Meteor Shower now has a 1 minute cooldown, damage reduced by 50%.
I dunno….if they remove the aoe cap (on both offensive and defensive abilities) you would have zergs running around with permanent stability and retaliation from just 2-3 guardians. Any area damage would cause the caster to die instantly. I actually think there would be even more zergs and stacking on each other.
However I doubt they will actually remove the aoe cap. You think lag is bad now?
Your stats right now are Power + Vit + Condition Damage
Power – this is a good stat as it increases your damage, however most stat distributions have it anyway.
Vitality – Decent for surviving burst damage. The problem with this is that our survivability comes through constant healing, especially in the 0/10/0/30/30 build that you saw. Vitality is just a buffer, but toughness actually makes your heals more effective, since each point of health is now harder to take away. If you stack both vitality and toughness you become stupidly hard to kill.
Condition Damage – It’s…okay. We can stack both burning and bleeding, however not at the same time due to the way attunements work. Precision is better because the D/D build has permanent +20% crit chance, and condition damage isn’t affected by crits.
What I would recommend you to do is to just buy everything, but with rare (yellow) items. This costs a fraction of what exotics would but the stat differences are negligible. Slowly do dungeons like Sorrow’s Embrace to get the power + precision + toughness gear (edit: with exotic stats)
The post which mentioned all the ascended-stat accessories is just a guide – the differences between exotic and ascended gear are small too. Unless you want to do fractals, the only way is to get save laurels up. However Anet has said they want to add more ways to get ascended items, but until then you (and I) are stuck with doing your daily achievements every day.
Another stat that I would recommend is healing power – this basically makes your heals stronger. Look for Power + Toughness + Healing power stats on items (not the one with vitality and condition damage- those suck).
Edit: Oh yeah you should mention what you plan to be doing, as WvW will demand a very different build and gear from general PvE and dungeons. What I typed just now is more to do with WvW, since the 0/10/0/30/30 build is best there.
(edited by Sunflowers.1729)
For roaming and smaller sized zerg fights (say 15v15) D/D is super awesome. That might change with the culling patch since they will be able to see you immediately after RTL-ing in, but for now it works. If your server has lower populations and doesn’t have zergs everywhere (like mine) then you’ll never need to swap weapons, except for sieges.
For PvE anything is ok. Scepter + Dagger is worth considering too cause mobs are stupid and stay in Dragon’s tooth. Even Focus is good for all the defensive options it gives.
The problem with your argument is that you assume backstab instant-death build is the only thief build.
What if I play a more tanky, survivable build which also uses backstab? I’ll use D/P as an example because I play that build. Currently there is no way to avoid the backstab – if you aegis I will just press it again. You can run around and try to face me (which works, sometimes), but using a defensive move intended to block powerful 1-hit attacks doesn’t.
Your argument of ‘that passive aegis counters a burst D/D thief hard’ doesn’t work anymore. Yes it does counter that one build, but to use a quote from above, just learn, adapt, and overcome. Must you absolutely pull of the combo of instant death within 3 seconds of the fight starting?
Maybe it’s a sign that that build has a counter – just like how using a condition build against a necromancer is generally a bad idea? Dunno maybe I shouldn’t have put 10 bleeds on that necro, cause he sent them all back. Maybe I shouldn’t have tried to shatter on a thief as he just pressed blinding powder and negated the whole thing.
Also the rune that grants aegis is on activation of an elite skill. So unless he is lucky enough to have pressed it just before you went in, it’s not gonna be up.
To have a powerfull stealth you have to spend 30 trait points… it’s silly that a stupid block would break stealth. Regardless how short the stealth cooldown.
So you’re saying that to land backstab you need 30 points in Shadow Arts?
I think it’s silly that my 90 second cooldown virtue is negated by a thief being able to press #1 twice.
You can remove the passive aegis by shooting him once with a shortbow, then swapping weapons and doing the rest of the combo. Really difficult stuff right there. Besides, that’s 1 out of 8 possible classes.
Anyway, how does that combo even take 8 seconds?
0 seconds – Backstab
3 seconds – 1-auto-attack chain completed + CnD
3.5 seconds- Backstab
As I said – missing your attack shouldn’t take you out of stealth, but blocking should. Consider that backstab has a pretty short effective cooldown while most skills that give invulnerability or aegis have much, much longer ones.
Heres some of my thoughts on this topic.
Beeing revealed vs Block: To a Thief means the end of his Stealth attacks untill next time he gets in to stealth. For a Player with Block it means they gain Immunity to stealth attacks, because every time a player have block buff, stealth attack will automaticly fail. – Block doesn’t have a long cooldown. It can be shared with other players, and reaplied with easy. So the question is – should Block have an Immunity to stealth attacks feature on it, when it is so easy to obtain ?
beeing revealed vs Miss : Would simply penalize Thieves for having a short range on their melee Stealth attacks, while still requiring to be positioned behind the target. It would also reduce thieves mobility in Stealth, by not alowing the use of heartseeker 450 Range. And since Shadowstepping to the target doesn’t automaticly put them behind the target , cathing up to the target and positioning yor self behind it, would be almost impossible.
beeing revealed vs Dodge - this is something that could be implanted in to the game. Dodge evades every attack, why should it be any different for Stealth attacks?
Aegis isn’t easy to obtain at all, at least not compared to stealth. Stealth attacks already bypass aegis, because you can just press backstab again if the first one is blocked. This isn’t considering special blocks like the Guardian’s heal which blocks everything for 2 (or was it 3) seconds, but then again the cooldown on that is pretty long. Sure you can block a whole ton if you use mace + focus + sheltered healing + retreat, but if backstab doesn’t reveal you when it is blocked, then you just made his entire build irrelevant because spamming 1 is easy.
The rest of your points I agree with though. Misses should not ever take you out of stealth because the range of Backstab is way too short.
Even as someone who thinks thieves are really, really overpowered, I don’t see how stealth stomping is too strong. One one hand there are classes like Engineer who can’t stop the stealth stomp unless you are really lucky, but then again stability or invuln stomping works on them too. The thief has to stand there and take damage, and is still vulnerable to blinds and knockdowns.etc. Off the top of my head, a good number of downed #2 skills will still counter it in the same way as the other forms of stomping (so no, there is no need to buff stealth stomping)
And as a reply to the post above me, the problem is not with stealth stomping per se, but rather is about how thieves are generally a ridiculous class. Even their down state is amazing. But stealth stomping by itself is quite easy to counter as the thief has to stand in one spot and channel something.
TL;DR – Stealth stomping is not OP
Edit: I meant the post above the previous one. Daendur posted something while I was still typing.
Nobody knows until they actually release the patch. The only thing that we can say for sure is that the revealed debuff will always be applied even stealth duration runs out, as it was mentioned in a video.
I think you just invented a new nickname for ascended gear that will be used by people who are against it.
That being said I don’t actually know the answer to your question.
if the enemy has blocked your backstab it’s obviously a form of counter-play.
and where do you put Aegis ?
What, you mean like the Guardian block from ‘Retreat’? It blocks everything. If a rifle warrior is stupid enough to open with kill shot on a Guardian with Aegis, it’s his problem. Do rifle warriors complain that Guardians have free Aegis at the start of a fight? It’s part of the class, just like how thieves have medium armor and mesmers have only light armor.
Do you see people complaining that ‘Wow that thief has medium armor while 3/8 classes have to wear light armor’ so obviously we should have all burst abilities ignore toughness?’
No? I thought not.
I don’t understand. You’re saying it’s ok for a thief to spam BS from stealth even when the opponent has taken the trouble/lucked out to avoid it once? Given that landing a single backstab for huge damage can easily determine the outcome of a fight, is it fair that a thief gets multiple chances to land it with no penalty?
Far from making it a “stupid skill”, it will promote skilled gameplay and weed out those thieves who don’t take the trouble to ensure that it lands by forcing the opponent to blow their CDs first. As it stands right now, spamming BS takes no skill and has no cost.
The damage is not so high to justify what you are asking.
A single backstab can’t determine the outcome of a fight, unless you are fighting upleveled undergeared characters.
Triple BS damage and your request will make sense.
Abilities that put out even more damage than Backstab:
Kill Shot
Churning Earth
Fire Grab
3 illusion Mind Wrack
100 Blades
Abilities that still go on cooldown if you miss/evade/block them:
Kill Shot
Churning Earth
Fire Grab
3 illusion Mind Wrack
100 Blades
So your point is?
Missing Backstab shouldn’t reveal you – the range is tiny and it’s easy to miss. Maybe a short (~.5 second) cooldown on the missed backstab will suffice.
Blocking is a different matter – if the enemy has blocked your backstab it’s obviously a form of counter-play. If I block a kill shot does the warrior get to use it again?
You might as well go to other games forums (WoW for example) and try explain your theory that their stealth ( which is called “STEALTH”) is not stealth after all, because it actually increases rogues speed ( BY DEFAULT).
That isn’t true at all (I also fixed your spelling mistakes).
Can we just agree that it’s stealth because the skill descriptions all say so?
Hahahaha so many tears from so many bads! Nerf was obvious, my main is a thief. Good. Deal with it, it’s deserved.
In this topic, there are more people who are obviously mad@thieves saying this comment then there is thieves actually complaining about the nerf. Just lol. Btw, if you are bad, good thieves are still gonna crap on ya.
But now a bad thief will crap on a bad player less. Seems pretty fair to me…
Guys the whole point of a nerf is to uh…nerf. I don’t really understand the players that say ‘oh but it destroys all our defense’. This is not true; thieves can still stealth, just not as easily.
Obviously thieves will be weaker with the change and that’s intended. However if you are able to use your stealth 1 attack consistently, how does this change even affect you?
Survivability on a thief is the stealth line. See the problem?
Yup, I see it. The problem is that even with no points in the stealth line, stealth is still incredibly easy to access.
That’s what you meant right?
Glad the kittens are all happy about this. I wonder what the person who created/coded the thief thinks of all this.
You seem to forget the things that ANet can’t nerf. The power of conviction and the ability to adapt and overcome. Those that play thief are experts at it. Think of the thief as a sniper. The most feared and hated element on the battlefield.
I leave you with the first line of a sniper’s poem;
I am the hand of God. I deal in fate.
I’m not sure if you’re being sarcastic, but I definitely become an expert at WvW when I hop onto my thief. Instantly gain +5000 stat points to adaptability and skill at ‘overcoming’ stuff. But on any other class? Nope, not an expert after 400 hours of play. Not at all.
I guess by boons you mean another broken build, d/d ele?
Yes (well, at least that’s what I understood from watching the SotG video). Although it will help a lot against Guardians too.
Edit: Oops I forgot to answer your question. They basically said something about being more effective against people with lots of boons. As well as giving mobility to weapons other than SB.
What, when did I even say elementalists are OP? Read all the comments I’ve posted, can you find where I said that? You can’t, cause I didn’t say so.
I’ve also played this class for close to half a year now, so being a ‘complainer’ is hardly a valid comment.
Also your comment about ‘Eles lack invulnerability skills’. Really? Really? There are only a handful of invulnerability skills in the game. I’d say that Mist Form and Obsidian Flesh (granted nobody uses focus) are pretty good.
I’m not even gonna argue with your view that ‘D/D elementalists suck in 1v1’. If you want to believe that, then go ahead. I’ll be stomping people all day in WvW.
Staff is a different story and it isn’t really that good, but hey they already said something about it on SotG so it’s all ok. Besides, this thread is about D/D (but seems to have gone off topic).
(edited by Sunflowers.1729)
D/D eles are very strong roamers in WvW because of strong 1v1 and mobility. So massive zerg battles aside, they are good for taking small objectives and generally being a pain to kill. I’m pretty sure nobody complains that thieves are OP because of what they bring to a giant battle, but rather what they can do to small groups of players. By the way it is true that thieves can do the same with less effort, but 1) they are getting nerfed and 2) it still doesn’t make eles bad at roaming.
Even on your server (T1 I presume) there’s bound to be something to do without following the zerg around. And if there really isn’t then I concede that you win, because my earlier comment was based around these small fights. Enjoy your super long WvW queues, I guess.
Ironically, this won’t do a thing to address the much QQ’ed about D/P ‘permastealth’ build as it never needs to exit stealth.
It will do a lot to the D/P build because the strength of the build comes from either landing the backstab, or failing that having your initiative regenerate enough to enter stealth again. With this new change, not landing your backstab will still net you the revealed debuff, with no option to stealth again. The problem with D/P isn’t that it can stay in stealth forever, it’s that it can just keep stealthing over and over again. This kind of solves that problem.
Although of course it hits the silly CnD spammers most.
Hi guys, so I was messing around with traits and came up with an idea for a build: 20/25/10/0/15. Weapons are greatsword + sword/torch. But the main focus is on condition damage (mostly cause I couldn’t be bothered to get a different set of gear, and wanted to use a GS). Rabid stats (precision/toughness/condition damage) on everything. Runes of the undead cause I’m poor.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fgAQNAR8flwzipXUTkGbNJipCBH6DXHJFl2rVmBvdhA;TUAAzCpsWYYx2CA
I can’t figure out how to link it properly so you’ll just have to copy paste it. Sorry : (
The idea is to use the GS clone’s 3x attack for Sharper Images along with rabid gear for high crit chance, as well as punishing people for destroying the clones with the 3 ‘when a clone is killed’ traits. I usually use the sword to immobilize and land shatters more easily, and the torch is for condition removal, burning, and generally not dying.
Confusion can be applied from a clone being killed, or any shatter.
I thought about it for a while and couldn’t really find a reason why a GS would be superior to a staff, but it seems to work pretty well so who knows. Will try it out and see what happens.
So…anyone has any suggestions on how to improve it? Sorry if it’s been suggested before, but a quick search on Google + these forums didn’t turn anything up.
(edited by Sunflowers.1729)
The change doesn’t do anything if you attack out of stealth since you would have gotten revealed anyway.
What it does change is chain CnDing, and D/P thieves since you can no longer immediately stealth again if you fail to backstab someone. Which is a pretty big hit to those builds, but is warranted as they are rather ridiculous
Can’t you put another veil before the current one ends? Or does it behave like temporal curtain which won’t stealth you again?
If ascended items are 5% better than an exotic (71/67 = ~1.05, doesn’t that mean a full set of ascended will still be 5% (or less, because of base stats) better than exotics? Why would you take that 5% and multiply it by the number of ascended pieces?
What I’d like them to do is to make it so ascended items are equal in stats to exotics, but have additional benefits such as agony resistance, or +20% gold from monsters. This way there are still incentives to get ascended stuff but it doesn’t have too much of an impact.
In addition the comment that rings are easy to obtain via fotm is a bit biased – maybe we should change it so ascended items are easily available through WvW (for example) but you need to spend 1 month doing fotm daily for just 1 ascended item? Definitely a bad idea for those people who only do PvE, yes?
Until they make it so ascended items are easier to get for multiple characters, from something that is not ‘just run fotm’, this problem will always exist.
cool 2 stack of defiant removed now i can clearly solo fotm ._.
But wait i m playing www……i can use RTL to to kill that Arrow cart on the wall……
Well at least i can rach the zerg to updraft…..oh wait there are 4 mesmer/necro fields that will kill me if i even try to get near…..maybe i’ll change weapon :o
“you can t change weapon in battle”kitten (weirdest profanity filter ever ._. was justrage meme….)I know today all you hear is D/D is OP (its not), but outside a debatable system in wich survining in asquare gives you point, balance is completely different…..
I don’t even know what you are arguing about – you think that I think ele is OP? That was just a response to the thread starter about how having long cooldown weapon skills is balanced, because we have a lot of them.
And if you don’t think a D/D ele is one of the strongest classes in WvW you might want to practice on it a bit more. Yes you many need a staff sometimes. Doesn’t really change much as the generic 0/10/0/30/30 traits still work.
We have lots of powerful ~45 sec c/d weapon skills. E.g. Updraft and Earthquake kind of do the same thing, so instead of having 1 skill with a shorter c/d, isn’t it better to have 2 separate ones which can cooldown separately and be used back to back if you so desire?
Although I kind of wish fire grab had a shorter cooldown – it’s our hardest hitting nuke skill which requires burning and point blank range – and it doesn’t even hit all that hard if you build to not die right after using it. it’s not really that important though since we are in a good spot balance-wise.
Honestly I’m not sure whether to be annoyed that something like this is possible or laugh at how hilarious the idea is.
Edit: The way you worded your post makes it even more awesome.
(edited by Sunflowers.1729)
Possibly a good reason thieves’ stealth hasn’t been nerf, is their presence in a large scale battle has never changed the outcome of a battle. Which is also why Ele’s and Mesmers have been nerfed, being able to perform amazing feats like portal bombing, aoe area control and actually blocking treb fire.
When Anet created theif, they created the only class in the game that has no passive guard. A class that has to actively avoid all damage. To make this manageable they equipped them with an illusion to keep as much damage focus off them as possible. On top of that they worked this stealth illusion deeply into their offenses. Thus you have a class is dependent on stealth for defense and attack.
On top of that they removed the thief class’ traditional primary target. The support healer. Traditionally a party’s backbone was the healer and if the healer died, their party fell soon after. Thief’s role was to take them out so the party would would fall. That was Thief’s big impact. However now everyone’s their own support, Thief has lost their target, their role and their way to make a big impact.Anet knows all this, how they’re dependent on stealth, and how they don’t make a significant impact on big battles in WvW. This is probably why Anet hasn’t touched stealth.
This pretty much
That lone thief roamer makes no difference in the outcome of a WvW siege or whatever. The only thing they can do in WvW is cut enemy supply which they are very good at, but thats abt it.
That one thief ganking you doesnt change anything in WvW.
I have a feeling that A-Net will make changes to the thief tho in order to shut these whiners up. They would have to completely revamp the class tho because any nerfs to stealth will render the thief useless. We will see how it’s gonna play out. I love reading all the crying tho, very amusing :P
That lone thief roamer just needs to equip/switch to a shortbow and he becomes pretty useful. Don’t forget about smoke wall (which nobody seems to like) which blocks all projectiles.
You can’t just say that without having an ability to single-handedly change the fight of the battle (portal), thieves don’t do anything in large fights. After all by that metric Guardians are useless in zerg-fights too, and everybody knows that’s not true at all.
I’m still unsure as to why thieves claim they are useless in large fights – so maybe you can’t go in and pick people off like in the open field. My Mesmer uses her sword for smaller encounters a lot, but you sure won’t see me leaping into a giant zerg and pretending that the same kind of tactic works. See daggerstorm, smoke wall thing, cluster bomb, shortbow #4 (healing reduction from poison) and even shortbow #1 bounces.
As a thief I also know the annoying-ness of not being able to do the same thing to a zerg as I would in a smaller encounter, but look at the big picture and realize that almost no other class can as well.
Nerfs to stealth will not render the thief class useless. Sure the removal of stealth would, but nobody is asking for that. Even if you believe thieves are not OP, nobody can deny they are an extremely strong class. A slight nerf wouldn’t make them unviable. God forbid that Thieves get on the same level as Engineers. That’d make them completely useless (/sarcasm)
There are 2 kinds of permastealth:
A player chaining stealth skills to stay in stealth forever- this isn’t a problem in my opinion as they can’t do anything back to you either.
A player using very spammable stealthing abilities that allow a thief (usually D/P or P/D) to be near-unkillable while still outputting high amounts of damage. As someone who plays a thief like this, it is overpowered since you don’t need to build overtly tanky and can still have bunker-levels of survivability.
That’s what some of us mean by ‘permastealth’.
P/D requires c&d to keep on stealthing and that’s where it comes to bad opponents not able to negate a c&d.
D/P has a straight access to stealth but it requires 9 initiative out of 12 and it is hardly spammable. Of course traits can help here.
Anyway they are not “near-unkillable” especially if they want to do some kill.
I use the D/P build all the time and stealth is extremely spammable, especially since you have Blinding Powder and Hide in Shadows. Not sure why anybody believes stealth is hard to enter in combat. I literally stealth every 3-4 seconds. Go on, try it:
30 points into Shadow Arts with 2 initiative regen upon stealthing.
Dagger + Pistol
Blinding Powder & Hide in Shadows (and Shadow Refuge for more silliness).
The damage is amazing with a free backstab every time too. If I don’t have the revealed debuff, I am in stealth or will enter it within 1-2 seconds. Don’t even need to CnD off anything.
There are 2 kinds of permastealth:
A player chaining stealth skills to stay in stealth forever- this isn’t a problem in my opinion as they can’t do anything back to you either.
A player using very spammable stealthing abilities that allow a thief (usually D/P or P/D) to be near-unkillable while still outputting high amounts of damage. As someone who plays a thief like this, it is overpowered since you don’t need to build overtly tanky and can still have bunker-levels of survivability.
That’s what some of us mean by ‘permastealth’.
Being able to do a no-travel-time shatter is extremely powerful. While you make the excellent point that the highest mesmer burst is in melee range, such a trait would allow massive burst from shatter/instant confusion from maximum range while being impossible to predict, which is the issue. Shatters hit very hard, but are difficult to land since the clones run so slowly and predictably, but you can do more damage by going closer, which also puts you in more danger. A trait like this messes up the risk-reward ratio.
Maybe you could change the trait to ‘Clones move X% faster when being shattered’?
the only escape I run is shadowstep, if it’s on cooldown and I’m knocked down, I’m dead. Whenever HiS is interupted I’m basically guarenteed death unless I have all other cooldowns to blow. Do you suggest I run roll for init. and shadowstep with withdraw or something? Sure, infiltrator’s is an escape, but at that point the fight is lost, and unless I combo with every other cooldown I have (SR/BP/SS/HiS) IR is still not always effective and devours all initiative within 2 arrows, which just goes back to the good ol’ rage inducing aspect of stealth, which isn’t actually a valid problem.
saying that shadow arts is overpacked isn’t an argument – I say it’s required for any spec outside of glass because it’s really the only tree that offers any surviavbility, besides a few in acro. Glass will not put a single point in SA tree for the sake of being glass. Why does everyone think traiting into stealth healing heals for so much? I regen ~350 with near maximum healing power.
Let’s take a look at the wiki – Shadow’s Rejuvenation heals for 293 + 0.1 healing power a tick. Maximum healing power without sigils is about 1400 (I think..?) so assuming you really stack so much it would heal ~440 a second. So your number is off. How is that not a lot? That’s 900 hp in 2 seconds, and with the myriad ways a thief can gain stealth, over a fight that adds up to a lot. This is a bit of a moot point though as the scaling is so-so but the base number is high so why anyone would stack so much healing power is beyond me.
My thief has 300 healing power and the regeneration is enough to face off against all but the most glass-cannony of enemies (obviously with proper usage of dodge and stealth to avoid attacks).
In addition, why should thieves not have to trait into a tree that gives survivability, or equip some form of escape ability? If you want to be so amazing at instantly bursting down someone that you devote 2 of your utility slots to doing so, is it really anyone’s fault but your own that you neglected to put in something that stops you from dying? Do you see any elementalists who run less than 2 cantrips, or mesmers who don’t have at least blink or decoy on their skill bar? Of course not, because they are probably already dead.
So yes, I suggest you actually use some of the escape skills such as blinding powder, roll for initiative, shadow refuge, shadowstep, and withdraw.
In addition shadow arts is overpacked – that’s why every non-burst thief builds into it. The synergy with stealth is ridiculous – it gives longer stealth, healing in stealth, condition removal upon stealthing, and (indirectly) more stealth by giving you initiative back whenever you stealth. It gives toughness too which is excellent for bunkers. Yes acrobatics isn’t very good, but nobody is forcing you to use it.
The main difference between D/P and D/D is the trade off of Cloak & Dagger with Head Shot and Black Powder. IMO the benefits of D/P are far far greater than losing CnD, since you can get stealth through comboing anyway (and it is so much easier to land). The classic burst combo of Steal (mug) + CnD + Backstab works too. You just replace CnD with Heartseeker and it basically does the same thing. Just remember to press F1 before your heartseeker’s animation finishes.
I use D/P as well with a 0/30/30/10/0 build; it works pretty well and lets me have less precision in favor of massive amounts of toughness and crit damage. However I’ve slotted ruby orbs (for the crit damage) and devoted 30 points to precision so auto-attacking hits pretty hard anyway.
Some of the deep fire/earth traits are actually pretty awesome but the rest of the tree sucks/you depend on that single attunement so nobody goes into them. Pyromancer’s Puissance is super for getting tons of might stacks but you have to stay in fire so it is a bit troublesome to use.
Stability on attunement to earth, especially with boon duration in Arcane tree is nice too (especially in WvW), but if you put so many points into earth you’ll probably already be in earth attunement when you need the stability so it is awkward to use.
So while the traits may be good/bad by themselves it is also important to look at the big picture (which is why going deep into water is so popular, because cantrips work regardless of your current attunement).
Something important to note with the 30 point water trait that removes conditions on regen, is that it triggers on all regeneration. Even regen traited from cantrip usage.
Kidding right? They can get so many evades, heals and other survival tricks and still have more AoE then Thieves.
Dem water fields are glorious.
I know right, they have roll for initiative, shadowstep, withdraw, smoke fields and healing while in stealth, a spammable cripple on shortbow too. Their autoattack bounces as well.
Yeah! Wait what?
Can you guys stop using sPvP as an example – maybe I can say that since 4 Warrior 1 Mesmer outputs the highest damage in dungeons, that makes such a composition overpowered in WvW too? Does that make it clear how bad of a comparison it is?
sPvP is based around holding points with very small numbers of people. WvW is not. If you fight a thief in sPvP and he is unable to kill your fully bunker build, you win cause you have successfully defended the point. If the same thing happens in WvW it is at best a draw, unless you both happen to be solo with no NPCs (which is extremely rare) in a supply camp or something.
sPvP has limited stat distributions which limits thief burst and makes it so there is a minimum amount of tankiness that everyone possesses.
Sure both are ‘PvP’ but so is costume brawl. That’s PvP too and nobody uses it as a comparison.
Edit: If I need to concentrate very hard to beat any thief (but still beat him!) but can destroy any other class (including other D/D elementalists) with half the effort, how is that not a sign that the thief is OP?
(edited by Sunflowers.1729)
However, on pve none of you mentioned smthn about s/d. Why?
I’m not really sure about that, as Scepter +Dagger is pretty good in PvE. After all the AI doesn’t walk out of Dragon’s tooth and lets you set up a pretty nice might stacking combo. That being said, for PvE I find S/F to be better as all the dagger abilities are short ranged and kind of risky, and focus lets you survive a lot better. It gives you projectile reflection too which is awesome.
On the matter of P/V/T versus zerker, this is really up to you. I’m lazy and don’t like dodging every single thing (and go WvW a lot as D/D) so went P/V/T but of course damage suffers. Why not start with P/V/T and swap in zerker gear bit by bit until you reach a point where you don’t feel too squishy.
EDIT: Why does it censor S./D
(edited by Sunflowers.1729)
What runes/sigils/gear do you run?
Power Toughness Critdmg accessories + Mix of zerker & soldier gear (it’s like 50/50 right now and I didn’t optimize it as all the wrong pieces are zerker). Ruby orbs on everything. For sigils anything you want just not those that trigger on weapon swap.
Guaranteed kill on downed enemies while stealthed – not a problem.
Cannot be damaged by marks and lots of untargeted AoE while stealthed – no big deal.
It’s actually somewhat dangerous to try and stomp a downed enemy, especially if the other players have seen you stealth and try to stomp him.
Marks can hit stealthed enemies, and your point about AoE is a bit off – untargeted AoE will hit a stealthed thief, but only if you know where they went (which is the problem).
Thieves are OP, but not that much.
The fiery greatsword is an exception as it is an elite skill, and IMO any sweeping changes done to conjured weapons should not apply to it without first considering the implications.
Your point about the ice bow, however, is kind of moot. Yes the #4 attack does hit hard, but it is limited by the long cooldown which is enough of a constraint – even with infinite charges on the ice bow it wouldn’t be spammable. The other abilities on the ice bow are also pretty bad.
The problem with conjured weapons is that nobody has any use for them – maybe they are to be used for 1-2 strong attacks (e.g. Ice Bow #4)? But then their long cooldown makes it so slotting something like Glyph of Storms might be superior.
Maybe they can be used to make up for a gap in the ele’s build, such as hammer on a staff ele for some close-ranged action? They kind of suck for that as conjured weapons have relatively few defensive skills and lock you out of attunements.
P/D Cond builds (I realize they can also do this to a lesser extent. Is this the one you are reffering to?)
D/D cond builds
S/D autoattack builds
S/P autoattack builds
Permastealth builds
P/P unload builds
I was referring to Dagger + Pistol build, which many thieves seem to use nowadays (at least the better ones)
As for infiltrator’s arrow, thieves that can deal dmg are the glassiest that any class comes, and our class has so little stunbreak that we need that arrow for mobility precisely because without it our class would be doomed to bunker builds, not to mention it* breaks stealth* and requires a weapon change to a weapon that forces us to not have the spammable stealth you are talking about.
It doesn’t break stealth. Sure your character looks like it is no longer in stealth, but the buff is still there and enemy players still can’t see you. Yes it forces you to change to a non-stealth weapon, but now you are far away from the people who are trying to kill you, which is kind of the point.
I doubt you could reliably use the smoke + HS spam stealth and BS to any effect. The trait allowing the extra second of stealth would mean you wouldn’t have the 30 point trait in precision allowing 100% crit from stealth, unless you’re taking down the +% to dmg with daggers or from behind instead, in which case the same thing occurs: you aren’t the GC BS build they are complaining about because you don’t have as much dmg. Then there’s the issue of the revealed debuff, which I assume you are talking about by 3 seconds between back stabs. I would personally argue that you would either have a problem with HS auto targeting and ruining your stealth, meking it so you cant BS at all, or the time it takes you to pistol 5 + HS away from your target would most likely take you far enough away from your target that getting back in the 3 seconds of stealth would require that the target be moving towards you, or standing in place, neither of which should be your fault.
As a matter of fact, my build does exactly that: 0/30/30/10/0(Edit: Dagger Pistol are the weapons). Guaranteed crit in stealth, health regen in stealth + extra stealth duration, initiative regen when entering stealth with heartseeker (or even just extending the duration with a second heartseeker, which is kind of broken). +50% movespeed in stealth allowing easy backstabs. Condition removal when entering stealth, and 3 seconds after stealthing. I have +90% crit damage while maintaining 1800 toughness. 5k backstabs (though it goes up to 8k on low armor targets) every 3 seconds is nothing to be sneezed at. The build is extremely strong and relies solely on this heartseeker + black powder combo.
Edit (again): Using black powder + heartseeker will make you leap towards the enemy, hit him with heartseeker, then trigger the combo finisher that stealths you, allowing for an easy backstab. So the auto targeting is in fact very helpful!
(edited by Sunflowers.1729)
Stealth is not overpowered by itself – it is stealth combined with massive damage and mobility.
Stealth is countered by attacking the air – which doesn’t work when you don’t even know where the enemy is. Any thief who stands there after stealthing and doesn’t even change directions/dodge is a terrible player. Infiltrator’s arrow can get you out of most any situations, save being chain-knockdowned/stunned and having damage unloaded onto you – which would kill most other people anyway.
You immobilized me? Attacking me? Infiltrator’s arrow.
You place Ring of Warding (Guardian Hammer 5 circle)? Infiltrator’s arrow.
You outnumber me? Blinding powder + Infiltrator’s arrow.
You outnumber me and successfully chain knockdowns and stuns? Congratulations you outplayed me in a 1vX situation where any other class would die.
*You can replace Infiltrator’s arrow with shadowstep, steal, the shadowstep signet, or Sword 2 return (but most people don’t use that).
When I play my thief that one skill combined with long duration (4+ seconds) stealth allows me to get away from anything.
Oh and you forgot the heartseeker + pistol 5 combo, which is very spammable. Not sure why you decided to leave out one of the most prevalent thief builds in WvW to show how stealth isn’t spammable. Yes if you just stay in stealth it you cannot do any damage, but what happens if I decide to chain that combo in with backstabs? Every 3 seconds I disappear (with a free backstab too). Definitely spammable.
EDIT: I would also trade 3 second stealths for invulnerability, except, you know, you only get 3 seconds of it on your elite skill/utility with a long cooldown, and you can’t do anything during the period but walk around and stomp people.
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The point, I think, that some of us are trying to make is not that the trinity is necessarily better – it is that GW2 just lacks any discernible form of teamwork requirement anywhere.
Sure the trinity is old fashioned, but at least it gave us something to do – something for your team to work together around. And if you say healing is just looking at bars and pressing the same button over and over again that is a bit of an oversimplification – you still need to walk out of fires, account for burst damage from bosses, heal someone other than the tank while still keeping the tank alive, and a bunch of other stuff – so it’s not like GW2 is the only game where you need to actively move around. There was (at least when I played during BC), a large gap between a mediocre and a decent tank.
So you actually had to cooperate with your team, and were rewarded (or should I say, not punished) for doing it. In GW2 you can work together with your team, but it just does so little. Does it really matter that we have a Necro in our team so the Illusionary Warlock can hit just that little bit harder? How about a Ranger placing water fields on your hammer Guardian so every 2-attack heals everyone? It just does so little, isn’t really required anyway, and these are the stronger examples I can think of.
This is why I find the dungeons to be kind of boring. Of course is is due to the way they are designed too. Subject Alpha is a fine example – there are only 2 mechanics to him: 1) Hit the purple crystal if someone is inside and 2) Wait 2 seconds after the red circles appear then dodge. Sure it takes teamwork to hit the purple crystal (so many people just stare at it -_-). That’s it.
TL;DR – Removing the trinity isn’t bad but it has to be replaced with something to make mastery of the game not just ‘be good at dodge rolling’.
EDIT: Yes I do believe, contrary to some of you guys’ opinions, that playing within the trinity takes teamwork. It’s not just ‘I heal you guys and that’s it’ – I can say that playing my elementalist is just ‘do damage to boss and snare/stun/knockdown/whatever-CC-I-have-up to help the team’ and make it sound kind of simple too.
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But the funny thing is, everyone is calling for innovation and blasting other MMO’s for sticking to the Holy Trinity. It’s a lose-lose for game developers.
Sadly this is true (and a good counter-point to my argument).
I don’t agree with the sentiment that GW2 has synergy. On one hand there are combo fields, and builds that are meant to benefit your team, but in the end it is still an individual game of survival (especially in dungeons).
Sure you can play ‘support’ or ‘tank’ builds ala Altruistic Healing Guardian, but the benefit to your team is still small.
A simpler way to see this is if your ‘tank’ guardian dies. Will you still be able to defeat the boss? Of course. In most other MMOs, if your tank dies, your team wipes. Period. Same for your healer and sometimes DPS.
So I don’t see how anyone can argue that the synergy in GW2 is anything to write home about. Yes the generic 4-warrior-1-mesmer group works together pretty well, same with 3 guardians for permanent projectile reflection, but it’s still kind of iffy compared to other MMO games.
This isn’t necessarily bad, as it means you can just play whatever the heck you want and get away with it, as well as not having to depend on a tank or healer who may or may not suck.
It is just different, and honestly I find it kind of boring. (Disclaimer: this is my own opinion) Sure you can argue that tanks tanking, healers healing, and people doing damage is boring too, but at least you had to work together to do a dungeon. In GW2 it’s just a test of how well you can time dodges and hit the enemy.
Edit: Yes teamwork helps in WvW – nobody is disputing that. However in the end it is still every-man-for-himself. And for serious dungeons – let’s use Giganticus Lupicus as an example. He’s a decently difficult boss, and sure when I’m on a Guardian using teamwide stability to get people out of the bubbles helps a lot, as well as using aegis to safely rez people during his storm of green stuff. However if my team was skilled enough there is absolutely 0 need to do that as we would never get hit. Can you take a team of 5 fire-mages into the Deadmines? The answer is no.
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Downed state is what makes zergs powerful – even if one person is downed, the others can rez or just protect him/her. It’s a bit of a crutch I guess, but removing it is not the solution.
This is because by removing the downed state, burst damage could get out of control. Zerg-fights would be over in seconds with massive numbers everywhere.
Thieves would become even more overpowered in a 1v4 or less as they would have no need to even stealth stomp anyone (which is kind of silly in the first place) and could just burst the squishier people down first.
So no, don’t remove the downed state.