Guild Wars 2

I think they want people to grind PvE for their armor… well in WvW anyway. I would just be happy if they made the rings worth salvaging or selling since it is about the only ascended that drops.

You cannot run down a well built thief. I have been trolling NSP pretty much every night while our side flips their T3 SMC. The keep contesting design is stupid but it is part of the game right now so we must endure its crappiness.

Warkind.6745:

It’s really embarrassing when I hit S/D #3 twice expecting LS to proc but my enemy blocks and I just end up twirling around them.

Also embarrassing is when playing during lag or on uneven terrain, trying to get Shadow Step to fire only it keeps ignoring the input. When it finally accepts the input for that necessary escape, it teleports then immediately returns right back into the middle of an angry mob.

DeceiverX.8361:

Unload with more than one activation will out-damage PW with other subsequent re-activations from the might stacking.

On a single hit, the most potent ability without Daredevil is Backstab. Given Daredevil, vault does slightly more damage and can be built to deal substantially more.

Unload is single target thus its damage is capped much sooner than PW. In a multi-target situation, PW has a significantly higher DPS. I think that gets missed a lot when people talk about how powerful Unload is. It is great 1v1… as soon as those numbers escalate (which they often do in PvE and WvW), its total DPS in comparison to multi-target skills drops.

Dare Devil traits and staff are not relevant given the 60 or less discussion.

Backstab is also a bit of a red herring since it cannot be chained. Over time DPS of Backstab is quite poor because of the 3s minimum and single target nature.

insanemaniac.2456:

sounds like you arent blasting light fields hard enough

I definitely am not… course I don’t have access to a light field so there is that.

Players should be able to passively reduce all damage types at the cost of their own DPS. In turn no skills should exist that make players immune from any damage type. Condi should have been a Damage Over Time effect that cannot be removed but can be reduced.

Game mechanics like Stealth, Evasion and Blocking should have cooldowns or hard counters. The ability to chain together defense so that a player is effectively immune from attacks for long periods of time is a poor and generally frustrating mechanic.

All or nothing attack and defense systems are incredibly difficult to balance.

Lahmia.2193:

Oh no. An area of the game where necros can do the highest dps! This isn’t allowed. That is Eles spot.

If it only did Ele DPS, it wouldn’t even be an issue. When a big Epi shot lands, five players go down without passing go. Its potential damage is off the charts.

babazhook.6805:

There nothing in fact OP about the Ghost thief build. I can not recollect dying to one .

That was true for me a couple weeks ago but now they seem to be crawling all over the place. They typically add-on to an existing fight since you cannot see them arriving, attacking or going. It is the perfect “assassin” build.

Artaz.3819:

It’s also because Boon meta (with Resistance, F5 traited and Durability Runes) dominated when Chronos could replicate across multiple people at once over and over again with low effort. That gave plenty of time for Mallyx Revenants (and shout cleansing Guards and Eles and others) to mass clear conditions from allies.

Agreed. It really wasn’t one thing that created the issue but a combination of changes that led us here. Now that the cat is out of the bag it is hard to not run with it because of its effectiveness .

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

A fair nerf is reducing the radius to 360 (the size of Meteor Shower) and reducing the range to 900. Not taking away everything that makes it a threat.

I would be happy if they capped the number of conditions it xfered preventing it from scaling to ridiculous levels like it does now and increasing its timer. As a parting gift, I would figure in a way so that Necros are more in combat agile. Give a little to get a little IMO.

Turk.5460:

Dagger auto attack is fine. If a thief is auto attacking someone for full AA rotations, either their target is a large bovine-potato, or the thief is currently being demolished by pretty much all other professions advantageous pressure/passive defense combined.

The various builds centered around D/P stealth may not be able to kill everything but nothing short of a mistake can kill it. Even on the toughest builds all a thief has to do is wait until a target is wounded and it is dead.

The new AA DPS is Backstab levels of damage, uses no init, applies poison, trips on crit sigils faster and can be cycled about every 1.7s. Backstab->AA for two rotations->Go invis repeat. Hardly anyone even bothers with HS any longer. Sometimes a thief has to abort with evades or use Shadow Shot to soften a target up. This change lowered the skill floor for power main hand dagger builds considerably.

Turk.5460:

Stealth stacking is absolutely fine, and you pretty much request it gone on every post I see you make. There is nothing more wrong with a thief stealth stacking than there is with any other profession cycling blocks, immunities, protection, etc…

Stealth stacking is lazy, low skill floor play that breeds builds like Ghost Thief. D/P is easily the most OP roaming weapon set in the game.

Various DH and Chrono mechanics, Epi, Healing Signet, etc all fall into the nerf category at least for me. I also think Necro needs more in combat mobility, pretty much any weapon on a thief outside of D/P needs some luv, engis need more fluidity, etc. You can try and pigeonhole my suggestions for making the game better as general QQ but at least I come to the table with some suggestions rather than just tear down others ideas.

Lahmia.2193:

That’s because epi is so powerful against the unorganised. But I don’t see why they should nerf it just because people are too lazy or casual to organise themselves to counter it.

Highest potential DPS skill in the game that is unblockable, on a 13.5s timer and an AoE. The skill is ridiculous in the current condi heavy meta. I ran around last night firing CB/Epi with the occasional Plague and it is easily the most powerful combo I have run in a long time.

Lahmia.2193:

It is capped at 25 stacks. Also it makes you wonder why epidemic hasn’t been part of wvw meta, despite being the same for 2 years.

It is not capped in WvW (unless they stealth nerfed it in the last patch). Besides a single a 25 stack of any damaging conditions is a lot of DPS across 5 players. Add on that it copies ALL conditions.

As noted above Epi became stronger as the meta switched from Power to Condi. When a few players were running condi builds it wasn’t as effective. Now at least in small scale condi builds dominate. Epi also feeds itself. The more Necros used it, the stronger the skill became in the meta.

Glass Hand.7306:

OK Necro just got nerfed (or rekt depending on your reliance on epi).

Please fix thief now.

The only thing that got nerfed on the necro is the ridiculous Epi shots. Epi is still OP.

zealex.9410:

oh so the broken resistance isnt enough?

Resistance is problematic for several reasons but a main one is that it is only accessible on a handful of builds.

Take the top 5 sigils being used and hit em with a minor nerf. Take the bottom 5 sigils being used and hit em with a buff. Rince and repeat until meta builds have a more diverse group of sigils used.

The problem isn’t access to new sigils but rather access to sigils that are effective.

neven.3785:

Anet nerfed it quite heavily, just need to blast the light fields

It was nerfed, marginally. Instead of being able to hit a player with 100+ stacks of condi it will go back to hitting up to five players with 20+ stacks of condi.

It is still the reigning DPS potential champ in the game.

Mentioned this in another thread:

Epi is an unblockable AoE condi cloner on a 13.5s timer with no DPS limit. Think about that in a condi-heavy meta.

There is literally no other skill in the game that can equal this skills potential DPS and nothing even close with that short of a timer. Even on a sub-par target it has a crazy good DPS for a utility.

ArchonWing.9480:

Can’t say I’ve gotten epi-owned in small scale; condi owned yes, but maybe that’s just my luck. I run power and have about 15k health so I can and will get one shot by like, anything.

However, I’d like to say that a lot of this so called “advice” dispensed to Straegen here simply will not help, because simply linking skills and broad advice does not address any real world scenarios. Easier said than done, so to speak and this kind of thing I find comes across as patronizing.

That is the thing about Epi… it doesn’t show in the combat log. Most Epi’s feel like a strong condi blast that any number of other classes can dish out so it easy to miss.

Epi’s main problems are two fold. First it scales to ridiculous levels hence players wondering how they just got 40 plus stacks of XYZ loaded on them. Second it refreshes so quickly that it is essentially a press button to deal a bunch of damage. The more condi builds there are around the stronger that skill gets.

Epi is an AoE condi cloner on a 13.5s timer with no DPS limit. Think about that in a condi-heavy meta.

I can head out to flip camps, sentries, etc and always find fights along the way. Overall population probably is down but if you break away from the zergs, plenty of fighting to be had.

Hexalot.8194:

I was just giving an example of how to reach 10K back stabs, and to be quite frank you can still reach that damage without going completely defenseless (switch bound to dash for example, which in addition to high mobility and evades, also gives 10% dmg reduction).

Backstab generally requires skill to pull off consistently. Misses, blocks, etc are punishing. Attackers have to line up the shot and typically burn skills to prime the attack. Against well matched opponents landing a Backstab is a tricky proposition. So much so that Shadow Shot is typically how a thief softens a target.

What does need a nerf is the base auto attack damage of daggers which was recently buffed and Stealth Stacking needs to end.

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

What on earth are you, and everyone else, doing to attract so many conditions? I understand that for frontliners the problem is a lot more prevalent. They’re forced in to taking heaping wads of damage and conditions. But if you’re a Thief, or any kind of mid/backliner, you shouldn’t be getting loaded with condi’s every 5 seconds. I can literally frontline (at least during a winning push or in certain opportune situations) on a full glass vanilla Ranger. I can remove 8 conditions if I blow all of my utilities and you know how often I have to do that? Almost never. At maximum I’ll get 5 conditions on me at which point I’ll quickly retreat to recover and wait for cooldowns to come off.

Epi is effectively spammable, so it only takes one Condi build to load up a player and one Necro to share those stacks of condi to five other players. If two Epis fire, that doubles. Basically a 3+ man group easily hits up to five players with a steady stream of 20+ conditions. Cleanse one set and in about 10s another set will land. Rinse and repeat until everything is dead.

Just try it. Build a tank condi necro, put epi on the bar, get into a skirmish, target one player, wait for said player to gets some condi on them and press button. Repeat every 15s until everything is dead. That is the current small scale meta.

Backstab is a single target skill, requires a thief be stealthed (which requires the use of another skill), requires positioning to do good damage, has a cool down when it misses and leaves the thief right on top of their opponent for better and worse. More importantly for a thief to land a BIG hit generally they have to be fairly glassy which in the current meta is problematic.

In multi-target situations its DPS is anemic compared to other attacks with higher base damage such as Grave Digger, Gunflame, Kill Shot, Churning Earth, Eviscerate and even Vault. It doesn’t even crack the top 20 when we factor in channeled attacks.

Backstab once upon a time was a problem but now almost every build comes out with 3k armor or so other built in survival mechanism making its damage meh particularly since it is single target lacking any ability to scale.

What is an issue is the ability to land a nice shot then disappear indefinitely 3s later.

Epi is a short duration utility skill and not something an entire build should be built around. No build should center around one utility so much so that altering it to remove two very specific targets prevents the build from running properly.

The very idea that a build is centered around a single utility is proof that said utility needs a nerf.

This happens to me as well. Just a finicky part of the input system. Most classes don’t notice because their skills hit cooldown and prevent a second attack. Been like this since launch.

babazhook.6805:

Sorry missed that. But that said even at under level 60 you should ensure you get those damage adds out of traits if you want to hit the hardest.

He is correct. Damage multipliers are what makes for the truly big shots. Food, trait lines, utilities, etc that add a damage modifier (X% to damage) amplify each other so each multiplier makes all other multipliers stronger.

The key to a power build on the thief in WvW or PvE is damage multipliers. You want as many multipliers as you can get.

For PvE use this build. Staff will have a 100% crit change most of the time and you will see 20k shots routinely. Switch to Pistol for fast heals and bosses that are dangerous in melee. Travel is Bound (for speed) then Vault (restores endurance) to keep speed up:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQNAqaWn0MBlOhNOBGOBkmiFqiau63+xvrnCgDYLHHsqD-TVCBQBKU9Hss/QK0QEgTBADeQAaU5n+0HAgjAwJVCGAAB4mtZbezAn38m38m38czbezbezbWKABGDA-w

For WvW P/P is not optimal IMO but if you want to go that route this build is serviceable. Similar tact but we have Instant Reflexes and health to counter blow up builds, more in combat mobility by moving away from Bound/Acro and a larger init pool for burst. Shortbow is a possibility over staff but in a group environment staff is still beastly:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQNAqaWn0MBlOhFmCGOBkmiFqiyLE+gSoLBCgDY+67+yH-TVCBQBpQDBAOCAM4BBEt9H0oyPFq+zJVCqP9BB4UAEAAB4mtZbezAn38m38m38czbezbezbWKAB2ZB-w

Staff D/P is a vastly superior weaponset in WvW right now but that is an entirely different build and play style centered around stealth.

Surprised DD with Havoc Mastery and Bounding Dodger isn’t better than Trickery and Lead Attacks especially since DD is two multipliers to one.

Pistol Whip or Unload. Both are channeled and big hitters. I don’t think anything else will even be close.

babazhook.6805:

I can post what i wish. It hardly strawman given the solutions being proposed. Happy?

Actually you cannot post what you wish all the time. See… strawman argument ahead.

babazhook.6805:

If he wanted to make the point of lethality it was easy enough to do as in “no profession should be able to kill another profession while remaining permanently stealthed”. but I guess accuracy in language is not important to people such as yourself and Donald trump.

See how that works?

We can debate all day whether turret/pet/clone damage is actual class damage and should reveal the Engi or the turret/pet/clone but it serves no purpose since it isn’t an actual issue in the game. However that is not the topic of this thread and trying to parse someones casual statement into an Engi can do so it is OK is as I said, strawman argument.

Ghost Thief needs to go. Your points about it not being specifically related to traps is a valid point and educational to those that don’t fully understand the mechanics. Your topic on Engi isn’t.

Artemis Thuras.8795:

100+ of any single condition would require either: an entire zerg stamping on you; or a lot of condis prestacked, then bounced with 4+ epis( probably more, considering typical zergs will be moving almost constantly).

I didn’t say 100 of one stack, I said 100 stacks of damaging condi several times in one night. Just by standing next to a Resistance Warrior in a small skirmish one Epi player can drop it like its… well you know. Last night I was on the wall when a Necro Epi’d the AC next to me and down went a few players with no chance to counter.

Artemis Thuras.8795:

To deal with the second, without knowing what you’re doing at all, I’d suggest not following too closely to your tag, but rather picking off the out of position enemies that get split from their zerg. Or once the battle begins to have downed players, snowball it by finishing downed enemies fast. Essentially your problem sounds like positioning, and getting condi bombed is merely one of many possible symptoms.

I am speaking to small scale skirmish (I generally don’t zerg)…. as in not on a tag but rather a 3+ v 3+ pickup often with 15-ish total combatants. These aren’t guild groups like tRex firing up a coordinated bomb. These are eight random guys running with a couple Necros spamming Epi. If it took actual coordination to pull off routine condi bombs (like it was a year ago), I would be with you. However this is just skill spamming. Epi when traited is on a 13.5s timer. Add on a solid condi mesmer with a couple necros and the echo chamber of condi application is absurd.

Every week it seems to be getting worse as more players abandon ineffective power builds to play ever more condi-tank builds. I am not different either… I run a 22k, 3k armor thief that spams condi like it is going out of style because that is the most effective meta right now. In comparison, power builds have to typically run super glassy to do that type of damage. Not so in the condi meta.

Again with the strawman argument. Nobody cares about an ineffective quasi-stealth turret engi that is about as lethal as an up-level Ranger in WvW. Stop trying to create a debate that nobody cares about and is ultimately pointless to the topic.

If that build was actually effective and remained stealthed the entire time, then yes it should be fixed too. Happy?

babazhook.6805:

I have already concurred that perma stealth the issue several times over. I have also stated that the ability to apply damage while stealthed occurs across several classes and given that the case and no one seems to have issues with those examples the issue is perma-stealth and not damage while stealthed.

You are parsing and trying to make an argument where there is none. The clear intent of his statements are that no class should be lethal while remaining perma or mostly stealthed.

Trying to derail that argument into fringe examples of builds that are not even in the same lethal capability while retaining some stealth is ridiculous. Lets stop with the Trumpisms.

Comparing Engi and Mesmer to Ghost thief is at best a red herring and to be frank a strawman.

Any attacker can counter play the Sneak Gyro by killing the gyro in a couple seconds leaving the Engi effectively without stealth for a very long period.

Mesmer has no access to perma stealth even with a Torch build. They have some substantial stealth stacking but it requires a lot of utility space to pull that off.

Jugglemonkey.8741:

This is a really good suggestion, much better than mine haha like I said I was just brainstorming a bit there, I’d rather find a solution that makes stealth more balanced without destroying a playstyle completely. I mean, if you’re full dire/trailblazer you can afford to be revealed sometimes.

Just for clarity my suggestion was not mine originally. This was something another user posted in year one of GW2 back when D/P was just wrecking everything. D/P has mellowed out a bit as the thief trait lines have seen numerous nerfs but the heavy access to long term stealth has been a problem since day one.

D/P is just straight up OP in the right hands in small scale WvW. I stopped running it because it gets boring with fixed rotations that are effective against 90% of the builds and near unkillable by the other 10%.

BLNT! I miss the fights… so many good ones.

A lot of players have been asking for new game modes since the beginning but it has fallen on deaf ears. Often forum members themselves tear down those ideas. Seems a lot on here want things exactly the same but different.

I would love a tournament where all our gear gets disabled for a week or two and we have to use what we find in WvW during that time.

How about a death week where players become ghosts when they die. Ghosts have their own set of skills and killing players on either side generates lifeforce . Living players stomping ghosts cleanse them making them resurrect as living. Killing players gains some portion of lifeforce they have accumulated. At the end of the week or tournament, lifeforce can be exchanged for new skins developed for the event.

I am up for just about any interesting week or two in WvW to shake up the status quo. On the plus side Crowfall is headed this direction.

Artemis Thuras.8795:

Then i suggest coordinating with your allies, and getting some of them to look at this:
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Condition#From_allies

Allies don’t help when enough condi hits to drop a player in one tick. By the time a player realizes they have been nuked, they are dead.

Besides in skirmish you don’t always get to pick your allies. Either way players should always have an option for counter play and should never be dropped in one salvo. In the current meta so much condi is flying that players get downed before they have a chance to activate a skill.

I am getting hit with 100+ stacks of damaging condi regularly now and I play mostly in small skirmish fights. That is insane levels of damage to counter especially when the damage type is all or nothing. Its not like I can put on more armor or take more condi clears…. I took them all major.

babazhook.6805:

I can do the same on a mesmer or engineer.

Mesmers have no access to perma-stealth. Besides many believe Condi Chrono and its variants are on the top end of the needs a nerf scale.

Engi’s sort of can do it but the gyro gives away their position most of the time. More importantly the gyro can be immobilized, destroyed, etc allowing for direct counters by every class.

Stealth is a sticky point in almost any MMO. However GW2 has massive stealth up time with almost no counter play against it. The window to counter is either non-existent (Ghost Thief) or so short it requires 3s or less to actually win a fight. Stealth builds in GW2 almost always die from player mistakes not from getting out played. The number of anti-stealth options are extremely limited and most have significant costs/drawbacks.

Lately, I have gone to running Lyssa runes, Shadow Step, Signet of Agility, Escapist’s Absolution, Pain Response and Trickster with Withdraw. More than a dozen times last night I was unable to clear alpha strike condi fast enough to survive in skirmish. Either I get bombed with so much condi no clear can do the job or I purge them only to be reloaded a second later.

Turk.5460:

The range and frontal radius of HS is much bigger than you think it is. It doesn’t require a target to hit…and unless you start HS behind the target (not on top of them, as that will still hit them), you have a much higher chance of being revealed than not. The hit/damage isn’t at the end landing point only, if a target is anywhere between the start of HS and the end of HS, it will be hit.

I can HS 2+ times in a BP field with a player standing in it without triggering the hit. Takes a bit of practice to know where the true edge of the BP is, switch off auto target, zoom in and ground target. It gets significantly easier if the steal doesn’t proc any damage.

katniss.6735:

I just noticed this is the third of these threads. I’ve been playing Path of Exile and just doing dailies in gw2. hueh
/customaryinb4lock

Change PoE to Marvel Heroes and same story here.

babazhook.6805:

I will not speak to PvP but P/P is hardly niche in WvW (or Pve). As a single target source of damage it hard to beat. The mistake too many make is staying to long in p/p and not taking advantage of the Might provided .

I am going to assume you play a lot of WvW like myself. When was the last time a power P/P thief tore you apart? My guess is outside of getting caught outnumbered, it hasn’t.

It is a fine weapon set in the safety of numbers. Its got one move and it is ridiculously easy to avoid most of that damage. Get it in an outnumbered situation or against D/P and the weapon set is a straight up liability. Most other classes find it weak as well (Ranger/Mesmer hide behind pets/clones, Warrior/Engi/Ele reflect, Necro… well they get kited by every thief build). Spam Unload 2-3 times and switch to another weapon for escape. Even skill cannot elevate it.

The condi variant (which I run) is solid when played well but the D/P variant of my build is arguably stronger.

Dagger.2035:

I agree with your assessment of Pulmonary Impact. It turns Headshot from a low damage utility skill to one of the highest damage range skills we have.

PI doesn’t crit, is single target, and requires a Sigil to do modest damage. It also requires timing and a target without stab to work otherwise a player just blew through a bunch of init for no damage. The attack can do upwards of 5k with Sigil of Draining in the mix for 4 init or a thief can dump an Unload for 2x the damage and one more init. Even better smack with Shadow Shot on a crit, do the same damage, get a teleport and Blind the target. Don’t even get me started on how Staff/Vault compares in a multi-target setting.

Besides the biggest damager on the thief right now is the auto-attack. One full cycle is nearly max Backstab damage and it costs no init.

babazhook.6805:

Assuming SA traited for condition cleanse, on a stealth of 4 seconds two cleanses are made before one has to come out and face the music again. This will very often leave yet other conditions on the player. Contrast that to the EA cleanse which a person can use to cleanse every time they evade. In theory in those same 4 seconds EA can cleanse 4 conditions.

EA is a fine supplemental condi manager but EA has strong counter play. I do it all the time, load a thief up with condi and stop attacking.

That aside the amount of condi clear for everything save D/P remains unchanged. Today I can CnD, Steal, Blinding Powder all at once for about 12s of stealth or roughly 5 condi clears. With the change a player can CnD (two condi clears), Steal (one condi clear), Blinding Powder (two condi clears). They just have to be watching their stealth timer to maximize that time. It is the same duration with one exception (BP).

What they won’t be able to do is attack a player, dodge twice, drop Black Powder and vanish without burning a few more skills. Rather than passive Stealth management shifting it to an active system doesn’t penalize good players just lazy ones. It also breaks Ghost Thief and limits D/P Stealth which lets be honest has been broke since launch.

If I had a say, Stealth abilities would replace existing time instead of add on to it. Then reduce the initiative cost of BP. Thieves should have strong stealth access but that also needs counter play. Being able to go dark indefinitely or even for 10s is absurdly difficult to balance.

In this system total amount of stealth outside of BP stays relatively the same but with more risk to the thief and more opportunity for counter play.

WoW perfected the modern MMO system in its time. GW2 was a step towards the next generation of active combat but in my opinion didn’t take it far enough.

GW2 is in its own right a monster success but it tried to serve too many masters at launch. Add in a horrible loot system with a non-existent aggro and an otherwise beautiful game ends up with substandard PvE and none of the excitement of a great loot drop.

Cygnus.6903:

That’s not the solution, because (Stealth Stacking) breaks thief.

Power D/P builds have been a problem since launch. They attack from stealth and a player has 3s to respond against a class that has numerous evades and high mobility.

Stealth should have to be chained not stacked. Stealthers will generally get the same stealth duration but they won’t be able to get it in easy mode. In that system Black Powder will take a hit and it might need to be adjusted but BP/HS combo has been busted since jump…. and I main a thief… as in thousands of hours on one.

Just ask Ghost Thief or Condi Chrono how well that works.