Guild Wars 2

Anet nerfed the #2 skill a long ways back… rolling that back would certainly help the weapon.

When the AA rotation became a more consistent damager than Backstab the class reached an all new low. Backstab for most thieves now is just a bonus rather than a skill that players build around… sad, just sad.

kash.9213:

In WvW:

When you just survived two enemy guild zergs, killed the squad driver, revived your commander, and made it out alive only to Withdraw off a cliff when you meant to laugh in chat.

A weekly occurrence for me.

DeceiverX.8361:

The thief will never see improvements on the profession-level so long as D/P remains as it is. And quite frankly everything pertaining to HoT needs to be toned down. The game has no hope competitively if it wants to keep fueling this power-creep nonsense to cater to players who refuse to accept nerfs to enable more build diversity within their own professions.

I think we are on the same page in a way. I think stealth stacking from the BP/HS/Bound needs a fix and the AA damage should be rolled back. They should roll back the ICD on the Backstab as well. I am on the fence with Shadowshot. I see your earlier points but I hate to gut one of a weapon’s main offensive attacks when it might not be necessary.

The problem as I see D/P is that is just too much of everything… too offensive and defensive at the same time. Lowering the skill floor with the AA bump was backwards thinking from ANet IMO.

I agree with you about the DH skill floor… nothing should be that easy to play and that effective. I could smear peanut butter on my keyboard and watch my golden retriever mow down opponents with a DH as it cleaned it off.

Depends on your heal. I would also keep in mind that utility runes are also very underrated on condi builds. For example, some of my builds run Lyssa to free up traits that apply more pressure. Even runes like Leadership can be excellent on some condi builds that also have high boon application. Traveler is a decent option for some builds that don’t have easy access to mobility or want to skip past taking a trait to get it.

Nuzt.7894:

They did it because with a couple thieves/mesmers it was completely possible to get inside the spawn and start the literal spawn camping.

Actually no since players in spawn and behind that invisible line are invulnerable. They probably got a lot of reports of “hacking” though.

A few months of work into a WvW “feature” that most players will blow right past… uhh… no.

Shadowstep.6049:

Did you even read what i said? Did you even read what you said? You want thieves to be slow in stealth. What is thieves job in pvp? To roam. How do they do it? Stealth up and run to other point while enemy hopefully can’t see them. If your suggestion would be implemented, thief as roamer would be dead and as a fighter they are garbage currently.

Instead of limiting stealth stacking in some way like every other MMO, ANet has systematically dismantled thief builds to compensate for the inherent imbalance in stealth stacking. Currently a thief can move faster in stealth, launch an attack with no notice and within a couple seconds disappear into the wind with so few counters they can be counted on one hand. This means any advantage a thief has becomes greatly magnified making the class ridiculously difficult to balance. Boost a small aspect and the class completely dominates in a small scale fight.

As long as stealth stacking remains as strong as it is, ANet will effectively be forced to limit most other aspects of the thief class instead of fixing an OP mechanic. The side effect is that thieves become ever more reliant on a frankly ridiculous implementation of stealth.

We are now smack in the middle of a chicken/egg scenario… nerf stealth an they kill the thief as it is. Boost abilities to create a more robust dueling thief, OP the stealth variants. They need to do both. Limit or create disadvantages to stealth stacking in some way AND rollback several nerfs the class has seen over the last three or so years.

Wargameur.6950:

Urgh….kitten you kitten forum, I had made a great answer and now it’s all gone….

If you are using Chrome, look into Lazarus. Saved many a post for me.

When a zerg chases you around a map… and you let them so you can turn and burn the couple idiots that chase a bit too long.

What the video doesn’t show is the 50+ times the thief got breathed on a died for trying that. It is easy to put a montage together of attacks where EVERYTHING goes right.

Then there is every other enemy thief cracking his skull since he is an easy target. I think a strong power warrior would accidentally down him just activating Whirling Blades for movement.

A Ghost Thief is not a valid reportable offense but it is a broke build that needs to get squished.

Mea.5491:

Yes, it’s time for tight, simple stuff and more pants. Where did all the GW1 designers go?

Right next door to Amazon Game Studios along with a lot of other MMO vets.

Shadowstep.6049:

…and so you would kill thieves as roamers (only role they have) in pvp. Good that you don’t balance this game.

I run three different non-stealth thief builds that are potent. SA and Trickery while potent in their own way are not mandatory. Besides stealth stacking isn’t necessary to quality stealth play. Prior to the D/D nerfs it used to be a strong weaponset and didn’t need and rarely used stacking. IMO stealth stacking just breeds weak cheese play (see Ghost Thief for a solid example) and this also includes Mesmers not just thieves.

No other AAA MMO allows players to have massive stealth uptime both before and after an attack.

Problem is a handful of other classes move almost as fast as a thief now and are stronger point bunkers. Thieves are weak in sPvP overall. I know some players play exceptionally well as a thief but those same players in say a Rev would play significantly better.

Hesacon.8735:

I’d venture a guess that of all the fights that happen in wvw, less than 0.1% of them are underwater. I’d love a ZvZ fight underwater, but everyone rushes to the shore

If we count by deaths, sure zerg fights this rarely factors in. However in small scale fights a good number end up in the water even though they were almost completely fought on land.

We cannot stomp underwater and grinding down tank builds is a monster chore. I won’t even get into the couple classes that abuse the terrain.

I am not advocating a costly renovation of all the brokenness. What I would like to see is health degenerate rapidly while underwater. No new mechanics and hopefully no costly dev time, instead have players drown much more quickly downed underwater. If they go to the surface, then they can stop the degeneration and heal otherwise something like a 10% health shot a second until they dead or on the surface.

Keep in mind if ANet goes near the SB, they will make it worse. That teleport, yeah they will nerf that (pre/post cast delays and slow the port itself), then bump the AA damage by 10% and not look at the weapon ever again.

Ario.8964:

Just remove trapper runes and it’s gone. Easy solution and then guard and ranger don’t have stealth anymore so balance is restored a little bit more.

Anything running Trapper runes is a compromised build. DH is probably the most effective but that has more to do with the low skill floor of that class in general than it does Trapper runes.

TheDarkSoul.1938:

@Straegen, I can understand Tempests but Warriors? Just wait for the stab and Steal it, or kite until its over and you can Headshot pretty easily, I don’t have any issues interrupting Warriors at all, in fact they’re one of the easier targets to interrupt because of how telegraphed they are.

Block, block, block, 0, 0, 0, evade, evade, 0, 0, 0… That aside you are going to use steal to get their stab, drop 6 init to do maybe 10%-20% of their health. That is a lot of setup for a shot that cannot crit and doesn’t have an immediate impact. Headshot with ID, Torment and Draining works in tandem for solid damage particularly when stopping heals and such but ID by itself is not a reliable consistent damager.

Headshot is also a telegraphed skill so that road goes two ways. Headshot destroys bad players but so does facerolling a keyboard. Headshot is mainly a side damager/interrupter of key skills between quality opponents.

D/P shouldn’t get a nerf, but stealth stacking particularly by a field should. Stealth has always been borked in GW2. No class should come in and out of stealth as easily as is done in this game. Course I also think stealth should slow a player down not speed them up.

In skilled hands the D/D condi thief is not the strongest thief condi build IMO. I don’t struggle with them since the evasion portion has a hitch just before it lands. I find Ghost Thief hybrids more dangerous. Those builds stack a nice chunk of condi burst then apply pressure while a player is trying to clear.

Changes to scoring does not fix any significant problems in WvW. How many times do we need to keep saying it?

Scoring isn’t the problem and it never was. They completely overhauled it and we have the exact same issues. They need to address coverage, population and class balance. Scoring will work itself out from there.

Taobella.6597:

if people try to spawn camp me i just put on scorpion wire pull them in legendary npc XD

Doesn’t work anymore at least on most maps. Enemies get teleported back now. ANet basically carebeared spawn camping… for the spawn campers.

Hibergate is just hibergating… BG guilds when not hibergating probably wouldn’t mesh well with Mag’s extreme attitude and skill pug style.

My guess is that it probably doesn’t reset from season to season. So after a few seasons players won’t be able to get any more AP for this.

Shadelang.3012:

Oh my god people >.< Seriously? The devs flat out say here that the patch in question was largely made by the SPvP team. Of COURSE the changes are going to be focused on that. Especially now that they have skill splitting setup so that they can make actual changes on there own WITHOUT relying entirely on the balance team.

There are some fundamentally broken builds in WvW that have been around too long. Even if they didn’t do a sprawling WvW balance patch they could have at least addressed builds like Ghost Thief in WvW. A build which pretty much everyone despises.

Since they do balance patches at a minimum of quarterly it is likely significant changes to any builds at this point are months away.

Viable yes, Good, no. The HoT builds are far too strong for P/D. The first DH or stun lock warrior is going to bust you up. You are going in with one arm behind your back against other thieves. Druids, Scrappers and Tempests can pretty much ignore the build altogether. Chronos are on an entirely different condi application level.

On the plus side, like most Necros/Reapers in 1v1 you can still win that fight. In skirmish they will drop a condi alpha strike the likes you have never seen.

Headshot is init heavy and cannot be effectively spammed. It also has a ridiculous number of counters. Try using it against a Tempest, Warrior, etc. It is almost laughable how easily it is shut down. I can only get it to work as a supplement to other main damage sources.

If that is the entirety of the class balance patches, they simply don’t care or are oblivious to the issues in competitive play for both sPvP and WvW.

Bound/Acro:

• Bound is a damage multiplier allowing for some of the biggest shots a thief has access to
• Bound then Vault is perma speed and fast travel (AKA no ShortBow needed)
• Endurance/Init is plentiful… enough so that Trickery’s init boosts aren’t significantly advantageous
• Energy sigil with D/P is a built in get out of jail
• Significantly higher DPS from Bound damage
• Staff has a built in De-Immobilize as well as Acro
• Dare Devil rune builds need no precision with this setup allowing for monster sized shots

Funny enough the Staff D/P build moves a thief away from a couple mainstays including the need for Shortbow and Trickery in most builds. Dodge spam itself has weaknesses mainly with Vault. Players that move past Vault spam with the Staff and master the skills between it and the Auto Attack are far more deadly.

In PvP it is pretty limiting because of how strong and easy other classes are in the meta (looking at you DH). In WvW there is a much larger diversity to be found.

Zero Day.2594:

It’s the easiest class in game, with perma stealth, perma dodge, and 1-shot backstabs/skills.

This is utter horse-kitten. Druid, Warrior, Dragon Hunter, Mesmer are all easier to master with so much passive defense it borders on ridiculous. There is a reason thieves don’t do well in WvW duels between solid players.

There is no perma dodge, that is a L2P issue. The only perma-stealth build is a complete troll build that is relatively easily avoided and I think most on here would welcome its demise.

There is no 1-shot backstab outside of ridiculous scenarios. Backstab is not even a good DPS skill. It requires more setup than pretty much any other hard hitting skill. It is single target (no cleave or AoE). If it misses it puts the skill on a 1s cooldown as well as the thieves entire auto attack. Oh yeah and it is a melee skill lacking the range of I don’t know lets say Gunflame which actually does hit as hard, has a daze, lights the targets on fire, easier to setup and is a ranged cleave.

Tonic’s like these should always be non-combat and should have a long post combat cool down.

Eval.2371

Just change to standard models /s

I think this setting only works in ranked sPvP and has no effect in WvW. Standard Enemy Models should be part of WvW settings.

Condi should never be an alpha strike. Never. Epi in skirmish is one of the hardest hitting AoE skills in the game right now. Jump on a pack on tRex and tell me I am wrong.

Oh and if you are tRex… yeah… one second it is a 10v5 and then epi hits and it is a 5v5. It maxes out at 25 stacks or I suspect I would be getting hammered with 50+ bleeds and torment rather than 25. It is stupid OP in skilled hands.

Camelot Unchained: 2005 game play hopefully by 2018. Get ready for non-action based combat focused around skill rotations.

Crowfall: Has potential with big names behind it. However, it is a startup and could easily fall flat when it comes out… if it comes out.

The basic definition of a skill build is one that is both highly effective and difficult to master. Builds that rely on self rotation are typically not skill builds. A skilled player will make them run better but inherently it doesn’t take much to master the rotation.

Builds that rely on counter play are almost universally the most difficult to master as they require a deeper understanding of mechanics of their enemy. That mastery typically pays off big at least until they face an opponent with an equal or higher level of counter play.

Caedmon.6798:

That dh gameplay looks so braindead..The guy just stands there,no dodge not even once..Its stupid how people can win by this kind of gameplay,Just pop ze traps and stand still…Oh man.

That is where the game has gone. Even a majority of thieves now rely on auto attack dagger spam to bring an opponent down. The amount of passive abilities the game has added is ridiculous.

You won’t notice a substantial drop in DPS switching to Marauder or the “poor mans” Marauder with Valkyrie armor/Zerk trinkets. You will have a bit more survival especially in WvW.

Epi is stupid OP in the right hands… just fight one group of tRex in Koda tonics and tell me I am wrong. 25 stacks of just about every condi in the game in one shot from a well coordinated attack.

In my opinion, the players actively using tonics to bypass reflect or movement should be flagged as cheaters and dealt with accordingly.

I am guessing I am not the only one noticing a lot more Kodan’s running around spamming Rifle attacks and Gunflame.

If this has already been addressed, great but last night was a sharp learning curve on how to fight range blasting abilities without reflect and watching strange movement abilities.

Right off you got hit by the stacked traps too many times. As soon as they light up, dodge out and reset before they take effect. Your pressure was solid between traps.

Had you switched to Bound, you would have won that fight IMO.

Had you switched your off hand weapon-set to PP, you would have destroyed that trap sitter.

Don’t get locked into a single variant of a build. One of our strongest abilities is to reset, dial in and blow em up.

On the plus side this is the damage AFTER GF got nerfed. Warrior Rifle abilities do have their limits but in skirmish among several enemies it can be devastating since it is often very difficult to see in that setting. It certainly doesn’t help that Warriors have access to exceptionally good passive sustain.

Lyssa can be a great equalizer on some builds.

Of all the builds I have played, hybrid non-stealth Interrupt build requires the most skill. Playing it requires intimate knowledge of each class’s skill wind ups, requires managing of enemy boons and is outright punishing when mistakes are made. It is devastating to any enemy that doesn’t know what they are tangling with though.

I like the new dots. Much easier to count the number of enemies I am about to jump on particularly in a camp or around guards.

My suggestion is to allow the “Standard Enemy Models” to work in WvW and disable all extraneous character effects.

Best: Druid, Dare Devil, Warrior, Mesmer, Scrapper

Worst: Necro

Everything else is probably going to get run over by numbers but works otherwise.

martin.1653:

well, I’m not saying arrow ricochet makes sense.. Although, it could happen probably more easily if arrow hits the hard surface, while bullet could just weld onto the armor. BUT that’s beside the point.

Bullet can easily ricochet. Bullets that ricochet one or two times are still quite lethal. Mythbusters even proved a three way bullet that bounces off three surfaces can actually hit the shooter. Course the final ricochet wasn’t lethal but it still packed a punch. Of course that is realword and doesn’t account for a world with players that can cast magic spells or magic gear in general.

It probably still works but Stance and Stunlock builds are vastly superior in the current meta.