Guild Wars 2

Last I checked no venoms stack. If two thieves share basilisk with each other, for example, they only have two stacks, not four. I believe they just overwrite each other.

HoT dagger legendary:

Fish Stick
A herring that has been skewered by a stick. Grows a shrubbery on your arm when drawn. Footfalls are little knight heads that pop out of the ground and say “Ni!” Alternatively, footfalls are shrubberies, and your arm is covered in tiny knight heads that constantly say “Ni!”

Flavor text: A legendary preserved fish. It is said that it can fell the mightiest of trees.

Haha, now I want a herring dagger skin.

Glad you like it! I corrected the typo, thanks! Update:

• Viper armor actually gives slightly higher DPS if you rotate Death Blossom, but not if you do a Backstab rotation.

• If you don’t like worrying about Thorn stacks, Trapper/Nightmare comes close in DPS, so it’s certainly a viable option. Or you can use Viper armor with Berzerker runes for extra power with similar condi DPS. There are several builds with similar numbers, so use what you like.

• None of the damaging sigils (Doom, Earth etc.) provide more DPS than Malice or Bursting. I use Corruption until I’ve stacked it, then stay in a set with Malice and Bursting.

• Staggering venoms by a couple seconds to maximize life steal will slightly improve your DPS.

Spreadsheet

Edit: Updated Spreadsheet

I have made it view-able so you can copy it to your own drive and modify the inputs without others changing things at the same time. Adjust the light blue fields only if you don’t want to mess anything up. It includes a link to the build the current numbers are based on. I recommend using gw2skills.net to make a build and plug in the appropriate traits and stats etc. If a trait, skill or something isn’t listed, it’s because it won’t affect your condi DPS, or is not good enough for consideration (ex. Trickery isn’t included since DA, SA and DD are basically mandatory for a good sharing build). I may update the sheet with more options later including power calculations.

Interesting findings:

• Thorn runes are superior to 2 Trapper and 4 Nightmare (for duration up) if you can keep a couple stacks of the bonus.
• Full Viper (weapons, armor, trinkets) with Malice sigil, and Trapper/Nightmare runes provides about 101% condi duration, and is a significant DPS LOSS vs mostly Sinister with just viper weapons and amulet with either rune set. You only gain about 20 power, but lose 13% crit chance too, so full Viper = not optimal.
• The build I linked has the highest DPS of any combination I tested. Feel free to link a better build if you find one.
• I have begun playing this build more like a power build, using Backstab with Revealed Training for high direct damage along with very good damage from the venoms. The spreadsheet shows a DPS loss for doing this because it removes Death Blossom and doesn’t account for direct damage.

I took a picture with everything maxed out to illustrate the issue. As you can see, the shoulder strap, undershirt, collar, skull, and spikes on the human look like mud. Everyone looks like this except for me.

Sargoth.8104:

The improvement provided by checking the box is marginal on medium settings and probably not distinguishable to the human eye on low settings, so they might as well have grayed it out for machines that don’t qualify for the high setting.

The setting is extremely obvious. Unchecked, all characters other than my own use blurry, low res textures. If I want to see my friends cool new armor it just looks muddy, even with everything else set to max. Before the change linked earlier in the thread, I had no performance issues while using high res character textures.

For those interested, I have a Celeron G540. It’s not great, but I can still get 30-60 fps on medium/high with character model limit set to low (this can dip to the teens in large zergs, but never single digits). I mentioned that I had a dual core CPU because of this thread.

I started this thread because even after following the instructions to force high res textures, the game still does not use them, and I don’t know why. I understand removing options that would frustrate users with low performance, but if I want to use this option, I should be able to somehow.

One year ago the meta was completely different and elite specs didn’t exist. Even if they were OP back then, it would be for completely different reasons than now. This is the worst I told you so I’ve ever seen.

Destroy shadow trap should most definitely be changed to an actual teleport (like mesmer portals). It is far too unreliable as a shadowstep. Shadow pursuit must remain a shadowstep for obvious reasons.

Vincent’s opinion about what is and isn’t ok is clearly superior to everone else’s opinion. Let the masses bow down to the whim of a single player…now that I think about it, I think I know how Anet balances thief.

It is unchecked and greyed out. I have a dual core CPU. I have tried manually adjusting the setting in the appdata file and making it read only so the game can’t change it but it doesn’t work. Maybe I’m missing something?

I really don’t understand why this is even blocked. I want to see my friends without blurry textures, but the game makes it impossible.

I would like to see lean techniques granting the ability to dive and gain altitude by pulling up out of a dive instead of just going faster/slower. Might be a bit difficult with the physics engine though.

43 AR for fractal 40. If you have full trinkets, versatiles will get you to 30 or 42 if using +7s. Can attune rings cheap and use some cheap infusions if needed.

Things being small on Asura is actually a boon if you’re a male. Shoulder pads are laughably huge on other races and many of the trenchcoats look two sizes too large.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Zodryn.4216:

@Vincent
Impact strike can completely bypass the downed state.

True. If the whole point with other skills is to bypass downed state anyway, might as well remove this state since it is pointless.

As for distortion etc., good grief make up your mind! Are you against safe stomps or just SS?They guarantee a stomp just like SS, only they have less counterplay than SS.

Here, let me make it simpler;
1) Does the stomper in melee range for the duration of the activation?
2) Does the stomp gets interrupted when the stomper moves out of melee range?
3) Does the downed players has the opportunity to counter?

If all the answer to these questions is “yes”, then I have nothing against it.

What I’m responding to is, if you — your opinion — think that stab, evade, etc. should also be nerfed or whatever, then you have to make that argument yourself. I’ve already stated the difference between stab, etc and SS Stomp.

Based on that criteria, you aren’t ok with things like stab because they can’t be countered. You also are against SS (and function gyro) even if it can be countered since you can go out of melee range. I’m saying it’s fine since it can be countered and the melee range thing is just a thematic complaint. You’re entitled to dislike it thematically, but you at least have to recognize that it is no stronger than any other safe stomp. If they aren’t going to remove those safe stomps, why should they nerf thieves options?

@Vincent
Impact strike can completely bypass the downed state. As for distortion etc., good grief make up your mind! Are you against safe stomps or just SS?They guarantee a stomp just like SS, only they have less counterplay than SS.

Rifle.

1000 range.

What?

Also “They Are After Us” grants allies immobilized? Should be renamed “Screw You Guys, I’m Outta Here!”

First, as already stated, there is counterplay. You can still knock back, fear etc. if you time it right when they port back. Thief, Mes, and Ele can all move or stealth in downed state, which hard counters the SS stomp.

Also, you save a couple of seconds getting the safe stomp, but you just wasted two stun breaks and a condi cleanse. Even if there was no counterplay, that is a big trade off.

Finally, if SS interrupts stomping, stability, distortion, mist form etc should all be removed when you start a stomp and disabled for the duration, and impact strike should be deleted. That’s never going to happen. If they did do that though, stomping would become very predictable and uninteresting. Stomp, get delayed two seconds, stomp again. Every time. No risk/reward or other options.

Everything you said about why SS stomp isn’t ok applies to every other safe stomp in the game, but you say only SS is a problem. Yes downed skills are designed to delay a stomp, but distortion, stab, invuln etc. completely negate most downed skills. In fact SS allows more counterplay than other safe stomps since you can still be stunned, knocked back and so on, you just changed position.

Edit: Also blowing a cd to get a safe stomp is healthy counterplay. Just like stab can counter stun which can counter an important skill, counterplay for counterplay is not a bad thing.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

The point I’m making is how changing the range never interrupt the stomp, which, IMO, it should.

The form change is no different than applying a stability buff, which is completely different than changing the range.

Right, and I’m saying you’re picking on range changes for no reason other than you decided you didn’t like it. Give me an actual reason why you should have to stay in melee range, other than personal opinion. I’d say it would be a silly precendent to set.

The part of a stomp that kills a downed played is when you land at the end and “stomp” them, the rest is a “prep” animation (winding up for the stomp).

The part of Cloak and Dagger that deals damage and stealths you is the dagger strike at the end. There is also a wind up here.

Saying you need to be right next to someone as you wind up before the stomp is the same as saying you need to be right next to your target to use CnD. They should both allow you to be anywhere you like until the part that actually hits the target, at which point you need to be in range.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

BeepBoopBop.5403:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

BeepBoopBop.5403:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Zodryn.4216:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

BeepBoopBop.5403:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

If they finally nerfed shadowstep stomping then good. I support it 100%. Keep it that way.

Why? Makes no sense. It is a 50 sec CD and one of our only safe stomps. Even if you decide to use the SB 5 trick, it still requires at least a 20 sec CD (steal) to work. Balanced the way it was IMO.

What makes no sense is that something like this undermines the downed state, makes the whole downed skills useless, and takes away the risk of trying to stomp someone due to a long casting time.

All theses are in place to counter or delay a stomp, yet it’s being bypassed by shadowstep stompping.

The only acceptable “safe” stomp is faking it to bait the counter before actually stompping.

Better get rid of stab, blind, distortion, stealth, invuln, and impact strike then.

That won’t make sense nor reasonable because they are working as intended.

Shadowstep stompping is obviously not their intention, which they have expressed in the past when they nerfed Sword #2.

I think 3 years is a nice period to classify something as ‘working as intended.’

Thief has many issues that are 3yrs old and I doubt that is their intention.

As long as Portal stomp exists, you are insane to question the intentions of Shadowstep stomp lol.

What makes you think I agree with that. That should go too.

IMO, and you’re free to disagree, any stomper needs to be in melee range the whole duration of the casting time. And changes in range should interrupt the stomp. It doesn’t really matter if you use blind, stab, evade, etc. as long as you’re in melee range the whole time, then that method should be fine.

Cooldowns or what other “balance” there is should not allow an out of range stompping.

I understand what you’re saying, but it’s just an arbitrary opinion about how it “should” behave. Teleporting away and back while still performing the whole animation makes much more sense than a ball of mist stomping someone. Or a tornado. Or a flying gyro.

Maugetarr.6823:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

BeepBoopBop.5403:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Zodryn.4216:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

BeepBoopBop.5403:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

If they finally nerfed shadowstep stomping then good. I support it 100%. Keep it that way.

Why? Makes no sense. It is a 50 sec CD and one of our only safe stomps. Even if you decide to use the SB 5 trick, it still requires at least a 20 sec CD (steal) to work. Balanced the way it was IMO.

What makes no sense is that something like this undermines the downed state, makes the whole downed skills useless, and takes away the risk of trying to stomp someone due to a long casting time.

All theses are in place to counter or delay a stomp, yet it’s being bypassed by shadowstep stompping.

The only acceptable “safe” stomp is faking it to bait the counter before actually stompping.

Better get rid of stab, blind, distortion, stealth, invuln, and impact strike then.

That won’t make sense nor reasonable because they are working as intended.

Shadowstep stompping is obviously not their intention, which they have expressed in the past when they nerfed Sword #2.

I think 3 years is a nice period to classify something as ‘working as intended.’

Thief has many issues that are 3yrs old and I doubt that is their intention.

I thought when they were asked about Sword #2 stomping and shadowstep stomping they made a clear delineation between the the two which basically boiled down to CD time. Sword#2 + infiltrator signet had an effective 21-24 second CD (and you could alternate between them) while shadowstep stomping is once every 40 seconds when traited (maybe less via rng).

An excellent point. If it was unintended, it really should have been addressed around that time. Also, it still isn’t a safe stomp vs elementalists, thieves, and mesmers. It’s not really thematically weird (and if that’s the argument *cough*steal with no target*cough*), and Vincent, you said the only safe stomp should be baiting downed skills by faking a stomp. If that’s the criteria, none of the things I listed should be ok (distortion, stealth etc.), yet you say they are.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

BeepBoopBop.5403:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

If they finally nerfed shadowstep stomping then good. I support it 100%. Keep it that way.

Why? Makes no sense. It is a 50 sec CD and one of our only safe stomps. Even if you decide to use the SB 5 trick, it still requires at least a 20 sec CD (steal) to work. Balanced the way it was IMO.

What makes no sense is that something like this undermines the downed state, makes the whole downed skills useless, and takes away the risk of trying to stomp someone due to a long casting time.

All theses are in place to counter or delay a stomp, yet it’s being bypassed by shadowstep stompping.

The only acceptable “safe” stomp is faking it to bait the counter before actually stompping.

Better get rid of stab, blind, distortion, stealth, invuln, and impact strike then.

I’m working on increasing my fractal level and agony resist, and I’m wondering if I can run with only 147 (for maw at 98) or even 142 if using singularities. Would fractal 100 be too difficult if agony dealt 5% instead of 1%, or is it easy enough to dodge that I could get away with it?

If you want a +9 agony infusion to go in the attuned or infused slot, you need 256 +1 agony infusions. Two +1s make a +2, two +2s make a +3 etc. So the amount required to make the next higher infusion increases by a factor of two every time.

To get 150 AR, the cheapest method is using +7 versatiles on everything (98 AR total), then use three +10 infusions (made with 512 +1s or bought for 15g) and two +11 infusions (made with 1024 +1s or bought for 30g) on the infused/attuned slots for rings and back.

Shovel Face.4512:

Since many people are ignorant and hate on Thieves for whatever reason, why not have a Raid boss that requires stealth as one of its mechanics? Just a thought.

You’ll already have a mesmer for alacrity, and an engie for dps, and they can both group stealth just fine. Engie does it better than thief. I really think Shadow Refuge needs a significant buff (at least 50% stealth uptime) and Sneak Gyro should be toned down.

Thank You! We really do appreciate it.

Do it man. :|

15

Please do not. It doesn’t matter how much your pet class gets screwed, leaving a bad review based on a single part of an enormous game is just bad form. If you think the entire game sucks, fine, leave a bad review. If you’re upset about the state of thief, that’s not the place to go.

Wait what? I had posted a joke about them removing evade from pistol whip. Did they actually change the tooltip?

+1 unless

1. black powder and shadow refuge get reduced cooldowns
2. meld with shadows affects combos
3. we get more group support (how about alacrity in acro)

I’ll gladly give up ooc steal for those things.

Azure The Heartless.3261:

Gray.9041:

Zodryn.4216:

If you sat down for coffee with Karl, what would you want to talk about (I imagine it wouldn’t involve yelling and accusations)?

Withdraw.

what the actual hell.

because if Karl can’t explain that, then I don’t think there’s much more to be said.

Yeah I’d pretty much be like Karl why

and not yell or accuse.

I mean its a game but jesus

I feel like it was left out by accident but they decided it was strong enough and didn’t need the buff so they left it that way. No way to know unless they say something though.

Cyhann.2609:

• sometimes

So 99,99999999% of the time is sometime now?

Neat!

I already stated that they haven’t been communicating. Hyperbole is almost never helpful, and is more likely to discourage anyone from actually giving us a response.

I’m sure you’ve noticed, but there is very little middle ground on this forum. We love you for DD GM buffs, but hate you for making the dodges GMs. We have numerous threads complaining about things, suggesting changes, and talking about builds. It’s because we are passionate about this class. Please don’t take our rage personally, but know that when we blow up at a change it’s because we play this class a lot and the changes you make affect our ability to enjoy doing that on at least some level.

I think the largest contributor to our salt level lately is that we feel pretty shafted by lack of communication. The steal change today isn’t even in the notes. We have no acknowledgement of any of our recent bugs. Are you aware of them? Is withdraw supposed to have 10% extra healing, or not? How do you feel about the state of thief relative to other classes? Do you even want our input?

Before HoT released, you specifically asked for input on the elite specs. Do they work well, are they fun/interesting to play, etc. We would appreciate a continuation of that attitude. Acknowledge bugs and let us know if they are being worked on. Ask us how we feel about certain aspects of our class. Listen to our input and tell us if you will actually consider our ideas. And please don’t feel bad if some players blow up at you.

You guys are awesome, but sometimes when you’re quiet we start imagining you as uninterested and incompetent. We assume the worst unless told otherwise.

Edit: fellow thieves, please keep it civil in here. You can rage at (politely discuss) the patch notes in any of the numerous threads about it. If you sat down for coffee with Karl, what would you want to talk about (I imagine it wouldn’t involve yelling and accusations)?

Steal used to be usable with no target and would grant thrill and hidden bonuses, but no others.

If your group has might DH runes are useless and running traps for the might will decrease your DPS. In PvE, I don’t know why you’d need that much might, but it wouldn’t hurt. Again though, it may be redundant if you’re doing an event and might is already covered.

XxsdgxX.8109:

Uhh so stealing from the air made sense? k

Made as much sense as nerfing thief right now.

Edit: I’ll agree it didn’t make sense, but you don’t just change it after three years with no mention when thief is already struggling. We need some compensation so it’s not a straight up nerf. They could have at least fixed some of our bugs.

Jana.6831:

“At least” everything was bug fixes – not happy about one “bug” fix in wvw… actually I’m pretty mad because of it

ETA: But on the plus side, the BL dagger is the first BL dagger skin I like.

Steal needs a target now.

Besides the many – no, dare I say – several tooltip updates, Steal can no longer be used without a target. No party swiftness, might and fury, no panic stealth button. Thank you for making the one balance change this patch a thief nerf.

Doggie.3184:

THEY MADE STEAL TARGET ONLY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! NINJA NERF!

/seppuku

You’re kidding. There’s no way…

Edit: spelling…can’t even think straight.

With a buff like that, expect to see some consistent nerfs for the next several years.

Azure The Heartless.3261:

Nocta.5274:

• Removed Evade frames on Vault

or

• Vault now cost 6 initiative

Do it to us Anet.
We like the pain.

Corrupt a balance change!

• Black powder now pulses every second. Also applies self blind if you are in the field.

• Preparedness is baseline. Removed initiative regeneration from infiltrators signet, shadows rejuvenation, and quick pockets, and reduced normal regen to 1 per 2 seconds.

• Shadows embrace now pulls all blinds from allies and enemies to yourself when you stealth.

• Acrobatics has been totally reworked. All traits focus on removing impairing conditions. There are so many options, you’ll never be crippled again! Your welcome! Deleted unhindered combatant so that acrobatics is valuable.

• Increased potent poison to 100% extra damage and 50% extra duration. Replaced poison with bleed on all skills and utilities.

• Added blind to CnD. Edit: self blind.

• Increased dancing dagger damage by 2000%. This skill can hit allied players.

• Pistol whip no longer roots you. Removed evade frames.

There’s this thing called weakness…you know that thing that reduces regen to one dodge every 20 seconds. Many weapon evades actually have vulnerable frames where you can interrupt them. The only things that probably need a look are mesmer sword 2 (add a short cast), distortion shatter (not sure), and revenant riposting shadows (add cooldown or increase cost). Other evades are usually manageable. The only class that can really spam normal dodges is DD, but take that away and they are completely useless.

How about we get poison and torment on dancing dagger to promote alternate skill use with D/D condi or hybrid instead of deleting a good skill.

What is the point of havoc master? It only boosts your pathetic direct damage. Take brawlers tenacity for more impairing daggers and endurance. Even weakening strikes would be better. Interesting otherwise.

DB can be used every 4 seconds at equillibrium. I’d hardly call that exclusively “mashing 3.” Dagger autos (poison on last hit) and dagger training complement the style well, along with lotus dodges and your pick of utilities. I fail to see the problem.

Some of these changes are interesting. Others are awful. Potent poison and venomous aura as GMs in DA destroys poison DPS as you need to have both. Why remove condi cleanse from S2? Why remove might from shadow trap? Totally unnecessary.

Please stop talking about quickness and slow. They affect animation times, not cooldowns. They should have no effect on initiative regen since they already affect our animation times appropriately.

Chill and alacrity should be the only things we’re talking about here. I support them affecting initiative, but if they do, we need to regain initiative on weapon swap.

I pointed this out awhile back. Please fix it Anet!

Mahuyo.3079:

gee, nvr remember saying it was a good build, nvr said it should be run, nvr said anything about the utility, nvr said anything about it ability to tank, and nvr said anything about it dps, so why u are saying something like that totally confounds me.

If you have no utility, can’t tank, and have low dps, you will actually be a detriment to your group (miss enrage timer, die a lot requiring revive, and provide nothing to teammates). That’s why he responded that way. Take this build anywhere you like, but don’t take it to a raid.