S/D, S/P, P/P, D/D, and Staff all seem to have viable builds with Daredevil. We have good bruiser builds, interrupt builds, and condi builds in addition to the old D/P meta. Also, the dodges are very stylish if that means anything to you. I’m optimistic, though I feel bad for those stuck with vanilla thief.
The new animations are wonderful, especially dash. Thank you Karl and the animation team! I do think lotus could do with a little more height in the two jumps, but otherwise it’s really great.
Edit: exclamation on the first sentence…that language filter.
Gliding is so much better than flying in my opinion. Flying is just an easy way to get around. Gliding requires positioning, skill, and in HoT, resource management. Sure you can’t fly everywhere on a whim, but the challenge and the experimenting with “I wonder if I can make it all the way over there” is a much better experience.
I have a guild stash, and I want a treasure trove, but need arch level 4 first. Should I spend influence on that now, or will the architecture requirement not even exist in two hours, resulting in wasted influence?
I’m gonna assume that’s satire. Nobody takes haste. Run shadow step for a stun break/condi cleanse/mobility on a lower cooldown. And who uses signet of shadows? If you’re in a group, you’ll likely have plenty of group swiftness, besides thrill of the crime or dash if you take daredevil. Needle trap is ok, but in a group setting, venomshare is far superior if it’s condi damage you want. On that subject, sharing basilisk melts break bars, and is also the most used elite in PvP. Racial elite? Only grenth for condi ghost in WvW is even worth thinking about.
We’ve also only seen one raid instance, so we don’t know yet how thief will fit in, but sinister venomshare is quite strong, as is daredevil zerk staff. I wouldn’t say we’re a “handicap.”
You can make it work, but it’s technically inferior to dire or sinister since the crit chance is kind of a waste while dire gives you a nice hp boost and sinister allows for good direct damage on top of condi. Zerk is also a good thing to have as a thief. Good news is you can get sinister trinkets for free doing living story achievements, but armor and weapons can get pricey.
But have it play exactly like necro, but more mobility?
One person suggested an actual form with alternate skills, only one of which even deals damage. Most other recommendations are more or less just buffs on reveal. Nobody suggested necro with more mobility. No clue where you see that.
I wouldn’t consider the black blurs they do to be smokey. I’ll agree that theives do use shadow magic, but to turn thief into another tanky shadow based caster that nukes whole parties isn’t the way this class should go. If that’s what you want, necro and reaper await. Hell, even mesmer suits the stealthy caster role better than thief would.
Daredevil may have retained the aesthetic, but the theme behind it (and behind most of thief’s skills in general) is speed and evasion. S/D (and staff to a lesser extent) is dedicated entirely to that. We now have TWO trait lines dedicated to evasion.
I understand the nostalgia a good game could bring about (I was too young and broke to enjoy GW1), but trying to bring a game’s mechanics with entirely different functions and mechanics around to a game like GW2 is exactly what we SHOULDNT be doing. We need less homogenization of classes while still aiming to make them different while certain game modes obviously cater more to certain classes. I understand everyone’s desire to make thief better, but making them like other classes isn’t the way to go. Why not try suggesting something that plays on thief’s strengths (or weaknesses, without making them facetankers).
Nobody is recommending that. People have thrown around different ideas for something that thief needs (survivability and a way to handle reveal), and while they’re calling it shadow form, suggestions are for something that fits thief and gw2.
And who said necro is the only class that can have shadowy effects? It’s not like we’re saying to just slap death shroud on a thief. It could look totally different, like a blur/phasing effect.
100% sinister. They give condi primary and pow/crit secondary. You get a full ascended sinister trinket set from Living Story achievements, and can use rampager dugeon gear if you can’t afford to make sinister armor/weapons. You don’t need extra hp since you’ll have plenty of dodges, stealth, and sustain from signet.
Lol, I’ve been playing for years and just beat Zhaitan for the first time yesterday. :/
Zerk is still one of the best choices. You could also grab sinister, or mix zerk with valk. Dire or DD with soldiers could also be a good choice if you feel you really need more survivability.
Why not split cloak and dagger so you can cloak to gain stealth and blind without a target and dagger is a non damaging (doesn’t break stealth) high vuln strike. It just can’t compete with on demand stealth from D/P as is.
WHAT? thats dumb… Is that only for Thieves? I don’t have that problem on my Ranger
It’s for everyone. You probably just don’t notice on your ranger because you don’t have anything to stealth you besides longbow 3, which has a longer cooldown than reveal. Reveal prevents us from backstabbing people repeatedly.
That’s good the toolbelt reveal can be dodged. Gyros are getting a speed buff though, so it should keep up with people. If that works out, SR is not desirable as long as enemies still don’t attack the gyro.
I don’t really want to buy HoT right now. I tried necro and it was actually alright, but it doesn’t really afford the same feeling as thief.
One of the reasons I like Necro as my 2nd fav is cuz it does feel like Thief. Just run around berserk with dagger/warhorn and abuse perma death shroud as if it was stealth and pew pew range backstab things for loadsadamage. You’ll feel like a loud Thief.
A loud, slow thief with lots of HP. So…not a thief.
Shadow form on reveal would make complete sense. Like your stealth hasn’t completely worn off. I like the pulsing blind idea, or giving attacks a chance to blind. I’d really like alacrity as well, and maybe reduced condi damage since we have the lowest HP pool.
Also keep in mind that when the gyro is destroyed it will deal damage to enemies in the area, this reveals the engineer. So killing the gyro while next to it negates the impact of the elite.
This was particularly annoying during the beta where it would kamikaze anyone dealing damage to it (broken AI thinking it has a weapon when it does not).
Hmm…you tested it and it reveals you? Most damage not dealt directly by the player (i.e. clones, minions, turrets) won’t reveal you, so that’s interesting. If it stays that way, that’s at least kind of helpful sometimes in PvP.
Still doesnt change the fact that thief is more skippable in PvE content thanks to it’s one semi unique function being performed better by a class that doesn’t have “master of stealth” in it’s description. Want to skip some stuff in CoE or TA? Would you rather have 15s of stealth that pugs will always fail using because they walk outside of refuge revealing themselves, or 44s with no such issues?
Dodges are 50 endurance. Dashing everywhere will be great for horizontal mobility, but you don’t need staff to do it. Also, SB5 grants vertical mobility that cannot be replaced by dashing or vault, and you don’t need three traits, a heal and a utility to make it good.
It’s really good when shared, provided the recipient doesn’t cleanse it. That doesn’t happen often though, and using it solo doesn’t really do a whole lot. I say give it weakness as well, so it still works with both condi and non condi cc venom builds and boosts survivability. Also, on the topic of venoms, BV and Skelk should really be instant cast.
A beefed up Shadow Refuge as an elite would actually be kinda awesome, and offer more build options. Right now, it’s pretty much Basilisk or bust
Nope. Trapper Runes + P/P + Ambush + Thieves Guild. Call in your posse and /whisper “You came to the wrong turf , bro!” Now you’re thinking with gang crime.
Lol, I do love TG, but the cooldown is so insanely high that you pretty much have to run improv. Can still be really fun in the right build, but meta sPvP is pretty much exclusively BV.
I thought it was strange that while we can permastealth as thief, it takes so much effort compared to chrono and scrapper. We need to trait for it, spend all of our initiative doing four tricky leaps every 10 seconds while trying to avoid hitting anything, and take stealth utilities because we don’t have the init regen to keep it up otherwise. It’d definitely help if MwS affected combos and maybe gave more than 1 extra second.
Why not make shadow refuge an elite? I wouldn´t have any problem with that actually :P
Saying sneak gyro is terrible because of being an elite and the other ones on engi are better isn´t really valid. They have better or great options? Thats fine. I would take a lot of utilities as elite on thief. Basilisk venom is ok, but I could live without it and take refuge instead. Thief guild wasn´t used in competitive pvp for long time (was it ever?), dagger storm sometimes, but not really that much to be a valid option. The new elite is interesting bu very situational and fails easily. ^^
I would actually love SR to be made an elite. Or even just the ability to take a normal util in the elite slot.
sneak gyro pulses every 3 seconds and only has 30s duration. so at best it’s 66% uptime, and even then, it’s 4s of stealth every 3 seconds, so unlike SR, you can’t get a super long stealth without putting the red flag over your head. meanwhile SR asks for 4 seconds of your time to get you 12s of untampered stealth, all while pulsing about 2k health per second (which also heals downed allies).
4s stealth every 3s means that by the 30s mark you’ve received 40s stealth (you have 10s left after it dies). The cd is 45 seconds, so that’s about 90% uptime. Unless it gives a pulse right at the start, in which case it’s 44s, and 99% uptime.
Well, S/P should provide large AoE damage, so that’s not unique to staff. They both have blind, evade, AoE, and CC on stealth attack. Staff also has weakness and immob break though, while S/P has interrupts.
Yes it does. If you walk out of the field or get feared, knocked back or pulled out of it you get 3s reveal. It’s a huge pain in dungeons when people don’t know how it works and rather than stealthing through a section they get revealed and die.
For a skill like SR where it can be completely nullified with a fear or knockback and makes you an immobile AoE target, the cd is high. Sneak gyro can have insane stealth uptime because it has counterplay, but SR has easier counterplay that has much worse consequences for the user. I don’t think a 45 second cooldown would hurt. Otherwise it shouldn’t reveal if you leave the field. I agree on MwS applying to combos.
With the changes to Scrapper, the gyro should keep up with the player, be harder to kill, and have 90% stealth uptime (kitten cooldown aka 45 seconds, grants 40 seconds stealth total). I’m not too bothered by it since it’s killable and an elite, but…our stealth utilities have terrible uptime, and SR is just as easily countered as the gyro. I’d like to at least see a little boost to meld with shadows.
Edit: I stand corrected. The gyro provides 44s of stealth max, or ~98% uptime.
It used to be 50% reduced damage in stealth… but they rolled it up into other trait and reduced it.
Why should revealed give damage reduction? I don’t think you’ve thought this through at all… c/d, backstab instantly, slash slash, heart seeker heart seeker (i’m safe from damage, it’s 50% less effective so just tank it out) until revealed gone, c/d and backstab instantly again…
May as well just ask for revealed to double your health bar.
IMO it’s an awful suggestion. If d/p is the “only viable build” at present, your suggestion is exponentially making it stronger too and therefore keeps it the strongest/best build.
How about dancing dagger applies blind as well as cripple for a ranged blind – to help dagger offhand builds? I’d rather have it on c/d but you can trait for it.
He never said 50% reduction while revealed. That would clearly be over the top. I’d go for 10% reduction, some endurance regen, and initiative regen when revealed. CnD should blind and SA should get a new GM for the reveal buff. Put the 50% fall damage on the deception cooldown adept in place of smoke screen on down.
The biggest problem imo is that, even if runes were dirt cheap, it’s still significantly less convenient to have to apply new runes to each armor piece any time you switch builds. Why spend so much on legendary anything when plain ascended is more convenient?
Also, in case anyone is wondering, this is in raids instead of HoT because legendary armor is primarily a feature of raids, not general HoT content.
Hmm…this could be interesting with DD for heals on evade and acro with AR. Use S/D and flanking strike will heal based on init and if it successfully evades. CnD can get you into stealth for extra regen and condi clear. Maybe DA with mug is a better choice than acro though.
With the introduction of legendary armor in HoT, I think it goes without saying that runes will be a huge pain if they aren’t unlockable/selectable. What’s the point of swapping stats when I need to carry around stacks of expensive runes for each time I swap?
People have already expressed a desire for selectable runes on legendary armor, but I would also like to see “rune memory.” What I mean is, say you have perplexity unlocked and select it while the armor is on sinister, then you swap to zerk and select scholar runes. If you switch back to sinister later on, the armor should “remember” that you use perplexity with that stat and automatically switch the rune for you.
If this isn’t implemented, I feel like i’d be saving a lot of time just having multiple ascended sets with their own runes instead of having to select both the stat and rune for each individual armor piece. To that end, it would also be nice if we could check boxes next to each armor piece to group them and change the stat on everything grouped at once.
I don’t see how bound risks revealing you. It’s not like you are constantly dodging while in stealth. That’s one of the main benefits of stealth, damage mitigation without blowing endurance. Also, the ability to deal damage on dodge absolutely benefits power D/P builds. Every little bit helps.
Even dash isn’t bad. Follow it up with shadow shot for more damage mitigation or heartseeker if they’re below 25% and you’re right back in melee range.
That 7% extra damage is also quite good. Coupled with bound, that’s 17%, which is like having executioner all of the time.
DD D/P has some decent synergy. Bound can be used to conserve initiative while stealthing with BP, impacting disruption works great with pistol 4, and the new empowered evasion will be a nice damage boost when sticking to your target. You’ll have to pick a traitline to drop though. I recommend testing things yourself to see what fits your playstyle, but it’s certainly not a bad option.
If dagger training had longer duration poison and gave backstab guaranteed poison, dancing dagger applied torment as well as having a flip teleport for chasing, and CnD blinded, D/D would no longer be a 3 spam fest and would be a solid hybrid set.
As for dancing dagger being on S/D and P/D, I don’t see why that’s an issue. It works great for P/D as you could torment and teleport to them and then use 3 for more torment and a teleport away. Perfect synergy. S/D never uses 4 anyway but an extra teleport doesn’t hurt or help in any huge way.
I like the BP change overall, but it severely hinders stealth cost after it’s already been heavily nerfed (used to have 2 init on entering stealth, and before that 2 init every time you gained stealth). That’s why I recommend a lower init cost. It’s easy enough for people to just not stand in the field that I don’t think lower cost should be an issue.
Resistance on reveal would be better so people don’t camp in stealth to be totally immune to condi builds. It’d also make people think twice about using an 8s reveal on a thief.
I like most of the ideas, but the death blossom and dust strike idea are bad. Dancing dagger needs the shadow step mark. It makes no sense on death blossom. Also, if you change black powder like that the init cost needs to go down.
A bit overexaggerated but good point. These feel kind of lackluster because I haven’t given too much thought of these.
A simple teleport in pvp is very strong if it can be used while casting, while at the same time doesn’t make too much sense in PvE therefore it should do something else too like deal damage/grant stealth/ inflict vulnerability.
So the effect caused by dust strike and death blossom could be called for example Marked for Death, activating marked for death stealths you, teleports behind/to your foe also inflicting vulnerability. (counterplay: vulnerability lets them know that you are coming)
The problem is, death blossom is used to mitigate damage with the evade and apply condi pressure. If you use it, you are right on top of them already. There is no need for a teleport, and it totally interrupts your flow. Stealth wouldn’t help either, as you’re then using a condi skill to set up a power skill.
Dancing dagger is used to pursue a target, so a teleport makes complete sense.
Dust strike makes more sense than death blossom, but it doesn’t really fit the feel of the kit. I’d prefer a line smoke field that you could vault through to gap close and gain stealth, setting up the leg sweep for knockdown.
I like most of the ideas, but the death blossom and dust strike idea are bad. Dancing dagger needs the shadow step mark. It makes no sense on death blossom. Also, if you change black powder like that the init cost needs to go down.
1) Any amount of mobility and immob break will get you easily out of range. This build has poor mobility.
2) Want to kill him? Deny stealth by standing in his black powder. Or taunt him with your pet skill, then use sic ’em. Or use any of the other myriad reveals coming with HoT.
I have used this build. Those who have no idea how thief works will sometimes die, unless they have any kind of sustain/condi clear, in which case you’ll just be a nuissance. Those who know how thief works will deny your stealth by standing in BP, grabbing a reveal trap, or traiting for reveal if they have it, completely screwing you over. I’ve not killed a single skilled opponent with this build, only clueless people.
Now if dancing dagger got torment and CnD got blind it’d feel like a really solid hybrid set.
