Guild Wars 2

This has been suggested before, and it is a wonderful idea. The user who reveals you knows where you are, removing the largest frustrating aspect of stealth. We still have access to our stealth attacks and stealth related benefits, removing the largest frustrating aspect of reveal.

Xeyon.6419:

My only concern with the change to Shadow Trap, would be players using it to get back into keeps, since the duration is rather long. However, with that said, the trap does require you not to die during its duration, and a few thieves making it back into a keep wouldn’t be that huge a deal. But as you know, if there is something to exploit, it will be exploited methodically, so I am sure it wouldn’t take long for full groups of thieves to go backcap towers.

On the other hand, a single mesmer can get an entire zerg back into a keep. I would see the issue if traps still had their hour long duration, but five minutes to get one person in is not bad compared to one minute to get 50 people in.

Edit: also the trap expires if you go too far out of range.

The tooltip on IP says that it is a projectile finisher. Do you mean it doesn’t register as a projectile for purposes of reflects and such? That may also be a bug. Distracting Daggers does properly combo though.

Bug: the Impairing Daggers utility does not act as a combo finisher.

Tooltip errors:
1) Dagger Training poison duration does not reflect the bonus from potent poison. The duration is extended though, this is just a tooltip thing.

2) Destroy Shadow Trap says “Teleport back to your existing trap early, destroying it and setting it on cooldown.” It does not teleport the user, it causes a shadowstep. I believe this should be changed to a teleport, as you can only return to the place you laid the trap, similar to Mesmer Portal. Also, it is highly unreliable as a shadowstep due to pathing errors. Shadow Pursuit should remain a shadowstep to avoid following players into keeps etc.

Weakness: poor mobility without SB or shadowstep. DD helps, but no teleports really hurts decap potential. Consider shadow trap if you don’t want to take SB. Interesting idea though!

Zdenny.2704:

Azure The Heartless.3261:

Zdenny.2704:

Play thief jst only half and year, and yes they are lacking hte fighting potential. But this is not what the class was designed for. Otherwise why would be then in almost every esport game?

Its a real shame when a class has the majority of its skills designed for attacking and yet cannot capably fight, don’t you think?

Not everyone has the opportunity to be the sorely-needed empty point decapper in high level play, you know?

Yeah its irony that assassing class cant fight like normal hero. But what the devs can make even about it? It will require rebuilding thief completly and set another concept. And this is hard to change after 3 years of thief concept. Its designed this way, use it this way.

Thief is designed as a highly mobile assassin. Kill it fast and move on. The problem isn’t the design and concept, it’s that every other class can lol nope our burst. That leaves us as just a mobile class. You act like Anet designed thief to deal no damage and just run around. That is simply not the case.

Zdenny.2704:

nikdik.1934:

OP, it sounds to me like you are just bad at the game. Go back to your OP Warrior or Guardian and learn to play noob!

lol wut? Im not compling about it. Im saying that they are not OP not underated. Im good with him not best, but good. I just wonder why there is so much qq about him.
Your reply doesnt make any sence. Did you even read it ?

We have one job. Move around fast. We are valuable because of decap and +1 ability. That’s fine, but not every thief wants to be useless in teamfights, outclassed 1v1, and just run around to empty capture points all day.

We need more options, preferably some 1v1, bruiser, and team fight builds. Daredevil helps, but only those with HoT. Also, it would help if real assassination was actually possible. There’s so much invuln and other kinds of mitigation that the backstab assassin is merely a poke to unbalance a fight you’re +1ing.

Use D/P 3 to avoid hard hitting single attacks, evade for multihit attacks. Use 4 to interrupt heals or other important skills. Keep your initiative high for extra damage and access to stealth when needed (costs 8 init). You can’t usually assassinate anything but other thieves, and even if you can win a 1v1 against another class, it’s usually wasted time.

DD has some good damage mitigation, lots of dodges, and can deal ok damage with soldiers amulet. Probably doesn’t come close to guard, engi etc. but that’s not the point. Many zerk thieves are tired of trying to burst down targets with large amounts of block, invuln, protection, and sustain, and running away to back cap after barely making a difference in a fight. If you see thieves trying something different, it’s because our role is so stale and pathetic that we’ll try anything just for a change of pace. Some reroll to perform roles like bunker more effectively, but some loyalists want to actually make thief work as something other than a +1.

Dire armor will provide a little boost in survivability while retaining high condi damage. You only lose a little direct damage. I never liked carrion as I felt the power without precision didn’t give enough damage to matter, while the vitality without toughness didn’t give enough durability. With impacting disruption and bound, I think a carrion P/P hybrid could be interesting though.

I like the build, but what is the point of CiS when both sets have blind access? SRej would be so much more useful.

Vault is extremely telegraphed. If you can’t dodge, block, blind, interrupt, or otherwise move out of the way of this skill, how do you handle other high damage, high predictability moves? The general consensus is that thief and daredevil are very easy to handle for nearly every other class since HoT hit. If Vault was an actual problem, this would not be the case.

In case it isn’t clear, venom share does not require you to stay in range of allies for it to work. You can share and then run off somewhere else and they still get the venoms. It could use a radius buff, but it’s not too bad.

Choice between venoms or traps/caltrops or something else entirely comes down to playstyle. If you run with a minion master and share venoms with him, you can get 30 stacks of poison on a single target. If you’re alone, that same skill is 6 stacks. Traps and caltrops are beter for area control while venoms are better for bursting and supporting your allies.

Switch critical strikes for trickery. Sinister is not going to 100-0 someone with a backstab crit. It just gives good supplemental damage to your very strong conditions.

Swap the signet. Shortbow gives plenty of mobility, and you’re missing out on many other useful utilities. Shadowstep is a stunbreak, condi clear and mobility, SR is great reset tool, and there are other good choices. If you decide on venomshare, you may consider ambush trap and thieves guild if you’re roaming solo, in which case improv could be an alternative to potent poison.

D/D with a glassy sinister build is risky. DD can pull it off with lotus training and tons of dodges, but you may be better off with P/D. It has the benefit of having a powerful hybrid stealth attack, while backstab doesn’t apply conditions and death blossom does little direct damage. P/D can also apply torment and the range and constant stealthing for sneak attack will help you stay alive.

Just don’t charge it if you don’t plan on throwing any of the daggers. It’s fine as is.

Bad idea. Say you run all physicals. You have a 16.67% chance to recharge all of them. Your suggestion gives a 20% chance to recharge one of them. That is a huge nerf. I agree it should be changed somehow, but not like that.

I waited 10 hours in a queue to play Archeage. Disconnects were common, and forced another multi-hour queue to get back in. HoT is great.

A few options:

• Run tripwire
• Stealth and attack as soon as the block finishes
• Run condi with needle traps, caltrops and caltrops on dodge

That’s one idea…but then what if you want to swap while roaming in WvW and you then have to run all the way from the start with your other character?

Howl.2498:

It makes me feel like I’m swimming through the air like a magical unicorn snake diety. I think it’s a bit odd, but I don’t have any strong feelings against it.

Ftfy…

Also, for those worried about slithering off a cliff, jump dodge is your friend.

I have a dilemma. I currently have four sets of armor and weapons and three sets of trinkets that I keep in two invisible bags. I have a trapper dire set, mes rune zerk set, adventure sinister set, and snowfall set for fun (no trinkets for this set).

I’d rather not be forced into a third (or fourth) invisible bag for even more sets, but I’m a major theory crafter. I love using many different builds, but who has the inventory space for that? I really want a soldier set with daredevil runes, soldier with scrapper runes, viper with berzerker runes, and trailblazer with thorn runes.

All of that would be at least 44 more bag slots (sharing back items and weapons with some sets)…my poor inventory. If legendary armor doesn’t have swappable runes, it won’t be a solution. Fingers crossed that it does, but who knows how expensive it’ll be. Hopefully not 3k per peice…

Am I the only one with this problem?

Did he have protection? That plus scrapper rune, and I think they have some traits for extra toughness could possibly explain it. I haven’t played my scrapper yet, so I don’t know what they can do in detail yet.

Also, elevation changes don’t jive well with vault or bound. It feels really weird when I leap 5 feet in the air and I’m stopped by a 1 feet rock or ledge. It should have a vertical component equivalent to the height of a normal jump.

RedSpectrum.1975:

That is a buff….now if only they’d make the triple hit on staff two hit all three hits reliably>_>

It’s been like that since launch. Also staff 2 just requires good positioning. I wouldn’t complain if it was easier to use, but I think staff 4 is more of a problem.

Yes please! It certainly would be appreciated if we got more range too (800 or 900). I don’t see why not, given that the general consensus – even among other classes – is that daredevil and thief are weak.

If you want to be technical about it, improv dropped to a 16.67% chance instead of 20% thanks to the additional skill type, so…

Agree, along with some base spec buffs. Vanilla players must feel terrible.

Concur with Holliday, but you could also run withdraw for more condi heal or the DD heal for more dodges. Also, the new poison runes are very cool (gain condi damage when struck by a poisoned foe), but krait, undead, or orr are fine.

Hmm, the cluster into steal + PW sounds interesting. Wouldn’t have thought to try that. I’ll give it a shot and see what I think. Sorry to nitpick, but what’s with the random capitalization?

blarghhrrkblah.3412:

knight.8926:

…I main a mesmer and warrior and playing thief is seriously easy mode compared to those two…

I’m not going to say you’re wrong because difficulty is subjective, but this makes me highly skeptical.

Warrior: high damage, high health, high armor, tons of damage mitigation, no complex mechanics.

Thief: high damage, worst survivability in the game, stealth compensates low survivability, reveal hard counters stealth, damage potential reliant on stealth, positioning, and good resource management.

Thief is easy mode though.

There is a very good reason for that. It uses the hammer animation.

knight.8926:

I don’t know why your complaining about not being “buff” enough but I just played thief and wow was it OP and fun to play. For those thinking its weak I main a mesmer and warrior and playing thief is seriously easy mode compared to those two. I’ll stick around thief for a while knowing how fun it is to play

Translation: I ran berzerker amulet and got assassinated by a thief. I’ll pretend I just picked up thief and say that I think it’s super fun, but subversively throw in a “thief OP” message. Nobody will suspect a thing.

We expect you to tele away at the last second, but we have the advantage of seeing the channeling bar on our stomp, making it easy to just steal at the real last second and reclose the gap. In reality, they might not even by reacting to your teleport, but just always stealing right at the end of the channel.

Edit: if it’s shadowstep, then yes they have to react quickly, but it’s still quite possible. How do you know it isn’t steal?

I’ve done well as a daredevil. After unlocking lotus training, I have good AoE condi with a generous amount of dodges and stealth if I really need it. I don’t kill things as fast as my zerker build, but it works.

If you time it right, the animation is practially seamless as well. Long distance snaking ftw! Now I feel like playing F-Zero GX…

Kageseigi.2150:

Ah, thank you so much, Mr. Joel… for everything you’ve done! I’m really enjoying the Action Cam!

If I may ask, would you consider implementing an option where the camera actually follows/tracks the target (keeping the target centered) like some flight sims have? While we can do it manually, it would be wonderful to have it done automatically with a key toggle.

Joel Helmich.7398:

pointing the camera down does not shorten the Heartseeker’s leap, making it much more difficult to jump inside Black Powder multiple times.

The behavior you want is almost certainly a bug in the first place, so I’m not sure what to tell you.

Oh, interesting. Thank you.
Yeah, in case you’re not aware, with the normal camera, Thieves can point the camera straight down to cut their Heartseekers very short… as long as there is no target selected. It allows us to leap through Black Powder up to 4 times, allowing us to extend our Stealth duration for a few more seconds… which we really do need just to survive. It becomes second nature to point the camera down, it seems.

If it’s really a bug, it hasn’t been addressed since launch, and it shouldn’t be. If you change it, it’s a huge nerf to an already suffering class.

Kolly.9872:

I’m just waiting for some dev to come around and hide this topic in the thief’s subforum.

Yeah…..

sigh

-_-

This is my favorite animation in the game. Please leave it as is.

Side note: did some people really not just go into the mists to try them out? That was the first thing I did at launch, and it inspired me to binge hero points until I unlocked dash because it was so cool.

Wish I could have been there! I was helping another guild claim their hall at the time. Precipice is huge! Way larger than I expected.

jayson.6512:

FeelsAlright.5860:

jayson.6512:

I knew someone will post UA here and ask for nerf but first try that in spvp you will see Rev is like a wet noodle.

It doesn’t matter if Rev is a ‘wet noodle’. The skill is gamebreaking. You can’t triple dodge it. Block it. Or even use your teleports to escape the damage.

Whoever thought pistol whip that follows you was a good idea needs to send the drugs my way.

Game Breaking? Blind counter it how its game breaking? i was blinded by thief and half of UA didn’t Hit and the thief killed me by 2 hits.

UA does seven hits in 2 seconds. Black powder pulses blind once every 2 seconds, meaning it will prevent 1/7th of your damage. If the thief casts it twice or uses shadow shot, that mitigates 2/7ths of your damage. Afterwards the thief is low on initiative and will be easy prey. If half of UA didn’t hit it’s probably because he dodged twice. :/

Edit: does that even matter? 100 blades and pistol whip can be blinded too, but they still root you so that victims can dodge/run away and avoid the high damage. UA does more damage and can’t be escaped. There has to be a good way to break the channel or escape it.

As long as Anet reasonably balances the new elite specs with the old ones, HoT will not be pay to win. Please keep in mind it’s only been a few days since the expansion. Some things are clearly broken. The worst offenders should get nerfed, while underperforming base specs should ideally receive a boost. It seems like Anet really wanted the elite specs to be fun and viable, and that has come at the cost of older specs feeling lacking, but give it time. There have already been frequent changes, so I expect things will calm down shortly.

Velimere.7685:

Daredevil doesn’t even get a blindfold…

…Did the developers not watch the Netflix original series?

That would actually be really cool. Give us a daredevil mask that covers only the top of our head, eyes included. From the sound of it, we’ll need to go in blind to have the courage to face the new specializations.

jayson.6512:

I knew someone will post UA here and ask for nerf but first try that in spvp you will see Rev is like a wet noodle.

Well like I said, I haven’t tried PvP yet, I was just asking if this skill is as crazy on rev as it is on the smokescale in PvE. However, wiki says UA hits almost 50% harder than pistol whip…wouldn’t call that a wet noodle.

Mirage.6754:

Smokescale’s already been nerfed in 2 ways, 1 being the damage… down by 50%. Enjoy half-dying

If it’s half of 30k…that’s 15k which is still full dying for us low hp folk.

I’ve been avoiding PvP since the expansion, but noticed something when fighting smokescales in PvE. Unrelenting assault hits like a truck, requires three dodges to mitigate, can’t be easily interrupted, and is completely inescapable (I’ve teleported 3000 distance with inf arrow and shadowstep and it tracked me the whole way). It feels like getting hit with 100 blades that follows you everywhere. I can only imagine fighting a Shiro rev…is it a big problem?

Meanwhile here I am having solo’d everything I’ve come across with few issues. The only exceptions have been a couple of hero points with champs, but there happened to be a couple other people around when I did them, so that wasn’t a problem.

Take weakening strikes, staff, and signet of malice. Staff auto works really well with SoM, 2 ensures you keep up the damage mitigation, and vault is a safe heavy hitter thanks to the evade.

Yeah, I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to play any other class. Thief/DD just has so much style. Staff feels really good and fluid. I’d still like a line field on 4 and more vault range, but overall everything is great.

Thanks! I’m tempted to grab viper over sinister now.

Anyone know how condi duration is calculated from expertise?

Scrapper runes, weakening strikes, and dash will give 27% damage reduction plus fumble for 77% reduction every other attack. Steal some protection and you will be insanely hard to kill. 100% reduction on fumbles and 60% on all other attacks. This could actually be a decent bunker if you can cleanse conditions well enough.