Guild Wars 2

DHawk.2687:

it works the same way but a PU condi mesmer will kill you without being revealed once, well until your dead. and yes we can trait into stealth, we get 1 second, mesmer gets the double amount. that would be fine if they wouldn’t be able to outstealth a thief, especially DD thieves

But then…don’t play D/D and expect to stealth for a long duration? I mean nobody plays Mesmer without stealth skills and expects to stealth for a long time (if at all) either. Unfortunately D/P is way better than all the other weapon sets but even if it wasn’t, it’s still the go-to stealth weapon.

PU Condi is even easier, just use shortbow to shoot the clones since the clone death traits are all gone. In PvP if they do that the point will just be decapped and in WvW it should be even less of a problem as you can just use shadow refuge and ignore them by running away.

Tringsh.2380:

- Pistol ricochet being removed without a range buff or replacement trait.

The range buff is actually on Ankle Shots, they just forgot to update the tooltip information.

Tringsh.2380:

…can we get some?
- Mesmers out-stealthing us with little to no reveal.

Reveal works the same for Mesmers, and anyway if both Thief and Mesmer trait for maximum stealth, the Thief can still get a lot more (and do it more often). I don’t see the problem with this, if they want to trait for lots of stealth why should they have less stealth than a non-traited Thief?

It’s like having 2 Phalanx Strength Warriors in PvE, it’s redundant and you could put another class/build there. Having one is really great but if you take two you’ll sacrifice a slot where a different class would work better.

kdaddy.5431:

my question to you is shouldnt they do 6-9k dmg when there putting everything into this 20 sec attack?

I….didn’t say they shouldn’t? Where did I say that?

Ok I’ll reiterate. IMO Rampage isn’t OP, it’s not too strong, and it’s counterable by dodging or what have you. But to expect someone to not ever get hit is kind of stretching it. What if I stealth the warrior with SR? Or you ran out of condi clears and got immobilized? Or a million other scenarios.

Also I play all the classes except Necro, that doesn’t change my point. Anyway, this irrelevant discussion has pushed the thread so far off topic that I’m not going to reply anymore.

SlayerSixx.5763:

You got +1d by a DPS and expect NOT to die? Getting +1d is quite literally the job of every dpser.

For god’s sake I know this, it’s just that when Deimos said “just don’t get hit” – it’s not always possible.

Okay? Stop it with the strawman arguments.

I don’t know why you guys are getting so fed up over this, the only thing I’m saying is that sometimes it is not possible to avoid every attack. I didn’t say that it was hard (or easy) to do so, nor did I say that Rampage was OP. It’s like dodging Kill Shot, don’t tell me you never screwed up and got hit by one before.

kdaddy.5431:

wait let me explain, so ive been running rampage since the pre cele since before it had a huge amount of damage. I used it for damage reduction and straight stability. Back then it did no damage and it was frustrating but it had its purpose. Now people are saying its silly damage acting like theres no counter.

I main warrior i run stances with vigor. This is literally what i do when they pop rampage i double dodge waiting for there attacks (dont even have to attempt attacking) pop endure the pain and melee for 2-3 seconds and switch to rifle and start to back up and hit cripple. It slows him down for like 1 sec and it creates enough distance to where there either chasing me or hes forced to use dash in which case i dodge again since i got vigor on a stance. Then he has literally about 2 seconds left to land a attack.

I dont know if you have seen mesmer play 1 vs 1 against rampage warriors but rampage warriors literally land zero hits against the new mesmers inside the circle. I dont know which class your saying you cant avoid rampage attacks, i think it would help if i knew what you were playing.

OK so what if he comes up to you when you’re halfway through fighting someone else? In a perfect 1vs1 scenario with all cooldowns up of course you wouldn’t get hit, but that’s not always possible.

Scapper.4236:

I understand the mathematics, and I do not disregard it. What I want to emphasize is that the Pledge should only be active for stealth provided by the mesmer and not second parties, even though it would require you to waste cooldown, but frankly it wouldn’t matter because I am sitting in stealth for such a long time, until I decide to open, by which time I have a stealth off cooldown.

I am not planning to sit in stealth for the whole duration and of course there is a point where I would burst, also adding to that a very sound way of bursting for mesmer when running solo is to use The Prestige and then bursting, (had North of 2,8k burst Prestiges myself) What is the issue? Obviously I don’t care about the math because practically I have tested and successfully was able to burst twice when running with a thief because of the “amazing cool-down reduction”. Of course this is all situational, but what happens when the thief is not there, well, I can then sustain myself by wasting cooldowns which I would not have done in the first instance because the aim is not seeing how long I can sit in stealth but to what extent it can be abused and played around with when running with a focus party.

Still not sure what you’re getting at, if you didn’t use torch stealth when stealthed by the Thief, wouldn’t it be off cooldown as well?

Can you clarify? What’s the difference between:

a) You have both Prestige + Thief stealth active, then hit the enemy and enter stealth again because the double cooldown reduction makes it come off CD faster

b) Thief stealths you, you attack, then stealth again with Torch because you didn’t use it in the first place.

In both you can attack from stealth and disappear again after attacking. In fact case (b) is always better because you have the option to extend stealth if it’s needed, unless you really need the boons from PU (in case (a) you can get the buffs both before and after)

So yes it’s a bug – which should be fixed – but it doesn’t do that much.

kdaddy.5431:

Sunflowers.1729:

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

Vague Memory.2817:

So I’ve just come out of a ranked PvP match and the combat log shows the following sequential attacks:

- Critical hit for 7,791 using dash.

- Critical hit for 3,910 using kick.

- Critical hit for 5,106 using smash

=16,807 combo

wtf

I don’t remember warriors hitting that hard before.

why did you let the warrior hit you?

Because…it’s not possible to dodge every single attack? Of course you should try not to fight rampaging warriors and go somewhere else instead (or stealth.etc) but if someone insists on fighting – especially on a small point where kiting is hard – eventually you will run out of blinds, dodges, or just make a mistake.

you obviously didnt watch the latest esl, all the rampage warriors use rampage to run away from losing fights and in the lower brackets the rampage warrior was losing 1 vs 1 fights in the circle

Er ok, that doesn’t really change my point that you just can’t dodge every attack…? I didn’t say rampage was super OP or whatever, just that avoiding 100% of abilities is very difficult.

Edit: I’d like to add that I think Rampage is fine, it’s like Time Warp and Lich Form with a powerful effect but on a long cooldown.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

Vague Memory.2817:

So I’ve just come out of a ranked PvP match and the combat log shows the following sequential attacks:

- Critical hit for 7,791 using dash.

- Critical hit for 3,910 using kick.

- Critical hit for 5,106 using smash

=16,807 combo

wtf

I don’t remember warriors hitting that hard before.

why did you let the warrior hit you?

Because…it’s not possible to dodge every single attack? Of course you should try not to fight rampaging warriors and go somewhere else instead (or stealth.etc) but if someone insists on fighting – especially on a small point where kiting is hard – eventually you will run out of blinds, dodges, or just make a mistake.

I’ve been playing some of every class (except Necro and Warrior) and don’t think the difference in power is that big.

Anyway, WvW is not balanced and I doubt they will ever make it so. Yeah it sucks, but when you have slower classes (Guardian, Necro) vs faster/more stealth classes (Mesmer, Thief) the latter will always have a massive advantage when roaming. Maybe the new map will change that (with more non-class related ways to disengage) but in the current state they can’t change this fact without messing up PvP balance. In any case I was able to do the ‘take down larger groups’ thing with Thief just fine, it’s not only Mesmers that can do it with ease. You can do it with any class it’s just that running away is easier on Thief/Mesmer when things go south.

Going back to PvP it did seem that the classes were slightly imbalanced but not really that much. Yes I even used ‘bad’ or ‘subpar’ builds like Medi Guard, P/P Thief (okay this one isn’t that good but you can still back-cap and +1 points easily, which you should be doing anyway), Mesmer (without PU or lockdown or interrupt mantra), S/F Fresh Air Ele .etc . No this doesn’t include useless things like Magi S/P Condi Thief.

Obviously I tested the ‘OP’ builds too and they were definitely stronger but not that much. Maybe if you are in a competition you’d want to use them, but casually it didn’t really matter.

You know, I’m getting tired of the arguments going around in circles and getting nowhere, so here’s a quick summary. Hopefully we can all agree on this.

1) PU is too strong.

-Very few people use it in sPvP, so we can conclude that it’s either not too strong there, or that other traits are even more OP. No conclusion can be drawn.

2) PU is too strong, in WvW.

-Only when escaping when roaming, or when attempting to escape a zerg.

3) PU is too strong in WvW in the situations mentioned above.

Yes, it is very strong for these purposes. I don’t think anyone will disagree. What is being pointed out is that Thieves can also do the same thing but better. Seriously, do you think that WvW has so many roaming Thieves because they are hard to play or high risk? Really? Even now I see more roaming Thieves than Mesmers. Hop on your Thief, practice for a bit and you can do it too. It’s really easy to run away.

Furthermore, Anet does not balance around being able to escape when roaming. I know you want them to, and so do I (because being able to reset a fight as many times as you want is silly), but they don’t. Proof: Necro and Guardian are terrible at running away.

TLDR: Yes it’s broken, but only in an area where (a) Thief is more broken and (b) Anet doesn’t care about, for whatever reason.

Okay? I hope that was a good summary.

Edit: It’s super strong for dueling too, but that’s probably even less of a concern for Anet.

So yes, I don’t care if PU is nerfed. But it would be rather unfair if Thieves maintained their ridiculous escape capabilities.

Tao.1234:

Mesmers are now in good position and are balanced.

Only PU need some rework, or rather Confusion condition does.

I’m pretty sure most Mesmers don’t use PU in sPvP

Choppy.4183:

My mesmer also doesn’t have travellers, and as a noob I survived every party wipe and thief gank without breaking a sweat, while still contributing solid damage pressure throughout fights. That seems right to you?

I was able to do that the same day I reached 80 on my Thief. So…yes? If you, like mentioned above, have trouble escaping on a Thief, you’re doing something very very wrong. (Edit: Apart from being 100-0-ed instantly of course, but PU won’t save you there either)

Ele with Fiery GS can escape well too. Anyway, for further proof that Anet just doesn’t care about people escaping when roaming, look no further than the Necromancer.

Choppy.4183:

@Denis
You’re contradicting yourself. If it doesn’t affect any game mode that matters, as far as you’re concerned, then it shouldn’t matter to you if it gets rolled back.

But then you ask why mesmers shouldn’t have long escape, suggesting that it matters on some level. And to that I say they already have it, which is why mesmers without PU are perfectly viable.

The long PU stealth makes that escape, and even mid-fight breathing room, OP relative to the rest of the game. You want long stealth like a thief? Would you be willing to shorten the range and increase the CD on Blink for it? Lower your health pool, perhaps? Increase the shatter skill CD and have it shared across all of them as a global cooldown? I wouldn’t, because it would gut mesmers, but that’s the sort of price thieves pay for their stealth.

Honestly, you sound like the Engineers that claimed Grenadier was balanced while glitched.

And yet they are (or at least, were) the most common roaming class by a very large margin. We are discussing WvW right? Well the numbers speak for themselves. Obviously, the price that they ‘pay’ for stealth doesn’t include massive burst, the best mobility in the game, and no cooldowns on weapon skills.

Ya PU is a bit over the top right now but your comparison is so biased it isn’t even funny.

Choppy.4183:

A weird argument is emerging that basically says,

1. Long stealth doesn’t help you in PvP
2. The stealth buff doesn’t matter in zergs
3. 1v1 and small scale Wvw don’t matter
4. (Therefore) the stealth shouldn’t be reduced

If the long stealth doesn’t matter in some areas in the game, that isn’t a reason to keep it, it’s a reason to take those areas out of consideration because they’ll be fine either way. It matters in some areas of the game, and reducing the stealth addresses that while keeping mesmers viable and not impacting other areas of the game.

Well…

There’s also the argument that “Thieves have been able to do this since forever, so why is everyone fine with them doing it but not Mesmers?”

Carighan.6758:

But… if I disengage, then what have I won? Nothing.

I try the alpha burst, it fails, I escape. Considering that points are gained for controlling objectives, I hardly contribute to winning the fight here, plus if anyone so much at sneezes into this 1v1 encounter I’m dead.

That’s assuming power-PU, ofc. condi shatter-PU and you got a wholly different issue in that while you can win 1v1s via attrition, you’re rubbish outside of stopping any solo runner, a lot like – and hence it’s so familiar – those 1v1 stealth highwayman thieves.

It’s really not that big a thing. Sure it helps you survive but… well… so you can survive a fight which the game isn’t even balancing for, /weak_cheer. Not really impressed by that.

Stealthing 10 people for 10s and then a zerg via Veil for 4s are the points you could argue with me about balancing on, but 1v1 fights? Really? Who cares, the devs certainly don’t.

Actually what you have ‘won’ is not having to run all the way back from a waypoint, and continue doing whatever it is you were doing. Hitting dolyaks/camps/tagging keeps to stop waypointing are all very effective when you can just keep resetting fights. Think about it, people sweep keeps not because they want the loot bag from that one Mesmer, but because of what they can do when left unchecked. Same with roamers and all the actions listed above.

With that being said, Thieves have been doing this for years (and still are, with stealth and bettter mobility) and Anet doesn’t seem to care. So I don’t see why they would nerf PU over this issue.

Yes I agree it’s cheese and fighting someone who either wins or escapes is annoying, but Anet hasn’t done anything for ages about an issue which existed – and still exists – before the patch anyway. And no, stealth trap doesn’t count when I can just shadowstep away.

TLDR: Anet doesn’t care about roamers.

Choppy.4183:

Isn’t that exactly what you did with your nerf comment? Compare pre-patch with post-patch?

No…? I don’t see at all how my comment was comparing the state of Mesmers pre and post patch.

Here I quoted it:

Remember when Chaotic Dampening was nerfed by 60%, and everyone agreed that that was a knee-jerk reaction to a trait that was strong but didn’t warrant that big of a nerf?

Changing PU back to 1 second (from 3 seconds) is a 66% reduction, or even an 80% nerf in the case of MI. That would be an even larger change. Hopefully this puts it into perspective.

Edit: I compared it to 1 second because people were saying to change (revert) the skill to +1 second of stealth.

To be even clearer I meant that just because a trait is strong before the patch, doesn’t mean it is still strong after.

Choppy.4183:

Mostly true (except at the beginning, as noted by others). But it was still a reasonably popular trait choice pre-patch (not optimal, but forgiving) that lacked any real justification for a buff.

You really can’t compare pre-patch and post-patch traits. Anyway, lots of other traits considered ‘strong’ pre-patch were buffed too.

Meditation traits on Guardian were all rolled into a single GM. However, medi guard was already strong before the patch. Cantrips on Ele, already used by like 90% of the Ele population, also had their traits combined into one.

Should we then nerf the Guardian medi trait because medi guard was already good before the patch and so it ’doesn’t deserve a buff’? Of course not! You can’t just make that kind of comparison. It shouldn’t even factor into the decision at all.

Remember when Chaotic Dampening was nerfed by 60%, and everyone agreed that that was a knee-jerk reaction to a trait that was strong but didn’t warrant that big of a nerf?

Changing PU back to 1 second (from 3 seconds) is a 66% reduction, or even an 80% nerf in the case of MI. That would be an even larger change. Hopefully this puts it into perspective.

Well, I would add another category: best escapes. In WvW you will frequently encounter an unbalanced or losing situation. There is no build which can withstand a 1v3 for a long time (against players of the same skill), so you will need to run away to survive.

D/D Ele with Celestial gear (Cleric is a bit overkill) can run away pretty well while sustaining in combat. Fiery GS is great for escaping too.

Warrior is good too but you will have to run greatsword, since it gives the most mobility skills.

Before the patch, Thieves were one of the hardest classes to kill (if played properly). With the massive increase in burst damage they die faster but still have the best escapes of all classes. Shadow Arts gives decent regeneration too.

PU Mesmer is good too but I’d wait until Tuesday as it may be nerfed.

MailMail.6534:

Necrotize.2974:

Power mesmers running PU are a completely different beast. They also give up quite a bit to get that stealth. Dueling obviously can’t be dropped. Illusions is also fairly mandatory as it reduces clone/phantasm cds AND shatter cds as well as providing some might. That leaves usually Domination, which can provide an insane amount of vulnerability to a proper burst. So giving up anyone of those lines for stealth isn’t exactly an easy choice.

They do not give up quite a bit to get stealth… Power shatter is highly effective no matter what 2 trees you go into in addition to Dueling. Illusions is not the least bit mandatory imo. Yes, most power shatter builds will benefit from the line, but you give up that extra power & clone management in exchange for either survivability or control. The latter is what is causing issues.

Duel/Chaos/Dom = the ability to quickly lock enemies down via CS and MoD. This is the biggest issue people are seeing. You don’t need the Shatter CDs in Illusions when it only takes 1 shatter out of stealth to down an enemy. Dwayna forbid the Mesmer is running Mental Anguish when he shatters you…

All this is to really say damage across all professions is just high right now. We’ll have to wait a while to see how things shake out and see if people are able to adjust. Maybe we’ll see tanker amulets used in response or more supportive builds being run…

Going Duel/Chaos/Dom with Mantra of Distraction (and assuming both Blink and Decoy are taken) means you have zero condition removal. I’d say that’s a pretty big weakness.

Then change the mechanic so you can’t easily shatter combo from stealth, not reduce the duration or boons because it can be used defensively too. Your suggestion of changing it back to +1 second will reduce the potential for a stealth burst but also hurt its defensive uses.

(edit: like for example casting a phantasm takes you out of stealth, not actually that you can’t use Mind Wrack when invisible)

TyPin.9860:

Menaka.5092:

TyPin.9860:

Thief backstab needs to be in melee range

thieves have a handful of gap closers and teleports on 0 cooldown

The discussion developed from Backstab. So we are talking about D/P or D/D Thieves. To say Thieves have several teleports on 0 cooldown is kinda misleading, because they are still connected with costs. Also 0 CD teleports of D/D or D/P is only on Longbow and it is actually quite expensive. I am not saying this is unfair. Still, the Thief needs to be in Melee range and thus risks to be hit by PAoE.

^He also said D/P has no 0 CD gap closer. Any Thief player will know that not only is D/P #3 (Shadow Shot) a 900 range teleport for 4 init, you can press 3>1 and still land the Backstab.

I mostly played Thief before the patch and seriously, landing the Backstab is not particularly difficult. You can hit them from the side, and it still applies the bonus damage. The Shadow Shot combo works most of the time (even if its projectile is reflected, they are teleported to you) although with steal/shadowstep/infiltrator’s signet you don’t even need to use it that much. Aegis is even more of a joke as you can hit them once and still remain in stealth. And if it fails, just try again! You can stealth as many times as you want with D/P.

I still think it’s cheesy and that neither class should be able to spike someone down from stealth instantly, but it’s really not true that Thieves can’t do it.

TyPin.9860:

Thief gets revealed from Backstab. Mesmer can time shatter just when his stealth wears off, preventing him from being revealed.

Actually, this only works with Decoy and Mass Invis. If your Torch invisibility ends next to an enemy, the burn will reveal you. Just go to sPvP, hit a golem, use The Prestige, and wait for 3/6 seconds to test this.

To be fair you can use Illusionary Leap just before stealth ends, then swap after, but that’s rather impractical and unless you time it perfectly, gives a lot of time for the target to react.

And you know very well why Thief has reveal, it’s because they have no CDs and that is the only mechanic stopping them going Backstab>CnD>Backstab>CnD.etc. Mesmer stealth has cooldowns so you can’t do that continuously.

Edit: Before someone points out that Initiative is a limiting factor, I mean something like Backstab>CnD>wait for initiative>repeat. Obviously I can’t test if this is possible to sustain indefinitely but you sure can do it several times in a row.

sinject.4607:

Laraley.7695:

I’ve been dueling a friend of mine and noticed that you get blinded even though you evade the shatter, so it’s basically unavoidable. Is this intended?

bumping till this gets fixed

no mechanic should be unevadable

Actually, you can’t dodge through Static Field, Line of Warding, or similar skills. It’s probably a bug that you can’t dodge this blind, but there are definitely un-evadeable attacks in the game that should stay that way.

Also you effectively can’t dodge things like Fire/Air sigils because they will just proc the next time you hit them but that’s kind of a different issue.

Edit: Basically what the people said above
Edit2: I don’t think Mesmer is OP, it’s just a suggestion if they really want to nerf PU.

robertul.3679:

OlrunTheBlade.1486:

If they go into Inspiration, they don’t have enough damage to kill a Cele DD Ele. It’s a close match up even if they go full offensive.

They can already take domination and dueling which are basically the power dps lines.

They used to be limited by the fact that they needed 6 into illusions for persona, elasticity and 30% shatter cooldown.
Now they get 15% of shatter cooldown as base and the other traits as baseline.

Add to all this the option to trait full inspiration for sustain and the overpowered gamebreaking powerblock which makes them rather problematic to deal with.

Isn’t this true for all classes? Eles can now take fire and air while still keeping water (or probably water+arcana+fire), Thieves can take deadly arts and crit strikes while still having shadow arts.etc

This doesn’t fix the problem, eventually a few servers will rise to the top and people interested in WvW will eventually migrate there, leaving empty tiers at the bottom.

To actually solve it, I think a few things need to be done (at least):

1) Separation of PvE and WvW population. I’m on SoS, and it is usually ‘full’. YB always has more people than us but they are only ‘very high’ population. By doing this it gives a clearer metric of a server’s population.

2) Make WvW fun for all tiers. Even on SoS (T2) I sometimes have trouble finding people to fight. And the two enemy servers almost always have larger zergs. Presumably, lower tiers are even less sparsely populated. EotM was an interesting idea but it didn’t have the feeling of getting points for ‘your server’.

One possible idea is to have only 3 enormous servers with a much higher population cap, and each of the existing worlds will be bundled into one of these 3. Of course there are problems with this idea, such as map queues and servers losing their community but this is just supposed to give an idea of what they could do. It might not even be possible to implement with the current way GW2 is programmed anyway.

3) Put a new map with interesting mechanics. They are doing that in the expansion so we’ll just have to wait and see.

I’ve been playing Mesmer and it’s nice to be able to reliably avoid zergs with Prismatic Understanding. I don’t feel pressured into roaming on solely Thief any more. Yes it is cheesy when you can disengage from (almost) anybody you are fighting, but Thieves and to a lesser extent Warriors have always been able to do that anyway.

Engi is fun in zergs with the Mortar Kit. The water field is amazing since it’s not connected to any healing skill (which you might have needed to use before reaching the zerg), and unlike Eles it isn’t gated by the attunement swap cooldown. Also, the projectiles on it follow a high curved path allowing you to defend structures much more easily, since you don’t have to stand at the edge. It’s a small detail but makes the mortar kit really appealing.

Didn’t try other classes yet.

rotten.9753:

Sunflowers.1729:

I don’t know if it’s actually OP or not (been playing Mesmer and Engi since the patch) but people used to never go into fire because you need water and arcana to survive. So even if you could blind someone, you’d still die easily.

Now you can take all the 3 lines and I’d wager that’s why the trait is being used now.

So basically, before the trait revamp, a profession was too fragile to run it?

Basically yes. Well I guess you could run burst builds before the patch but it wasn’t such a good idea as you were incredibly fragile (and at that point there were much better classes for it anyway)

rotten.9753:

It’s amusing to hear that fire line “perma” blinds is OP since that trait hasn’t been changed since ever.

So what made it OP, OP?

I don’t know if it’s actually OP or not (been playing Mesmer and Engi since the patch) but people used to never go into fire because you need water and arcana to survive. So even if you could blind someone, you’d still die easily.

Now you can take all the 3 lines and I’d wager that’s why the trait is being used now.

Well, I agree that it’s kind of weird (hello Unload). D/D is fun and I really like how you can actually dodge the CnD, unlike D/P which is mindless and lets you chain stealth.

Also uh, all Thief builds require spamming of something. It’s either spamming Unload, spamming 3 (on sword), spamming 521521521521521521 on D/P, or 515151515151 on D/D. You can’t get away from it as that is how the class was designed.

And this should probably go to the Thief forum.

Uh in case anyone was still wondering, I got it to work with Autohotkey.

Make a script and type in:

+WheelUp::
Send, 1
Return

+WheelDown::
Send, 1
Return

Then run the script. When you hold shift and scroll up or down, it presses 1. I’m quite sure this is allowed, since each time you scroll it only does one action. But if anyone can confirm this, that would be nice too.

The + sign stands for shift in AHK, you can change it to control (^) or alt (!) if you want a different key.

I bound the scroll wheel to 1 (I have a Razer mouse so I used the software that comes with it, but you might be able to do it with Autohotkey too), since there wasn’t a way to change the key bind in GW2 itself.

Unfortunately alt-tabbing to browse the web is really inconvenient because trying to scroll up turned into pressing 1 so I have to change it. And I can’t figure out how to bind shift+scroll to anything either so scrolling up and down in bank/inventory is a pain.

Hendrix.9763:

Taking stealth away from the Thief would be like taking an Elementalist’s water trait line. The class would simply be broken without it. It serves as the most important aspect of a Thief’s defensive play along with their mobility from the various shadowsteps they have.

Actually the change is more like this:
-Removing poison’s healing reduction to healing, so there is no actual way to counter it.
-Make healing able to be spammed every 3-4 seconds
-Give one class in particular a 100% healing reduction for 8 seconds, on an automatic proc. That’s not letting people play against it, the person applying the healing reduction doesn’t have to do anything at all except attack.

Being able to damage through stealth isn’t a counter, that’s like saying damage is a counter to healing :/. OP has a valid point but lots of people are just strawmanning it.

Yeah but with 100% boon duration CnD would stealth for 8 seconds and Decoy 12 (assuming proper traits). Do you really want that? I sure don’t.

It’d also give certain classes a massive advantage over stealth, while other people who can’t boon strip as easily will have a much harder time.

I like the idea but it’s really hard to balance (although stealth isn’t balanced anyway) since you can do things like stack boon duration, boon share to get massive amounts of stealth, and lots of other abusable tricks (8 second veil in WvW?)

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Revival

No (but there are certain traits and runes which let you revive faster)

ResJudicator.7916:

OP’s posts are kind of ridiculous. They’re always a long-winded rant attacking anyone who suggests balance changes that adversely affect thief (good or bad). Instead of writing up a multi-page tantrum, you could actually try responding to the points in a logical manner?

I’d do the same for you here, except you haven’t actually made any points except to disingenuously suggest that everyone who disagrees with you is a scrub.

Oh god yes, you just described what I was trying to say.

As a Thief player I find some aspects of the class super easy. D/P is like playing with training wheels, although S/D does take a good amount of skill. In WvW roaming it’s even easier, I usually never die over the span of ~2 hours.

Just thought I’d add that in. Why is D/P hard anyway? Cause you’re squishy? That’s the same for literally any burst build that isn’t Warrior or Guardian.

Edit: I can post the screenshot of my Thief if you want, if that will stop you from going “you never played a Thief, your opinion is moot”

I think the change is a good one, if only for the sake of consistency. Why should teleports be unaffected by movement skills, and dashes/leaps not? Of course, if it were up to me I’d have made teleports affected by chill/cripple instead of the other way around, but at least it is kind of consistent now. As it is you can teleport while immobilized, as well as up some terrain.

For those people arguing that mobility is affected in the open world, the difference is actually quite small. A few weeks ago I used a GS+Sword Warrior and had a race against someone simply running. Our base movement speed was the same (+25%), and I used GS #3&5, Sword #2, and Bull’s Charge on cooldown.

Over a distance that took me about 3 mins to travel, she completed it in 25% more time (80% of my speed). Already we can see that movement skills don’t do that much. They only account for 20% of the distance I traveled (the rest is from running). If this 20% is no longer affected by the +33% bonus, then 20/1.33 = ~15.

So you will travel at 95% of the speed you previously were at, assuming of course that all your movement skills are leaps (and not teleports). The math is a bit wrong but I’m sleepy and can’t be bothered to fix it. In any case it’s not that big of a difference. And apart from the Silverwastes there isn’t that much long-distance running to do anyway.

Edit: In WvW where being able to disengage depends on the relative speed of two players, I agree that this change makes Warriors and to a lesser extent Rangers/Guards significantly better at escaping..

It really depends on you. But you probably want some personal opinions so here’s mine:

Mesmer, Engi, and Ele are the most fun because you can combine your skills in creative ways. Guardian, Warrior, and Thief are objectively good but not very entertaining to play. (Thief especially, even PvP is just spamming the same few skills over and over).

Ranger is kind of boring, and no comment on Necro (I don’t have it at lv 80)

T raw.4658:

1. Thieves can’t stack stealth on a wall. Used to be but that was removed.

I literally just tested it (like 1 min ago) and you still can. Well, you can’t keep spamming CnD to get a huge stack but you can still gain stealth if you aren’t already in stealth.

How do you handle rapid fire? I dunno, the same way other classes do it? Press dodge.

Let me ask you a question: if you keep saying that rapid fire counters stealth (which I do agree, it does), what else counters stealth?

-Stealth disruptor trap (impractical)
-Sic em
-???

I mean, there has to be some way to counter stealth. I used to play Thief in WvW a lot until it got too boring, as it’s too easy to ‘outplay’ people with my easy spammable auto-might stacking-self regenerating-condition-removing-enemy blinding stealth mechanic.

Just don’t think of it as invincibility and you’ll be fine.

Here you go, this is my human elementalist. I kind of want feedback and this seems like a good place to find it.

Edit: clearer picture

I’ve been using this build since forever:

0/30/30/10/0

Berserker gear+weapons, Cavalier accessories

(Edit: To reach 2k+ toughness you have to use a few pieces of Soldier instead of Berserker, but there isn’t really a need to stack it thathigh)

Thieves are not terrible at PvE – the reason Mesmers are considered ‘required’ is because of their unique supporting abilities (feedback, portal.etc).

Thieves can do the same thing as a Warrior – a lot of damage. While their multi-target damage may not be as high, it is still quite significant (certainly better than some other classes). On single targets they do the highest damage.

Of course, you have to actually not suck (lower health so less room for mistakes), which is more than can be said for most Thieves. That’s probably why there is the perception that they are terrible at dungeons, when it isn’t the case.

Zacchary.6183:

Funny thing is alot of these people who are complaining havn’t put forth any effort towards combating a thief and instead would rather get on the QQ train and beg Anet for nerfs that are just not going to happen.

The last profession update thieves got 1 buff and 5-6 tooltip fixes. Perhaps Anet is starting to get tired of the kittening. Perhaps they want people to stop crying for nerfs and start figuring out how to beat them… you know, not be lazy baddies.

When even the creator of the build says that it’s overpowered, I’m inclined to believe him more than some random person with a cavalier attitude.

Maybe you should learn how to play the Thief (what you seem to like saying) before saying that everyone else sucks, because I’ve personally tried the build and it is ridiculous. The problem isn’t that people suck, it’s that you are terrible and can’t see its potential.

Here, I even quoted it so you don’t have to find where the post it:

Sceinna.3561:

THIS. NEEDS.A.NERF big time.

I play P/D but I used to run D/P before it went mainstream (Yishis build inspired by my build, he gave me credit in his D/P video).

Either you remove the blindness from the single bullet (as you combo)… or remove blind all together, I can’t really think of a fix but D/P is OP as hell.. luckily most players have no clue how to play it and are nothing more than annoying.

My video : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZOl-e8KCkY (9.5k views)

Scorpio Spork.9568:

Sunflowers.1729:

My build is:

0/30/30/10/0 + D/P. Berserker Gear, Cavalier Accessories, Beryl+Ruby jewels.

As you can see, having 2700 armor isn’t squishy at all. Since then I’ve added in some ascended pieces for 15600 hp and >100% critical damage, with 1700 toughness (not armor).

For videos, I’m still working on one but keep getting sidetracked (and my video software keeps messing up). This week’s matchup was against Blackgate where the pretty well-known [RIOT] guild is. Obviously trying to 1v3 them is suicidal, but during fights with them the build proves to have good sustained damage+survivability.

Okay, I had to +1. That’s a really nice gear combination. Your toughness/vitality is incredibly similar to my p/d Thief, which I didn’t think could be done with a backstab build. And good luck against Blackgate! I’m on Yak’s Bend, so comparatively, I have a much easier time.

If you have a channel already put together, I’d love to sub.

Sorry, don’t have a channel (not planning to have one either). Thanks though.

Here’s the build with food+all ascended gear (which is a pain to accumulate).

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/thief/?7.0|8.1g.h17.a.1g.h2|5.0.0|1g.a1.1g.a1.1c.a1.1g.a1.1c.a1.1g.a1|2v.d13.2v.e13.3v.e16.2v.e13.3v.e16.1i.67|0.u68c.u45b.a6.0|39.1|59.5a.5b.5h.5u|e

Scorpio Spork.9568:

Sunflowers.1729:

I did – my Thief is the easiest character to play and I frequently 1v2-3 because if anything goes wrong, it is so easy to escape. The amount of damage you can avoid with stealth+blinds if used properly is amazing. This doesn’t even take into account how broken Hidden Killer is because of the uncontrolled crit-damage scaling outside sPvP.

The only annoying part is that being effective in a zerg consists of going to the back and picking off people quickly which, while good, doesn’t net a lot of bags.

Anyway, I just wanted to say that everyone seems to be insulting the OP (because he sucks or whatever). That doesn’t change anything – he has a valid point.

I’d love to see your build and videos against good players. I’m not calling you a liar; I’m just saying 1v3 only works against awful players/builds. Sure, you can escape if something goes wrong. So can my Mesmer and Elementalist.

Is your issue with Hidden Killer or with high crit damage builds? In either case, stacking crit damage leaves a very squishy thief. And if they’re using Valkyrie, that means their health is high, but they have no toughness. Meaning, their heal will be pretty small (and probably on a 30 second cooldown). A smart player shouldn’t have much problem dealing with a backstab Thief.

I play a p/d Thief, and I’ve found myself quite effective in zergs. I do the same thing my d/d Elementalist does in a zerg: lure people forward and punish them for over extending (or lure people from the sides).

My build is:

0/30/30/10/0 + D/P. Berserker Gear, Cavalier Accessories, Beryl+Ruby jewels.

As you can see, having 2700 armor isn’t squishy at all. Since then I’ve added in some ascended pieces for 15600 hp and >100% critical damage, with 1700 toughness (not armor).

For videos, I’m still working on one but keep getting sidetracked (and my video software keeps messing up). This week’s matchup was against Blackgate where the pretty well-known [RIOT] guild is. Obviously trying to 1v3 them is suicidal, but during fights with them the build proves to have good sustained damage+survivability.

Scorpio Spork.9568:

I think it’s time all you complainers make a thief, play them to 80, gear up and head into WvW.

Seriously, that’s what I did after having trouble against stealth. Now, glassy, over-confident thieves are my favorite target. And after playing pretty much every decent thief build, I definitely do NOT think stealth needs a nerf.

Remember back at launch when everyone was complaining about Mesmers? No one knew how to fight them, and they wrecked in WvW. But now that’s not really an issue. Even if you’ve never played as one, you learn their patterns. You learn how to spot the real one. The difference is, you can’t see what a thief does in stealth when you’re fighting them. It’s harder to learn how their mechanic works when you’ve never extensively played as a thief in PvP.

So quit complaining and roll a thief. If you don’t feel like leveling, try them in sPvP. The experience is different than WvW, but you’ll start to understand why stealth doesn’t need a nerf.

(No, I do not main a thief. I have 5 different 80s I cycle between. Fighting thieves is not a problem with any of my characters, including my Ranger or Elementalist.)

I did – my Thief is the easiest character to play and I frequently 1v2-3 because if anything goes wrong, it is so easy to escape. The amount of damage you can avoid with stealth+blinds if used properly is amazing. This doesn’t even take into account how broken Hidden Killer is because of the uncontrolled crit-damage scaling outside sPvP.

The only annoying part is that being effective in a zerg consists of going to the back and picking off people quickly which, while good, doesn’t net a lot of bags.

Anyway, I just wanted to say that everyone seems to be insulting the OP (because he sucks or whatever). That doesn’t change anything – he has a valid point.

Edit: Okay actually the Guardian is the easiest. However, outside of zergs (where hammer trains are particularly effective) the Thief is still a lot better.