Well you could try to pre-cast backstab and steal into the target… Otherwise I think this is just something you’ll have to deal with like the rest of us. Could be latency.
Underwater is kinda ridiculous as a Thief.
People think we can dodge for days on land? Boy, they haven’t even seen us swim have they? Hah!
Their survivability is great… You will be hard-pressed to find a thief who will fight to the death.
Their sustain is terrible, though.
We still know nothing of the cantrips or the traits though… I imagine a lot of thieves are going to shoot themselves dead in the face in WvW with this weapon.
Pvp wise looks awful, open world and wvw seems that it could work, what has me worried is that trickery is still cored and the new trait will have to either replace DA(damage focused trait) or DD(utility trait)
We don’t know the traits yet though, either of these two being replaced could end up being completely fine.
Or it could be a disaster. Who knows…
In the aftershow Bogotter revealed that the Holosmith is a high risk/reward POWER glass-canon, with the heatmechanic giving you more dps as heat increase but with a chance that you may explode if too much heat is generated. A new specific heal skill was mentioned as a counter to overheating.
It’s probably a combined cool-off ability, like a heatsink. More heat = more healed…?
First oft, i play since the beginning. My first 80 was the engineer. I love the concept. But after a long break i hit a brick wall with hot.
I am dying left and right. I am one, two shotted by everything that moves.
I tried full vit and tough scrapper. I couldnt outheal the damage. I couldnt escape. I couldnt distract with anything like necro or mesmer ofc.
I tried full condi pistol pistol. Damage didnt kill fast enough, couldnt outheal the damage.
Full power feri scrapper, all the same.
Please enlighten me how to engineer. I just love the class too much to quit it for my necro or mesmer (who just kitten the mobs in the junge, even Champions).
Blinds baby, blinds. The enemy can’t hurt what it can’t see.
Pistol 3 + Bomb 4 + Mortar Kit 4 + Grenade Kit 3 + Flamethrower 5 = enemies are nearly permanently blinded unless they are champs or higher, in which case you shouldn’t try to solo them.
And that’s just if you want to play defensively. If you want to play more offensively, you should be up in their face making them miss all their attacks.
So much this…
Who needs dodges? I’ve got BLINDS FOR DAYS!
Just stretch your piano fingers and get playin’.
I wonder how this’ll affect piano players…
Honestly, unless they remove about 50-75% of the waypoints in this game, I can’t take mounts seriously. Why would you EVER need them besides to get pass some cheesy mechanic that will be in the new zones? (Hint: you won’t)
Usually after you waypoint you start running for your target location.
Now you’ll get there quicker than before.
It’s there, and if you use it it’ll benefit you, but you don’t have to. So yeah, you don’t NEED it, but you’ll still get from A to B quicker than if you’d run.
Unless their speed boost is only 40% or something pathetic like that, in that case, keep your boots.
if all maps get the size on desert BL… xD mounts could be fun…
I’m throwing my voice with this guy.
Mounts could be fun, if used on such maps.
Didn’t really see enough to give much feedback. Mounts… blah. My concern from watching the announcement program is that the maps look like they may be more multi tiered massive jumping puzzles similar to dry top and HoT maps which I hate. I hope that’s not the case. I’ll wait till I participate in the open beta weekend to see if I’ll pre-purchase or not.
Well… That’s a shame.
Personally I loved what HoT did with the maps. I hope for more from the new ones, and that seems to be what I am getting.
I think the mounts look fun. I wonder if we’re getting to use them in previous maps. So what if we have waypoints? We get more fun ways to travel and explore. GW2 has always done the travelling animations very well, they feel floaty and heavy, yet agile and bouncy, and that’s all animation work. If they can put the same amount of effort into the mounts, I’m game.
PvE? No problem.
PvP? Well there’s a lot of projectile hate right now, which is worsened the further away you are from your target. Depending on projectile speed and if they can be reflected and/or blocked, it’s not going to work very well.
We’ll have to wait and see.
Can’t speak for raids or sPvP, but guardians are all over WvW, one of the most desirable classes to have in your squad. Depending on how this is handled, they could be even more desirable than they already are.
Hope it’s like Battletech.
Overheat, and you get stacks of burning until you burn to death. Also, HEY WE GOT UNLOAD NOW! On a cool-down probably but… Eh.
I don’t see what you’re supposed to do with rifle animations. You can only hold a gun so many ways and still fire accurately at long distances. Are they supposed to go full-on marine marching drill team on the thing?
A bit sad I wasn’t seeing any prone animations though, but… Knowing Anet, they would just disappear into “Uneven” terrain unless they originate 12 feet above the ground.
Jumping Gunners ftw.
Not all that concerned with the rifle, I want to see the traits and how they affect my Unload Sprays.
Go for it.
Why staff specifically though? DrD will carry pretty much any weapon-set.
Why not just play an FPS?
The game doesn’t aim for you in most FPS games. Kind of a turn-off.
(jokes ofc)
Don’t know yet. As long as it isn’t capable of bursting opponents down from 1200 range while retaining the Thieves magical escape capabilities, I am good.
Yeah, there are.
I really wouldn’t recommend it though, your contribution as a part of the zerg will be very restricted. The only thing you bring to the group at the table is cleave damage, and everybody around is already bringing a lot of that.
If you plan to frontline, unless you have a stability battery alongside you, your damage is going to get constantly interrupted, most of the time, making you unable to deliver it.
Unless you run condi-thief and spam poison-fields, that can really screw up the folks who are trying to seek shelter in the backline of a zerg, or the healing bursts of the frontline. As a thief you have access to basically the entire field of combat at a pretty low risk as long as you’re aware.
There are better classes for frontline combat in a zerg though, or midline, or backline for that matter… Thief really doesn’t have a solid place in a zerg eitherway.
That doesn’t mean they can’t support the zerg though, pick off stragglers, finish downs, ninja-rez, camp flipping, scouting, etc. They are all… Less direct ways of contributing though, probably not what you had in mind.
That said, get a couple of thieves organized, get a commander who knows where he wants them, and they can do some real damage.
Just don’t go into a zerg with 11k HP.
You will die.
(edited by TwiceDead.1963)
Yep, been having some issues with it lately. I suspect lag.
Also, and you didn’t say this but I just want to head it off in case someone else does, being overtuned in one aspect of the game is not a good way to balance for weakness elsewhere. I would personally rather have thieves get some shaves to reduce their small scale dominance while also getting buffs so they can better participate in other areas of the game, than leave them in the garbage can in some areas and reigning supreme elsewhere.
That’s a novel thought for sure, but it’s probably never going to happen. Since the game came out, thieves have never had any kind of group support aside from group-stealth, and Mesmer does that better. Well, Boonstrip as well, but with the asinine amount of boon generation out there, it hardly makes a dent.
Thief has always been a selfish class that is suited for small-scale encounters, but is more of a liability in large ones. I doubt that is going to change once the Rifle gets introduced.
Sword? Was that a typo?
No.
I really struggle against D/P thieves though.
I have gone to running Acro and Instant Reflexes on most of my thief builds. It really ups the survival against stealth builds.
Yeah I’ve started running that. I switch between Deadly Arts and Acrobatics depending on how dangerous things get. Numbers of D/P thieves in the area usually has me switching to Acrobatics immediately.
But Instant Reflexes can really only carry me that much, It’s mostly a l2p issue by now.
I didn’t get seriously into WvW before a couple of weeks ago, and I play Thief for the most part. I started out with D/P meta that everybody seems to run, and the stealth-spam was fun for a while, but I quickly grew bored of it, mostly because it felt tedious to keep stealth up all the time. I also died a lot back then, strangely enough.
Then I swapped to S/D, and now I am having way more fun. I have NO stealth, except from the occasional steal on other thieves, so if I kitten up, I can still run away from fights with ease, but now people can see me running away!
I really struggle against D/P thieves though.
I also made a condi-thief, and it’s pretty fun as well. I haven’t really learned what works for me with such a build yet though, so I haven’t felt like I contribute much in fights.
Thief is fun, yeah.
I would like to add:
“You always botch the landing, resulting in a faceplant.”
I don’t know… When it comes to Thief for me the past few days, I’ve been running with a zerg. I don’t really die that much anymore, not like when I started out, used to get downed all the time, but as you get around the class, what your build can survive and what it can’t, you really can get away with a lot. Been playing S/D the past few days, no easy access to stealth in my build either… Actually unless someone provides me with a smoke-field, I can’t stealth (unless I steal from thieves).
You also have 100% control of engagements and disengagements unless you’re up against another Thief… Maybe that’s why people flock to it. Can’t speak for Ranger, but to my experience, Thief is REALLY forgiving to play once you get around it.
As long as you pay some attention in zergs, it’s really easy to survive with the class, even if you jump through their frontline and start picking at their backline. I’ve done so multiple times the past two days, and 7/10 times, I survive, and the 3/10 I don’t, it’s because I get too eager, just gotta learn some self-restraint.
I really like Rage, atm. Even 3 seconds go a long way in an initial encounter, and considering how easy it is to escape with Sword, I don’t really feel particularly threatened unless I overstay my welcome.
I might consider a condi-cleanse sigil of some sort later, though. I have so many ways to cleanse though…
I don’t find S/x slow in the slightest. S/D I find it kinda faster than regular D/P. The only thing I am sacrificing is stealth, blinds and on-demand and interrupts, and considering the mobility I have and ease of escape, I don’t feel like I need stealth unless I am up against another D/P Thief, then I’ll be in some real trouble…
I encounter a lot of fights I can’t really win, but I blame that on a lack of experience than the weapon-set. I would probably do better with D/P, but I don’t really enjoy it as much as S/D.
I might consider adding some wanderers and burl trinkets down the line though, experiment a little.
they need to do two simple things,remove all proc from all classes and than just simply give every single class same invu/block time.
If you did that, what if you made blocking something akin to the break-bar? A limited pool of it’s own that can block for a set duration, but can break before that if it suffers enough damage.
If you want to break up Zergs, introduce friendly-fire! Haha, imagine if they did that, it would be hilarious…
You don’t defend against thieves. Please don’t, stop defending yourself! LET ME KILL YOU!
- Signed, a Terrible Thief.
For real though…? Try playing the class for a bit if you already haven’t. Learn their abilities and traits and such. You’ll at least get a rough idea how they operate, and you MIGHT have fun in the process.
They should’ve prepared their Resistances. Do you kill many Revenants this way who run Mallyx?
Honestly, I’ve been playing with S/D with Rage and Air sigils all day, and I absolutely LOVE it. I rip boons all day, dodge all day, and have a lovely 2100 leap range (IS + Steal), so good to attack a zergs backline as you just bypass everyone. When you start getting focused, you still have IS(on return) or Shadowstep.
I am even faring better in duels! I actually had a really cool duel today against another S/D thief, it was great. We spun around, dodged, ported around, danced and sung campfire songs in the daytime. In the end I got rekked thanks to mistakes being made. Neither of us stealthed, which was refreshing.
So yeah, duels are fun now!
… Unless I am against a D/P Thief, then I am royally screwed, but I can live with that, since I can always run away just as fast as they can! Mostly… Point is, I am having more fun with S/D than I had with D/P.
Don’t think I will remove the Rage sigil, that extra burst JUST manages to down a player before I have to pull out or get rekked by everyone who wants to get the thief who can’t stealth away(It happened a lot today because I got too eager).
EDIT:
I say duels but it’s mostly just those times when I end up fighting people 1 on 1, nothing official, just me getting jumped or me jumping people. Not like those actual duels people use to have outside north SM where they line up and fight in turns… Or was it south-west SM?
(edited by TwiceDead.1963)
They need to add the option to toggle party colors within a squad so that you can see whom you are actually paired with.
Or just a simple party icon above player’s heads.
Or make Squad color the Squad color (Greenish?) and make party-color blue, don’t make everyone blue.
D/P with Black Powder and Heartseeker for the leap finisher, it’s an unconditional stealth on-demand without relying on an existing target or utility skills. Detonating Blinding Powder inside the Black Powder while heartseeking can also net you quite a duration.
Bit ini-costly though… Something Shadow Arts helps mitigate.
If D/D can do the same as D/P can, then I don’t know how… Mostly due to never having run the set, really.
Wait is this PvE? Oh.
Air/Air (Superior/Major have separate cooldowns, same proc damage)
Air/Blood
Air/FireAll add some burst. Is you’re S/D this will probably be a lot of your DPS, since you’re generally not getting in a lot of autos.
Air/Rage works on S/D, but also great on S/P
For S/P, also consider
Air/Draining (I think this is ~1500 life steal on interrupt with no CD?)
Rage/Draining
Already got a pistol with Drain on it, so I got that covered. Really liking Air/Rage so far, the sword auto does quite a bit of damage actually if they only get the opportunity to land, something quickness helps with for an initial burst. Fights can drag on for a while though…
I’ve been tinkering with acro, trick and DD for some serious dodging.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQNAsYFn8lClOhFmCGOhlriqbBmuAwbDygPYe6v+vH-T1SBQBYRpUGVWAgHAQCV/ZBHBAzoE8KKR0whAYCnAADu/Q+0HEAABwRP6RP6RPakCQ0dWA-w
Hey! That’s what I am running as well!
Except for the Dagger… It’s a zerker, and it has the Air sigil. And the sword is currently using a Rage sigil. And I don’t run foods. Too expensive. Also using Withdraw instead of CV, also, exotic armor. Ascended is too expensive. (but ascended trinkets.) but OTHERWISE it’s the same!
Great fun build, haven’t quite settled on sigils yet though.
(edited by TwiceDead.1963)
Do you mean Nullification? Which removes a boon on hit? That’s a good idea!
But quickness is a good idea as well, as it’ll let me steal boons faster for a short while.
Hmm… Decisions decisions… Both are cheap so I might as well experiment.
Took a break from my condi-thief. Hopped on my other power thief and I run S/D.
Currently got Sigil of Absorbtion slotted (Steal Boon on interrupt). Thing is, I don’t feel like I am getting much use out of it, as my current power build doesn’t have a whole lot of interrupts. There’s Basilisk Venom, Steal, and Bandit’s Defense. If I somehow land CnD, I have an opportunity I guess. . . I never really use the off-hand dagger on this build, feels like a waste of ini.
If I have Air sigil slotted on my dagger, what would you recommend I grab on my sword?
I agree with Sviel… I don’t quite understand what this anti-zerg mechanism you’re proposing is, or how GvG is going to play a part in it.
1s interval might’ve been a bit much. Increasing that duration by 300% was a bit much. Lowering the current by 33-50% seems reasonable.
There’s only one case where I’d put dodge in the same category as invuls, and that’s with Thief, but only because of Daredevil. Thief doesn’t have reliable access to resistance, stab or invuls like the other classes, so the focus on evades there is understandable. I don’t count dodge for the other classes.
Haha, I don’t have a solution or ideal form of damage mitigation, there’s so much of it. This is purely sharing my thoughts on the matter, I am not clever enough to come up with a universal solution to this, and even if I could, maybe I shouldn’t roll it.
I think the scale tipped after HoT released and the power-creep just flushed over the game, but I can’t really claim that with confidence as I wasn’t playing WvW before that, so I don’t know how it was.
I haven’t been doing sPvP or WvW for long, maybe a year of WvW and a half for the other, so I am not really what you’d call sufficiently experienced to be an accurate judge of this entire system as a whole package, so take this as mere opinion and not advice or suggestion.
I’ll say this as humbly as I can, I don’t like it…
My first character for WvW was a scrapper, and the first thing I noticed after getting to know my build that was shared by someone else, was: “Wow, scrapper is so forgiving to play! I can just leap into a pile of the enemy zerg and walk right out again! Thanks to the double Elixir S procs!”.
I made some legit HORRIBLE plays after this, plays I shouldn’t have been allowed to walk out alive from. I leapt right into enemy piles again and again and again, and I was allowed to walk right back out after doing my damage, again and again and again. As long as I was backed by a line of allies to retreat behind, I could do this indefinitely.
And maybe that’s the point? That these frontliners with invulnerability, are kind of like boarders on a ship, so to speak, leaping from your own ship to the enemys, doing a little damage to the enemy crew, then swinging back to the deck of your own ship before you get focused?
But this is not just about the scrapper, I swapped classes see, because I felt kinda cheap, and brought a Revenant instead. Wouldn’t you know it, they have their invuls too! And I can make the same plays as I could on my Engineer (albeit to a lesser extent, success rate went down).
Then I see enemy warriors doing the same… I tried a guardians and they have blocks, invuls, stabs, clears, you name it. Thieves might be the biggest offender as they get evades for DAYS, although I don’t think they have much impact on zerg v zerg.
I know that individual skill matters less and less the more people you cram into one combat-zone, and it’s hard to design a game to make a player feel relevant in such an encounter, but I don’t think the solution to feeling relevant is letting players be literally invincible to leap into the middle of a squad of 50 people, do their damage, and walk out while being targeted by every enemy in the zerg, and get out unharmed.
So those are my thoughts. While invuls frustrate me, they won’t stop me from playing the game in any gamemode.
I’ve said my piece, I think! See you in the field!
This is what I have been running in WvW:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQNAqYVl0MhimYpTw8Jw/ELtEmXZISNHmLhrwZoWA4AsAA-TVSAQBA4BAYgzAAtUC6hDBQCV/Jdmfyoyv8pP4F7PAA-w
I know what you’re thinking… "You must be godkitten suicidal to run with that getup!(replace suicidal with any snide or demeaning remark that suits your thoughts), and you would be right! But please understand! I am poor!
Okay, for real though…
Viper is pretty great, but it’s a tad bit too squishy for WvW encounters. I realized this after every 1 on 1 I tried to pick it would take me a minute to get them down and it’d only take them about… 2 seconds to get me down.
As a Condi-thief, I find myself lacking in dodges and cleanses because I forego the precision signet for Venoms, and the other two slots are occupied by my panic stealth and my stun-break. I don’t get access to Shadow Arts either because I prefer the massive amount of forgiving traits Daredevil gives me that keeps me alive in my currently very squishy state. I can’t let go of Trickery, it’s godkitten Trickery, and since most of my damage is Poison based, Deadly Arts is a must. That’s my logic at least…
In which case, how about Trailblazers? Gives you Condi-Duration and Damage, along with some mightily needed Vitality and Toughness!
On the other hand, you don’t really need durations because of the asinine amount of cleansing people can do. But then Choking Gas comes along… It’s pretty great to spam these into a zerg if you decide to follow one.
So have anybody of you tried to run Trailblazers for condition builds in WvW? Or do you think the Expertise is overrated and you’re much better of using something else?
I’ve been running full Vipers in Zergs lately, with Poison Duration on shortbows.
Works great, especially to kill downs, just spam Choking Gas on a downed target and people can’t do kitten unless they’ve got resistance… At which point you steal all their boons away!
As per ush though, you bring nothing in terms of boon-support, so expect to be frowned upon. Like this:
>:C
Also play smart, or get some vitality. Or both.
(edited by TwiceDead.1963)
Ah I see. Didn’t know you lost the stacks… Never used stacking stat sigils much.
I just… Don’t do legendaries.
Their skins are ugly(Personal opinion) and borderline annoying at times (rainbow ponies), and their function? Convenient, sure, but nothing I couldn’t get done in an hour, as opposed to the years I’ve heard someone spend on obtaining them.
All respect for people with the willpower and patience for such a long-term goal though, but personally I’ll make do with what I got.
…
I’d like to say that GW2 for PvE has a meta but it’s a very strict meta
…You are mistaken. There is nothing strict about the meta in gw2. Even in raids.
That really depends on the people you encounter. Some people need absolute structure in their squads to be confident of victory.
Solution to that is to just… Hang around people who aren’t like that.
I wouldn’t mind seeing Stealth go. Problem is, that would seriously kitten with core thieves.
I wouldn’t mind seeing all the evades go… We’ve got Stealth, as long as they remove the ICD.
I won’t see both go. We need either, right now as we don’t have the ludicrous amount of passive defenses other classes do.
No matter what you do though, thieves will always be a source of frustration for any non-thief. It’s just a universal staple at this point no matter what game you play that has any rogue-y classes.
I am still puzzled at the initial idea.
Let’s make the clunkiest and arguably heaviest weapon-type in the game a throwable ranged-weapon.
I mean, sure, it would do some damage if someone actually got hit by the thing, so I guekittenecks out in that regard, but godkitten … Revenants must be kittening RIPPED.
I would’ve preferred Frisbee throwing (Ranged Shield).
inb4 “It’s magic!”, I know I am just poking fun…