specifically)
I look at it like this.
100% duration with no +con dmg = 170 more dmg over the course of 8 seconds or 21.25 dps per stack.
But this now scales with your +con dmg.
Assuming you aren’t hitting the 25 stack cap and not chooseing just one or the other (duration vs con dmg) I can’t figure out the math where you wouldn’t want to prioritize 100% duration first.
edit: it’s hard to give specific examples without knowing exactly how much + con dmg you give up using the runes/sigils/traits/food to get you to 100%.
If I’m understanding it correctly, you would need 425 (21.25*20) con dmg to be = dps to 100% duration if you just compare them directly. I doubt you can get that much from runes/sigils/traits. Add the scaling +con dmg gets after 100% duration and it’s just way better.
(edited by Stiv.1820)
The thing is, the more opponents you have around sure you do better dmg but you also increase the possibility that someone around has a root ability up. Getting rooted and focused is death. A few coordinated people will down you in the root even if you insta stealth.
If you want to do it safely you can slot it with haste, shadowstep and blinding powder and only do it when they are all up but now you are talking about using 3 skills to make the most out of an elite.
Does entangle work against dagger storm, I thought that stability would prevent this? if not then the root would be instantly destroyed anyway by my combined groups aoe or probably from a dagger storm hit.
in group vs group wvw dagger storm is very very potent in its present state. The problem with analysing how to beat dagger storm is it factors in a lot of maybes and nearly always doesn’t account for dagger storm being used by a group. coordinating their attack around it. Remember I use this skill I play a thief and it just feels at present like a magic “I win” button. I’m not complaining I like that its potent but I don’t feel like I should complain about other classes when I feel that certain elements of the one I play are out of balance too.
Any ability that roots you works as far as I know. I’ve been rooted and focused many times trying to DS a zerg. My favorite thing to do was to steal from a warrior and DS^Whirl back to back in a zerg but as our server has climbed the rankings this has become impossible. It all depends on who you are fighting.
Yes stacking organised thieves coordinated in voice chat is insanely powerful. No doubt about that.
The thing is, the more opponents you have around sure you do better dmg but you also increase the possibility that someone around has a root ability up. Getting rooted and focused is death. A few coordinated people will down you in the root even if you insta stealth.
If you want to do it safely you can slot it with haste, shadowstep and blinding powder and only do it when they are all up but now you are talking about using 3 skills to make the most out of an elite.
I’ve never personally tested but from what I understand 100% duration is the a hard cap.
B) another common complaint is that omg a rogue brought me down to 5k health in like 10 seconds.
heh
You get 5% of your condition dmg added to each tick on top of the base of ~42.5/tick (at 80). So with 807 you should get ~82/tick which is pretty much what you are seeing. Not sure how it handles rounding.
Because of this, Bleed duration > con dmg.
Each stack of Might also adds ~1.75 dmg/tick to bleeds.
It’s Tarnish Coast’s own fault. I’m out there every night for the fun of it. Who cares about who has the most numbers on some screen. The PvP is what’s fun.
Too many with the mentality of “it’s not fun if you aren’t winning” (free transfer zerg). People just take their ball and go home, shows the mentality of the average GW2 player. Those scores should just be removed completely imo so the zerglings don’t feel as bad and might try to take a keep even when being dominated.