^What this guy said. You either AoE on point while being bunky and supporty, preventing caps, use ranged weapons or have instant gap-closers if you’re melee. Being a plain old walking guy with a sword doesn’t work in this game, which is a sign of how broken it is, but, well, that’s life.
Warrior will get a teleport or a zerker build will forever remain a novelty to play in between serious shoutbow matches just so you don’t kill yourself out of boredom. Or they can increase Rifle’s damage by 100% I guess.
Anyone who says you can run without Defense has never actually played warrior at any level beyond hotjoin hero. A warrior without at least 4 in Defense and a Longbow is bad and worthless versus competent players. Sure, Axe + GS with 6 in Strength might be fun to run in WvW and Hotjoin, but you’ll be eating dirt half the time in a team fight, and your burst is unreliable at best compared to a thief, mesmer, guardian or even a freaking longbow ranger.
There’s a reason why thief always replaced or succeeded zerker warriors for roamer back in the day. Thief did everything a warrior could do, and did it better. They had better mobility, better escape, better burst, better survivability.
Warrior survivability has improved since those days with Cleansing Ire, Healing Signet, and Zerker Stance, at the cost of probably half their previous damage, with the trait realignments, and the Frenzy nerf. In the end they’re still a slightly mediocre gimmick.
GS/Hammer isn’t so bad now that Stability is fairly rare, but yeah. Zerker Warrior will never be optimal unless they overbuff the living hell out of it, simply because he lacks instant teleports and gets screwed by long Protection uptime, block and blind spam.
Mines would be pretty cool, but this weapon needs to be good enough to replace either D/P or SB in PvP, because the meta is to stale at the moment. So, it either needs to have god-tier mobility or good direct killing potential. It can’t be just a quirky condi/utility weapon.
I like the idea of a sticky-mine based weapon. Imagine placing a dozen of those on the map, each inflicting long cripple and such, messing with the enemy roamers and softening people up before a team fight. A good Thief would have to not only manage his decaps and team presence, but also make sure the trails remain trapped. It needs an Infiltrator Arrow-type move, though.
If that’s the case, what line/tier do you guys think it should be placed in?
I take Warrior as a baseline, where he has to sacrifice useful traits to grab Warrior’s Sprint, but not any crucial ones.
If we’re considering the new traits, I’d roll it into Wrathful Spirits. This way it would actually compete with Fiery Wrath.
A Zerker Dragon Hunter will have to take Zeal and Valor, if I’m correct, so putting it into some other line will severely cripple the build. However, if Guardian’s speed is a real concern and they don’t want to overdo it, maybe put it on Unscathed Contender and make it read “you have a 25% increased movement speed while under the effect of Aegis” in addition to what the trait already does. This way Guard will have his normal speed in-combat, but will be able to move around while roaming.
I mean I understand the immobilization/cast time being considered for True Shot. It was just something that crossed my mind.
Edit: But as I’ve stated many times, I would LOVE a movement trait. I think Guardians will now be the only profession without a movement trait/signet once all of this goes live. One thing to note is that I think we’ll be too strong with a movement trait. Right now, we’re essentially thieves with teleporting burst without the disengage.
Thieves get way more than just burst. They’re great for pinning down targets with Panic Strike, providing support with stealth, stripping crucial boons, hunting enemy DPS, because they have endless teleports, they always have interrupts at hand etc.
Even a GS Warrior with Warrior’s Sprint can’t match a Thief’s mobility, so Guard getting the +25% trait won’t suddenly turn them into better Thieves. Not to mention that Thieves don’t even have to sacrifice a trait point to get their unmatched speed.
And as for True Shot – it’s essentially like Mighty Blow. It’s the only attack on the weapon set that doesn’t get outhealed by Cele classes, so I think it’s fine. Rangers get a far more devastating attack on their LB and yeah, it’s on a 10s cooldown, but it also requires two dodges to completely avoid it, plus they get a really strong autoattack. I know you can’t compare skills directly and that Guards have a lot of their own unique tricks, but I don’t think that True Shot being semi-spammable is that big of a deal in a game full of blinds, blocks and evades.
In pve no you dont, you can go full offensive yolo..
Pvp? sure you can walk without it…. if you like to run away all the time.
Without defensive traitline you must build FULL offensive and hope you can nuke your opponent before he does.
It’s no problem running without defense at all… in pvp/wvw. And it’s not “ineffective” you know, not running defense, doesn’t mean you can’t run anything else.
Watch Vaanss for example (youtube). He’s good example
Why is it bad to run without defense? tell me!
And yes have been asking the same.. thick skin must be the worst trait ever!
What about… Deep Strike: Fury you apply also grants 150 condition damage.
Yeah, we all agree Thick Skin is absolute trash.
That trait isn’t bad at all. It’s free condi damage not just for you, but for your whole team. Traits like that may make a hybrid Warrior even stronger.
I think you guys are missing the point. No other skill in the game hard counter class mechanics. Well maybe Moa. And for the record, stealth is part of the thief class mechanic, stealth attacks.
Uh-huh. Except Stealth, since it negates the ability to hit the Thief.
Taking a trap means not taking a different utility. You’re most likely overreacting.
Drop smite condition,Take Smiter’s boon trait take the trap. Still wouldn’t stop us from playing an acro build, but it certainly is annoying to have SA be almost entirely stealth based still with a revamp.
Smiter’s Boon isn’t a substitute to an on demand Smite Condition. Smite Condition is probably the last Meditation you can drop, it’s just too much damage, healing and cleanse because of the short cooldown.
JI is the only one I’d drop, but traps are just too easy to avoid in PvP, they’re not worth the slot imo.
There are some people who would have you believe otherwise, but turret builds are, in fact, not viable at all anymore. I think the most glaring fault with the change is exactly this part:
Fully specced into Turrets survivability and they melt in seconds in PvE
A lot of people only think of the sPvP environment because “lol E-Sports”, but this is not the only game mode. Turrets have always struggled in PvE, but when you have 5-6 traits completely dedicated to them and they die as easily as they do now against PvE mobs? That’s ridiculous.
Edit: And the only time turrets are useful outside of their “place and blast finisher” style of play is if you take at least half of the turret traits, but you really need all of them to even hope for them to be effective. End edit.
There are numerous threads outlining potential changes Anet could make to make turrets not useless anymore, but chances of them actually implementing anything soon is very unlikely.
Welcome to the life of all minion classes. Enjoy your stay.
Please. Have you seen what a real sword looks like. Or a real combat axe? Or a warhammer? They’re all relatively small and light, because a weapon has to be fast. What we have in the game are fantastical abominations that wouldn’t be usable IRL.
I’m more concerned about the stance. Human male, for example, stands very awkwardly and swinging from that posture will look really strange.
The stiletto was a knight’s weapon. Most knights in medieval times had a stiletto and/or a rondel. Last time I checked knights used huge plate mail armor too.
Knights in Medieval times uses Daggers as a way to cut through the weak points when the enemy is knocked down. They get on top of the enemy and then pierce through the parts where it is weak. A sword, axe, hammer has too long of a reach when you are on top of them.
If you think that knights used dagger as a offhand weapon, that would be silly. A dagger can’t cut through armor. A sword does a better job on killing unarmored foes because it has a long reach. Shield is better off as a offhand because it is a weapon and provides more protection.
Daggers can be used defensively and an offhand, but that would be silly for a full plated knight. Anything a dagger can parry, the armor is enough to protect it.
If a warrior gets dagger, it would have to be a physical utility skill that does more damage to disabled enemies. It would make sense in gameplay and immersion. Physical skills have tons of CC. For the immersion explanation… because of above explanation.
RL explanations don’t matter. Revenant is getting a dagger, by the way. It’s a heavy armor prof.
Well…
Bright side is we’re not the ones getting traps as utilities. The not so bright side is that the DRAGONHUNTER didn’t really seem awesome, even less so then the Chronomancer – which didn’t really impress me either (o well, high expectations I guess), so…. not really looking forward to the thief’s elite spec reveal – we’re either going to get a rifle with a dumb name or a torch with a dumb name. Getting a rifle with a cool name could happen but probably has a less chance, and a greatsword with a cool name is just not going to happen.
QQ #firstworldproblems
Why do people care about names so much? And what’s so bad about “Dragonhunter” anyway? You hunt dragons in a game about hunting dragons… it’s alright.
We’re all dragon hunters in the game’s sense…. The name is just cheesy sounding, besides that it’s giving to a guardian… Not a deadly menacing warrior of some sort, but a noble knight in shining armor…
Warriors aren’t deadly in this game, they’re buffers.
For Guardian, these looks like they could be fun and interesting.
However, if you’re going to let Guardian apply Quickness to the party, then I hope you are upping Mesmers’ ability to do reliable damage in PvE. Otherwise you could possibly be edging Mesmers completely out of the speedrun meta. Guardians already do more damage more reliably and have higher uptime on their reflects … not to mention heavy armor and no worries about AOE/cleave killing their phantasms (back to the reliable aspect of damage).
Time Warp will be providing much longer Quickness for one.
So for signet of Courage, a full heal with a 4 1/2 sec cast on a 30 sec cool down?
And “feel my wraith” would be a Aoe quickness with fury with a 15 sec cool down?
You what mate? 15 sec cooldown on AoE quickness, really?
I’d rather see a Banner-like cast time on the Signet with 60s cooldown or something like that. No idea about the Shout, but it needs to be 45-60s cooldown, grant 2-3s of quickness and 15s of Fury.
He’s killing dragons, not trying to be like one. Wings are there to counter flight, shield is there to counter the fire breath and the spear is there to kill them.
Well…
Bright side is we’re not the ones getting traps as utilities. The not so bright side is that the DRAGONHUNTER didn’t really seem awesome, even less so then the Chronomancer – which didn’t really impress me either (o well, high expectations I guess), so…. not really looking forward to the thief’s elite spec reveal – we’re either going to get a rifle with a dumb name or a torch with a dumb name. Getting a rifle with a cool name could happen but probably has a less chance, and a greatsword with a cool name is just not going to happen.
QQ #firstworldproblems
Why do people care about names so much? And what’s so bad about “Dragonhunter” anyway? You hunt dragons in a game about hunting dragons… it’s alright.
I don’t see how it’ll be hard to imagine it working, really. Just think how the standard longbow Ranger can manage to stay alive while running full berserker’s gear… but now, give them loads of stealth. If anything, I think a rifle Thief would have an even easier time of it than a pewpew Ranger, and probably have to sacrifice some sustained damage to balance them out.
Thief shortbow probably gives a good baseline for how resilient they can be at range, with its one evasion skill (#3) and mobility skill (#5) being more than enough. There’s pistol too, to a lesser extent, with an immobilize on #2 that can be spammed to kite a single target. Unless the Thief’s elite specialization changes their resource system entirely to be cooldown-based, any evasion/CC skills they might get would have no cooldown as well (and so knockbacks are pretty much a no-go, since it would be a one-skill CC chain).
You’d probably have to look at their pistol skills to get an idea of where they’d go with a rifle. Immobilize/cripple on a skill, probably vulnerability or maybe fury off something… daze/blind is another possibility, though the daze would need to be short like on Head Shot unless it also had a cast time, because of the no-cooldowns problem.
Personally, I’d expect them to turn into something of a sniper, with a way to gain stealth, some mobility-impairing effects, and a charged high-damage shot kinda like the Warrior’s Kill Shot. I don’t know how much they’d want to let Thieves venture into territory already claimed by longbow Ranger and rifle Warrior, though.
Signet of Stone, that’s how pewpew Rangers survive.
That’s the thing, though, Signet of Stone is definitely a good skill for them defensively, but Thief can be doing the same role already simply by going stealth for pretty much as long as they please. (they’ll also get 50% damage reduction in stealth now, if they like.) What I’m trying to say here is that Thieves already have the tools needed to keep themselves safe, so giving them a weapon with little-to-no defensive options in its skills wouldn’t mean they’d roll over and die if they got in a fight.
You can’t attack while you’re stealthed though. A Thief using P/P is dead meat mostly because that set has no real defenses. Thief is extremely glassy (I aint talking WvW cheese builds right now), so lacking a defensive mechanic may mean they eat one serious hit and keel over. We’ll have to see, but I want the new weapon set to at least have decent in-combat mobility.
I always leave Guardians for last anyways in PvP/WvW cause I am not worried about their damage output. I am worried about wasting time on them and getting back stabbed by the thief. Now I know the Guard will be sitting in the back on traps, I can ignore them even more.
Deer rank much? Are you really not worried about medi Guard’s damage?
Yes MediGaurd are nasty, but I honestly do not see many MediGaurd. Lots of ShoutGuard.
Speaking sPvP? I see nothing but medi Guards and an occasional bunker. Medi Guards are considered meta at the moment, after all.
I always leave Guardians for last anyways in PvP/WvW cause I am not worried about their damage output. I am worried about wasting time on them and getting back stabbed by the thief. Now I know the Guard will be sitting in the back on traps, I can ignore them even more.
Deer rank much? Are you really not worried about medi Guard’s damage?
I don’t see how it’ll be hard to imagine it working, really. Just think how the standard longbow Ranger can manage to stay alive while running full berserker’s gear… but now, give them loads of stealth. If anything, I think a rifle Thief would have an even easier time of it than a pewpew Ranger, and probably have to sacrifice some sustained damage to balance them out.
Thief shortbow probably gives a good baseline for how resilient they can be at range, with its one evasion skill (#3) and mobility skill (#5) being more than enough. There’s pistol too, to a lesser extent, with an immobilize on #2 that can be spammed to kite a single target. Unless the Thief’s elite specialization changes their resource system entirely to be cooldown-based, any evasion/CC skills they might get would have no cooldown as well (and so knockbacks are pretty much a no-go, since it would be a one-skill CC chain).
You’d probably have to look at their pistol skills to get an idea of where they’d go with a rifle. Immobilize/cripple on a skill, probably vulnerability or maybe fury off something… daze/blind is another possibility, though the daze would need to be short like on Head Shot unless it also had a cast time, because of the no-cooldowns problem.
Personally, I’d expect them to turn into something of a sniper, with a way to gain stealth, some mobility-impairing effects, and a charged high-damage shot kinda like the Warrior’s Kill Shot. I don’t know how much they’d want to let Thieves venture into territory already claimed by longbow Ranger and rifle Warrior, though.
Signet of Stone, that’s how pewpew Rangers survive.
WOW…OK. So I’m learning that a LOT has changed in the past year or so. It’s looking like I have to re-learn the entire game, not just thief.
Are there any REALLY obvious changes that I should watch out for? Core mechanics? I see there’s a new condition called torment that hurts when you move. Anything like that?
The main thing is that people got much better at countering Thief. You need to learn to juke as soon as somebody looks at you funny. Don’t use Backstab+Steal right away, because a lot of players will random dodge in anticipation and a missed Steal may spell your doom very easily.
The first thing you need to do is to learn all little tricks like Steal into Cluster Bomb detonate, about face Withdraw, Shadow Shot cancel into Backstab, fast Shadowstep+Inf Signer+Steal into Backstab, the correct distance for double Surprise Shot, all of the correct teleport spots etc. When you learn how to do all those 100% of the time you can consider yourself a beginner Thief.
I find it laughable that people are calling this a blow to dps guards or meditation guards. The trait is goes mostly unused in PVE due to the light field on the hammer for min-maxers and hammer’s sluggishness for casuals. In pve it only became a thing after the tournament with the one meditation hammer guardian on the winning team, which is a couple of months old. Before that very few guardians actually ran this trait in pvp.
Most Guards run Hammer in PvP and every single one of those runs Glacial Heart.
This is the softcc we have been waiting for, 33% on hit with a 10s icd is going to be quite powerful for zerk hammer builds imo. So far these trait changes look amazing to me and ive mained gaurd for about 2 yrs. I am very excited for these changes and see a lot of great build options already
Slow is 50% if I remember correctly, while Chill is 66% movement speed reduction, so it’s a nerf to our kitability.
I had some issue’s with the kill and revive traits from radiance and valor still, needs changing to be honest.
The kill trait from radiance (the one that refreshes justice, right?) is a very iconic and loved effect in PvE. I don’t think they would change it so easily.
Not only PVE, it’s very strong in Pvp also, it recharges VoJ on stomps. 0.3.6.1.4 > 2.1.6.1.4 imo.
You don’t really need it though. Once one of them is dead the fight’s already snowballed.
Don’t forget zerker builds lose about 22% crit damage from Discipline, as well as free Toughness that made us be able not to be 1shot by Thieves. I think Zerker builds will be weaker, especially on Warrior when shoutbow alternative is so strong.
Stats on gear going to be buffed, also spvp amulets. Ofc we wont be able to make “hybrids” builds like in wvw but at least we will have defined roles.
Shoutbow with banner trait gonna become broken as .. yet even easier to play.
Oh they’re rolling the lost stats into the amulet? I never heard them say that, but that’s good if it’s true.
Don’t forget zerker builds lose about 22% crit damage from Discipline, as well as free Toughness that made us be able not to be 1shot by Thieves. I think Zerker builds will be weaker, especially on Warrior when shoutbow alternative is so strong.
Sneaky, fast, agile, feels like a skilled fighter and a has a lot of subtle, yet interesting mechanics. While most classes in PvP spam AoE and condis everywhere while being tanky, Thief feels like a scalpel. Your every strike counts and you feel like you work for every kill.
Op: "and no other build is even close to power then shoutbow? "
Lol bezerk hambow = shoutbow counter…. You know nothing about dueling
What does anything have to do with dueling? Cele amulet is actually banned on duel servers… what are you on about? I’m talking about regular PvP matches.
Oh and APEX and Abjured are using Warriors. Two top teams in NA and a bunch of top teams in EU possibly. How are Warriors obsolete again?
This is why people don’t like it when casuals or talentless bad players “voice” their opinions when they are just not good enough to have one in the first place.
Stay classy.
You’re notorious for being a joke of the Warrior forums, saying that zerker builds are so good. Yet nobody uses your “high risk, high reward” builds. Also, I said that Warrior is soon to become obsolete and that it’s carried by the Banner at the moment. I know that it’s being used by a few teams right now, imagine that.
Did this previously have a longer cast time? I mean, I’m still kinda new to Warrior, but it doesn’t seem to have a cast time long enough to warrant that kind of strategy. I feel like I’d be getting “obstructed” more often than not while trying this strategy.
You just have to figure our the distance and timing, but concealing Pin Down is a good strategy, since it’s one of the most dangerous skills in the Warrior’s kitten nal and people are mindful of it.
Disregard Hundred Blades. It’s here to cleave bodies, for when you land a CC (Pin Down if we’re talking sPvP) and an occasional surprise for an enemy circling back into melee distance. All of the other abilities save #1 deal good damage and you should rely on those plus Reckless Dodge and procs to kill your enemy.
Greatsword is what makes Warrior viable in WvW. It’s a fine weapon, albeit a quirky one.
Let’s face it, Warrior is only useful because of the incredibly unfair Banner elite. Without it no serious team would use a Warrior, because everything this class does, Ele does better. However, people are getting better and better at countering Banner, e.g. the increasing amount of DPS Guards using Banish to mess it up, poison, CC rain etc.
I think Warrior’s days may be coming to an end. And no other build is even close in power to the cheese than is Shoutbow (maybe the mercy banner kitten build is close). Everything else is a crappy generalist fighter, be it direct damage or condi. They’d have to overhaul the whole profession, because most of our skills are just “hits” and have incredibly obvious animations, while the real game revolves around instant casts, AoE and conditions.
Thief is here for two things: run around and stand in circles and jump onto a guy who got low. However, to do these things, your team need to be able to win fights. If your team dies you can’t rotate and you can’t jump on anyone, because nobody ever gets low.
Thief is made for competitive play, not for soloQ.
SB can be amazingly effective on a thief when played right- poison, damage, bounces, etc in a team fight. Positioning is key.
Don’t run for far unless you have communication with your team, tell them you are doing it, and make sure they can hold while you’re wondering around. If they can fight over mid while you cap far then arrive to swing the battle, then the match is certainly moved in your favour.
Stick at it and don’t be tempted to grab a cheese build (medi guard, turret engi, shoutbow war, d/d ele) just to press the ‘i win’ button, it’s much more fun when you win with a less than perfect team- that’s the fun of playing in unranked solo q. If you feel the need to swap classes before the start then I suggest you form a team if getting your win %age up matters that much to you.
Oh, and learn to call targets and encourage others on the team to do so too- focusing down that pesky healing ele/necro/ranger or whatever can work wonders in fights.
Thank you for the tips. So I should stick to team fights and not avoid them.
I’m halfway with the crowd here. I have played enough solo queues as a thief to know when it works and when it doesn’t. First off you should not use a dp/sb build, instead go for something like the sd/sb meta. Secondly, you do “class math” at the beginning of the fight. You see which classes counter which and how the overall picture looks for your team vs. their team (this is guesswork, but you’ll find that it’s often spot on). Thirdly, have a counter class at handy. If you play a thief, always have a medi guardian ready to swap in matches where you see your thief is not gonna do it. You can swap classes during the 1 minute 30s before the match starts. I also recommend having a shoutbow war, cele ele, or cele engi/turret engi whichever you prefer at hand for those matchups where it looks really bad (although personally I never go wrong with my medi guard unless there’s already 2 guards on the team, in which case you are usually safe to run as a thief anyway).
In the end, thief is hard to solo queue because you rely on team play. But if you have maps like khylo, temple, skyhammer, and sometimes niflhel then playing as a thief doing far decap can work quite well. Remember, only decap unless it’s safe to cap and your team doesn’t need you in a fight.
S/D actually seemed harder to me, because you can’t burst targets down as effectively and counter other zerk builds. But thanks. I play medi guard too, it’s very easy and effective, it’s the thief I’ve problems with.
You push far early as thief regardeless of your comp right?
To make a far push effective you need at least some sustain in mid. Since they have to survive a 3v4 for about a minute untill the home capper joins mid. If your team doesnt have enough sustain YOU are the main reason your team is losing.
But I don’t actually contribute that much to a fight. All I can do is throw in poison and cluster bombs until somebody gets low to burst them down with D/P, which may never happen. Not only that, but a good team with kill me instantly if 2-3 players focus me. I don’t see big players participating in large fights often.
I wouldn’t recommend playing Thief in soloQ. Thief is a force multiplier, it can’t carry hopeless teams and you will be useless unless you’re incredibly good.
but it’s like this:
9/10 – Skirmisher. Very hard to fight current meta with it, it’s a dueling build that takes a few ages to kill anything.
8/10 – Good for adding, but you will rarely outnumber people in soloQ because your team will always be dead or fighting in a corner somewhere.
11/10 – not viable. You will never hit even terrible players with S/P.
The game starts, I go far and cap it. My team loses mid and loses home to the enemy roamer. I go mid to snatch it, but 2 people are there. I go home to cap it back and at this moment the enemy roamer caps far. Also, an enemy or two come from mid to our home to cap it, so I have to run. I go to mid, but my team is outnumbered there and the fight is pretty much lost.
And so my team balanced around being 2-capped and 3-capped the entire game, losing all team fights and me, the roamer, always being chased by at least 2 people or a single hard counter like an engie.
What should I do? I have absolutely no impact on the game, the team dies and I can’t help them in a big team fight, because… well, I’m a Thief.
I keep telling people that rifle is actually very effective if you trait for it, but everyone laughs at me and says that rifle is a weapon that is so worthless that it should just be deleted. Then they have this reaction when a rifle warrior smashes their face, and accuse the warrior of hacking.
It’s just this guy. And yes, Rifle is pretty bad. Everything works in WvW, though, because most people are terrible in there.
