Guild Wars 2

Thieves have a ton of mobility too. My point is you guys aren’t hurting for mobility. As for WvWing on an Elementalist, as I pointed out I do. However, I do not run a mobility oriented spec and I stick primarily to groups so I don’t run into issues where I need to run away that often.

I’m well aware of the dangers of roaming and while I’ve come across my fair share of Thief and Elementalist duos in the past, I’ve never found a need to actually run away from them because I don’t wander alone.

I get a ton of enjoyment out of my Engineer too in WvW which has a ton more surviability but a lot less mobility than my Thief and Elementalist. I’m a little iffy on my Necromancer though. I don’t enjoy playing him in PvP as much but that might just be because he’s condition specced and I’m not a condition person.

So throwing in the mobility argument as the reason why you should be able to be the only class who can suicide in front of a tower/keep/garrison then Vapor Form back in through the portal isn’t cutting it. We’re not talking about mobility, we’re talking about an Elementalist only mechanic that allows you to nuke siege, flee back into your keep after being downed, heal up, rinse and repeat.

Nikkinella.8254:

You lost all credibility you MIGHT have had right there. Even before all the massive nerfs, ele NEVER had the best mobility in the game. We were always below thieves, rangers and warriors if all 3 were specced for mobility. Most eles do spec for mobility because we have to thanks to our crappy stats. Thieves who don’t know how to play and spec only for damage and refuse to bring any type of CC abilities to battle kitten ed and moaned till they nerfed us to the point where we are now tied with necros and engineers on mobility. Eles having the best mobility was a myth created by bad thieves who refuse to spec to be mobile with CC yet expect to catch a mobile specced ele who can CC them.

Even with the increase on Ride the Lightning, you guys still have access to additional mobility oriented skills and swiftness more often than a thief. Thieves have not seen any increase to their mobility since March and you guys got an extra 20 seconds stamped onto Ride the Lightning.

Tossing this in, to boot, the change to Ride the Lightning came after the outcry of Ellie bombs with the guaranteed crit utility blowing up in peoples faces, throwing an extra 20 seconds onto the cooldown and knocking it down to have the same range as Shadowstep without reducing the travel speed. Oh, and you guys still have a teleport, Fiery Greatsword utility, burning speed, invulnerability in Mist Form, I mean I can keep going if you guys want to pretend you don’t have excellent mobility.

I play an Elementalist you know.

After reading some of these responses, I can see you guys need to keep Vapor Form. Not because it requires skill to use, or its fair, or anything else for that matter, but because it’s clear you need it.

Sunflowers.1729:

Yuujin.1067:

The reason I haven’t bothered to reply to any of your post is because you are clearly ignorant to the fact that has already been acknowledged by ANet. Since you’ve asked me to respond directly to you, I will.

Proof?

Yuujin.1067:

Strangely enough, neither of those abilities allows a thief to dive into a situation where he is outnumbered, die, and then retreat backs inside of his keep to safely heal himself out of his downed state. Come to think of it! They occupy utility slots and you lose then when you die.

Strangely enough, it lets me do just that, and I don’t even have to die to use it.

I’m done here. You are obviously unable to comprehend any argument, so talking any more with you is futile. Hope the patch hits you hard!

59:40 onward comparing Thief mobility to Elementalist mobility. Continue on, to 1:00:15.

As for you being done, good. You have your own argument you want to bring to the forums, but it has nothing to do with what is being discussed in this thread.

Sunflowers.1729:

The equivalent would be stopping Shadowstep from being used when immobilized/stunned, and using it stops you from stealthing for 5 seconds.

Ele – best at escaping into keeps
Thieves – best at escaping in open fields.

Isn’t this the same?

At this point I’m pretty sure you’re either not reading the arguments, or are trolling. Seriously, the class with the best WvW escape, bar none (stealth), is complaining that someone can run a short distance into a keep if they aren’t immobilized?

Just ignore her posts, because there is nothing left to say.

Edit: Also, you didn’t reply to any of my posts. Probably because there isn’t anything you can say that would actually make sense in response.

Once again, you’re comparing thief utility, something that thieves have to place on their bar, with a spell that all Elementalist gain access to when they are downed. No one is suggesting it be removed for the game, the only suggestion has been while an Elementalist is in his downed state he cannot use Vapor Form to enter through portals.

Elementalist have the best mobility in the game. The developers have already said they want to bring thief mobility up more in line with Elementalist mobility so the fact that you keep bringing mobility up as a defense in this argument boggles my mind. This debate has nothing to do with mobility, it has to do with downed state Elementalist being able to enter portals when no other profession can do that from their downed state.

The reason I haven’t bothered to reply to any of your post is because you are clearly ignorant to the fact that has already been acknowledged by ANet. Since you’ve asked me to respond directly to you, I will.

Shadowstep does not remove immobilize directly. It clears stuns. You have to use Shadow Return to remove conditions off of you. This puts you back in the location you were previously in before you used Shadowstep. If you have more than three conditions on you, there is no guarantee that you will actually remove the immobilize from you. Even if you do, you’ve just Shadow Returned to where you were standing previously so that’s zero mobility.

Shadow Refuge requires you to stand in a medium sized circle, clearly outlined for your enemies to see, until it ends to receive 11 seconds of stealth. While I agree the duration of stealth it allows is pretty excessive, these days most WvW and sPvP players have figured out that if a thief is silly enough to drop it on themselves in PvP and try to wait out its full duration, you can just run around and kill them. It has become one of the least effective ways of stealthing.

Strangely enough, neither of those abilities allows a thief to dive into a situation where he is outnumbered, die, and then retreat backs inside of his keep to safely heal himself out of his downed state. Come to think of it! They occupy utility slots and you lose then when you die.

Strange, comparing utility to downstate skills. Maybe that’s why I didn’t bother to respond to you, because none of this actually has to do with the issue that was being presented.

And you can’t possibly be that blind. Watch a roaming thief video or get out and PvP in Tier 3 or above. Thieves always roam with Elementalist because they have insane mobility and burst potential. It is almost a staple these days for dedicated roaming duos.

Nikkinella.8254:

In that regard then I want them to remove stealth from thieves. I shouldn’t have to change my utilities to deal with thieves just like you shouldn’t have to change yours to deal with an ability which unlike stealth actually has a counter. If they nerf our one downed state ability that doesn’t completely suck then they need to buff the others. Its sad that even in downed state thief can still do more damage than ele can when they are still fully alive.

No one is asking for abilities to be removed. Have you even read this thread?

The proposal was to remove the ability for downed players using Vapor Form to pass through portals.

Tell you what though, we’ll remove the thief’s ability to go through portals while they are downed too to make it fair.

Nikkinella.8254:

Well hey guess what? Other professions have to change their abilities JUST to counter thieves so why shouldn’t thieves have to adapt as well? I have to change all my utilities on my guardian, ranger, and warrior whenever a thief is around just to deal with their constant stealthing BS. And stealth has no counters besides that lame trap that rarely works that thieves STILL whine about and want removed from the game. And why should I have to change my skills to counter a thief’s broken stealth mechanic, which unlike vapor form has NO counters to it. And no, just swinging wildly and hoping to hit them while they are stealthed is not a counter to it. a counter should remove stealth. Thieves can counter eles and guardians by ripping boons off of us, we should be able to counter you by ripping stealth off of you. I could tell you were a thief right away just from your whiny posts. you always call for nerfs on everything rather than adapt to it and use the tools you have at your disposal.

I gathered you dislike the Thief class as a whole based on your previous remarks in your other post.

This thread however is about Vapor Form allowing Elementalist to fly through portals and hide inside of their keeps to heal up. They are the only class that can do that and it can be accomplished with ease.

I don’t know of any skilled players who create utility and weapon layouts based on single profession. I can see you have trouble with Thieves and I’m sorry about that, but even in your own example you make my point. Even if a thief stealths and you have to wave around wildly to land a hit on them eventually they will show up, and they won’t have been able to pass through the portal into their keep. Once again, your opinion on how overpowered thieves are doesn’t apply to the topic at hand, which once again I will reiterate, Vapor Form allowing you to pass through portals to hide inside of keeps regardless of your current utility setup or weapon layout. You don’t have to set up your utility/weapons so we shouldn’t have to either. Plan and simple.

Nikkinella.8254:

I don’t see what’s so silly about it. My point is you CAN stop it. If you choose not to, that’s your decision. It doesn’t need to be nerfed just because you don’t want to use the skills you have at your disposal. Why would you not bring some sort of cc ability with you in the first place when fighting near someone elses tower? That’s just common sense. You must main a thief because that’s their typical mentality. “I don’t want to adapt to what my enemy is capable of so nerf them so I can just use the same things I use on everyone I encounter and ensure my victory 100% of the time!”

I do main a thief. That means to counter it by myself I would need to stealth then shoot you with my shortbow, replace one of my signets with the immobilize venom or with an immobile trap. It is not a question of having to adapt to a situation so much as myself or any other profession and player having to sacrifice a utility slot or adopt a weapon set to counter one specific cheesy tactic that people like yourself seem fond of.

The idea that anyone should have to set up their utilities a certain way or use a specific set of weapons to counter Elementalist turning invincible and flying through a portal while downed is silly. You want other people to have to eat up valuable utility slots just to counter you getting downed and pressing 2.

The idea that you want other players to have to use skill to counter your lack of skill, then turn it around on them as if there is an issue with them and not yourself is exactly why this needs to change.

Caffynated.5713:

I’m sure they’ll eventually replace vapor form with an ability that instantly puts the ele in defeated state so they can respawn sooner. Of course, then whiners will complain that they can’t force eles to bleed out to waste time.

If it was a thief down skill, the response would be to just keep going and ignore them (this was literally an ANet response to unkillable (anywhere, ever) thieves).

Keep Vapor Form. Lose the ability to go through portals. Are you saying the skill would be useless without the ability to fly into portals?

Nikkinella.8254:

Yeah you’re saying the same thing over and over again. “I don’t want to have to change the skills i’m using and bring some sort of means to stop this even though I easily can, so it needs to be nerfed.” It’s fine how it is. There are many, many ways to stop it and if you don’t bring one of those things with you, the ele deserves to get away.

Hahaha, asking someone to have to change their utility to counter a skill someone gets after you’ve already killed them is silly. You realize that right?

Fishbait.6723:

& what about those that didn`t jump, but were pulled down via Mesmers, thieves or that stupid bot siege razer? (or the rangers with their pull soon..) whilst they were just up there sorting through their bags to weapon swap (still a kittened thing to have to do!)

They can use their non-downstate mist form? You know you have one of those, right?

If they aren’t concerned enough about their surviability to invest in it then they can do what every other class does which is not stand by the edges of the wall or fight to make their way back inside if they do get pulled off?

Fishbait.6723:

But here`s another hint. If one ele` does this & gets back through, then fair enough, you lot weren`t maybe ready for it (or more likely didn`t have spells to drag them far from the keep/immob` them)
If this happens lots, then it is definitely the fault of you lot & not the ele`.
If you`ve witnessed them doing this over & over (which they can only do a few times before instantly ding) then you`ve obviously the wrong spells on your bars/wrong weapons attached.

I play ele` & back when I used to play in WvWs, had plenty stopping me from rushing into a keep to defend & stopped me from vapour forming in.

No sense in broken recording what’s been said a dozen times already so you can just scroll up.

Nikkinella.8254:

They take this away then they need to take away the ability of other classes to yank us off the tops of towers.

Not just you, everyone can get yanked off towers. Unlike Elementalist, Warriors, and Mesmer, not all classes have an invulnerability spell to make them immune to damage while they run back in.

As a class that doesn’t have access to invulnerability, it should be my place to suggest that they get rid of pull abilities. I think they are frustrating and the mesmer’s is way more effective than the thief’s (Protip: A thief can only pull you if you are standing on flat ground or on the lip where as a Mesmer can pull you over the lip) but there is no reason to get rid of this mechanic. The point is for there to be real and present danger. With the invulnerability spells elementalist have access to WHILE OUT of their downed state, they have no room to complain.

Aeranima.2853:

The majority is missing the point. Either all classes should be able to escape through the fort portal or no one should. There should be no exceptions.

Just to defend my experience in combat: I know most classes inside-out through pvp. I’ve experienced and suffered nerfs on many of my preferred professions as well as upgrades to them. The immobilizing is not the problem here in wvw – it is the squishy escapes. Not even thieves can escape through portals while in downed state and teleports to the fort portal. With that said, I think people understand me and others frustration. 1 elementalist can STILL hold of a zerg alone thanks to mistforming through a fort portal.

And keep the tone civil to eachother. There are no bad players, just unbalanced professions.

Yes and no. I don’t agree that any class should be able to pass through a portal in PvP while they are supposedly ‘downed’ because that’s supposed to be a part of the risk of jumping off the wall. I don’t really care so much for warriors because they die immediately after running inside so there is a certain sense of satisfaction that comes from it. Even if they are getting rezzed on the other side, they still died.

But yeah, I don’t think any class should be able to pass through portals and live while they are downed. The ability warriors have brings you back to life (You are no longer in a downed stated), then -kills you afterwards- which is a lot different from giving yourself invulnerability, portaling to safety, then healing yourself back to full.

Nikkinella.8254:

You’re probably one of those people who also cried for RTL to be nerfed because you refused to bring an immobilize skill with you which pretty much made the ele a free kill if you used it right as they activate it. If they nerf our downed state, which sucks right now, then they need to up our survivability in general so we don’t get downed as often in the first place. or replace it with something similar to the warriors skill. Would that make it better, if we could come back to life and use all our skills and still get away? You’d probably still whine about it and throw a tantrum till we get nerfed even further than we have already. you people won’t be satisfied till we’re nothing but walking lootbags. How about they just make it so that as soon as we enter wvw as an ele the WASD keys are disabled on our keyboards and we just stand there for you to kill? will that make you happy?

No, this is really the only aspect of Elementalist that I dislike. I don’t think the people purposely getting themselves killed then running back into their towers through portals in vapor form is a surviability issue. You shouldn’t be jumping off the walls and suiciding in the first place. This is Elementalist abusing an aspect of their downed state that I’m sure ANet didn’t plan for. This is not an issue of surviability. If you guys couldn’t float back into your keeps through portals while downed, you wouldn’t jump off the walls and get yourself killed.

This is exploiting a crappy mechanic.

Survivability problem solved.

Nikkinella.8254:

And why should we not be able to vapor form into the tower when you can stop us from doing it easily? Just because you refuse to use an immobilize to stop us from doing it? If they do remove it then I want them to remove warriors ability to walk through doors after they get back up as well. or better yet lock all their skills when they get up in that downed state so I cant use my greatsword to dash away from my enemies and run back into the tower. And who cares if I still die afterwards? I’m still getting inside where I can be rezzed and come back out again to continue the fight. same thing.

Another long list of things that someone has to do to counter a cheesy tactic. The fact that Elementalist don’t even try to survive and just let themselves die so they can easily float back inside through a portal should be evidence enough that this tactic requires absolutely no skill.

At this point, arguing with you seems futile. You just keep proposing that it falls upon their opponents to have the right utility set up, or have access to their immobilizes the moment a Elementalist drops to counter the Elementalist pressing 2 on his action bar and floating to safety.

If a warrior stands up, walks through a portal, and dies on the other side, you still get credit for the kill, a loot bag, and he takes a repair hit. They are not the same thing.

Nikkinella.8254:

When you see them go down IMMOBILIZE them before they have a chance to vapor form. If you cant do this then you are just bad, simple as that. It doesn’t need to be changed, it’s fine as is. If players are to incompetent to immobilize us then we deserve to get away. By the way warrior can also get up and walk back in through the portal while they are downed and have the benefit of being able to use all of their skills while in that state as well. I’ve been downed with my warrior, gotten back up and used “Fear Me!” to scare people away from me and Endure Pain ensuring that I walk in safely so my teammates can res me afterwards. And Warrior can move ALOT further than ele can in downed form. Ele has to be almost next to the door to get back in. I can be relatively far away and use all my warriors movement skills and get back in.

Warriors still die afterwards and take the repair hit and nine times out of ten you can kill them before the skill even becomes active. You can’t compare the two.

Elementalist can keep their Vapor Form, they just can’t Vapor Form through portals. I don’t see why this is such a difficult concept to grasp or why you guys keep bringing skill into this while ignoring the issue presented by the original poster.

There is no skill involved in hitting Vapor Form and running through a portal yet people are expected to have to save and time their immoblizes or coordinate with people who have them to prevent elementalist from using this skill less, cheesy tactic.

If there was some skill involved in it, I doubt anyone would care, but there isn’t any and the fact that some of you are trying to compare it to shadowstepping while still alive (Which by the way doesn’t put you through portals. If you shadowstep on top of a portal you have to back up then run through it again) or popping invulnerability while still alive just shows how little you guys understand the mechanics of other classes.

Mirta.5029:

And you want to remove the lifeline of a class that’s weak and easy to kill to begin with. I suggested counters. OP simply doesn’t want to counter, he wants to rofflestomp with an auto-attack so it seems. Something is only OP if it can’t be countered, if it can be countered by absolutely everyone, why should it be reworked?

You quoted everything but the part of my post where I specifically said NO ONE IS ASKING FOR VAPOR FORM TO BE REMOVED. Since you can’t seem to grasp it, I’ll type it in caps again; NO ONE IS ASKING FOR VAPOR FORM TO BE REMOVED. We’re asking that you no longer be able to pass through portals while you are downed with it.

All of this nonsense about immobilizing an elementalist or not killing them close to a portal is just ridiculous. When they are suicide nuking siege then Vapor Forming back into their towers, you don’t get to choose where to fight them.

Kain Francois.4328:

So I recently got a Yakkington’s Ring, and I’m not sure who to give it to.

What is the best class for farming events and underwater? I’m torn apart between Necromancer and Engineer, since both are amazing at tagging and underwater AoE.

I see a lot of engineers using their turrets for farming purposes. During event farms they just pop them down in spawn locations to take everything. If you are running with a condition Necromancer it can be very difficult to tag mobs before they did, resulting in a loss of credit for the kills. I strongly recommend engineer for this reason!

Mirta.5029:

So you’re telling me that you don’t bring a hard counter on your party and then go home to cry that you can’t kill an elementalist?
You know what people say what thieves are one hit killing them while invisible? “stack vitality and bring aoe’s”. You know what warriors are told when they can’t remove conditions? “Run a shout build!” You know what melee classes are told when they can’t keep up with ranged? “Bring a ranged weapon!”.
So I’m telling you bring an immobilize. How is it the classes fault that you’re not bringing a counter?

Wow, you are actually defending this cheesy tactic.

You seem to be missing the point of what the original poster threw out there. Elementalist are the only class that can get up and run through portals while they are in their downed states, after they’ve already had their health bar taken from 100% to 0%. They can then proceed to heal up safely on the other side.

There is absolutely no skill involved in this tactic. They can do whatever you want. suicide burst down siege, finish off low health targets that were at range, dance in front of the gate, then get downed, mistform back into their towers, heal up, then do it again while every other class in the game actually have to SURVIVE and make it back to the portal while alive. There is very little risk involved in this ‘strategy.’

No one is asking for the removal of the ability, they are just asking you not be allowed to pass through portals with it active while you are downed.

Xavori.3768:

Illusionary Counter is scepter 2, and that’s the weapon skill that’s getting torment added on mezzies. Since scepter is already a good choice for condition build mezzies (and apparently getting better) it’s not out of the world unexpected that a condition mezzie will be able to add this in without too much effort.

Thanks for clarifying. That’s actually good to hear. When I first read about the change all I could think about was how rare it was to see people floating around with the sword offhand, so hearing that it is on scepters is a step in the right direction.

Xavori.3768:

This is exactly the kind of post I was rolling my eyes at originally except vis a vis thieves.

No. It will not be the age of necromancers. Torment is only available to them via their new 5th death shroud skill.

Oh, and you lack bravery if you’re going rabid and undead. Much more exciting to live life as a necro running rampager with nightmare rune. Add in fear does damage and fear duration traits for lulz. Also helps to have played a burst thief and/or dagger elly so you get used to use movement and dodging for survival.

My post about Necromancers was mostly in jest to mirror the attitude presented in this thread about Thieves receiving Torment. There are worse, more annoying things out there than condition Necromancers.

While I stand by my original assessment that Necromancers will get the most out of Torment for obvious reasons, they all get it, I don’t actually think Torment is going to be the Condition that broke the camels back.

randomfightfan.4091:

Yuujin.1067:

randomfightfan.4091:

I think it’s funny that you wrote the complete opposite of what’s actually happening. The only semi-good thing about this change is that it’s forcing thieves into a melee position (where they truly belong). This MIGHT help make a few terrible thieves start meleeing and do damage instead of sitting at max range in a desperate attempt to stay alive while doing nothing.

That’s fine for dungeons. Quite frankly, there are very few situations where you actually need a shortbow in a dungeon, and even fewer when it is the ‘best choice.’ Unfortunately, in PvP there are some situations like when you are firing up at tower walls or shooting down from there where that range would come in handy.

Very true but I don’t think this cluster bomb nerf is that big of a deal in those situations compared to the auto attack no longer heat seeking nerf or the nerf to shadow steps. I know whenever I tried to shoot anything that wasn’t either walking in a straight line or standing still, the bow would just miss. Also almost every time I shadow step to or from somewhere, I get rubber banded at least a little bit now. They are really gutting the class by tacking more bugs on instead of fixing them.

Yeah my biggest issue with the Cluster Bomb change is that it wasn’t very useful to begin with. Half the time when you fired it down off of a tower the projectile path would hit the ground and you’d spend more time positioning yourself than actually dealing damage with it. The reverse situation, firing it up, there is no way to guarantee that when it splits apart it will go where you want it to.

The only time the ability feels useful is at close range. This change just reaffirms that.

Mirta.5029:

Well think of it this way:
1. Elementalist abilities like ride the lightning have an insane CD now
2. They have the least base health of all classes (11K)
3. The mist form lasts 3 seconds and if you immobilize a downed elementalist they can’t go anywhere.
There’s nothing OP about elementalists. If poster’s zerg is getting pawned by one elementalist then I would say that it’s a bad zerg.

1) Ride the Lightning, Burning Speed, and Swiftness. Let’s not pretend Elementalist aren’t mobile. That’s just silly.
2) http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Health They share this honor with two other classes, the Guardian and the Thief.
3) That’s all well and good but considering not every profession weapon combination has an immobilize this is a terrible reason to allow elementalist to pass through portals while downed.

This isn’t a situation of elementalist being overpowered, it is a situation of elementalist being able to mistform through portals while they are downed. No other class is able to do this, and there is no reason why elementalist should be able to hop off their walls, engage the enemy, get downed, then simply mistform back into the tower.

If you’re fighting on behalf of this cheesy tactic, I don’t know what to say.

randomfightfan.4091:

I think it’s funny that you wrote the complete opposite of what’s actually happening. The only semi-good thing about this change is that it’s forcing thieves into a melee position (where they truly belong). This MIGHT help make a few terrible thieves start meleeing and do damage instead of sitting at max range in a desperate attempt to stay alive while doing nothing.

That’s fine for dungeons. Quite frankly, there are very few situations where you actually need a shortbow in a dungeon, and even fewer when it is the ‘best choice.’ Unfortunately, in PvP there are some situations like when you are firing up at tower walls or shooting down from there where that range would come in handy.

Mirta.5029:

while we’re at it, let’s remove all abilities that allow all classes to escape. Like invisibility off thieves and endure pain off warriors -_-

He said mist form while downed. When a thief turns invisible in his downstate you can continue dealing damage to him or her. Don’t turn his point into something it isn’t.

I don’t think mistform needs to be removed from the downstate. I think ANet should remove Elementalist’s ability to run through portals in WvW while it is still active but only during their downed state. Thieves and Mesmers can’t teleport inside of towers, while they are downed so there is no reason why Elementalist should be able to stand outside of keeps, get downed, then just mistform back inside to rez.

That said, I don’t think ANet has the capacity to make this change. Their state of the game cast a couple of months back acknowledged that Elementalist had crazy mobility and they talked about bringing other classes, like the thief, up to it but so far they’ve fallen pretty short on it.

So if you manage to catch an Elementalist and kill it, make sure you don’t do it too close to a building they own, cause they’ll just float right on inside!

Balance.

Chaos.7231:

What homes would these be?

Your home instance. You go there during your story quest.

One that doesn’t have solider stats on it.

The range was reduced to 900 from 1200. There was no mention of projectile speed. This just means Thieves in PvP using Cluster Bomb in hopes of getting over walls to deal damage to the people standing behind them won’t be able to do that at range anymore, while other classes remain uneffected.

CAUSE DEM CLUSTER BOMBS WERE REALLY HURTING FOLKS.

I’m actually very dissatisfied by this change and hope it gets reverted. It is bad enough we only have one choice of ranged combat in PvP but the number of nerfs Cluster Bomb has received (On top of it not benefiting from having a special 3 Dual Skill ability so no +5% crit or +5% damage) really shows ANet doesn’t know what to do with thief range.

Xavori.3768:

offence.4726:

@Xavori this basically is the /thread. I cant add anything to what you said because its perfectly right.
Although im curious about the new dot condition and how it will perform in PvE with our beloved thieves.

I think it’ll not help at all for thieves. I think condition bomb necros and maybe mezzies will get some mileage out of it. But condition build thieves are just so far behind in DPS versus other potential builds, and since torment looks to be really limited for thieves on top of the lower condition dps, I just don’t see it being a part of any builds.

There are a few other changes I liked. Larcenous strikes getting a initiative cost reduction is nice for my main who runs sword/dagger. Everything getting faster will help my burst thief (this is actually true for my 20 some odd other alts as well).

I’m also thinking Long Reach getting Steal to 1500 + Sleight of Hand going to 2s stun on steal + lowered recharge time on steal might be a bit much to all pile together. Yes, everyone has access more stun breakers, and most of them will have lower recharge than Steal even after the change, but I’m betting a lot of people will keep running builds without stun breakers and much forum rage will ensue as a result.

Also, interesting that nobody is complaining about that combination of changes. Might be because nobody complaining actually plays a thief and understands just how they actually work.

I don’t think anyone will really benefit from Torment aside from Necromancers. I could be completely wrong, but the weapon utilizing torment on a Mesmer is a sword in the offhand? If that is the case, I’m unfamiliar with condition builds that utilize the offhand sword.

I think some of the changes in the ‘leaked patch notes’ are steps in the right direction of making pistols viable as a weapon, but not enough so in PvP just yet. We might see some pistol/dagger an pistol/pistol thieves popping up, stacking conditions, throwing in the right sigil, and trying to get some mileage out of the Torment in PvE, but I don’t really see that happening in PvP.

Yes, condition build Thieves in PvP are annoying to deal with. No, it is not the most effective build as of right now. With the 50% bounce for pistol 1, maybe they’ll be more viable.

Fortunately, for everyone worried about those pesky Dagger/Pistol thieves jumping in and out of stealth, this change is going to mean very little in dealing with them. In fact, hope that they are silly enough to add the Torment venom to their rotation. It’ll just make them that much easier to kill.

For now, welcome to the age of Necromancers. Rabid gear with Undead Runes for everyone! With Signet of the Locust they were already a pain to chase down after they conditioned you up, and getting past all that toughness and health, plus the extra health bar, was just a chore. Now you can’t even get frustrated and just try to run away from them.

I think the reason for this is pretty clear. The reason why I don’t really see ANet rushing to ‘nerf’ Shadow Refuge because it is -so overpowered- is because to get the full effect of it, you have to stand in it till it disappears. Fortunately, for your enemies there is a giant red circle and a few visual cues to let them know exactly where you are.

Any idiot with AE can continue to deal damage to you, and if you don’t have AE you can just run around in the circle spamming your auto attack until it goes away.

Shadow Refuge feels like a great ‘OH CRAP’ button, but the truth is if you are using it for a stealth + escape method, your best bet is to drop it AWAY from you, continue to dodge attacks, then jump into it at the last minute to get the stealth tick that keeps you hidden.

You just have to be in it for its last pulse to stay hidden.

Considering ANet consolidated the thread on the general forums with the ‘leaked’ notes and have been directing posters to the ‘main thread,’ I think it is safe to assume they are in fact all real.

Richard Nixon.6573:

Giffonhook is so ridiculously easy…

…with portals. :P

Doing it legitimately is just a super long “did you press all the keys at the right time? and did you get lucky with your aggro? and is your class well-suited to avoiding being hit?” Not worth the time involved at all.

And do it alone. Doing it with other people makes it 100% more difficult.

wickedkae.4980:

What i mean is that as the game progresses over time we will simply run out of bank space ( I already have) I don’t have room who know how many other sets get released.

Farm gold >> Convert Gold Into Gems >> Buy More Bank Slots

@grave of hearts.7830

It wasn’t a poor choice of words. Last week we had the same ‘problem’ with SoR. There is no contest when you pit three servers against each other when there is a tremendous gap in coverage, organization, and level of skill between all three of them. This is not TC capitalizing off of the match up, it is TC participating in WvW combat.

The only thing more embarrassing than a server taking pity on you and letting you have towers, keeps, and camps is coming to the forum and trying to villainize them for having more points than you.

Vol.5241:

No JP is hard.

Except Griffonhook

Gives me nightmares to this day.

I read this and had to comment.

Hahahahahaha, so true.

wickedkae.4980:

They say they want us to have variety, but the current system does a great job in killing that,

I completely disagree. Every time I stumble across a ‘set’ of armor I like (Be it a full set or combination) I just create an offset of gear for a new weapon/trait spec I want to try out and transmute onto that. Multiple sets of armor for multiple weapon sets.

This system actually encourages variety.

Aieo.2815:

Zelda.7013:

Get ready folks, here it comes!

Knowing our luck we will face TC again. haha

Can I make a clever joke?

If so, you bring the WHINE and we’ll bring the CHEESE.

Get it? Whine instead of wine because some people from your server are complaining about TC.

And cheese because people are accusing TC of being cheesy.

SoS. I just can’t quit you. ;.;

Hahahahaha. Sorry, I read this thread title and all I could think was “Hah, reverting a nerf is what passes for buffing thieves these days.”

Thief counters thief extremely well because a thief understands the thief process. ANet needs to stop kneejerking straight to nerfing thieves and read this thread to see why listening to the community is not the way to go.

This thread is adorable.

All I got out of this thread is thieves are OP because they can stealth and run away.

LoneWolfie.1852:

Simonoly.4352:

@Yuujin – Me thinks you stopped watching the video half way through then. Sure, he made tons of mistakes, but he used the exact same insta-gib melty Thief burst that so many people complain about. My comment wasn’t on his performance, only that he portrays quite often the exact thing that people point out and then scream for nerfs. If this video was ever an attempt to portray the Thief as balanced to those who have already decided the Thief is OP, then it’s not really going to help the cause. But actually it looks like the OP was just having some fun kittening around, so none of this analysis even matters.

-What LoneWolfie said

You did actually stop watching halfway through because in your post you said he was melting faces and that just isn’t what was happening.

No offense, Wolfie, but what I saw wasn’t you kicking copious amounts of butt all by your lonesome.

Simonoly, you sound like you’ve already made up your mind on the thief issue, because all this video showed beyond what an average thief player looks like, is how unreliable the so called ‘insta gib’ method is on someone that isn’t specced glass cannon.

No one cries when a glass cannon anything dies, that’s the price you pay for sacrificing all of your surviability to deal damage, and wandering off by yourself.

Thieves don’t get heavy armor, a high health pool, a second health bar like Necromancers, clones and confusion, or anything along those lines. Thieves get stealth. No fear, no knock backs, no invuln mist or sword attacks, no protection buff, just damage and stealth.

I still think it is funny that our best ranged weapon, the shortbow, also happens to be the only weapon that does not benefit for dual wield traits or have a dual wield ability since, hurr hurr, it’s a single weapon.

I feel like that sums up the amount of thought that went into the thief profession.

Simonoly.4352:

Hmm you kind of started out showing that even GC Thieves have a hard time chipping away at the tankiest of Guardians, but then the rest of the video was just you melting everything you touched with the exact combo that so many scream about in these forums. So I guess what your video shows more than anything is: Toughness saves lives (as does situational awareness).

I like the bit with the anime though. Abstract enough to make me raise my ‘What the kitten?!’ eyebrow ;-/

You weren’t watching the same video as the rest of us, me thinks. The rest of the video set to ‘like a boss’ was a combination of him failing to kill stuff before moving on to a different fight, killing people in when he was in a large groups, or getting killed.

Also, to the guy above me. One second extra reveal was just dumb. It hurts PvE more than it hurts PvP but at the end of the day, it just shows that thieves feel like they have to rely to heavily on the stealth mechanic.

No ‘melting’ occurred.

Svarty.8019:

To which I would reply that they should balance for such low skill level gameplay because the thieves themselves can be more effective than most other classes with less skill.

EDIT: In fact, the devs say as much right here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0togRMEc_o#t=41m06s

Editing in a TL:DR – Just because the thief class occupies the lowest tier of play doesn’t mean it takes less skill to play, it just means it doesn’t have a good high tier meta that makes them a viable choice like the elementalist does in the devs example. That’s a problem. Can’t survive on just being able to two/three shot people who don’t invest in toughness and vitality.

That’s not what he said. Nothing he said really suggest that thieves take less skill to play effective, really just that thieves are more effective against unskilled players and stay in the lower tiers of PvP.

What he said represents the fundamental problem with this game right now. There is no high tier meta for thieves like there is for elementalist. Thieves fall off at the top because, surprise, there are classes that just do what we can do better.

World of Warcraft had the Warrior/Druid combo. They dominated the lower tier arena ratings, but once you broke out into the 1800s, it was no longer a viable option. Starcraft 2 had mass mutalisk/roach rushes that dominated the mid level of play, but once you got to the higher tier of play, that strategy no longer worked and you had to try new compositions.

That doesn’t mean any of the things I mentioned above are easy, or take less skill to pull off, it means that they are only viable against unskilled players. Every single time I hear someone cry about getting two shotted by a thief it makes me laugh. There are really three conditions to get ‘two shot’ by a thief.

1) You have no vitality/toughness (You are a glass cannon)
2) You are upleveled like crazy.
3) You are at low health already and you aren’t really being two shot.

That’s it. That one style of play, mug + CD + backstab (Which is three hits by the way) works on people that meet the above conditions. The variations of this, the haste pistol whip combo or haste heartseeker spam, only work on a stupidly small portion of the actual playerbase in this game.

Warriors, Mesmers, and elementalist have the ability to do the same exact thing as a thief. Warriors with the stun utility can thousand blade a stunned target for all of his heath. Mesmers can pop mass clones, shatter them for confusion, and throw on their sword two for invulnerability. Elementalist have their own burst combo that might require more buttons, but pays off to be more effective in that it can hit more than one person like the warrior and mesmer but unlike the thief.

Once people figure out, duh I need health and toughness hurr hurr, these tactics are useless. Then you’re just a melee class, with one of the lowest healthpools in the game, in medium armor, sacrificing damage to get your health to a point that is still -lower- than where clothies are and armor to no where near what a warrior or guardian has.

Lemmie tell you, at this point it’s starting to feel like we gotta work really hard to accomplish the same thing as other professions.

So it really is no surprise to see a lot of people just stop playing thieves in favor of other classes at higher tiers.

If thieves were easy to play and had some real viable builds, they’d dominate the higher tier of PvP. That’s not happening though. The thief is just a gimmick class. Watch the video of the guy fighting ‘outnumbered’ with his thief. He does a lot of shanking upleveled players and murdering people who seem completely unaware of his presence. More a gimmick than a class these days.

As much as I love complied threads of ‘all strange drop data ever recorded in a single place’, it detracts from specific issues. The question I am posing here is, does anyone notice empty wooden chest after prolonged periods of farming, not every experience anyone has ever had where they felt they should have gotten better loot.

Attention Farmers!

Some of you might have already stumbled upon this! Empty wooden chest! Or wooden chest filled with white cloth/vendor trash items!

Does anyone know if this is a bug? If it is, does anyone know why it only starts to happen after an hour or so of farming and not throughout the entire time?

To avoid being a terrible party mate I do all my magic find farming outside of dungeons, but I have to say, nothing is more dissatisfying and disappointing than stumbling across a chest that should contain uncommon or higher quality gear and getting a piece of white salvageable gear or a porous bone instead.

I’m not saying all the rampant speculation about ANet lowering droprates and throttling the amount of rares, exotics, and T6 materials is true, but it certainly doesn’t help their case when a wooden chest pops up and nothing but trash is inside and it especially doesn’t help that it happens to the rest of my party about an hour into farming, and not before it, which further reinforces the idea that we can only have so many nice things before the game starts taking them away from us.

Anyone else have this happen to them?

sorrow.2364:

kenshinakh.3672:

It’s actually just a L2P issue.

Have you guys noticed how there are less and less complaints about it? It is really just because people learned and adapted… I definitely find WvW more challenging for my thief compared to 3 months ago, so people are definitely learning how to counter thieves.

For those thinking thieves are too good, please have faith in your abilities and skills to improve! Don’t think “I lost because he was a thief.” Instead, think “What can I improve to beat that particular class?”

I’m not just saying “L2P!”. I’m telling those who have trouble with thieves to have confidence in your ability to learn and improve and you will be beating most thieves in no time!.

That way, there’s no more need for non-sense changes like stealth reveals or higher stealth reveal debuff, or some plainly strange suggestions I’ve read in this thread over the past months lol.

It’s not a matter of L2P, it’s the design philosophy of the Thief which puts it in a condition of opness.
Actually, a Thief with half a brain is capable to win every engagement simply because every fight which turns harder than expected can be easily left with stealth and the crap amount of mobility Thief has. This capability is given to not any profession, the Thief is the one in which it is more stressed, but also Elementalists and Mesmers are capable to.

If you combine the ability to leave any fight which is turning in a loss with the culling issues and the loads of damage the Thief deals, you can easily see why the Thief is OP.

Keep in mind that I’m not talking about how dealing with the Thief, there is always a counter to OP specs, that’s for sure, I’m talking about the overall balance of the game, considering effectiveness/efforts ratio, which in the Thief is way, way too high.

Sup.

Roll a thief. Play a thief in WvW and sPvP. Leave every encounter that goes south successfully. Show us how easy it is to play a thief. Make a video of the ‘effectiveness to effort ratio’, post it here, and then we can believe it’s not an issue of your ability to play but rather the state of the thief class.

Until then, I love when bad players blame their ‘game issues’ or ‘class balance’ for their lack of skill.

bhagwad.4281:

Maugetarr.6823:

Well by that logic bunker eles, guardians, and even some engi builds definately need rebalancing.

If that’s what it takes, then yes. Two players should always beat one player with ease in every possible way. A glass cannon should never be able to dish out enough damage to kill two people. A bunker should never have enough health to outlast two people.

A glass cannon should dish out more than a balanced player – enough to kill them. A bunker should be able to hold out against one player.

But never against two. No matter what profession, race, weapon set or traits, two (or more than two) people should never be troubled by one player in any way.

That’s quite the design philosophy but I completely disagree with you.

If a bunker Engineer sacrafices his ability to deal damage to increase his survivability, he should be able to hold out against multiple opponents for an extended period of time.

If a thief sacrifices her ability to deal damage or have useful utility to extend the duration of her stealth to occupy the attention of a handful of players and distract them away from an objective she should be able to do that.

I don’t think anyone here is suggesting a vanish thief or bunker engineer should be able to 2v1 someone in a fight and win.

This is the thief, not the warrior forum.

(I kid, I kid.)

What amazes me about this thread is it was supposed to be a discussion about making thieves more enjoyable to play. Instead it has turned into a choir of people calling for nerfs on an already boring class that lacks variety.

Take away our damage and stealth and thieves are left with literally nothing.

Nothing.

Iavra.8510:

you’re continuing to imply that thieves don’t require utility slots to do the things that they do

Daecollo.9578:

Mug: 504 base damage.
Cloak and Dagger: 504
Backstab: 806 (MUST take time to get behind him.)
Lightning Strike: 403 damage. (about a 40% chance to apply to this combo.)

Seems like i’m not the one who stated this first.

And believe me, i would be very happy to see elementalists nerfed, but in another way:
- shorten duration of fire field + blast finisher combo.
- raise CD on RtL or shorten the range.

Regarding mesmers, i personally think that the burst is okay. Confusion could need a little toning down.

With no guaranteed chance to crit like a elementalist has. So when the thief doesn’t kill them successfully with this combo he is left with his steal (Mug) on cooldown, his reveal timer up, and six less inits to do something. He can burn what remains of his inits to do another cloak and dagger, or try to finish his opponent off with heartseeker, but he doesn’t have the guaranteed damage that a class that can activate guaranteed crits does.

Utility that increase our crit chance is Signet of Agility. Utility that increase our damage is Assassin’s Signet. We don’t get that guaranteed damage though that you seem to think we get.

Yes, once in a blue moon we get some lucky crits that can let us drop glass cannons in two hits.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve killed stuff in three hits before in the past with a lucky air proc finishing it off. I’d see your concern if I had done it without lucky crits, but it was all lucky crits.

The difference between thieves and the elementalist we’re using as comparison is one can guarantee that kind of damage all the time with the click of one button, which the rest of us have to rely on a random number generator.

DreamOfACure.4382:

Should I use Sigil of Air? or Impact?

And please state why.

I currently have a 40~60% chance to crit, depending on the zone

Trick question. Sigil of Fire.

Dakitten108:

I think s/he meant an insignia like this: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Insignia

As for which insignia you can’t go wrong with Berserker’s but if you find yourself dying a lot you can also go with Knight’s or Valkyrie’s. Also if you run a condition build Rampager’s works well.

Oh pft, you are totally right. Sorry about that. This advice is solid. If you’re running dagger/dagger I’m going to assume you’re not doing it for condition damage, so Zerker is the way to go.

Personally, I run Zerker trinkets/weapons with Valk armor. That brings my base health up to nearly 14k with Divinity runes X2.

I run a 30/30/10 DA/CS/SA spec and often enough I do not die in dungeons/fractals/ect. The extra health is a nice buffer.

Iavra.8510:

There is 1, maybe 2 situations where he actually downed more than 1 player. But still, still build is a pure gimmick. He gives up every piece of defense for a single attack. The thief has no need to do this, so those arguments are invalid.

You clearly have an anti thief sentiment. You’re going out of your way to make excuses as to why it is okay for every class but a thief to do what it can do. I’m pretty sure no one here is saying elementalist should be nerfed or shatter mesmers should get hit by the nerfstick, but you clearly think that there is something wrong with the thief class.

You’ve misrepresented facts, you’ve misinterpreted a video with actual video evidence, you’re continuing to imply that thieves don’t require utility slots to do the things that they do, so its clear you just want to see the thief nerfed.

I’m sorry for whatever we did to you.

However, since you are not approaching this from a unbaised standpoint, I would recommend you respectfully bow out of this conversation as your bias is causing you to blatantly disregard facts, imaginarycraft situations, and improperly represent your case.

Before we start tearing eachothers heads off over wording, technically you are both correct but the gentleman who said Daggerstorm is not “AE” was more correct.

Daggerstorm does not follow the traditional ruleset of AE abilities as has been pointed out. Similarly, as Taka added, calling “Dancing Daggger” AE would also be silly because it behaves differently from traditional damage.

Saital.4819:

I was never a huge fan of Haste actually. But then again I run a 15 Acrobatics Vigor uptime build, so it is pretty counterproductive to drain my endurance bar for 4 seconds.

Plus, Quickness or not, the revealed debuff is still 3 seconds after I Backstab somebody. It throws off my rhythm when my autoattack chain executes twice as fast between Backstabs.

I feel like non-thieves (and some actual thieves) forget that you sacrifice all of your endurance (And ability to dodge) for haste. It isn’t like the other trade offs, take additional damage/can’t be healed for the duration of haste, it has a longer lasting impact. Assuming you counter this by picking up Signet of Agility, thieves are the only class that need to counteract their quickness utility with another utility to maintain survivability.

I don’t know, I don’t see a lot of thieves using haste in sPvP unless they are ‘dueling’ each other.

You seem to get it but a lot of people seem to hastily jump to conclusions because their quickness in terms of reacting to 4 second haste buff that renders a thief unable to dodge for ~10 seconds (5% per second, requires 50% to dodge) is lacking.

Oh lol haste finish ’em.