Guild Wars 2

Hahaha, I like this. Have a stealthed cookie.

Unholy Pillager.3791:

I see where you’re coming from, but you’re exaggerating things considerably to try to make a point. Ranger taunt isn’t close to being a real problem, because pets can’t be told to go to a specific place. It has a tiny range, so to be hit by it you would have to be right next to the pet. Not only that, the ranger would have to get extremely lucky: ranger f2 takes 5 seconds to activate many times, and sometimes it never actually gets activated. I have hit f2 (actually, the button that I’ve assigned for it; my laptop’s f-buttons are weird so I don’t use them) repeatedly, rapidly, for several seconds, only to have my pet fail to use it at all, much less in a reasonable time frame. Pets suck. Oh, and if you jump over some broken terrain (such as the rubble near the henge point in Niflheim) the pet will get stuck most of the time, forcing a swap (and resulting 20 second cooldown).

The engineer has a utility skill that reveals…but nobody uses that. Ever. They have a trait that does it, but it competes with streamlined kits, so few players use it (also, apparently it’s bugged). And they’re going to get a terrible elite skill with a reveal toolbelt component. And nobody is going to use that, either, because we already have 3 elite skills that are strong in both toolbar and toolbelt components, and have greater flexibility in terms of what they’re useful against. I agree that forced reveal durations should be reduced, but until revenant comes it will never be a serious problem in sPvP. WvW, where you can switch your skills and build (and food) based on an opponent in the distance whom you’re planning to attack, is always going to have these sorts of problems…and not just for stealthy professions.

I’m not exaggerating. If taunt hits it’s also basically a reveal. It happens, sometimes even without the ranger intending it (i.e. they’re fighting someone else and you get caught be it by chance). It may not be common, and it’s definitely not as much of a problem as engi or rev, but my statement wasn’t an exaggeration.

As for “WvW…is always going to have these sorts of problems…and not just for stealthy professions” I disagree. As a thief, I can’t swap one trait to completely shut down a necro for example. Sure, maybe I can change my build to be more viable vs certain things, but that’s different.

Unholy Pillager.3791:

Not even remotely true. Perma swiftness isn’t nearly as much mobility as infiltrator’s arrow. Stealth gyro is terrible; the gyro itself is visible and very fragile, and you have to move extremely slowly to stay in its range. Oh, and nobody is actually going to take it, because rampage, mortar and supply drop are all much better than pseudo-stealth that gimps your movespeed.

I know thieves are in a bad place. However, I’m sick of that inspiring so many of them to make claims which are blatantly false. Making claims that are so obviously false makes people mistrust everything else you say, even the things that are true.

Zodryn: fewer than half the professions in the game have any reveal, and of those only revenant is a serious problem. However, daredevil is intended to make low-stealth thief viable…which makes this entire line of discussion (forced reveal) less urgent.

While thief is not my main, I do play it far more often than I play most professions. The main problems that I’ve encountered recently are twofold: thieves need better condition removal. They needed better condition removal months ago, but with burning as it is now the need is quite desperate. Second, they need better active damage mitigation. In a team fight in which the opposing team has multiple players with strong AoE presence, the thief can be prevented from contributing at all merely by the random mashing of buttons.

The only profession at all in a position to replace a thief in PvP is the mesmer. Rangers are desperately trying to (because they haven’t had a slot in high level PvP at all, ever) but aren’t even in the same league as thieves when it comes to mobility and stealth. The same holds true for engineers.

The point isn’t whether engi has better stealth than thief, but the fact that as the “masters of stealth” we are having our goodies given away to other classes. We don’t even have a stealth elite, but engineers and mesmers do. Even if the other classes never use stealth in any meta builds, it still makes us feel like our role is being given to others when we are already hurting as a class (especially true of mesmer).

Also, engi has liberal amounts of dangerous reveal, not just rev. Ranger also has taunt, which is functionally a reveal. Yes some classes don’t have it, but the odds of not running into those classes that do when roaming or playing sPvP is low. Even now I’ve run into problems in WvW where I am trying to stealth to either assassinate an outlier or escape a small group and some engi decides to swap traits so he can completely screw me over with 8s reveal. I shouldn’t be forced to buy kitten expansion so that I have an alternative (which I could have had previously before the acro gutting).

The stealth we have needs lower cooldowns or longer duration when traited, and we need some way to deal with reveal. Otherwise, thieves really don’t qualify as the masters of stealth anymore.

Don’t forget about ranger. Smokescale + sword will allow them some extra stealth on top of long bow and traps. Even trap guard can get in on the action. And they can all reveal each other too. Funny that as the master of stealth we can’t even spot another person in stealth to reveal them, but almost every other class can.

I want ricochet. P/P used to be great for tagging and healing. Now it’s meh single target pew pew.

Slowmelt.8547:

Outclasses an elite skill meant to do the same sort of thing by magnitudes, is overpowered beyond belief, and is never going to happen.

What would this add to the game?
The solution to Thieves being underpowered isn’t to make them overpowered.

I actually don’t think it’s overpowered, but I agree it’s a poor solution. It would likely lead to endless qq about thieves, resulting in more nerfs and even less build variety. For that reason, I don’t support this idea. However, dd elite is pretty close, just needs to be a bit more usable.

From a thief perspective:

1. Even more burning
2. Ranger plus reveal
3. Lag plus reveal
4. Even more pet?
5. Acrobatics plus doge
6. Even more reveal
7. Actually really cool
8. Not dagger dagger
9. Most interesting spec

After thinking about it, deep wound doesn’t make sense thematically being more effective vs heavy armor, so I present you with this new condition:

Spite:
Spite is a poison originally concocted by an unnamed Canthan assassin. It saps the vitality of it’s victim, leaving them in a weakened state. Tough armor and thick hide act as a catalyst, causing the mightiest warriors to suffer the worst effects of this aptly named mixture.

Also, it would be very interesting if it could stack two or three times, allowing you to reduce a soldier warrior to the health of a zerk thief…obviously if this were possible, it would have to be difficult or impossible to obtain multiple stacks by yourself.

MrForz.1953:

There are so many factors that makes a tank… an actual tank: Along with protection layers, invulnerability, sustain and so on, and these tanks carry the offensive tools to actually tank, controls such as knocks to interrupt your flow, or blinds, or chill, stuff like that. % based damage will probably mean nothing given the health pools and what separates tanks from squishies. And if you want your “tank killing” abilities to go through all that, I’m afraid the squishies will have it much, much harder than the tanks.

Good points. I think it can be handled without destroying squishies though. Here are some examples.

1) Deep wound or %hp attacks could use a formula like (20%)*(armor/5000 + HP/100000) which is 1.2k hp for a zerk thief or 6k hp for a soldier warrior.

2) Most squishies don’t have much block access, but tanky classes do! There could be a trait with say a 10s icd that causes a blocked critical hit to daze the target for 1/4s, effectively interrupting shelter for example.

3) Invuln is a big problem, but I can’t think of a great solution yet, and it’s not like we should be able to just lol nope everything a tank can do, so I’ll leave it.

Edit: %

For those concerned with positioning with the higher range evade: dagger auto has 130 range. If you attack, then dodge towards the enemy, that puts you roughly 300 units away (not 320 because hitboxes), which is only 170 units outside auto range. It’s not like you’ll always end up miles away from melee range when you dodge. Also, just consider it’s use in SR a challenge. It’s not impossible, just tricky.

Al Shamari.7234:

Zodryn.4216:

With these updates I think dash is gm worthy. I say remove the damage from lotus (there’s enough reveal on other professions now to catch a condi ghost easily), and give bound a little extra something and I fully accept them as gm traits.

You could still add an interface for selecting them out if combat for convenience. No reason not to, even if they stay gm traits.

Wait, so if they remove the damage from Impaling Lotus, what’s its use?

Condi. No direct damage means it doesn’t reveal and supports a condi ghost style.

Hey all, I recently thought about the fact that our combat role for a long time has been high burst, single target assassination, whether 1v1 or +1. Unfortunately, our 1v1 assassination usually only works well against the squishiest of players, which these days is mostly other thieves.

I thought of my time playing LoL, and the fact that certain items or characters handle tanks effectively using %hp damage. What if we had some options (maybe in critical strikes) that allowed us to spec as a tank killer? Options include adding deep wound from gw1 as a condi that temporarily reduces % max health, %hp damage on crit, etc.

With these updates I think dash is gm worthy. I say remove the damage from lotus (there’s enough reveal on other professions now to catch a condi ghost easily), and give bound a little extra something and I fully accept them as gm traits.

You could still add an interface for selecting them out if combat for convenience. No reason not to, even if they stay gm traits.

Karl McLain.5604:

Re: Dash update!
The original reason we had removed the extra distance on Dash was that we lacked the tech. Since that post, it’s been resolved. Thus, the distance of Dash is back, with a fervor. Now you’ll travel a full 450, up from the 360 previous (~300 base dodge), while moving at a faster-than-running speed. Swiftness duration increased to 10 seconds, up from the 8 we talked about originally.
This thing’s about solid movement, so we’re going to push it in that direction for this BWE. Please check it out and let us know how you feel about it. The animation’s going to remain as your character’s run for now.
We are aware that this new distance will cause some de-sync in synergy with Shadow Refuge, but feel that the open-field movement capability for daredevil needs to take precedence over this abliity. note: You can still dodge from edge-to-edge and remain inside the field, but it’s pretty tricky.

I love you.

You can perform 4 heartseekers, for about 8 seconds (12s minus combo time) BUT there is a bug where leaping into bp doesn’t grant stealth even though the combo text indicates that it worked. You must perform each leap from within the bp field to gain the proper amount of stealth.

Thank you for communicating. Whether we like the changes or not, I think we all appreciate the feedback.

Questions:
Is there no way we can get monkey king animations?

Will we be getting the extra distance back on dash? Kinda doesn’t live up to it’s name otherwise.

Can we get an acro update so it fills its own niche?

I don’t know why people keep bringing up other classes saying that you can deny their mechanics. Sure, I can dodge an adrenaline skill, or kill mesmer clones with AoE, and that is denial, but it isn’t “every 20 seconds you get no clones for 8 seconds.”

The problem is, so many people run withdraw and shadowstep, why do you even need those traits? Even the reduced effectivenes of chill and cripple doesn’t matter much since you can chase with d/p 3 or escape with heartseeker or inf arrow. DD should synergize, but if you run staff you have another immob break with no cooldown, and bandit’s defense makes htc even less of a big deal. Not to mention vigor is barely noticeable compared to evade assistance you get with DD.

Personally, I love those two traits, but they aren’t even close to making acro worth taking over any other trait line.

Lenaios.2781:

For some reason every thief seems to think they are revealed 100% of the time. I agree that revealed training should give protection like somebody mentioned already on this post, 200 power is nothing. Also revealed is counterplay, even though engi gets to do it abit too easily. And what is this violating class mechanics bs? Every profession can completely deny everything the other can do by outplaying. Afraid of engi revealing you? Well dont go try to stealth near a one or like lot of ppl here like to say: understand how it works and exploit it.

Lol what? Yes reveal is counterplay, just like a stun is counterplay (deny just about anything briefly with an interrupt). But there are these things called stun breakers. Counterplay to counterplay so when you are stun locked you aren’t completely screwed. There is nothing like that for reveal.

And it’s not just engi. Almost every class is getting a reveal skill now. You’re also saying if I don’t want to be denied stealth I just shouldn’t stealth (there is no way to exploit 8 sec reveal at the moment so that suggestion is useless)…in other words, if I don’t want to be denied my primary condi removal and regen I shouldn’t remove condis or regen. Makes sense, I’ll try that next time…

My opinion: we are not masters of being revealed, we are masters of stealth (well we’re supposed to be, right now it’s debatable). I’d rather have a way to get back in stealth than a passive “I’m strong when I’m revealed” solution.

The funny thing is scrapper will be the closest thing to having a stealth toggle…

“Thieves can stealth, but it’s very easy to reveal them, so don’t worry. They can steal items from their opponents, but it’s usually just some ice or gunk they didn’t need anyway. They have trouble keeping up with more mobile classes unless they use all of their initiative, and lately it seems like they forgot how to dodge. Rumor has it some have sought therapy to regain their lost memories, we call these individuals ‘daredevils.’ Thieves can be safely ignored if you aren’t wearing a berzerker amulet.”

I noticed some extra startup lag on my skills last time I played. It seemed like they completed with the right timing, but the delay was just enough to bother me a bit. Not to the extent that I couldn’t tell how to time a black powder heart seeker combo, but enough to make getting four off really hard.

Shogun.7401:

No, we need the old trait back. Fight for it

This is almost exactly the old trait but without the rng. It has a chance to deal less damage, but on average is the same and would actually work better with SoM since every shot bounces instead of every other.

I want a trait that gives the ability to remove reveal (example: remove reveal on steal so once every 20-30 seconds) not perma ghost mode immunity to reveal.

Temus.7086:

I guess the specialization is just not for me then, if this is the direction its going. The animations are mostly recycled and not at all representative of any staff martial arts I have seen and had hoped this spec would emulate.

The animations definitely need work. That was a major complaint most of us had, along with general clunkiness. Overall though the spec is really great. And I’m really excited to finally have a leap skill.

Karl doesn’t want the rng of the old ricochet, and wants only one trait for each weapon. Here’s my suggestion. Replace ankle shots with a new version of ricochet.

Ricochet
Pistol shots bounce (100% chance) up to three times, dealing 25% less damage per bounce (so 75%, 50%, 25% for the extra targets). Pistol range is increased.

Also give pistol a 5% damage boost baseline to make up for ankle shots. This is almost the same as the original, but no rng, same synergy with SoM and IP. Here’s the math comparing damage of the old ricochet with this one. We’ll assume one shot does 100 damage and there are four targets.

Old
If you shoot twice one won’t bounce and will deal 100 damage, one will and will deal 400 damage (100 to each target). Total: 500 damage in two shots. This is an average. There is a chance to deal 200 in two shots or 1000.

New
One shot will deal 100+75+50+25=250 damage. Two shots will then deal 500 total.

As you can see they should perform similarly (though the spread will be a bit different). Please Karl, ankle shots is a very uninteresting trait. Ricochet is what we want. Others have suggested piercing, but keep in mind piercing performs very poorly if there is a height difference due to either terrain or race.

I don’t like the implementation, but interesting. I think we need a gm in sa or an elite to give brief ghost level stealth. I don’t think anyone wants stealth with movement speed decrease.

Daniel Handler.4816:

Its not just mesmer. The pet bugs out when their target stealths. Basically it messes up all AI. One could argue that all traps and uncatchable should reveal the thief.

Also last time I checked your primary mechanic was steal, your secondary mechanics was initiative, dual skills, stolen skills, and stealth attacks. Either way you are discussing countering, not denial.

Mesmets can still shatter, which is AoE so it has a good chance of hitting your stealthed opponent, and many pet skills will also still work. AI isn’t the point of this thread though. It’s about the fact that you can completely deny a thief’s access to their primary survival mechanic (evades aren’t our thing anymore) for a very long time. Whether you call it our core mechanic or not, it’s far more essential to thieves than any other class.

Also, steal is our profession skill, but it’s just a shadowstep, and even the stolen skills are things other classes can do (not game changing things either). Using the “others can stealth so it isn’t a thief mechanic” logic, steal isn’t a thief mechanic either. Only initiative is truly unique to us.

Thief stealth has always had plenty of counterplay. Knockback, fear etc for SR, stand in black powder so they are revealed when trying to do multiple leap finishers, block or evade CnD, interrupt HiS. The only thing you can’t counter is blinding powder, which is 4s traited on a kitten cooldown.

You can already counter a thief trying to enter stealth, now you can also screw one that made it in with 8s reveal. There are two kinds of counters to stealth, we should get at least one good way to deal with reveal.

Edit: why is 4 5 seconds censored?

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Zodryn.4216:

Sir Vincent III.1286

If you sneak attack, RT is a boon.
If you get revealed via Sic ’em, RT is a counterplay.

Does it matter what you call it though? Fine, let’s call it counterplay. I’ll change my request: I want good counterplay.

Then I agree. We need more and good counterplays — RT is not enough.

Totally agree with you. Thanks!

Sir Vincent III.1286

If you sneak attack, RT is a boon.
If you get revealed via Sic ’em, RT is a counterplay.

Does it matter what you call it though? Fine, let’s call it counterplay. I’ll change my request: I want good counterplay.

Revealed training isn’t counterplay. Counterplay is when someone reveals me and I can do something or something happens to react to it so I’m not totally screwed, or can even possibly turn the tables. 200 power with no access to backstab or my main survival source isn’t very valuable. It doesn’t counteract the reveal. It just gives a mild buff.

Example of active counterplay: if an SA trait made steal remove reveal, I could save steal instead of opening with it, then use it to counter the effects of lock on/sic ’em or what have you.

Example of passive counter: Mirror of Anguish. Wanna try and lock down that Mesmer? Joke’s on you. In this case it’s not active counterplay since it’s automatic, but it is certainly a counter.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Shinjiko.1352:

Like maybe a single shadowy effect? Or a different one for each of the different dodge styles.

Totally unnecessary and a waste of resources because you should know which type of dodge you traited for — no need for visual “fluff”.

What’s next…a visual “fluff” for which Trickery GM you traited for so you’ll know if your Steal will daze or apply confusion?

The visual effect has no value because it is expected the you at least know what your build does.

The point is just for fun/enjoyment, not because we don’t remember our build. By your logic they should remove the special Guardian virtue effects because there’s no reason for them. For that matter, why do necros get an effect when in deathshroud? Shouldn’t they know they’re in DS without the effect?

I’m fine with people getting reveal access, but right now we have no response. If I destroy a mesmers illusions, I am slightly denying him a very important mechanic, but he can instantly make more. If I got lock on or disruptor trapped, I just have to wait 8-30s without enough dodge access (that’s dd domain now) and no other active defenses as the squishiest class in the game. No other class ever has to face a similar situation.

Our unique mechanics as thief are initiative, stealth attacks, dual attacks and stolen skills (steal itself is not unique as it’s just a teleport). I would argue that stealth itself is a core thief mechanic, as it controls our access to stealth attacks and we rely on it heavily to survive, deal damage, and control fights. Obviously stealth isn’t unique to thief, but we are the only class so heavily reliant on it. Not even dodging can mitigate our need for stealth. Daredevil is another story, but as a core thief, it’s stealth or die.

With this in mind, how would other classes react if there were multiple ways to completely deny them a mechanic they desperately need? Engineers have lock on and scrapper now gets another stealth denial. Imagine a skill that destroyed enemy mesmer illusions and prevented them from making more for 8 seconds. Or giving a necro a debuff that locked them out of deathshroud, prevent an ele from attunement swapping etc.

The only other class that has issues like this is ranger, since pets are killable. They can at least heal them or pet swap though. We have no good way to handle 8 seconds of reveal (or more in the case of wvw traps) other than hope to run away, but that is really not an adequate response. We ought to have some way to mitigate these situations. Either a way to remove reveal or protection/something else when revealed.

TL;DR enemy reveals are basically a “nope” button against thieves. We need counterplay.

How about our endurance bar is different colors/has an effect based on which dodge we are using? Green for lotus, blue for dash, orange for bound. I don’t know what the extra effects could look like…

Demented Yak.6105:

Join us and become a future revenant!

Get unrelenting assault and more!

Leave your barren, neglected thief main behind!

Lol, I do have a slot for rev and I’m sure I’ll play it. I don’t anticipate giving up thief, but I may end up with two mains.

BlackDevil.9268:

‘’I compare it because UA is usable in PVP and PW isn’t. ’’
You mean like the other 150-200 usable skills? It rather seems to me you’re just asking for buffs on the wrong forum section

Because those other 200 skills are also high damage evading sword skills…also, thief builds are heavily defined by their dual skill. Pistol whip’s uselessness is the entire reason nobody uses S/P. Give it a qol improvement and people may actually try it. And again, I ask here because Roy seems to have good ideas and is actually communicating. Maybe he could help Karl brainstorm improvements? I don’t know why people are getting so worked up. I’m appreciating Roy’s work, not QQing about rev being OP.

I am not asking for UA on thief. I just want pistol whip to be usable, whatever that looks like.

I compare it because UA is usable in PVP and PW isn’t. Not to mention it severely clashes with the high mobility concept of thief while UA meshes nicely with the Shiro concept.

BlackDevil.9268:

Comparing classes. Classic.

I’m not trying to compare classes. I’m saying Roy created an awesome skill, and contrasting it with a skill that is somewhat similar but almost totally useless in PVP due to wind up and root. I’d just ask for a fix from Karl on the thief forum, but have you ever been there? We haven’t had any real attention (for core specs) in ages. This is a kind request to have Roy pass something along to Karl.

Edits since this was moved to our forum.

Hi there, I’d like to get some input on pistol whip. The skill roots you for the duration and has a huge windup. This is not a big deal in PVE, but in PVP anyone with a brain will easily avoid it. Comparatively, unrelenting assault is guaranteed to connect if you’re in range, grants might, deals more damage (according to wiki) and doesn’t have the awful windup time.

Now I’m fine with UA, and I’m not asking for a nerf or might and shadowstep on pistol whip. Just pointing out that UA is allowed to be strong AND easy to connect, while PW is strong but nearly useless in PVP because it rarely connects. It also feels very off compared to all of our high mobility weapon and utility skills. Can we get some kind of qol improvement for PW so it’s usable?

Note: immob does not make it usable, as stun amd immob breaks/stab are rampant in PVP.

I’m sure many of you have tried out Acro along with DD, so what do you think? Personally, I feel I have enough dodges and cc mitigation with DD alone that Acro seems like a wasted line. I would like to see some more unique effects in Acro, like swiftness you apply is superspeed, resistance on GI, protection on dodge. Some access to buffs we can’t get elsewhere.

Staff 5 does not leap the full distance when crossing gaps and almost never works as desired if there is even a slight elevation difference.

In case you haven’t tried it, finishing blow has a different (much cooler) animation if you are moving while you cast it. I recommend this is made the baseline animation instead of the current one.

Loving the new spec, but as already mentioned, the animations need work.

Staff
The animations feel so slow that I feel like a turtle instead of a nimble martial artist. It feels too weighty. Also, the leap doesn’t work with elevation changes, and doesn’t travel the full distance.

Dodges
They need to be smooth like normal dodges. Dash especially feels clunky with very noticeable start and ending lag. I wouldn’t complain if they were made a toggle as OP suggested.

Acro
It needs to be said. I feel no benefit from taking acrobatics. I recommend adding more boons and buffs to differentiate it more from DD. Resistance on guarded initiation would be a good start.

Heal
Remove the delay when you start healing. It should begin giving health immediately. Also, the animation looks really strange with anything other than staff.

Utilities
Great, but it feels weird having my weapon disappear every time I use one. Also the prep cast time on distracting daggers is prohibitively high, and the animation looks really out of place (on Asura at least).

Elite
Finishing blow does not work at all if it completes right as they are downed. The whole skill also doesn’t seem to connect very well. Hitbox issues?

Traits
Generally good. Minors could be a bit better, and we’ll need new grandmasters if dodges are made a toggle. Impacting disruption doesn’t seem to work very often. Is there an ICD?

Updated with our one fix this patch…seriously, that’s all we get? Please at least revert the icd to 10 seconds. /sigh

Edit: also added a bug mentioned in another thread about combos.

Has anyone played Braid? There’s a section where any time you rewind, a shadow of yourself redoes what you just rewound while you can do whatever you like. Clever puzzle mechanic. Could also be interesting having clones that mimic what you do instead of just AI that do their own thing like Mesmer clones.

In case you missed it, Rubi said “this will be a distracting week” on the artwork reveal tweet. How do you think we will distract our opponents? My instant thought was clones, but you know…Mesmer. Worst case it just means we are a distraction to our opponents (would rather be an actual threat), but I believe it references our new mechanic. Speculate below.

yolo swaggins.2570:

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Name: Meld with Shadows
Rating: A
Comment: Good trait. Could always use a little more stealth though.
Suggestion: Bumping the effect up to 2s won’t do much but make deception skills a little more appealing.

An alternative would be 1s in combat, 100% extra out of combat (like PU, but not as ridiculous).

yolo swaggins.2570:

---

Name: Hidden Thief
Rating: C+
Comment: Effect isn’t that great but it isn’t bad enough to change.
Suggestion: No change needed.

I recommend making it blinding powder on steal with a 10s icd (post patch that was what it was, but with full BP cooldown). Basically the same thing, but blinds and can blast X/P 5 for extra stealth if desired.

I’d also like to see Trappers Respite icd back down to 10s like it was on patch day.