Guild Wars 2

Lokheit.7943:

But to be honest, despite it’s a great thing for those situations… those situations means ABSOLUTELY NOTHING*. 2 roamers fighting each other won’t affect the server results at all. It will affect their personal prides, but that fight won’t mean anything at all.

Roaming is not useless – if you think so, then you are simply comparing one roamer to a large zerg, which is an unfair comparison (1 person, to 30+ people).

Let’s look at what roamers do:

-Kill Dolyaks. A 10 man zerg can kill one dolyak – 10 roamers can kill 10.
-Kill Sentries – same as Dolyaks.
-Cap supply camps – same as the above two points, albeit a bit harder to pull off properly.

-Delay reinforcements to a siege. Let’s say your server has hills, and the enemy server is sieging it. People that die/decided to join the fight will trickle in. As a roamer you can kill these people. Thieves are the best for doing this because long duration stealth lets you ‘reset’ the fight easily when too many people accumulate.

-Following zergs around. Although it seems counterproductive at first, this is actually one of the best things that a roamer can do. Let’s say your server’s population is less than the enemy’s, so most zerg-versus-zerg fights will result in a loss. If your server knows where the zerg is, then such a fight doesn’t have to take place. Alternatively it lets your server know where to defend in advance. Again, Thieves with stealth are the best for this.

-Contest waypoints. It doesn’t take 10 people to contest a waypoint, just one. Guess what, Thieves with stealth+lots of mobility are again the best at doing this.

On a per-person basis, roamers are the most effective players in WvW. It takes more skill than ‘Spam 1 and press F for loot’, but think about this: would you rather make your 20 vs 50 fight into a 21 vs 50 fight, or make sure this fight (a guaranteed loss for your server) never happens?

Everyone has agreed that Thieves are the most effective roamers in WvW by far (see the other thread where everyone agrees you can’t catch a Thief), and since it is a vital part of the game and not some 1v1 ego-boosting contest (as outlined above), it stands to reason that it should be toned down, and/or other classes given the tools to perform as well as Thieves when roaming.

Granted, Thieves could use more area damage (because sometimes I just want to shut my brain off, follow the zerg, and get loot), but that is a different issue.

Edit: I know people like to roam just to have random 1v1s with other people, which leads to claims that ’it’s useless’. Guild vs guild fights also happen (you know, the kind where each side picks 20 people and everyone else watches) and nobody says that zergs are useless, even though such fights contribute absolutely nothing to your PPT either.

Jason.9643:

just checked, here are the ways that thf remove conditions, very limited:

THF needs sword/dagger spec for infiltrator strike (3 ini) > shadow return in 15s (2 ini) removes a condition.
shadow step slot skill > shadow return in 10s – break stun + 3 conditions (50s cd)
Shadow’s Embrace (shadow4 trait) Remove one condition every 3 seconds while in stealth.

hence if you keep burning ticks on him and run around a tree, you may just win

not sure if shadow embrace proc again if you stealth twice in quick succession. e.g. black powder > hs hs hs.. – another tip, black powder is smoke aoe, usualy against pve mobs that wont move, so for pvp, just move away from it immediately.

Thieves have amazing condition removal

-Shadow’s Embrace actually removes a condition immediately upon entering stealth, and another one every 3 seconds (so that’s two conditions)
-Hide in Shadows removes burning, poison, and bleeding. It even removes poison before healing you, so you get the full heal. (Works with above trait too)
-Shadow Return – Cures 1 condition
-Shadowstep return – Cures 3 conditions

I won’t include the ranger’s stolen skill, or any possible runes/sigils.

That’s actually quite a lot of condition removal – when I play my Thief, condition builds are the easiest to beat. Not only can they not burst me down, the conditions just fall off when I enter stealth.

Edit: You cannot catch a Thief in WvW. It’s not possible, unless he is terrible.

I wanted to play a class that was considered ‘hard’ after leveling the incredibly boring Guardian(hence my lv 80s are Mesmer, Ele, Engi, and Thief).

It was disappointing – The D/P build was the epitome of easy-mode. S/D now is much more fun, but it’s still not particularly challenging either.

Oh well, at least I have a fun time roaming in WvW, where Thieves either win, or don’t lose.

I did the same thing as the OP, and came to the conclusion that stealth is a stupid mechanic (especially the D/P build).

Normal Thief: Hurr Durr he used Whirling Wrath let me pop Blinding Powder now I can’t take any damage (right?) and oops I died, Stealth is so easy to counter!

Thief who knows how to play: He used Whirling Wrath let me dodge out of it.

Normal Thief: Oh I just went invisible I will just walk in a straight line, how did that Engineer hit me with Grenades? Stealth is so easy to counter!

Thief who knows how to play: I just hit stealth and will now change directions

Normal Thief: Shadow Refuge, look there’s a Mesmer with a Greatsword, let’s just stand here!

Thief who isn’t brain-dead: Dodge!

After playing a lot of classes and coming back to playing a Thief, it’s so darned easy to see how people try and counter stealth, and that there is actually very little way to stop it.

Not discounting the OP’s opinion, of course, but that’s what I personally found.

Razor.6392:

except I don’t have issues with thieves’ burst being unpredictable. 1-2 seconds reaction time is enough for me to do something about it. This specific case however… it happens in less than 0.5 seconds.

A Thief can burst you in 0.5 seconds too. As long as CnD is precast, the entire combo can be performed very quickly (it can even be done with an auto-stun from Basilisk Venom so dodging won’t work)

Edit: This isn’t directed at you, but rather at the poster two posts above this one. The Scepter is notorious for having very powerful but hard to land abilities:
-Dragon’s Tooth
-Phoenix
-Shatterstone (I think it hits pretty hard, but nobody ever stands in it so I can’t be sure)
-Fire Grab, Churning Earth, RTL (if from range) are all offhand dagger abilities (scepter + dagger is most common set) that are difficult to land for various reasons.

I’m not saying that the Lightning Attunement + Air #2 + Sigil + RTL combo is easy to dodge (it’s almost impossible) but to extend that and say all scepter combos are easy to hit is just ignorant.

Frostedblaze.9017:

Razor.6392:

Gotta burst him down, that’s the only way. And that will only work if the thief is average. A good thief is unbelievably hard to fight.

And as a sad PVT hurr durr ele you won’t even dream of killing a thief.

Whats wrong with PVT?

Thieves can, at any moment, leave the fight. This means the only way to actually kill one is to burst them down before they can react. PVT doesn’t have enough damage to do so.

Edit: It’s not exactly like this, but you get the general idea.

You make good points, but I predict guarantee a wave of ‘L2P Thieves already suck’ comments.

Don’t compare Retaliation to Confusion – even though the two are similar they aren’t the same.

Both have consequences if the enemy attacks, however confusion is much more powerful:
-Works when the enemy attacks anyone, so they can’t just target someone without retaliation and carry on attacking
-Triggers on anything, including heals, stun breaks, some dodge rolls.etc
-Confusion is stackable
-Confusion doesn’t trigger multiple times for something like Barrage (although it does for Tornado/Dagger Storm, I think)

In other words, confusion punishes you for doing anything, but retaliation only punishes you for attacking someone.

While I do think the concept of retaliation is badly implemented (it should hit really hard, but have low duration), it’s hardly the same as confusion.

Edit: I keep missing words out

LordByron.8369:

For the rest….
i can run from a D/D ele….
Without many problems even with a mesmer.

Is this better?

That’s not really true, there are a lot of people that can’t run from a D/D Ele.

-Guardians (a bit debatable if they use S/F + GS + Judge’s Intervention)
-Engineers
-Necros – I don’t have one so not sure about this, but they usually seem really slow.
-Mesmers, from personal experience. I’m a terrible Mesmer so don’t quote me on this!
-Anyone that hasn’t built for roaming (okay this is a bit biased, because D/D is the Ele build for roaming and is average-ish elsewhere)

This leaves Thieves, Warriors, and Rangers who can get away. Not an unreasonable amount (somebody has to be the best, and right now Thieves are). Again, and I can’t stress this enough, exaggerating isn’t the way to get your point across.

Take a look at the Thief forums and how much they like to exaggerate and blow everything way out of proportion. It’s really not a good thing to be like that.

TLDR: D/D Ele is still good for roaming, even after the nerfs. It’s not the best, but it’s still not bad.

HawkMeister.4758:

Ok before everybody blasts off on their own little tangent, WHAT IS THE CONTEXT HERE?
Is it PvP only changes, or actually includes PvE, WvW even?

Well, we don’t know. That’s all that can reliably be said.

Razor.6392:

Thief burst is melee, this burst is ranged.

I’m talking about instant 11k+ damage in less than a second from 900 range.

Actually you are right, it isn’t telegraphed at all, and is ranged. I don’t see why we should lie about it being predictable.

I mean, it is kind of possible to see it coming (maybe) but the entire combo can be pulled off at any moment (except the weapon sigil, which is finicky to time in actual combat).

Edit: I’m not saying it’s overpowered (nor that it isn’t). But the build lacks defense and is basically a one-trick pony, even though that one trick has very little counter. Thieves can do twice the burst in .5 seconds as well (Steal is 900 range after all, and you can stealth away afterwards) and yet they still insist that it is balanced, even when that has little counter as well.

Also, how do you get 11k damage? I haven’t been able to get those numbers.

Mirta.5029:

Penguin.5197:

Tigirius is hoping for more methods of speed so that we are not always locked into speedy kits, one example can be making power shoes 25% all the time.

Also as far as Im concerned, we dont have a leap until jump shots delay with rifled barrels is fixed.

Wouldn’t that be OP? Other classes either get DC on their speed boosts or they have to waste a utility slot for it.
Other classes have their leaps messed up too (example: guardian GS leap. Supposed to land on the thing that you’re targeting, but it loves to over-jump it and throw you off a cliff)

My point was that even though Engineers have permanent swiftness (while other classes may not), the lack of any form of teleport or jump (jump shot is the same speed as running) makes them one of the slowest classes for moving around anywhere.

randomfightfan.4091:

Swiftness on crit for 5 seconds, 5 second cd. Vigor on swiftness for 5 seconds, 5 second cd. Definitely need a speed boost… riiiiiight.

tigirius.9014:

Here’s to hoping engineers can finally get a speed boost so we can get rid of having to use speedy kits all the time OOC for movement. That would free us up for more choices in an instant.

However it’s definitely going to take ALOT more then 1 change to get Engis back on track that’s for sure!

Look, I can fail at reading comprehension too.

I would make one of the gadgets give a +25% speed boost.

Edit: Also, leaps? Really? Ever tried to use Jump Shot? Not only does it have 700 range, the animation is slow you might as well walk there.

Mirta.5029:

tigirius.9014:

Here’s to hoping engineers can finally get a speed boost so we can get rid of having to use speedy kits all the time OOC for movement. That would free us up for more choices in an instant.

Engies are the only class that can keep perma swiftness up and you want a speed boost?

randomfightfan.4091:

tigirius.9014:

Here’s to hoping engineers can finally get a speed boost so we can get rid of having to use speedy kits all the time OOC for movement. That would free us up for more choices in an instant.

However it’s definitely going to take ALOT more then 1 change to get Engis back on track that’s for sure!

Swiftness on crit for 5 seconds, 5 second cd. Vigor on swiftness for 5 seconds, 5 second cd. Definitely need a speed boost… riiiiiight.

Seriously? People are saying that Engineers are too fast? (And the above poster is a Thief too, which makes it even more silly)

Have you even played an Engineer?

Edit: Yes you can have permanent swiftness. Find me any kind of teleporting ability.

Devon.9061:

Just from skimming this… I would say the most desired thing is new maps in WvW… The maps are getting boring and siege is placed in the same spots 90% of the time. Lets mix it up a lil bit. A zerg should not be able to cross a map in 2minutes.

Let’s just convert all of the PvE maps into WvW maps and pick three of them every week as the borderlands.

Supply camps can be the little NPC campfires scattered around, and the keeps can be the larger groups of NPCs.

It’d probably a pain to implement though.

emikochan.8504:

Two 5% sigils don’t stack, two stats on kill don’t stack. Anything from the same class of sigil doesn’t stack with others from the same class

Okay, and that.

So pick two from the list, make sure they aren’t from the same group, and that both aren’t in the ‘has internal CD’ category.

Fenrir.5493:

2- I put on my gear 2 monk runes, 2 water and i still cant mantain the boons a lot of time, i saw some eles that can have the boons up really a lot of time, their boons its always full i cant manage to sustain all the boons because they dont last enought.

You need to trait for ‘Elemental Attunement’, Fury+Swiftness on Auras, and Fury on attunement swap (which is a minor trait anyway). Vigor on crit is good too.

On one hand the enemy Thief did take a utility slot to run away, but on the other hand, Thieves are still in number one place to run away.

You can’t really counter a Shadowstep + stealth in any way short of instantly bursting the Thief down (which doesn’t actually stop him from doing it, if he is fast enough).

It’s no secret that Thieves can usually get away from anything in WvW (because being able to do so in sPvP means you just lose the point). And really, it’s overpowered. I wonder why there are so many roaming Thieves, and that fact has never changed? It must be because all of the roamers are attracted to play this class, not because it’s super good for roaming or anything.

The trade off is that Thieves are kind of bad for zergs and larger fights. I don’t know if it’s Anet’s intention to have this kind of one-sided balancing act going on, but I personally think it’s kind of annoying, both to people who don’t want to roam on a Thief, and to Thieves who may need to join zergs (both of which apply to me :/).

Edit: Important note – I actually think Thieves are not bad in zergs if you play the right way (so no “lol I stealth into the sea of AoE damage and expect to live”) and pick people off at the back. It’s obviously not as easy as ‘spam F and 1 and get loot’ but it’s effective.

bobross.5034:

What he does not seem to recognize is that it is very simple to bring a thief to low health. Any class can do it, any variety of ways.

That really depends on how you build your Thief. If you go glass cannon, it’s the same as anyone else that build glass cannon.

Edit: And to all of you pretending that Thieves are bad in a 1v1, I hope your conscience catches up with you.

I haven’t given much thought to this issue, but why do WvW ranks go from Legend to Bronze Invader? Isn’t that a bit silly?

Shouldn’t it be Invader>Bronze Invader>Silver Invader>Gold Invader>Assaulter (or whatever the next rank is)

Edit: I’m still at rank 13 so it doesn’t have any effect on me, but it’s really odd.

emikochan.8504:

All sigils of the same type do not stack.

So all swap sigils, stacking sigils, flat bonus sigils and %proc sigils don’t work with eachother.

So take one from each group.

That’s not…exactly true.

There are two kinds of sigils – ones that have an internal cooldown, and those that don’t.

Sigils that have internal CD
-Effects that proc on crit (e.g. Might on crit)
-Effects that proc on weapon swap (e.g. Chill foes on weapon swap)

Sigils that don’t have an internal CD
-Flat bonuses (e.g. +5% crit chance)
-Gain stats on kill (e.g. +10 power on kill)

And here’s how it works: if one of your sigils is on cooldown, then any sigil that also has a cooldown cannot activate.

So you are safe to take any combination of sigils, unkitten th of them are in the first group.

Edit: If both your sigils are in the first group it won’t work. And now you’ve learnt a new rude word.

RogueTigeR.3160:

I’m not going to post ALL the spamming of everyone that said this but this is the 1st… here is my reply…. it never WAS infinite….only so far u can travel in 15 secs…which… when “in combat mode mentality” goes by a lot faster than u think…

Also note that the initial shadow step is only 600 range… so its not like you can just port 1200 away… do ur thing.. continue moving an additional 1500 away… and expect to get back….

This was definately a nerf..and a bugged nerf at that.

How was it not infinite? If you had (for example) 10 Mesmers to chain-port you across the map, you could still use Shadow Return to get back. I know if still worked if you used a waypoint (making craft-leveling my Thief realy easy).

Saying it’s not infinite because you can only go so far by yourself, is like saying that numbers don’t go to infinity because your calculator can only go up to a certain limit.

sorrow.2364:

I’ve just pointed out that saying that thieves are easy to control is a lie.

Mostly this. Every time (every time) someone says “oh just CC the Thief” I laugh my kitten off.

Travlane.5948:

impossible to fail invis? wow thats one heck of a statement. i make people fail invis all the time. i just stand near the black powder shot….after 2 secs they either hit me with HS and reveal or i dodge and they reveal anyway for not being able to stack it. thats not even mentioning push/pull/KB/KD/traps/lines/fears/daze/stuns ….. do u just have a personally hard time dealing with it? i mean if u give them room of course its easy access but not fool proof. i mean i guess they are all bad thieves i fight….it might seem to nto work if u try it…but thats either bc ur not doing it right or they are using HIS or Blind powder or etc to stack it. they get 2.5 secs of invis or 2 secs of invis after jumping thru first….then u stand next and they cant stack bc HS hits anyone NEAR it…not on or very close ….HS is very forgiving as far as distance and direction goes…u can miss and overshoot and it will still hit and reveal.

It’s not ‘one heck of a statement’. I played the D/P build for a long time in WvW, and it really is hard to stop.

If you think that “stand in the BP and the Thief will get revealed” is a valid counter, you are simply a failure of a Thief. If you do that I will backstab you, or wait until stealth runs out, then use the combo again.

Alternatively, I use the combo, walk back into the BP (hard concept, I know) then use HS again. If need be I untarget the enemy (again, this is really difficult to do) then HS off in a different direction. It’s so difficult to do that I learned how to do it on the first day of playing D/P. The most that your ‘stand in BP’ strategy will do is make me get off not 3 but 2 chained heartseekers.

As for pushes/pulls? You have about 0.5 seconds to pull it off, it has to hit me instantly (so no ranged projectiles or any ability with a delay) to stop the stealth.

Even if you knock me out of it, I can HS back into the BP if the field is still there.

I’m not having a hard time with it at all, in fact I find it really easy to do. If you have a problem with pulling it off you just need to L2P (cliched term, but I feel it is very apt here)

Edit: If D/P is so easy to stop then why would anyone use it over D/D? Just for Head Shot+ Blind field? I doubt it.

Arganthium.5638:

These are some of the worst suggestions I have ever seen.

Stealth is not OP, especially in PvP. In both PvP and WvW, all you really have to do to counter stealth is swing your sword around and spam AoE. Usually results in a “frontstab” (that’s how I dub it), which sucks and means that you’re winning.

That’s all that it takes.

I…what? Any Thief knows that the easiest people to counter are those who do just that. If you swing your sword around I just run through you, and spamming AoE is kind of a waste unless I’m immobilized (I can dodge out of it, then you will just be wasting those AoEs on nothing).

Standing in Black Powder is an even worse idea – if the Thief is running away you are rooting yourself (and you can still use HS twice anyway – use it once, run back inside, then use it again), and if the Thief is trying to kill you it’s even worse because you are standing right there for him to backstab.

Those aren’t actual ways to counter stealth! Maybe if the Thief is completely terrible they might work, but against better players they lose most of their effectiveness.

Atherakhia.4086:

The only reason D/P is so powerful is because initiative regen is so high that you don’t lose that much damage from using the defense oriented pistol offhand. The main detractor from Thieves in WvW zerg fights is that you can always see them coming.

While I agree with the overall sentiment of your post (maybe not the degree), these aren’t exactly true.

D/P uses a large amount of initiative to sustain the combo. It’s not so restrictive that you can’t use any other skills, but it’s still quite a lot.

Why D/P is so strong is that it gives impossible to fail, on-demand access to stealth, and Backstab gives massive damage (especially if you build for it, in WvW) without having any initiative cost. Most other builds have to have some kind of trade-off. To do more damage, you use initiative. To survive more, you also use initiative. D/P does both at the same time.

Edit: D/D obviously does the same thing, but CnD is much harder to land, is risky if you fail, and doesn’t have Blind/Interrupt/Gap Closer (you made good points about these too). Also D/P #3 lets you land Backstab so it’s even more easy!

The main detractor from Thieves in WvW isn’t really that you can see them coming. In the cluster of random red/green nameplates and lag, nobody can tell if you’re a Thief or not. In fact, it’s even better than a 1v1 situation – the lag makes it almost impossible to react to anything that I do.

What is actually bad about Thieves in larger fights is that stealth doesn’t stop any damage. Picking off squishy targets at the side/rear of a zerg is actually very easy to do, however if you adopt the common zerg-ball-of-death tactic then stealth does nothing.

Make no mistake – Thieves are still very, very good at large fights, just not in the ‘I make giant red circles of damage everywhere’ way.

Zacchary.6183:

Sunflowers.1729:

Zacchary.6183:

http://www.penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/perfect-imbalance

</thread>

Dude what, you didn’t even watch the whole thing.

It says right there at the end “if players have been complaining about it for a long time they are probably right”.

Now, I’m not saying that the game should be balanced for 1v1, but…your video is not even saying the same thing as what you are.

Edit: I’m fine with Thieves being incredibly imbalanced at 1v1 (especially in WvW), but not with people who say that “oh we suck at 1v1” because that’s just untrue.

Did you pay attention to the whole thing? What about the part of Cyclical Imbalance? Do you understand that it takes designers AND players for this to work?

If devs would stop messing around with the classes, it would force everyone to think instead of beg for nerfs/buffs. One specific build for a specific class would become Flave of the Month. People would get tired of getting killed by them and start developing their own build to counter the FotM. That build becomes popular and then people start designing builds for taking down that build and the cycle continues.

I am sorry if you didn’t completely understand it, but having this game balanced on a 1v1 basis is asking for kittenloads of pigeonholing and boredom.

That’s why I said you didn’t watch the whole thing.

Tell me, where are the roaming groups of anti-Thief builds? Oh right, there aren’t any. Because you can’t out-roam a Thief.

Seriously, if you are gonna bring up a video, at least understand it before posting it here.

Edit: Allow me to explain, in no uncertain terms, why you have no idea what you are talking about.

The video has nothing to do with 1v1. All it is saying is that by making a certain playing style/character/item stronger, people will learn to counter it. This creates a circle of A counter B which counters C and so on.

If Thieves had a counter in WvW, there large amount of Thieves would be countered by (for example) an anti-Thief Engineer build, which would in turn be countered by something else. Evidently this is not the case. There have always been large amount of Thieves – the ‘metagame’ is not changing because there is nothing that counters them.

It can still be balanced because Thieves aren’t very good at larger fights, but your video has nothing to do with that. All it is saying is that if something is imbalanced, another strategy will evolve to counter that. We are not seeing that in WvW.

You can argue all you want and say that “oh everyone is just lazy to think of a way” but that’s an exceedingly weak argument because with Youtube and this forum, only one person needs to think of such a build and it will become immediately widespread. Obviously, that has not happened yet (that or such a build would be useless against anything but Thieves, which defeats the point)

In short, can you stop pretending you understand the video, and go watch it again? I’ll distill it down to one sentence: GW2 is not balanced for 1v1 (true) but your video has nothing to do with it.

If anyone else has any issues with my post, just…say so. I’d hate to be wrong.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

Tolmos.8395:

The game isn’t designed around 1v1, but it still happens and can be a pretty solid indicator that something is terribly wrong with a class when 3 of the 4 posts you put here had to do with thieves being imbalanced in 1v1 :-P

but … what if …
thieves are supposed to be “imbalanced” in 1 vs 1 ? O_O

No, I’m fine with Thieves being imbalanced in 1v1 (again, I really don’t like the people who can’t see this, but that’s a different topic).

Just don’t complain that “oh we suck in team-fights and zergs and dungeons”. (which is not really true anyway) You can’t be good everywhere.

You’re not going to kill a D/P Thief, sorry.

You can slow him in stealth with things like Ring of Earth and Frozen burst (whatever it’s called) to stop the backstab, but to kill him is flat-out impossible.

You can try running away though!

Zacchary.6183:

http://www.penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/perfect-imbalance

</thread>

Dude what, you didn’t even watch the whole thing.

It says right there at the end “if players have been complaining about it for a long time they are probably right”.

Now, I’m not saying that the game should be balanced for 1v1, but…your video is not even saying the same thing as what you are.

Edit: I’m fine with Thieves being incredibly imbalanced at 1v1 (especially in WvW), but not with people who say that “oh we suck at 1v1” because that’s just untrue.

Doomdesire.9365:

I don’t kill people just to force them to walk and repair bills. I kill people because it’s fun. If he runs away, I don’t get that satisfaction, but I still won

That means you find it fun to just kill people.

Personally, I’d be pretty annoyed if everyone that I ‘won’ against didn’t drop any loot (it would still be fun, but less).

I still don’t agree with the ‘Thief escape = you win’ sentiment. What if we made it so any time a Thief kills someone, the Thief gets no loot or WXP? He still ‘wins’ right? But the flood of complaints would crash the forums.

Truga.5897:

Chaosky.5276:

Truga.5897:

Arheundel.6451:

So basically we should have a weapon suitable for a single situation only out of thousand?
We may as well make an entire profession and call it “Defender”, give it the ele staff and you’re good to go

It’s high damage over time aoe+some control mixed in. If you want direct, instant damage go D/D.

What if I want direct, instant damage at range?

Use RTL. Or roll a warrior, use rifle. It’s not aoe, but oh well, it’s instant damage at range.

It really is that simple. You can’t have everything. Pick 3. Range, Aoe, Damage, Instant. I don’t think any class has all 4 on the same weapon.

Well…the thing is that other classes can switch to a different weapon to cover for these gaps.

Grenade kit also comes close to fulfilling all of your criteria except maybe the ‘instant’ part(which is why every single Engineer uses it…)
Edit: Don’t nerf my Engineer! : (

Chaosky.5276:

Truga.5897:

Arheundel.6451:

So basically we should have a weapon suitable for a single situation only out of thousand?
We may as well make an entire profession and call it “Defender”, give it the ele staff and you’re good to go

It’s high damage over time aoe+some control mixed in. If you want direct, instant damage go D/D.

What if I want direct, instant damage at range?

Sorry, you can’t (maybe play a Mesmer?)

I wish they would give that to Elementalists, but then again every class has something that it can’t do (e.g. my Guardian’s ranged damage = 0). Maybe that’s just what we are supposed to be like :/

I cheated by using both Vigil and Priory armor…

But it looks nice!

happynow.7190:

Thanks again Sunflowers for the clarification

Toughness increases your heals? Or is it Healing power?

So your recommendation stays on Knights right , its much better than clerics?

Toughness makes you take less damage, so the extra 1000hp froma heal will last longer.
Healing power makes your heals actually more (not always in a 1:1 ratio).

Cleric’s is okay (for some classes it is useless) for Elementalists, so it just depends if you want more damage, or more survivability.

Don’t discount Cavalier (Power Toughness Crit Dmg) or just Berserker (Power Precision Crit Dmg) too, because D/D has permanent fury (+20% crit chance) up time.

If you go for critical damage read this first:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/12dmi5/tip_stat_optimization_with_crit_damage/

Knight’s is Power Precision Toughness (PVT is Soldier)

I personally don’t like vitality – it just increases the buffer that you have before you die. With all the heals that an Ele has, toughness is just much better since each heal is more ‘efficient’.

Therefore, instead of taking Power/Vit/Healing, take Cleric’s gear instead. Power/Toughness/Healing.

As for the might buff, each stack increases power and condition damage by 35.

LordByron.8369:

You are right i need to be more clear:
In WWW you can t chase almost any decent player.

Nor you can escape.

D/D is a roaming profession that lost roaming capabilities.

No, that’s what I tried to say in the earlier post. We can chase decent players – 3 gap closers is quite a lot – just not as well as a Thief does. It doesn’t mean we suck though.

(I don’t have a Warrior so no comment there)

We can also escape pretty well. Again, not as well as a Thief (Warrior..? Not sure) but compared to most other people it’s pretty good.

We are actually pretty high on the totem pole of roaming, and except for Thieves (stupidly good at roaming) are comparable/better than most other professions.

Okay the general consensus for traits is:

Fire – sucks. Never take this (except in rare cases)
Air – pretty good
Earth – works only with condition damage or if you just want to be stupidly tanky.
Water – Amazing
Arcane – Almost a requirement in every build.

Most builds are something like 0/10/0/30/30 maybe with a few points moved around. It works with all weapon sets, and in all aspects of the game.

For gear you can’t go wrong with Knight’s. It has decent toughness and damage, and again works with all weapons. (I’m not saying it’s the best everywhere, but…it’s passable).

Edit: Oops, I forgot to say that the traits can be swapped around depending which weapon you use. For example 10 points in Air either gives you

-Fury and Swiftness with auras (take this with D/D)
-Glyphs come back 20% faster (with Staff).

So you just swap them depending what you want to use at the moment.

Piola.3782:

I don’t have too msny problems with Stealth but I have to admit BlackPowder+Hearthseeker combo grants a “Stealth Abuse”…
So, this is teh question:
Why I can’t use CnD to extend my stealth? (and it requires a target, BP don’t…)
or
Why I can extend my stealth with Black Powder (with no target required?)

Do you mean why the game mechanics let you do that, or why Anet made it that way?

The common answer to the 2nd question is that ‘BP+HS takes more initiative’ but if you look at the numbers it doesn’t really take that much more (6 compared to 9), especially since the combo is really hard to fail and you will almost never have to use BP twice.

Personally I think it’s just not balanced well. D/P even has an interrupt, blind, and gap closer when you’d expect it to be on D/D (which has a harder-to-land stealth)

Edit: I still think Thieves are OP in WvW(but only there). Just yesterday I decided to pick up S/D (so you know I’m not very experienced with the set) and managed to kill 2 out of a group of 5 people. While they were probably been pretty bad, I can’t do this on any other lv 80 that I have. Abusing CnD on some unfortunate rams/boars helped a lot…

The problem is mostly from stealth being too good for running away in WvW. Just remove (or greatly reduce) stealth and relegate it to long cooldowns like Shadow Refuge, then give Thieves another form of defense. It will help in those zerg-fights anyway. If the primary defensive ability is stealth, Thieves will never be good at zerg-balling because it does absolutely nothing there, and they will always be too good at roaming, where being able to run away is invaluable.

Let’s not let this forum become like the Thief one (cough stealth trap complaints cough) with us whining over every single change and exaggerating every weakness.

The RTL nerf was pretty big – it is a 100% increase after all, but to say that we don’t have any chasing power now is not true at all.

We don’t have the best chasing/escaping ability, of course. However, D/D still has three gap closers (and Lightning Flash as a potential fourth) on shortish cooldowns.

Burning Speed and Magnetic Grasp have ~15s CD and have decent range. D/D still has immobilize, cripple, chill, knockdown, and lots of condition cleanses.

Simply comparing the Ele to Warriors and Thieves isn’t a good idea – there are 5 other classes too.

Now I don’t have a Necro or Ranger (at 80), so I won’t speak for them, but for the other three – Guardians, Mesmers, and Engineers, we are still much better at chasing than any of them could ever be.

In my experience, escaping a fight on the Ele is also much easier than on the three above classes (okay I suck at playing a Mesmer, which might skew it a bit).

Personally, I feel that having such powerful escape abilities (old RTL) in comparison to classes who don’t even have a teleport (Engineer, where Jump Shot is slower than walking :/) was a bit ridiculous.

I still feel ridiculous on my Thief, being able to run away from anything in WvW (really, anything), but if this one class needs balancing, it doesn’t mean everyone else should say “oh he is better than me we automatically suck”

TLDR: Don’t exaggerate – it just makes you less credible.

Edit: I don’t usually sPvP so this is all from the perspective of a WvW player, where escaping ability = good at roaming, and chasing power is invaluable.

Bacon Please.8407:

Ralathar.7236:

Bacon Please.8407:

He used his skills wisely just as you did. Congrats, he ran away. you won.

That is a draw just like it is with every other class, and I don’t get my prize money.

I could pull a draw on any class. Especially warrior. After hating on thief from such a long time, it is a lot harder then many other classes. I thought when I first started playing It was gonna be faceroll easy but it is the hardest class i’ve played yet, the only class i haven’t played is ranger. That being said. Some fights you just won’t win. Some fights you can’t win. if you got him down to 5% chances are he had one hit left and used his ohcrap button to escape. So yes, I would say you won.

You just picked the class with the second best escaping ability and say that every class can ‘pull a draw’.

Where’s my Engineer’s 1200 range teleport? Why can’t every class have as good an ‘oh crap’ button as stealth + Shadowstep/Infiltrator’s Arrow?

Bacon Please.8407:

The best way to beat a thief is to play a thief. This is coming from a warrior main and let me tell you, it really works.

I have a Thief. Nobody can catch me, not even another Thief. Stealth lets me literally walk away from every encounter that I don’t want to fight anymore/cannot win.

Phoenixfudge.5290:

These guys did it right spam AOE and CC. http://youtu.be/hD6NJVTOf-g?t=1m59s

You know if he just pressed Shadow Refuge earlier, he would have been able to escape right?

Bacon Please.8407

Congrats, he ran away. you won.

I cannot agree with this statement. If he ‘won’, then why does the Thief not have to pay repair costs, walk back from the WP, and where is Ralathar’s loot bag?

Edit: And what’s to stop the Thief from coming back again, and again, and again until he wins?

Edit: Alright, in sPvP, this is a win (sort of). You get to cap the point, and the Thief does not. In WvW, where all the complaints are? How can it be construed as ‘winning’ in any way?

Sleel.8365:

Sunflowers.1729:

Sleel.8365:

Sunflowers.1729:

Sleel.8365:

yeah….. that’s why I can pop my heal on my guard and be back to almost full health, from 1k, while if I do that on my thief, he’s at 1/3 heatlh….. yeah, a guard is a squishy (all classes but engi and mez)

Um, while Guardians are less squishy than Thieves even though they have the same health, you can’t just use something that is flat out wrong to support your point

These two abilities have the same cool down, both grant some defensive bonus, and the Thief one heals more.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Shelter – 4555/30 = 151 hp/second
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Hide_in_Shadows – 5240/30 = 174 hp/second (didn’t factor in regeneration)

Even if you use the highest healing skill per cooldown, Thieves outstrip Guardians

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Signet_of_Resolve – 8150/40 = 203 hp/second
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Withdraw – 4344/15 = 289.6 hp/second (almost 50% more than the Guardian! and it gives a dodge + condition removal too)

To get the result that you have, your Guardian would need incredibly low HP (or very high healing), and the Thief would need lots of vitality beyond what is usually required.

In short, stop using bad examples.

Edit: Okay technically you can be right, but it doesn’t give the entire picture at all.

Yeah…. and I don’t play both classes and know from using them rather then spec sheets and assumptions on what build I’m using either…

I have both a Guardian and a Thief at 80 too, and never get the results that you are describing.

The numbers described in the wiki don’t lie. I’m more inclined to believe something that can be checked, than an anecdote from a probably biased person.

Check your own biases, and check again what was said about assuming what builds I use. I don’t use either of those thief heals, cause I don’t play the style that benefits from them.

Yes, you are technically correct in this one case. Your post is still misleading.

I can also be ‘technically correct’ and say “Look at this 30/30/10/0/0 build Elementalist, he sucks at healing. All Elementalists must have terrible healing abilities”. Obviously in this one case he does have next-to-zero healing, but to extend that to “all Elementalists have crap healing” is obviously stupid and flat out wrong.

Sleel.8365:

Sunflowers.1729:

Sleel.8365:

yeah….. that’s why I can pop my heal on my guard and be back to almost full health, from 1k, while if I do that on my thief, he’s at 1/3 heatlh….. yeah, a guard is a squishy (all classes but engi and mez)

Um, while Guardians are less squishy than Thieves even though they have the same health, you can’t just use something that is flat out wrong to support your point

These two abilities have the same cool down, both grant some defensive bonus, and the Thief one heals more.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Shelter – 4555/30 = 151 hp/second
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Hide_in_Shadows – 5240/30 = 174 hp/second (didn’t factor in regeneration)

Even if you use the highest healing skill per cooldown, Thieves outstrip Guardians

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Signet_of_Resolve – 8150/40 = 203 hp/second
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Withdraw – 4344/15 = 289.6 hp/second (almost 50% more than the Guardian! and it gives a dodge + condition removal too)

To get the result that you have, your Guardian would need incredibly low HP (or very high healing), and the Thief would need lots of vitality beyond what is usually required.

In short, stop using bad examples.

Edit: Okay technically you can be right, but it doesn’t give the entire picture at all.

Yeah…. and I don’t play both classes and know from using them rather then spec sheets and assumptions on what build I’m using either…

I have both a Guardian and a Thief at 80 too, and never get the results that you are describing.

The numbers described in the wiki don’t lie. I’m more inclined to believe something that can be checked, than an anecdote from a probably biased person.

Edit: And if that was your best argument, just an “oh I think I’m right so I must be”, then there is no reason to ever read anything that you post from now on.

Sleel.8365:

yeah….. that’s why I can pop my heal on my guard and be back to almost full health, from 1k, while if I do that on my thief, he’s at 1/3 heatlh….. yeah, a guard is a squishy (all classes but engi and mez)

Um, while Guardians are less squishy than Thieves even though they have the same health, you can’t just use something that is flat out wrong to support your point

These two abilities have the same cool down, both grant some defensive bonus, and the Thief one heals more.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Shelter – 4555/30 = 151 hp/second
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Hide_in_Shadows – 5240/30 = 174 hp/second (didn’t factor in regeneration)

Even if you use the highest healing skill per cooldown, Thieves outstrip Guardians

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Signet_of_Resolve – 8150/40 = 203 hp/second
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Withdraw – 4344/15 = 289.6 hp/second (almost 50% more than the Guardian! and it gives a dodge + condition removal too)

To get the result that you have, your Guardian would need incredibly low HP (or very high healing), and the Thief would need lots of vitality beyond what is usually required.

In short, stop using bad examples.

Edit: Okay technically you can be right, but it doesn’t give the entire picture at all.

Lepew.7890:

Allow me to translate into whyner.

Waa, waa waa waaa waaaaaaaaaa THIEF Stealth Trap waaa waaa. WAA! WAAAAAA! THIEF Stealth Trap. Nerf nerf NERRRRRRRRF waa waaa waaaaaa!

I believe that’s what everyone did when those traps came out.

Anyway, your argument is sound and backed up with solid evidence. Everyone, look here. This is a fantastic example of how to make your point.

As someone who plays a Staff Elementalist in those WvW zerg balls, I think they might be referring to how Static Field (and similar things, like Veil) affect an infinite amount of people.

It’s pretty powerful, being able to stop an entire zerg with one ability.

Svarty.8019:

Advice to budding developers (because Anet’s won’t learn): NEVER put stealth classes in a mulitplayer game.

Well, stealth is alright if it is implemented properly.

Look at games like LoL/Dota – there is stealth there too but because there are counters (wards, dust of appearance) and because stealthed characters don’t have the best mobility and burst in the game it can be balanced.

You also can’t stealth every 4 seconds.

Edit: You’re not wrong though, stealth is hard to balance properly.

Edit: Before all the Thieves (well, other Thieves, because I have one too) come and spout the same old “then why isn’t sPvP dominated by Thieves” nonsense, here is the answer:

There is a counter to stealth in sPvP. It’s called ‘you can’t cap points in stealth’.

-The guest feature is unlimited, but you can only guest on two servers per day. If your friends don’t do WvW, you can just guest to their server every day.

-If you want to change your actual server (for WvW, or convenience), you have 2 options

1) Pay the gem cost
2) Delete all your characters then change servers.

The gem cost is for transferring characters, so if you don’t have any, it is free.

I’m so amused by the OP – none of his arguments are actually about whether this change is a ‘bug fix’ or not, except #1 and #3 (which is actually the same point, made twice in slightly different ways).

Everything else is just discussing whether the skill should be changed to be better or worse. That’s not really the point here, since this entire patch just fixed bugs (if you notice, there were no balance changes).

So let’s take a closer look at this argument – I’ll quote the post here:

Arganthium.5638:

1. Counterargument: “But the tooltip says that it has 1200 range!”

The tooltip also says that you “return to your original location”, so obviously the tooltip is contradictory. Furthermore, just because the tooltip says something does not make it theoretically correct in the first place, anyways.

Alright, what he is saying is that
1) The tooltip says “return to your original location” so obviously the intention was to return to the location, regardless of the actual distance in between
2) The tooltip is wrong

For the first argument, let’s check virtually every single teleporting ability in the game

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Judge%27s_Intervention
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Blink
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Flashing_Blade
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ride_the_Lightning

I think that’s enough abilities to get the point across. All of them say that they teleport you to the target/targeted area (I specifically chose skills that say that in the description, just to be very pedantic)

All of them also have a range stated in the description. When Shadow Return allows the Thief to teleport back from an infinite range, I expect to see all of the abilities above work at an infinite range as well.

As for your second argument, that makes even less sense. If the skill description isn’t ‘theoretically correct’ (whatever that means) then we can completely disregard them.

Personally I think that the Engineer Grenade Kit should summon a fotm lv 40 Jade Maw to smite all my enemies for 90 million damage. What’s that? It doesn’t say anything like that in the description? Ah, the description isn’t ‘theoretically correct’.

Good job OP, you posted a huge amount of stuff that is completely irrelevant.

Edit: In case I wasn’t exceedingly clear enough, the patch had only bug fixes.

Whether Shadow Return deserves a buff is another topic entirely, but to call this change not a bug fix is just silly.

YourOwnFear.2743:

Up leveled light armor target with stacks of vulnerability below 50% health.

You don’t even need that – I’ve backstabbed upleveled people for 10k damage straight off the bat without any vulnerability, while they are at full health too. (in a 0 30 30 10 0 build)

Crawford.4135:

Just told a friend: “An elemental just replied, I bet”.
I was right, and now I’m done.

Can’t win – attack the person directly. Good job, you will get full marks in a debating class.

For the record, I have a lv 80 Thief and Engi too

XApocalypse.8739:

Are you serious? That has to be one of the most cheap skills in world vs world. Elementalists are the only class that jumps down off of a tower/keep’s wall and mess with all the opponents, they run around trolling everyone and right when they get downed they mist for right back into the keep and do it over again, i honestly don’t see why this hasn’t been patched, its unfair why can’t other classes do that?

Vengeance lets you run back into keeps too. It just so happens that Vapor Form is easier to access so you see it more.

Crawford.4135:

Sunflowers.1729:

So…what?

How does the Shadow Return skill change have anything to do with Vapor Forming into a keep? Evidently Arenanet doesn’t think that being able to do so is a bug, so it wasn’t fixed.

That’s it.

Would you like it if I could Shadow Return through my keep wall outside, down a few players, return back inside with dots on me, get downed, go back outside rinse and repeat? I think you would have a problem with that.

Good thing you can (sort of). You just have to use Infiltrator’s Strike at the gate. I still don’t see how it is related though.

I mean, Hide in Shadows makes the Thief invisible and the Elementalists’ healing skill doesn’t. I have a problem with that…said nobody ever.