The Thief PP/PD build needs to be majorly toned down. They never spend more than 50% of the time out of stealth and every time they enter stealth they remove conditions and heal.
That seems…unlikely, considering that P/P doesn’t have organic stealth.
Ok … so I made a quick movie to prove exactly how wrong you are …
Wish all arguments were as easy to win.
That is D/D+D/P, not P/P+P/D. You literally got none of the weapon combos right.
The Thief PP/PD build needs to be majorly toned down. They never spend more than 50% of the time out of stealth and every time they enter stealth they remove conditions and heal.
That seems…unlikely, considering that P/P doesn’t have organic stealth.
Vapor Form rarely ever does anything aside from stop a person from killing you for a few secs
Welcome to every downed skill ever.
I just want to get to the bottom of this so that people will stop using MF in fractals, as it is harmful for the entire group
That depends on the goals of the group. If the group is there to knock out a daily ASAP, MF is going to slow that down. If the group is looking to get the optimal amount of loot out of a fractal then they’re doing themselves a disservice if they aren’t running some MF.
I’ll never get why people will rail on groupmates for bringing some MF, but not when they overspec survivability. You never hear “Why aren’t you running full berserker gear? You’ve never got close to being downed.”
It’ll work, just remember that when you’re evading or your enemy is missing due to blind/weakness, tough/vit are doing nothing for you. People invest so heavily into offensive stats because they have means other than defensive stats to mitigate damage.
Newsflash: You don’t have to do the monthly…
Poor defense for a poor mechanic.
When you dangle a carrot in front of a donkey, you don’t get to say “you don’t HAVE to eat the carrot” because you know kitten well that donkey wants that carrot, and that’s why you deliberately put that carrot out in front of it, to keep the donkey moving forward at your whim.
Like that donkey, players are goal driven and motivated by shiney things put in front of them.
If your primary motivation is already “getting shiny things” and not “having fun doing content I want to do”, then you’re already doing fractals.
The fractals are as optional as the monthly.
its all about playstyle and what you enjoy. ignore what ppl "tell"you what to use
Yes and no. Play style and what you enjoy are most important, but if you happen to enjoy a weaker play style or setup you give up the right to complain about content being too difficult or groups not taking you in. People “tell” you what to use because they’ve found it effective, and that advice is worth listening to.
I’ll respect someone’s decision to play Dagger/Nothing with full healing gear because they enjoy the style, but only up until the point that they start calling for content to be nerfed to make their desired play style viable, that PvP needs to be nerfed because everyone is stronger than they are, that groups keep booting them out, etc.
I dont say my desire are more importants than others. I just wanna the same attention.
Wish granted, your subset of content has got the same amount of attention as the main storyline.
My idea is to stop trying to find ideas to change a mechanic that works.
Stop trying to repair something that isn’t broken, everything is already fine as it is.
You can say this, but the only developer sentiment we’ve had on the subject along with a large portion of the community agree: TTK being <4 seconds isn’t good, especially being able to instantly close from a range.
I’m in favor of straight-up reducing back stab’s raw damage in favor of buffing it in some more synergistic ways.
Even though I play the spec because I like raw damage rather than condition, done right I am also in fanvor of this. Maybe a medium-large cripple or with traits a source to gain protection or retal, things like that to give it more flavor in trade for some damage.
The only problem with this though is that BS does a very small amount of damage compared to glass when you run a balanced build. Any nerf to backstab in terms of damage is only going to hurt balanced that much more, so the trade off would have to be very significant for these builds.
Your second point is exactly why I believe the change needs to happen. Backstab synergizes very well with dumping damage boosts and power upgrades onto it…but absolutely nothing else. Reduce the direct component and give it conditions/boons, make it steal endurance, something.
I’d also like to see a stealthed dagger attack from the front change from “weaksauce failed backstab” to something more useful. Sword’s from-stealth attack is far more interesting and synergistic because you can change the effect via positioning.
The ultimate goal here is not to make backstab less desirable to use, but to make it more desirable to use while making the insta-kill builds less viable.
Hence why I said “DPS thieves.” Condition thieves are fine in PvE. Never said they weren’t. I will always laugh at DPS thieves using Death Blossom even at all. It’s a waste of initiative and time.
I’m also laughing at you for your inability to read.
Condition thieves are “DPS thieves”, condition damage is a great, if slightly more situational way, to put out DPS.
I … griefed him for a good 30 mins until he stopped coming back in, laughing at his dead body each time.
…
Some people just love to be bullies
That is so meta.
I bought the game at same price of PvErs, why i have to bear other people get contents for their game, and mine game does not receive content at all?
This is the price you pay when you choose to only enjoy a subset of the content the game has to offer. The same can be said of any other subset.
If a Thief is in combat, delivering damage and/or receiving damage, he shouldn’t be able to stealth. The timer to restealth should begin after he both stops attacking and stops taking damage.
Pretty much makes stealth an opener ability and completely unusable in combat. Would require a major retuning of the profession to change mechanics that drastically.
Stealth doesn’t break when taking damage, why should taking damage prevent stealthing?
2. the thief stealth debuff on combat should also apply when out of combat
I’m not sure what you want here. The “revealed” debuff activates when a thief hits something while stealthed. If you’re not in combat, there’s nothing to hit.
What am I supposed to do? Every single group I’m in wants to use every exploit. I try to avoid using as many as possible, but there is no way I will just leave a group on the 3rd fractal because they want to aoe down the seal in the colossus fractal. That is ridiculous and I’d never get anything done.
Build your own group and include your ground rules with every invite. You’ll get groups at a slower rate, but that is the price you pay for having a strict code of conduct.
From my understanding you’re ranked according to point values, not merely win/loss, so continual close matches will fail to move your positioning enough to push you into a new matchup.
Your description sounds very similar to the roles that sword already currently fills.
I don’t disagree that greatsword probably gets a disproportionate amount of graphical love, but there’s half a dozen weapon options I’d rather see thieves get before greatswords that’d fit and grow the profession better.
“Pretty much twice as slower” is a vast overstatement on how much MF affects stats. Furthermore, I’m not particularly lucky and can pull 2g+ an hour out of fractals with only 50 – 80 % MF. With current ecto prices, many places are >2g/hr farms.
If the whole party uses it that “overstatement” is not far from reality.
Fractals profit is based on luck since there is no money reward, you may get 2g+ as well as 30s
There’s an RNG element, but one that can be predicted and influenced via what you kill and how much MF you bring. So while, yes, you can only make 30s in a run, you could also make >10g (I’ve pulled that much on a multi-exotic fractal set). Statistically, based on your behavior and MF, you’ll pull an average. The average is quite good, in my experience.
Anyhow, even going from everyone in party at 0 % MF to >100 % MF on every member, you still won’t reach nearly a 100 % increase (“double”) in time spent to complete content, especially since a good percentage of content is not spent in combat.
When I take a swing at you, I’m stealthed until my attack actually hits. In fact, if I miss, you never see me at all. So why insist that beginning a stomp should expose you?
If there’s anything that’s a bit off about stealth and stomping, it’s that stealthing the downed guy blocks stomp. This is rather inconsistent with the way attacks that would hit a stealthed guy anyway still correctly connect and do damage. (Fixing this would require changing thief downed skill 3 to actually do something, though.)
It is only inconsistent if you consider stomping an attack, which the game currently does not in any sense. If stealth broke on a successful stomp, it would be inconsistent to have stealth be able to block stomps. As it stands, however, stomp acts consistently as a channeled action, but not an attack.
@Tulisin.6945 ( im not blaming thief of my failure ok.,) i say there thief is lethal in 1 vs 1 and i can accept that., but not in 1 vs group., is that clear? For example: u r in the party and thief kill u, i think ur party should have chance to make that thief stop, down or retreat but they can’t do that why? Bcuz of that #5 dagger,skill, thief can hide every 2 – 3 sec.,
You didn’t get the point of my post then. It isn’t #5 dagger skill that is doing it, it is the fact that the thief has better mobility than you. If he was slower than you, but stealthed, you could still kill him. If he didn’t have stealth, you still couldn’t, because you can’t catch him.
So I been watching my p/p videos to see what am I doing wrong then it hit me. Pistol has only one skill in the no 1 skill. Well that sounds a bit confusing so let me explain. If you are using daggers and you use the number 1 skill you get 3 types of strikes same with the sword. So why not give it to the pistols as well?
Let me know what you guys think of this and if you like this idea of mine or is it crap
Actually makes alot of sense part of the problem also is the pistol shot shoots as slow as rifles. you have two pistols why aren’t they both firing in sequence? bang bang …see?
They do…on the only P/P skill that exists. Auto attack is not a P/P skill, it is a P/ skill.
If you’re mobile than the thief and they stealth, you should be able to kill them anyways. If the thief is more mobile than you are, you aren’t going to be able to catch them regardless of stealth.
So why are you blaming thief stealth for your failure to kill the thief instead of thief mobility?
Thieves have weak mobility compared to Greatsword/Sword Warrior, D/D Elementalist.
The average thief has mobility on par with another profession’s heavy mobility spec. The average Greatsword/Sword warrior or D/D elementalist cannot keep up with the average thief. Nothing can keep up with a mobility specced thief, but few thieves run full mobility.
I’m in favor of straight-up reducing back stab’s raw damage in favor of buffing it in some more synergistic ways.
If you’re mobile than the thief and they stealth, you should be able to kill them anyways. If the thief is more mobile than you are, you aren’t going to be able to catch them regardless of stealth.
So why are you blaming thief stealth for your failure to kill the thief instead of thief mobility?
Making your team complete a dungeon pretty much twice as slower where you could have spent that time doing a farm that grants you about 2-4g an hour (you have to be the luckiest person to get 2-4g extra by using MF in a dungeon, like winning the lottery).
“Pretty much twice as slower” is a vast overstatement on how much MF affects stats. Furthermore, I’m not particularly lucky and can pull 2g+ an hour out of fractals with only 50 – 80 % MF. With current ecto prices, many places are >2g/hr farms.
Again I’m just saying stealth stomping should just be removed because it’s inconsistent with the rest of the system, not because I think it’s cheap.
How exactly is it inconsistent? I’m no fan of the finishing move and I do like the downed state, but I see no difference between stealth finishing and stealth resing someone. You can use utilities and skills to both help your team members get back up and to keep the enemy from doing the same with their team.
1. There is a trait that generates a Shadow Sanctuary when rezzing. To have rezzing break stealth makes that trait totally useless.
2. Rezzing someone is not an attack.
3. Stomping someone is the single most influential attack you can do in combat.
But nobody requests stealth to be broken on a successful stomp, but instead when a stomp has begun, which is not consistent with how even damaging attacks work. Even if you equate stomp to a regular attack, logic dictates that it wouldn’t break stealth unless the spike is successful.
It all equates to, quickness, stability, and stealth just quickening the inevitable. If you are down, and somebody is focused on killing you, you are defeated without outside assistance.
Pretty much.
Stealth stomping is only a huge advantage in 1v1, so what people really have a problem with is getting downed first 1v1, then failing to come back and defeat their opponent.
If you get downed first in 1v1, you are going to lose regardless of professions. If the situation isn’t 1v1, then stealth isn’t an issue.
A D/D thief traited to 15 in the top row can be 100% perma-weakening the boss with Dagger 1 chain (and thereby probably sitting on max or near-max initiative), and when adds come can simply spin off 3-4 DBs in a row, tagging all the adds (and the boss) with 9-12 bleed stacks, then steal back to the boss and resume the perma-weaken spam. And Death Blossom is a hugely wide AOE. And it heals you for a ton if you’re built to heal on attack. DB does 3 hits per mob, so how many potenial self-heals is that at 100+ per heal?
…
Finally, RFI is nearly as useful as Infiltrator’s Strike for getting out of trouble. It’s easy to goof your IS and not really get as far away as you need to. RFI is 100% reliable and will move you very far away from the target and the center of the fight. It will also 100% reliably stun-break, which IS is not reliable at doing. Need condition removal? Put a superior signet of Purity on your off-hand dagger. Fixed. Now you effectively have automatic single-condition removal every 10 seconds.
Sword auto attack also provides perma-weaken, plus cripple, plus AE capability, without taking a trait for it. Dagger’s poison->weaken application synergy is nice, but it isn’t exactly a huge leg-up on sword. Additionally, if you’re alternating long periods of auto attack with short bursts of Death Blossom you’re going to have to balance your stats or accept weaker bleeds, while not a huge hindrance this again reflects poorly on the decision vs. power-based sword.
Roll for Initiative is a utility skill, and pretty incomparable to IS. RoI only allows one-way movement, while IS can be used both to close and create distance, as well as removing conditions. That said, optimal IS use has a very high skill cap, so most people won’t really push its limits.
Mesmer would be my choice for mobility/stealth synergy. Mesmer is the only other profession that has viable stealth, and if you both take some stealth synergy you’ll be one of the only class combos able to benefit from eachother in that way beyond the simple stealth mechanics. Mesmer clones are also great at distracting enemies to allow the thief to get in more rear-arc attacks.
You get viable ranged combat, and no armor competition as well. The latter is something people don’t always consider when building a duo team, but not having to compete over gear is very helpful when something nice drops.
- Stab (Sword/Empty 3) now applies a 2 second immobilize. That skill needed some flavor, even if nobody is going to just use just a single one handed weapon.
- Caltrops can no longer roots players.
Stab doesn’t need to be better specifically for the reason you noted. These X/nothing weapon combos don’t need to be viable. If we were to get a new offhand weapon that only had #4/5 skills and inherited the empty-offhand skills instead of having a dual skill then there’d be a reason for it. Every change comes at a cost in implementation and testing, there’s no reason to devote developer hours to something like this as-is.
And Caltrops doesn’t root players as-is, it has a 1-second channel but you’re entirely free to move for the duration.
The rest of the suggestions seem alright, especially making more skills available underwater. Buffing C&D with blind might be a little strong.
Say all the projectiles do go precisely 900 units forward, as intended. The discrepancy in range might be because the projectile on Vital Shot starts further back than the projectile from Head Shot. This would likely be due to animations determining the origin point of the attack.
The only issue I have with this is that all range should be measured from the same point on the character hitbox. We don’t see range variations due to race, for instance, because animations are just a fancy overlay onto mechanics that should be consistent regardless of animation.
It’s terrible on DPS builds, obviously, but you shouldn’t be using Pistol if you’re using a DPS build.
I don’t think you understand what that term means. Condition-based damage generates excellent, if slightly more situational, DPS.
Would Rune of Rage be better if it had an offensive proc? Sure.
But so would Hoelbrak, Pirate, Pack, Vampire…
Runes go into armor, they can take effect when your armor is struck. Sigils don’t have defensive (“when hit”) procs, Runes don’t have offensive (“on hit”) procs.
They pose no threat to a thief especially necro that relies on condi dmg because we can remove conditions and heal up all while we are in stealth so preety much we are invulnerable to a necro after we become hidden
Those are some pretty big generalizations though. Not all necromancers are condition-based, and not all thieves have passive condition removal during stealth.
What about Stealth breaking on damage, and when you’re de-stealthed from being damaged you cannot re-stealth for another 10 seconds? Would this be absolutely game-breaking?
I don’t think you realize how easy it is to damage people in stealth. This would only be viable if stealth actually had some kind of evade component to prevent attacks from hitting.
OOOR.. Thrill of the Crime could be buffed to be 30 seconds of Swiftness/Fury/Might.
That’d definitely allow permanent uptime of Fury/Swiftness without much effort, for what its worth.
I agree thieves should get more access to boons, but they ought to come from weapon skills.
Starlink, why dont you just craft a cheap quiver? Its not that hard, or expensive.. im sure you have 50 ectos somewhere, and 250 ancient bones.. not expensive.. there, PROBLEM SOLVED
Assuming he’s got a vial, I don’t think this is unreasonable. Barring really bad drops, you should get enough money and/or ectos getting to level 20 to make yourself an ascended back piece, unless you’re skipping the vast majority of the mobs. Bare minimum doing each fractal set once and getting a gold from each should pull in 20g by the time you absolutely need that back piece, the bones will run you 6g~, the ectos another 15~ assuming you didn’t salvage any on your way up.
where are you getting your T6 mats / Ectos? O_o and can I has some?
I made the fang based quiver.
Each fang was ~15s making that ~37g 50s
Each Glob was ~25s making that another ~12g 50s
Waiting and buying when costs were low it was a bit over 40g for my non infused quiver. That doesn’t give you a single point of resistance by the way. Still gotta make an infusion or infuse the quiver.My point was that to even arrive at level 20 you have to clear 19 fractal sets, which will give you at least a gold per fractal set (I usually make about 2g/set) and plenty of tokens for the infusion. If you use bones instead of fangs, the cost for the fine mats falls to <7 gold, so you should be able to afford the total cost of 19~ with the 20-40 gold you made getting to that point.
So the argument then becomes not “I can’t get any agony resistance because it is totally random” but rather “I don’t want to spend my money and/or get agony resistance with a stat combo that is suboptimal for my build”.
The argument becomes kitten where’d you get that vial to make a backpack? Oh yea… RNG. (got 1 after 1800 tokens made in fractals)
You’re right that the vial introduces an RNG element, but I would like to point out that the OP didn’t complain about lack of vials. Your odds of not getting one on the way to level 20 are extremely low unless you’re skipping a lot of content.
full mf gear
Unlike most stat decisions, MF gets heavily diminishing returns depending on slot. Shoulders and chest have the same % MF, for instance, but the stats you trade out for said MF are vastly different.
So that said, “full MF gear” is going to drop off in viability for farming fractals long before people actually stop using MF gear. Things like pirate runes and all-stat accessories mean you can pull 40 %~ MF at the cost of something like 100 stat points, and I seriously doubt fractal levels are finely tuned enough to be doable at one level with those 100 stat points, and not at the next level without. Food has similar returns, unless you’re running a heavily food-synergized build (relying on crit food heals for survivability, etc.), so it is another good source of “cheap” MF.
tl;dr – Full MF gear is sort of insane, but not using MF gear is kind of insane in the opposite way, might as well get the cheap MF and leave the expensive MF.
The problem with venom related traits aren’t just the traits themselves, venom skills are just sub-par.
This. The OP isn’t a bad idea, but strong venom traits are the problem with venom, not the solution. Venoms are balanced around builds that trait for them heavily to make them worthwhile, and as a result are terrible for anyone not running those builds. The base skills should be made more viable for all thieves, but that is tough to do without breaking venom thieves.
I honestly prefer D/P combo. This gives me the ability to basically blindlock the boss mob, even if I’m half way across the field. This makes it so a lot of attacks just miss.
Now I’ve never given it a rigorous test, and I may be mistaken, but I was under the impression that blind being 10 % effective on bosses meant that only 10 % of their attacks would miss.
The auto attack and the stealth attack are the only two abilities that aren’t crap on main hand pistol. Why would you want to change the auto attack?
I think you may be overestimating the potential of the auto attack. I’m not sold on it being quite as sky-is-falling terrible as some folks here, but it isn’t in Sneak Attack’s league, and I wouldn’t call it good.
-If you miss once or twice he heals back to full health (few classes can stop this).
Few classes can stop it solo, any group should be able to do so quite easily as long as you maintain control of your stun immunity stacks. If every person in the group brings a single stun to the fight the boss should never ever heal, since you’ll just drop any kind of interrupt on him when he tries.
It’s not just the attack speed of Vital Shot that needs to be fixed. Also the range of pistols is not 900 as specified, it’s even shorter than that!
The description of both Trick Shot for Short Bow and Vital Shot for Pistol (the auto-attacks) specifies range 900.
Now if you want, you can try this out.
Go to the shooting range in Lion’s Arch near the Dungeon Armor vendors, then equip a Short Bow and put yourself at max range and shoot to see how far the arrows go t hit the target. Now, switch to Pistol and try shooting from the same distance which should be 900 and see what happens…Pistols’ effective range is actually roughly 700, hence the range in Pistol skills description is a lie.
This may be due to how shots arc with different projectiles. I know you can get extra range out of arcing your bow shots, it is possible that pistol shots do not rise and then fall, but merely fall, causing their range to be less than stated in some situations.
Not salvageable? That’s unfortunate…I suppose Anet has not decided on a proper loot table for ascended quality items yet. After all, what do they drop? Orichalcum and ectos? That’s the same as an exotic. Would have to be something a bit nicer. Hmm.
There are already ascended-level materials that drop by tier in fractals. Presumably, these materials will have more used when full ascended-level sets are available. They could, for instance, allow you to craft ascended armor out of ascended materials attained via random drop or salvaging ascended drops.
Starlink, why dont you just craft a cheap quiver? Its not that hard, or expensive.. im sure you have 50 ectos somewhere, and 250 ancient bones.. not expensive.. there, PROBLEM SOLVED
Assuming he’s got a vial, I don’t think this is unreasonable. Barring really bad drops, you should get enough money and/or ectos getting to level 20 to make yourself an ascended back piece, unless you’re skipping the vast majority of the mobs. Bare minimum doing each fractal set once and getting a gold from each should pull in 20g by the time you absolutely need that back piece, the bones will run you 6g~, the ectos another 15~ assuming you didn’t salvage any on your way up.
where are you getting your T6 mats / Ectos? O_o and can I has some?
I made the fang based quiver.
Each fang was ~15s making that ~37g 50s
Each Glob was ~25s making that another ~12g 50s
Waiting and buying when costs were low it was a bit over 40g for my non infused quiver. That doesn’t give you a single point of resistance by the way. Still gotta make an infusion or infuse the quiver.
My point was that to even arrive at level 20 you have to clear 19 fractal sets, which will give you at least a gold per fractal set (I usually make about 2g/set) and plenty of tokens for the infusion. If you use bones instead of fangs, the cost for the fine mats falls to <7 gold, so you should be able to afford the total cost of 19~ with the 20-40 gold you made getting to that point.
So the argument then becomes not “I can’t get any agony resistance because it is totally random” but rather “I don’t want to spend my money and/or get agony resistance with a stat combo that is suboptimal for my build”.
Starlink, why dont you just craft a cheap quiver? Its not that hard, or expensive.. im sure you have 50 ectos somewhere, and 250 ancient bones.. not expensive.. there, PROBLEM SOLVED
Assuming he’s got a vial, I don’t think this is unreasonable. Barring really bad drops, you should get enough money and/or ectos getting to level 20 to make yourself an ascended back piece, unless you’re skipping the vast majority of the mobs. Bare minimum doing each fractal set once and getting a gold from each should pull in 20g by the time you absolutely need that back piece, the bones will run you 6g~, the ectos another 15~ assuming you didn’t salvage any on your way up.
(edited by Tulisin.6945)
I agree TC, i will purposly hold the group up untill they come back and kill them.
I would just kick you and 4 man it. I’m there now only for the rings that never drops. I don’t need more junk from trash. There are enough not skippable mobs out there to kill. If you don’t quit game after 100 more runs you will skip everything too.
Conversely, I got my rings in 3 runs and now am more interested in farming the mobs. Maybe I should boot you for having different priorities?
Or, better yet, just communicate for ten seconds when you’re putting the group together so everyone is on the same page, that is all it takes. This should be something discussed within the first minute of a group getting together, not halfway through the second fractal. Nor is it alright to just assume everyone does things one particular way and then complain when the group isn’t on the same page and you didn’t bother to let them know.
What I don’t agree on is making the solution to venom’s weakness even more reliant on venom-share builds than it already is. The problem with venoms is that with the exception of specializing heavily into them, they’re terrible. Making that specialized set of venom builds more powerful is not the solution venoms need to become a viable utility for all thieves.
Instead of nerfing venoms, they should have nerfed venom share. Like, shared venoms only get half the charges and double the number of charges at the same time.
I think the term “nerf” clouds it a little. I get what you mean though, venoms and venom-share was poorly designed. Because of the potential for venom shares to be powerful with that one build, they had to be so weak that people not using that build find them terrible. This is particularly apparent with Basilisk Venom, which has seen several nerfs as a result of it being quite good with Venom Share, but even in its 100 % original state most people considered it the worst thief elite by far.