Guild Wars 2

Sanduskel.1850:

lol not. Anet loves thieves. what you call nerfs…lol. you haven’t seen nerfs. we are still the most hated class in the game, so clearly anet hasn’t really hurt us.

Anet nerfs us because they love us. I guess they hate warriors with a passion since they buff them every 2 weeks. I can just imagine april’s patch now…

HERE IS YOUR FREAKING 100% BURST CRIT RATE WARRIORS!!! I HOPE YOU KILL YOURSELF WITH IT!!!

Seriously though, 10/10 for having the most contradictory comment on thief forums.

Warriors are way easier. Probably should ask the warrior forums for advice if you are having problems playing it.

Ok I think I will be serious this comment.

Burnfall.9573:

How do you determine who is good? By watching them play well.

How do you determine who is a good player? By watching them play well and improve on any mistakes they make.

How do you determine who are good players? By watching them play well, improve on any mistakes they make and then pass the knowledge onto the newbies that follow.

Does being a good player make one become like others? …sure?

Does being a good player makes one belong to higher tiers? Yup. Higher tiers of gameplay.

" Good Player is about being yourself " Correct.

" Good Player is about knowing yourself " And your profession (at minimum).

" Good Player is about believing in yourself " And improving yourself.

" Good Player is about making some mistakes " and learning from them.

" Good Player is about learning from them " and doing better next time around.

" Good Player is about who you are " (not so much)

" Good Player is about you " (not really)

" Not about what others are " (you kinda need to know other professions to effectively fight them. so yes, knowing what others are is important.)

" Not about what other others say about you " (criticism is important. You just gotta be able to take it. #sageadvice)

" Not about what others think about you " Mostly….

" Not about others " Yep.

" Not about classes " (actually yes)

" Not about Ranks " Yep.

" Not about ‘skills’ " (that’s actually really important lol)

" Not about Traits " (kinda important)

" Not about Runes " (less important)

" Not about Tiers " Yep.

" Not about Sigils " (kinda important)

" But about " (time?)

" Only " Zuul.

" You " tube

" Just " Chuck Testa.

" U " VWXYZ

infantrydiv.1620:

Thief burst is absolutely insane against terribads.

fixed*

NinjaEd.3946:

Is that you in that photo burnfall on the steps to making sense?

If I can make a suggestion, don’t stop! Keep making your way up!

Happiness is too mainstream.

Overall venoms are not worth it in any game mode. They are pretty much a short duration fire and forget on a proportionally long CD. Not only that they are only worth using when you equip 5 specific traits out of all 7. Would never recommend them.

Terrestrial Spear > offhand sword.

My warrior is left handed. But because the game engine discriminates against lefties, my war must be righthanded making combat just a little harder for him and NOT AS OP AS I WANT HIM TO BE!!!!

plz fix anet

I think fried tengu legs are better then quaggan fillets. I guess it all depends on how you were raised. :I

I actually am trying a Mantra-support/phantasm build (cuz imma freaking n00b mes) using Mantra of Pain. With restorative mantras it turns it into a quick AoE heal for party/phantasm support and Empowering Mantras makes it a DPS buff afterwards.

Yamsandjams.3267:

Zacchary.6183:

Chilled C&D = 5 initiative
1 initiative per 3 seconds
C&D CD = 5s x 3 = 15 seconds.

This is actually good to point out. I think when people describe reducing initiative regeneration (myself included), they don’t consider the actual math behind it. I believe the intent is actually to reduce the amount of initiative regeneration such that it effectively works out to a 66% longer cooldown like other professions have. For instance, a 10 second cooldown should become a 16.6 second cooldown.

As such, the math that I believe should be used is that a chilled thief would regenerate 1 initiative every 1.66 seconds, rather than reducing the regeneration rate by 66% to 34%.

This effectively works out to approximately 0.6 initiative per second, and thus could be considered a 40% reduction in initiative regeneration rather than 66%.

Reworking your calculations, this creates the following:

Chilled C&D = 5 initiative
1 initiative per 1.66 seconds
C&D CD = 5s x 1.66 = 8.3 seconds.

Thank you! This is how everyone should be suggesting nerfs. +1

If you want to understand why thieves are saying no, its because that 66% translates into 300% CD for thieves.

C&D = 5 initiative
1 ini per second
C&D CD = 5 seconds

Chilled C&D = 5 initiative
1 initiative per 3 seconds
C&D CD = 5s x 3 = 15 seconds.

For the short duration of chilled you might as well say halt initiative regen because its just as effective.What would you say if chilled tripled your CD time and then applied it to all of your skills. Hmm? Thats how universal cooldowns work.

Instead of trying to justify an “I win” button, you guys should play the profession yourself for once. Alot of you apparently do not understand thief mechanics.

I can’t believe all of you think this is a good idea lol!

Arenanet has already said they will not do this because it would be a hard counter to the whole thief profession. Secondly most of your alternative ideas are just as bad.

If you guys think thieves are really that overpowered then get on one and try to wreck everyone in WvW.

Maybe everyone was so shocked at the -50% DAMAGE WHILE STEALTHED trait that they just didn’t.

You guys wanted chilled to be balanced so I suggested that everyone gets screwed over the same way.

#ChessLevelBalance

Chorazin.4107:

RedSpectrum.1975:

And the same applies to thieves, not all weapon skills have relevance to the fight. So still they would be at an underdog position.

But you have repeated access to the 1 or 2 key weapon skills you need until initiative is exhausted, whilst switching weapons gave other classes more skills to use, it does not take into consideration that at that particular juncture in a fight only a select few skills are useful.

At least you have skills available. That is the point.

v You know how easy it is to fight a thief? Aoe, damaging conditions and simply playing well will repel if not kill a thief. If you seriously want chill to affect initiative, then I want chill to place all of your skills on CD after you use 1-2 of them. That is equal.

This whole thread is about players wanting an “I win” button against thieves.

To answer you without waiting another hour for flood control, thieves have 2 main forms of condition removal and both of them rely more on skills and positioning than they do utilities. Since initiative is technically a universal cooldown for the thief, driving the regeneration to 1 ini every 3 seconds with chilled is enough to make the thief helpless against attacks.

The lowered speed will essentially maim their access to survivability. On top of that, they are moving at a turtle’s pace so doing this will turn the thief into a slow lootbag.

At least with other professions, they aren’t as pidgeonholed as thieves when it comes to condition removal and unlike thieves, other professions aren’t entirely screwed out of their weapon skills if one of their skills get placed on cooldown.

However, I would not mind extended reveal since thieves are starting to get traits that proc on revealed.
v

LegendaryLukeee.1462:

Hopefully you guys fix when thief’s are chilled they have 66% slower initiative gain. Kinda bs that they are immune to a type of condition. Maybe its too hard for you to code lol?

If they are chilled then they are barely moving. If you can’t hit a turtle then maybe pvp isn’t for you.

Sanduskel.1850:

Lol. My warrior is immune to lots of things. It’s how poorly balanced warrior is.

fixed*

Just want to point out that even though the damage is small for most attacks does not mean that they are useless. In fact they are a utility skill in themselves. However the reason why you never see them is because this game is a numbers game meaning that burning through your enemy’s HP is more efficient than doing anything else.

On Topic: I wouldn’t mind if arenanet removed initiative, but then they would have to rebalance all of the weapon skills. The lack of damage and universal cooldown in a way balanced their spamability and utility.

Trav… dude… its better than protection. And I know at least all of the theorycrafters will TRY it AT MINIMUM. I already have a s/d build planned for it.

Warriors don’t even NEED new traits.

Because the people who play pet-based classes tend to be not very good at them. The reason why is because they don’t understand the philosophical part of the profession.

Most of the time, the player thinks of their pet as a meatshield or extra DPS when infact they should be thinking of their pet as an extension of their character and companion. Since there are two bodies being controlled here, the player has to coordinate between them.

But most of those players fail to coordinate with their pet so they end up sucking.

This is coming from a WoW Hunter that could out DPS anyone in PvM and then go into PvP with the same gear and completely wreck in 3v8+

supa suop.8026:

Acrobatics: Assassin’s Equilibrium – Gain 1s of stability when you are revealed. This is a high skill cap trait as you need to use it when you see a stun/daze coming and attack first to reveal yourself and gain the stability.

you know anet instead of make this a the new GM trait why not just add stability to the Hard to Catch trait?

Is it so wrong to try and make the traits you already have a little better before you add more things, and create more problems for yourself?

Hard to Catch needs to be deleted. There is no salvaging it without overhauling it.

I wonder what sandy and burny think about the new traits now that more thieves are going to use stealth because of them.

:3 I know I am after a 14 month hiatus.

Holy kitten…..

They actually made took my idea and gave bonuses to reveal.

LMAO! Resilience of Shadows is a big middle finger to the people who keep complaining about the thief profession. Now every thief and their guild is going to be running it, even the part of the thief community that refuses to use stealth.

giddy all over the place

I 10% forgive you anet. Keep it up!

Anet is getting smarter with their nerfs. Too bad there is no amount of nerfing that will make crappy players better.

Clear.8512:

Thief
In addition to a few bug fixes and slightly toning down the poison duration of Choking Gas, thieves will be looking at a few new survival and support options via traits. Sharpen your blades, pack your pistol powder tight, and fletch your arrows: Invigorating Precision is coming your way, which will heal you for a percentage of your outgoing damage on critical hits.

“We feel the thief profession isn’t as viable as we thought it was so we are going to keep throwing healing traits and skills at them until they are.”

Dear OP,

At least the ranger CDI thread didn’t get derailed by a single person who posted a page-worth of the same comment across all 18* pages. At least ranger’s CDI got more red posts than Thief’s. At least Arenanet Staff didn’t attempt to bullkitten the rangers by calling a 1/3 decrease to your profession’s main combat mechanic’s effectiveness a “MASSSIVE buff”.

Compared to thieve’s Dec. 10th CDI, Ranger was a MASSSIVE success.

Love,

Thief Forums

You are not having any luck because you are not buying enough gems. But don’t worry, you are not alone.

This kind of RNG is what made me hate Legendaries in the first place. So instead of trying to bust my kitten and waste my time for some of the ugliest skins in the game, I am just selling everything.

Doomdesire.9365:

Would like a rifle with a unique stealth attack. Instead of a killshot type stealth attack (OP) it would be a burst of shots such like a machine gun, the total damage of which would be higher than a backstab but would be easily dodgeable much like sneak attack from P/D. Also give it the ability to pierce so thieves can actually have a role in zerg fighting.

I wrote my idea on thief rifles however the thief forum doesn’t keep it afloat very much. :I Also the stealth attack I have on there isn’t a powerhouse attack like backstab but it does some damage as well as cripple them.

I also made a trait that makes traps viable with it.

Reikou.7068:

Zacchary.6183:

Try using all those leet skills and see if you can keep up with the condition spam without Shadow’s Embrace and s/x.

You can’t, and neither can any other class except maybe warrior.

Now, if you want to keep up with condi spam, and rely on something other than skills, you can try Lyssa runes, which synergizes incredibly well with Basilisk Venom. Congrats now you can clear all condis whenever you want.

Oh yes. Rely on runes to fill in the condition removal hole. Most professions do not need to rely on runes to remove conditions because they at least have decent condition removal.

Just for the record though, if it weren’t for lyssa runes basilisk venom would never be used. Venoms are crap support compared to others and a complete waste of a slot

v Also that.

Reikou.7068:

Zacchary.6183:

Reikou.7068:

Remove Meld in Shadows (Stealth Skills last 1s longer,) and Shadow’s Rejuvenation (Recover health in Stealth,) nerf Shadow’s Embrace (Remove 1 condi/3 seconds while in stealth) And I think SA will be fine.

Using stealth is fine, but a player shouldn’t be rewarded for stalling in stealth forever, which is what Shadow’s Rejuv does.

Then the only form of condition removal will be sword #2. This is a very bad idea.

Shadowstep (Sure but not everyone wants to run this)
Hide in Shadows (Doesn’t cure torment, immobilize, confusion, chilled, cripple, fear, vulnerability, weakness or blind)
Withdraw (doesn’t cure Torment, bleeding, confusion, burning, fear, vulnerability, weakness or blind)
Roll for Initiative (see Withdraw)
Signet of Agility (1 condition per 30 (24 traited) seconds that cuts crit rate by ~7% doesn’t cut it. Almost every other profession has either a signet passive or a trait that removes 1 per 10 seconds or one per cast of a specific utility type. Thieves do not.)

just from skills.

Try using all those leet skills and see if you can keep up with the condition spam without Shadow’s Embrace and s/x.

Reikou.7068:

Remove Meld in Shadows (Stealth Skills last 1s longer,) and Shadow’s Rejuvenation (Recover health in Stealth,) nerf Shadow’s Embrace (Remove 1 condi/3 seconds while in stealth) And I think SA will be fine.

Using stealth is fine, but a player shouldn’t be rewarded for stalling in stealth forever, which is what Shadow’s Rejuv does.

Then the only form of condition removal will be sword #2. This is a very bad idea.

Kyon.9735:

oscuro.9720:

When a thief stealths, swing around wildly and don’t stop spinning. This will significantly make aback stab harder for the thief and may reduce damage by a significant amount.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Backstab
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Flanking

Contradictory to its name, Backstab deals full damage on both sides as well. Spinning around wildly will still give a thief the same 75% chance to land a Backstab.

You mean 50% since you still have to be on the back half for it to count. Then you have the 10-30% chance that you’ll land it because the target (if they are competant) will be moving. And you have a short time before you miss the window and leave stealth.

Obscuro, if they are asking for credentials that means they do not have any valid points to offer.

Conncept.7638:

Neko.9021:

Shadow’s Rejuvenation is indeed quite strong: wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Shadow’s_Rejuvenation

However, such a Thief that spams stealth:
-Does not really help in speedclearing dungeons in PvE
-Does not contribute much in a Zerg fight in WvW
-Does not capture or contest points well in PvP

So they really don’t do very much that impacts the game in any meaningful way. They just run around and harass people in hotjoins or in WvW “roaming”. I’m pretty sure that’s why this trait isn’t really considered a problem.

They kill stuff and they never die. That is useful no matter the game mode.

They are also susceptible to dying. Nobody wants to actually TRY though.

I play alone because people suck.

Chris.4527:

You’re looking at the “perfect situation” – when it will barely happen, if at all.

Warriors are not seen that much in the “roaming” stuff, its dominated by thiefs(wonder why?), mesmers, engineers, sd/sf/dd eles. You do have your random warrior roamer, but hes far and few between.

Now, this thread is a discussion about thieves. But I will debunk your build for you with your inexperienced jabbering.

2400 armor is decent, but with a thief he’ll chew right through that with cnd spam.

Banner regen – wvw/roaming/etc is dominated by thieves – keeping this up against a thief, is near impossible. Poison will thwart that any second its up.

And during that 30 seconds, a thief can/will burst your hp from full to 0 while youre waiting on your only 100 hp/sec which will be thwarted because of poison.

I literally have no idea what your logic is behind this build you’re trying to explain, its downright terrible.

Please, keep this discussion about thieves and SA in the future please.

But I have stayed on topic. This is about the Shadow Arts traitline and it’s healing capabilities, am I correct?

I just wanted you to see the difference between a your class and the thief class so you can understand the contrast between them both. Granted, a thief is rarely going to do what I listed, but its possible and it can be tested so it isn’t invalid.

Secondly, my point is still backed up by math (feel free to check) while you are just copying the gripes of all the other players who complain about thieves daily. Same thread, same complaint.

Point being: this is purely QQ thread by another player who got ganked by a thief because they failed to pay attention. You are completely biased and wrong in your accusations, you leave out valid information painting a false picture and you failed to prove anything legitimate because of it.

By all means, this thread should be locked because it is a repeat of previous complaint threads.

Chris.4527:

inexperienced jabber

A warrior can afford to go heavy into zerk, put on tanky traits and then hit for 5k+ with bursts while allowing for cleanse and great adrenaline gain. Allow me to demonstrate…

With this I can do this:

1.)10k Burst heal and then keep a constant regen for 124 a second.

2.) I can still easily deal burst damage above 5k+ as shown below:

Power * Weapon Str * skill coefficient / Armor * modifiers

2284 * 857 (weapon strength minimum) * 3.0 (eviscerate 3 bars) / 2200 = 2669.165 * 2.65 (crit and +% damage with banner out) = 7073

3.) If I switch out HS for Signet, burst heal is gone but it jumps to a total of 527 a second. This is constant and without having to apply stealth. If I were to calculate HPS between the thief you are describing and the warrior I am describing it would look like this:

Thief (Shadow Refuge, Hide in Shadows, both regen traits in SA and Deception -20% CD)

Hide in Shadows (becuz its better than withdraw): 5540 + 1670 (regen on stealth) + 668 (base regen) + 1292 (HPS in stealth)= 9170

Shadow Refuge (traited): 1690 * 5 = 8450 + 6460 (HPS in stealth) = 10130

Perfectly Timed C&D x 6 (becuz we are maximising HPS right?): 323 * 24 = 7752 + 1670 (stealth HPS) = 9422

9170 + 10130 + 9422 = 28722 / 48 =

598.375 HPS

Warrior (Banner Regen, banner -20% CD and Cleansing ire. Healing signet and Surge trade off)

Healing Signet: 402/s

(or)

Healing Surge: 10,120 / 30 = 337

Banner: 124/s

402/s + 124/s = 527/s (signet)
337/s + 124/s = 461/s (surge)

So you are a little more than half-right about thief’s regen capabilities. But hold on a moment, let’s look at what both my toons did within those 48 seconds of HPS calculation:

Thief
Shadow Refuge > Wait 20 seconds > Hide in Shadows > wait 4 seconds > Cloak and Dagger and then wait 4 seconds x3 > Repeat.

Warrior
Healing Surge (if equipped) > Press 7 > Wait 30 seconds (96 of using healing signet) > Healing Surge (if equipped) > repeat

Yeah a thief can out HPS a warrior but a warrior has 96 seconds to do w/e the warrior wants. The thief, however, cannot leave stealth or even become revealed without suffering loss in HPS and making him useless for the duration of the calculation.

Now Chris, you need to go back to that warrior of yours and be glad you don’t have to bust your kitten for all the OP stuff you have.

I can already see this being op.

Also before you ask: Thief racials are op so I didn’t put one.

Chris.4527:

Lets see what a warrior cant do.

A warrior can not go invisible. (Superior Rune of Infiltration #6.)
A warrior can not support this amount of regen, and burst for 5k or more. (banner regen, healing signet, eviscerate with 3 bars)
A warrior does not have the ability to put poison on to halt others healing as well. (Eviscerate because poison doesn’t do much anyway lol)
A warrior does not have a… 6k? burst heal with mug and withdraw used as well, along with continuous regen. (Healing Surge with 3 bars is 10-11k)

Please try again.

You all are so silly…

Long Bows? Whips? Shoulder-mounted death pistols?

Just look at the shiny thumb on my first comment in this thread. Rifle is obviously the only option.

Sanduskel.1850:

LadyHorus.8214:

Well, all I can suggest is make a thief and learn how to play it… because once I did I realized it can be quite challenging. I’m not the best thief but I know enough to understand them so I can know their limitations and strengths. :shrug: Granted I did this probably a year or so ago and that is when I started building my mesmer for more survivability at the time (I was going condi/toughness build long before it became the thing to do lol).

I think oscuro’s reply is the best one here though. Really all you need to do is learn the way their skills work in order to know how to counter it. And that could be said for pretty much any class you might be having trouble with.

I have multiple thieves, and they are the easiest class to play, hands down. The ability to waltz into a group, off a squishy and get away is hilarious. Watching the enemy flail in the air makes us thieves giggle.

I can still bleed you to death with d/d conditions. All 5 of your thief alts. Just want to point that out.

Carighan.6758:

SkiTz.4590:

Stop nerfing things (unless they are stupidly OP like healing signet) and start buffing things that aren’t a viable option.

Please be aware that the commonly toted tactic of “buff all the things” is usually a terrible idea.

Why?

• Doesn’t really change anything. If you are 25% stronger than the other person that’s the same as them being 20% weaker.
• The highest the absolute power, the stronger the runaway-factor of actually overpowered things. The less absolute power, the easier it is to cushion overpowered elements by player-skill.
• Gameplay gets slightly more twitchy. Many MMORPGers don’t play for twitch-combat, and they’re an existent userbase you risk alienating.
• You threaten PvE balance. There is one – very very very large – game mode which relies on absolute power instead of relative balance, and you’re fiddling with that.

Buffing doesn’t exclusively apply to DPS. You forget there is skill utility to account for as well as the effectiveness of heals, boons, conditions, condition removal, stuns and stunbreaks.

Most of those don’t necessarily make them stronger but it does make traits and skills more desirable which opens up viable builds in the process. That’s what people want.

However if Arenanet kept nerfing everything, eventually those skills and traits would become so useless that you might as well call them fillers.

So no “nerf ALL the things” isn’t any better of a choice.

Guys what about the Pagan circle thing of MMO Combat? :O

That still exists, although highly ignored.

I got bored facerolling on my war so I started killing things 5-7 levels above me. Made it fun again.

Zojja has hair clips equipped with cloaking devices in her hair.

Vanthian.9267:

stuff

It is hurting the game for players who do not want to learn. The counter to everything is knowledge and players who refuse to take advantage of this counter are going to continue to get killed. This isn’t exclusive to thieves either.

Olba.5376:

Evilek.5690:

To:
Black Powder make “Revealed debuf” when he is used in stealth => no more perma stealth with d/p weapon set. This change make Thief wisible on 1+sec.

In this time Thief use BP+HS->BP+HS etc.

After change Thief use BP+HS now he must wait before it expires stealth duration -> now Thief is visible 1sec+ -> BP+HS.

That would be worse than Last Refuge.

And besides, what exactly is the problem with “permastealth”?

Answer: Stealth > bad players.

DeceiverX.8361:

Travlane.5948:

you realize 2 other classes arguably 4…can do the same exact thing within less than a second of thief or just as fast? mmmm? so lets nerf all 4 and buff thief defense bc the lack of defense is thewhole reason for our burst. agreed?

Thief doesn’t need a buff. The class is good at what it does and if it did any more it would just be overpowered. If anything, offhand pistol and/or heartseeker need a nerf.

Keep it a one-trick-pony but nerf the trick? Gotcha.

You wouldn’t need to wait for a nerf if you would just learn the profession.