Yo, how are you landing the traps on moving targets with the delay? Or are you laying the trap and kiting someone to hit it prior to your weapon burst.
DX nailed it. I start Skale Venom, Needle Trap, Steal, Dodge (for Lotus) and then Shadow Strike. If they clear or pop Resist, wait 25s and take another run. Basically dump 4 stacks Bleed, 7 stacks Torment, 5 stacks Confusion, 5 stacks Poison, Vulnerability, Immobilize, Weakness, Cripple.
A good chunk of it is unblockable. I can also stay outside of melee range most of a fight. It is stupid good DPS even against solid condi clear builds because just getting that load off will often cost a player 5k plus. Even better most classes don’t have a clear so they end up knocking off the non-damaging cover condi leaving that 5 stacks of confusion and a couple others untouched.
Chasing the build makes the situation worse since poison fields, more traps/venom, more Lotus is just sitting there waiting for application. If they get close, poof the build is gone since it has a ton of initiative left.
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Not sure if I can agree with that. Like I said I run D/P in Ranked too, at the moment and I am the one to pretty much get countered by S/P =D PW ruins or evades my entire burst even at the most unpredictable times and hits me in the process, which is why stealth is not really helping me anyway.
D/P has the choice of when to attack as its DPS isn’t tied to landing a big shot and it has more stealth up time. D/P basically strafes S/P until it has the advantage.
S/P on the other hand is a lot stronger against some meta builds such as DH variants. It can drop the hammer on trap-centric builds and hits hard enough to bring down bunker Tempests. It also lives in evade frames so it can hold a point better than D/P.
Perma-evasion builds (both power and condi) need to take a shot to the knee. Stealth stacking D/P builds also need to take a hit.
If ANet does this, they must boost the other weapon sets. They also need to bring down the rotational defense of some builds. The problem is the thief lives close to the edge already so nerfing any of the stronger builds will make the class seriously under-perform in this meta.
I have been playing with a Venom/Trap build with high stealth and it is nuking most players right now. The ability to condi up a player passively is very strong and unblockable. Its rotational condi is stronger than Ghost Thief as well. Not as annoying to fight against but more deadly.
P/P is good on bosses that hit too hard for thief melee. For everything else the Staff is way better.
Distracting Daggers is near useless. No matter how I try to push it into a build it simply is a 3rd tier skill. Take Bandit’s Defense… Stun break, Block and knockdown all on a quick cooldown. Shadow Step, does anyone run without this? SoA… one of the strongest skills going in the current condi meta.
Eventually they probably will go down to 3 or less tiers. Games get stale and players leave. That is just part of the process. GW2 WvW is hanging on mainly due to a lack of competition. If Crowfall is half as good as it looks, GW2 population will likely take a monster hit when it releases but that is how it should be.
Some day there will be one tier and it will likely be mostly empty. Just how it works.
If they nerf the condi, the rotational and passive defense needs a serious adjustment. This includes addressing Dire/Traiblazer as well.
Getting ascended trinkets requires logging in frequently. Getting an ascended weapon via crafting isn’t terribly expensive. Ascended armor is a minor upgrade at best.
GW2 is one of the few games that somehow managed to have decent gear tiers without builds needing to rely on them to perform. Just enough of an improvement to make it worth the effort but not so much to make players in different gear tiers too far apart to be competitive.
What GW2 really needs though is a significantly better drop rate. Having played thousands of hours, I have seen about a dozen non-ring ascended drops and zero pre-cursors.
The number of cheaters I run into a far and few these days. I think most of the left when the popularity of the game dropped.
The flaw with this design is that there isn’t anything to fight for. It doesn’t have to be a villain but the game mode has always been missing that driving force… killer loot, fantastic enemy or any sense of permanence that players contribute to. It is a fine game mode but doesn’t truly engage its player base.
Legendary is for appearance and convenience. There is no combat advantage. Even if there was, the difference between ascended and exotic armor is razor thin. Skill and build determines 99.9% of a fights outcome.
As I said before most of the condi variants can’t effectively build for the same amount of active defense. The ones that can lack offensive pressure.
Condi pressure builds have both high DPS and monstrous active defense. Evade Condi Thief, Condi Chrono Bunker, Condi Mallyx Rev, Condi Chill Reaper… all work very well with Dire and have extremely strong active defense (evasion, stealth, etc).
Power builds are no longer “brittle” in comparison to condi unless the player threw together some kittenty yolo build that relies on catching people by surprise (and hoping they aren’t running passive traits to save them from a burst).
With a few exceptions, there are very few Power builds as bunker as Condi builds with the same or higher DPS. Most of those power builds actually fall apart against the builds I listed above. In duels, there actually isn’t a class that can consistently beat my condi thief build except Burn Blowup Guardian (50/50) and Mallyx Condi Rev (this wins almost every time).
When power builds are easily landing 5-10k+ hits on players with 3k armor, the passive survival dire gear is providing is 1 extra burst or maybe a few auto attacks.
Traits/active defense/boons>toughness
The effective difference between 3k armor and 22k health compared to 2k armor and 17k health is substantial. That is effectively 60% more passive defense against power. The cost of that passive defense on a condi build is typically negligible. This level of passive defense also make the active defense stronger. The difference between being two shotted and four shotted is massive in this game.
Sure there are a handful of builds that can land 10k shots on 3k armor with a lot of stacking but those same builds are extremely brittle and can rarely survive counters which is exactly what that level of passive defense gives a player. I tear most thieves up on my condi build but can hardly survive their burst on my power builds.
Only RvR game worth playing right now. If that changes, I am gone.
Before links, tiers had very different kinds of play. Now they all seem the same. I have been in T4, T3 and T1 this link cycle. Besides, a relink can easily make a transfer to a lower tier server pointless.
Basically any tier that is fairly even in score, is typically the “best” tier for activity. Unfortunately this week all the tiers have dominant servers in them.
If they had a downstate every couple minutes, how would the in between time from the start of that timer to the end? No one downs or do they auto die?
This function is already in the game but requires downing a player 3 times in 1 minute (virtually impossible). When a player goes down the 4th time in a minute, they automatically die rather than go into a downed state. I think this should be 1 downed state every 2 minutes.
If they removed downstate, more ppl will be running powerbuilds or condi burst builds (more than they do now). Build diversity would drop as they would need to buff support/healing builds to compensate in group fights.
I don’t think they should remove downed state just resurrect. Problem with rez is that all a more populated group has to do is survive and then they can completely reconstitute their numbers. This disincentives a smaller groups from engaging because it is mostly pointless. If dead players had to port immediately, smaller skilled groups could pick apart larger ones more easily adding more strategy and skill to the fights.
Bunkers particularly boon ones don’t need any more “love”.
On small scale I see far more thieves, DH’s, war’s, rangers, ele’s, engi’s, and rev’s running power. The only classes that I see running condi the majority of the time are mesmer’s and necro’s, and even then a really good power mes is a lot scarier than 90% of the condi mesmers I run into.
Power builds must give up passive survival to get good DPS. Condi builds are the exact opposite. So yes a really good power player can and will beat the snot out of a condi build.
However on average condi brings passive survival unmatched by power. Hence my point that PVT is laughable for DPS while Dire is effective at both bunkering and DPS.
(edited by Straegen.2938)
Linking and ANets loose Glicko/RNG changed everything. Before that, bottom and top tiers mostly sucked. After those changes, some matches are abominations while others are pretty balanced. Take this last link when Mag first went down to T3, the map Qs and zergs were every bit as numerous as they are on T1 outside of reset and Mag was just mowing through everything (probably still are).
These days being on a small pop server is about the same as a more populated one.
As a note, I transfer frequently since I am a guild of one so I have played in T1, T3 and T4 in the last few weeks. I try and find a fairly close match and avoid the blowouts on either side.
Been in the game since launch… don’t think it will ever get fixed. Typically happens on uneven terrain.
A player should only get one Downed State every couple minutes. Resurrects should be removed from the game. Resurrects are one of the most unbalancing factors in WvW IMO.
If that happens, I am fine with removing fast stomps.
One more time. You do not need to be in berserkr armor in order to do damage in a power build. Nothing FORCES this on people. You can do plenty of damage in a power build without traiting power, precision ferocity.
No build exists that can take down my condi thief or several bunker variants in other classes I run using PVT. Several classes in Dire can condi down just about any build on all classes including a few bunker ones dedicated to removing condi.
Condi in WvW right now is significantly stronger in small scale on most classes than power and it isn’t even close.
I troll power builds with a non-stealth thief condi build. The hardest hitting builds in WvW have maybe a 1 in 10 shot at bringing me down and that is almost completely reliant on the attacker being an order of magnitude better than my old kitten .
Before the ICD on Backstab, this would be nearly unthinkable. However with the ICD thieves have to be smarter about when they land a Backstab. This change opens up a bit more versatility for a weapon set that is already suffering under the heavy defensive meta.
CnD is already init heavy, doesn’t have any significant damage and requires a thief to be up close and personal so I don’t see any balance issues. This change would make D/D a better performer even though it would still be behind D/P in effectiveness.
You’re completely assuming that you can get right back into stealth every 3s after you leave it. Any form of CC will obliterate most thieves. If you take stealth stacking out of the game, you alter and change so much more than what needs to be changed. It’s like demolishing your home to fix a termite problem. It’s far from prudent.
Removing Stealth Stacking eliminates lazy play and allows for more counters to stealth play which has been a sore spot since launch. Stealth Stacking has made balancing the thief a nearly impossible endeavor. Anet has no chance to consistently tune skills/traits since they can land from an invisible enemy that disappears seconds later. A skill might be fine out of stealth, but on a stealth build it can quickly become OP.
Most players would still have relatively the same duration of stealth if they time their skills properly. Basically more skill required and eliminates builds like the Ghost Thief. Good players will hardly notice the change in most fights.
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If you’re playing “rock”, you will never beat “paper”. Just move along and find something else to fight. I’m pretty dense but even I’m smart enough to have figured this out.
The build has no direct counter so there really ins’t a rock, paper or scissor to the build. Some builds have a slight chance at killing it while others aren’t in significant danger but that is a handful of meta builds. An average player in an average build has no chance. Most don’t have a chance against the hybrid Ghost builds that don’t need to stealth the entire time just as an opener.
OP to me is something that is significantly difficult to counter consistently while being dangerous all in an average players hands. If it is effective but requires exceptional skill to pull off, not OP at least in the general sense.
A good example of generally not being OP is the Druid. Druids can be so bunker they are near unkillable. Others hit like a truck. However, there are no builds (that I know of) that pull both off with an average driver. There are some extremely well played Druids that are monstrously good but in my experience that centers around exceptional skill. Engineers, Revs and Tempests follow a similar line. They can feel OP but in almost every instance you are dealing with an extremely skilled player with complex rotations. Basically the player is mostly beating you, not solely the build.
Now underwater Rangers/Druids are stupid OP.
Again just my opinion.
I’d rather fight any of the classes you sum up there, cause you can see em while fighting, right?
Correct. No build should exist that most classes have virtually zero counters against it.
How random is Glicko now? I ask because Mag ending up in T3 and HoD in T2 is a massive Glicko swing.
Given those swings, it is possible CD could be in T2 with Blackgate.
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+1 and should have been done long ago.
And in order to get matching power damage output, one needs to spec into power as well.
And it’s very much mathematical. Most professions in WvW in all environments are better off playing conditions. It isn’t the case in PvP because a mix of damage is necessary and is best pushed towards +1 builds designed to help burst down other players in a gank environment, and some builds can still push heavy power damage numbers depending on the matchup. However, the best builds are always budgeting offensive vs defensive pressure. This is just how it is, and how it has been since just a few months after release. Signet thief isn’t considered a good build despite being the best quick burst in the game, just because it’s so vulnerable to pretty much everything. I don’t think a full-berserker-gear build aside from backline has been in the meta in WvW for years. Even now, most of the ZvZ/backline builds play conditions because they still just deal more damage.
Otherwise the skill-per-skill value and cooldown cycles are near-identical.
Burn guard and venom thief can easily pull of 8-10k+ tick engages. Reaper stacks an instant 40 bleeding and 12 poison on foes with two skills. There are some aggressive condi mesmers which can quickly pop out over 20 stacks of confusion and 12 torment on engage. There are a number of streamers that have shown these builds and play them. I believe one of the top 50 thieves in NA plays a D/D condi non-death-blossom-spam venom build which a guildmember of mine runs now, which applies absolutely huge condition pressure right off the bat.
All of this… just all of it.
Did I say it was a DH Blow Up build? Nope, I said my Burn Guard build that is bursty, which it is I can stack well over 15-20 stacks of Burn in the initial opening.
Back to my point, most classes cannot do a thing to a Ghost Thief other than run away (and not all can do that). Telling others to L2P when you are running one of the strongest meta builds in the game right now is silly.
Also “bursty” implies power which on a DH Burn build typically means Viper. Viper is also meta on DH right now because DH has… wait for it… high rotational defense (as in block/invuln up time better than any other class in the game).
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DH needs its defense cause its crap without it, try roaming with plain guardian, you will see the difference.
Its rotational blocks/invulns can be up about 80% of the time during a fight. The impressive part is they don’t have to give up much DPS to get that. The DH builds are already difficult to melee much less having to wait for a tiny window to open so a player can do damage. It is the strongest low skill floor build IMO. Guardians can be kited. That isn’t an option with most DH builds. Their Virtues are simply stupid good.
While I agree that condi chrono is overtuned, I’m curious as to what you think should be changed about it considering you didn’t list anything specific.
The reason I didn’t list a specific change is that it isn’t one thing that makes that build so strong. Any changes need to be done in small increments until the build gets brought into line. Changing Confusion back would be a good start in my book. That also makes other condi builds a bit more tolerable.
You’re funny, warrior signet heal is fine. You might be thinking of adrenal health stacks off primal burst
Adrenal Health should use the sPvP version. Over 20s Healing Signet heals for almost 8k passively and has one of the better activation abilities. I would move that number closer to 7k over 20s.
These are just my opinions and observations. Certainly not gospel.
While I agree that condi chrono is overtuned, I’m curious as to what you think should be changed about it considering you didn’t list anything specific.
The reason I didn’t list a specific change is that it isn’t one thing that makes that build so strong. Any changes need to be done in small increments until the build gets brought into line. Changing Confusion back would be a good start in my book. That also makes other condi builds a bit more tolerable.
You’re funny, warrior signet heal is fine. You might be thinking of adrenal health stacks off primal burst
Adrenal Health should use the sPvP version. Over 20s Healing Signet heals for almost 8k passively and has one of the better activation abilities. I would move that number closer to 7k over 20s.
The number of people that don’t know I can see their pets… priceless.
High defensive Rotation? Ghost Thief Condi application is all unblockable so bypasses all Guardian defenses
In your build the GS has built in condi clears. Also if the player takes Renewed Focus their rotational defense gets significantly better. If a DH knows a Ghost is around swap out to Light’s Judgement.
As for your specific build, that is a pure burn build not a DH Blow Up build which often runs Viper.
What builds/skills do you find OP and in what context?
My short list:
DH – Rotational defense combined with passive defense is too strong
Necro – Deathly Chill is crushing it in skirmish. Epi is still an issue.
Thief – Ever-vade builds, Ghost Thief
Warrior – The passive Signet heal needs an adjustment downwards
Mesmer – Condi Chrono for a variety of reasons needs to meet a nerf bat
My bad… try this build:
It has a bit of survival built in so you can take a single alpha strike or a single condi bomb. An alternative is to go with Deadly Arts over Trickery. DA will do more spike damage by a good bit but Trickery should have better sustained DPS.
FYI, any D/P thief worth his salt will tear this build apart using stealth and dodging/blocking during reveal. Course if they mess up, this build will down them quickly. If you want more survival, I have a P/P Staff build that plays fairly well.
Cleave on sword was always 3 targets.
On your own links look down at the changes log. In 2014 those dagger attacks now hit two targets. Prior to that dagger was single target with those same attacks.
That is what I said. Backstab is single target and Dagger AA is two targets. Sword AA and PW is three targets. If there is more than 1 target PW beats Backstab without question. If there are more than two targets, Sword AA beats dagger without question.
Interestingly Dagger AA beats Backstab if there is more than one target. Backstab is quite literally only strong against a single target when flanking. Even then it is only good every 3s. In contrast, PW has consistent DPS all the time and scales better. It is completely self contained needing no extra traits to insure a crit, doesn’t need any special positioning and needs no setup. It is also the hardest hitting single thief ability at least in a vacuum.
Now there are situations where X is going to better than Y but for the most part PW is a crazy good PvE attack paired with Invigorating Precision.
Burn guards are not necessary super easy to kill on ghost thief (multi condi cleanse ones) but they are absolutely nothing to worry about because they only have 1 primary damage condition and you run Shadow’s Embrace plus also have RoS in Dire/Trailblazer gear.
I can’t recall ever falling over from a guardian and it sure wasn’t because of burn condi.
Depends on the variant. Blow up burn DH uses 1-2 traps and power attacks to crack anything within melee range of it. The burn portion is more of a finisher as well as constantly applied as pressure and while in melee range cannot be easily cleared as it constantly applies. Not all burn builds are the same but the ones that drop trap and symbol can easily blow up a Ghost Thief particularly if they get caught by an AoE.
The lag generally isn’t from poor server architecture or client side design. Lag in most MMOs is from handling the network load. Because GW2 has a tremendous amount of AoE and cascading triggers, the number of players attacking in an area before lag sets in is fairly limited. Better than most MMOs but still limited.
Unless they redesign the amount of AoE and reduce the amount of passive build triggers, it is unlikely anything else will significantly reduce player lag. Sure they could prioritize the packeting system a bit better but that might cause more hacking. They might be able to upgrade their server architecture but it would be a minor upgrade in performance most likely. A full rescale on a grid system might be possible but typically that has to be engineered up front and can be nearly impossible to convert to after a system is in place.
Basically the likely only way to “fix” or rather improve the lag significantly is to completely redesign the skills and traits of the game. The AoE cap was a stop-gap but ultimately in GW3 (if that happens with WvW) my guess is AoE will be much more limited as will passive triggers from traits.
I apologize for this thread because in no way should it have drawn an ANet response. There are a massive number of threads that actually do deserve a response and get none.
If it was truly 1 ghost thief vs 9 of you that’s a serious L2P issue, I know Roaming on my Burn Guard I am able to easily kill a Solo Ghost Thief, when 2 are involved it becomes a hassle.
In fairness you are probably playing one of the most OP builds in the game right now. Not every build has access to Guardian-level condi removal, strong burst, solid condi damage and high defensive rotation in one package.
Doubtful. WvW has such a tiny population spending development effort has a very low ROI.
This is a post that came out of frustration. There is no fault as players were playing as we do and this post was QQ. The timing of that garri claim simply stung for me a bit more than usual.
I could (probably should) have turned GW2 off and went and played something else. Sadly though that is what so many of our fellow players have done only to not return. Expressing my raw frustration on the forums seemed better than simply quitting. In hindsight, I doubt I would post this again since it isn’t helpful nor was it cathartic.
The initiative cost per damage unit on CnD and Backstab is better than what PW does.
Again it greatly depends on how stealth is accessed. CnD, 6 init. BP/HS 9 init. Utility is free BUT that can potentially lower DPS and is on a slow cooldown. Taking SA to get Stealth steal also lowers DPS. Pistol Whip 5 init and requires no priming or cooldown unlike Backstab.
Dagger AA cleaves, and has cleaved for what’s pushing two years. It’s objectively superior to the sword’s cleave/DPS.
If Dagger cleaves now, they need to update the wiki because at launch it was dual target and I don’t remember seeing it get an upgrade.
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Double_Strike
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Wild_Strike
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Lotus_Strike
vs
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Slice_
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Slash_
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Crippling_Strike
Backstab isn’t hard to land can be delivered faster than PW. The OP asked for damage potential.
The OP asked for the hardest hitting skill which is still PW particularly against more than one foe. It has a higher coefficient, doesn’t need to be primed, is not positional and frankly costs less init than most Backstabs. It is easier to use, can be chained, procs the hell out of IP, has solid crit DPS without having to take Hidden Killer and it evades the entire time. It is very nearly the perfect PvE attack. PW also doesn’t have a cooldown on a miss or block… admittedly less likely in PvE but still a downside particularly when DPS is considered.
Unfortunately they painted small scale into a corner with the heavy defensive rotations on Tempest, Scrapper, Warrior and Guardian. The only way for most other classes to compete is to run ever-vasion, heavy stealth or go bunker/condi.
A player cannot get near a DH any more without having 20k health and 3k armor to eat the burst and survive the burn afterwards.
in any case thief is broken beyond believe, anet kept buffing the damage and the defenses now it’s a joke class.
coming from stealth to do massive damage and stealth again or teleport miles away is not a gameplay that is fun to play against. Somebody at anet should have eyes to see it.
The thief class has seen a long string of nerfs to the point it is down to a couple solid weapon sets and neither perform as well as they did last year. Even its hallmark skill took a big shot with the cooldown. D/D, S/D, P/D, S/P are all niche builds at best and mostly go unused. SB is only good for travel. P/P is the only single target weapon set in the entire game across all classes as far as I know. Staff just took a big hit in sPvP that will likely make it into WvW at some point. Nearly every thief has been shoe horned into some D/P variant.
Seriously the class is down to D/P stealth builds with Staff offhand and some a couple condi builds most of which pale in comparison to DH Burn Guardian, Condi Chrono, etc.
This build looks like it would get torn apart by any of the DH burn blow up builds running around. A Bunker Tempest is also going to be a massive handful. Anything with a solid Alpha strike (another thief) should make short work of this build as well.
How do you get your thief to one hit kill? I have a thief and I cant do it and I see people do it so I don’t understand.
In sPvP it doesn’t happen. There is no one shot kill in sPvP due to gear limitations. The way it happens in WvW is damage multiplier stacking.
Unload is almost completely useless in full Trailblazer. Head Shot (with a bunch of traits) and the AA are the only things that can really proc condi outside of a Venom. Outside of an interrupt build, P/P is a very poor choice when running full Trailblazer.
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