If I can figure out which one it is the condition P/D build is great because I can shoot him while running from the clones or CND the clones.
I just have issues figuring out which guy is the right guy and i end up stealth attacking a clone
Bottom line i guess is just fight them to get better at it rather than just leaving because i hate fighting them
Thanks for the advice. Anything else would be appreciated
I
I know this has been discussed but can you help me a bit more.
I haven’t leveled a mesmer so they confuse the hell out of me.
The mesmer with lots of clones, you see him and start attacking him, he stealths and a clone takes his place (I think this is what is happening)
At this point I think (what kind of build is this by the way?)
1) If you have tagged him as a target (I always call targets) the clone gets the target indicator or it disappears.
2) The mesmer stealths
My questions are – how long can he stealth? Is the same as thief stealth? How many times can he do this (what is the cooldown).
I am getting a little better at picking out the real mesmer when he reappears – at this point there are like 3 toher clones ,but it seems (and I know it’s just me l2p) that anytime I start attacking the real mesmer he disappears and a clone appears.
So… any help would be great as it is now I just C/D the nearest clone and leave, it’s just too much of a pain.
I pay P/D condi, but have the same problem no matter what build i’m playing.
it would really help me, i want one that tells me EVERY TIME when i get a condition, not every time it gets extended – i.e. the first stack of bleeding or confusion is fine. if i cleanse it and it gets reapplied i want it again
for now it seems random.
ill be honest, im not as fast as i was ten years ago, i play on a much bigger screen etc, those icons are small.
I dont want to take my eyes off what im trying to kill.
it’s client side right? so it should be easy to give an option for this?
There may be a way to do this but I haven’t found it.
Could we have an option to increase the frequency of the audible condition damage cues “burning, burning! Is that my blood?” etc.
It would really be great for PvP for me. The icons are so small (can I make them bigger?)
verbose, normal, less verbose or something like that.
queen event was fun, not too hard, jut the right challenge
gettign to the queen was no challenge – ran from left ide of map.
pls dont make the events too easy. pretty sure most players feel the same.
best way to zerg tag with SB is poison field + cluster bomb.
Not sure everyone understands but Poison field + Cluster bomb does Condition damage 2 ways (bleed if you detonate (then no blast finish) /poison) and it also does area weakness.
You can hit 4, 2, 4, 2 until you are out of ini.
The just auoattack.
Anyone walking in the poison field gets tagged esp if you bomb them and more importantly
this really really helps your team
@rogerwilco
I find people staying out of melee range are susceptible to SB Poison/weakness
In addition you can steal to get in Melee range and CND – you can also CND off other monsters.
I really have trouble with D?P Thieves, Shout Guards, etc but you cnat expect to be every class 1 V 1.
why are you letting this guy troll you.
/salute Vanthian
Excellent trolling.
yes the constant pew pew unnerves people, they charge you, you stealth, then pewpewpew
Love it
If you are attacking Zerg v. Zerg and use shortbow poison fields followed by undetonated Cluster bomb you are making a large contribution.
Damage + bleeds + poison + area weakness + healing nerfs
If youa re defending you can back up doing the same.
My P/D Condi thief I use in WvW is very Zerg friendly since it has 22000 HPs.
If you are running through Siege you take a lot of damage, sure but you can get through it fast with teleports and dodges.
Ranged Condi is great for zerg pickoffs too on the outskirts although not as good at burst but you can avoid ther aoes since you have 900 range on your pistol.
Thieves are just good at WvW because of the godliness of shortbow.
I noticed this gem
“someone posted DAOC stealth mechanics in another thread but missed some of those points. I think DAOC had it done brilliantly. Never played the game but it sounds great. Thieves already have the highest mobility so stealth should be dealt this way and it wouldn’t completely destroy the class, some skills would need a rework of course.”
The whining about stealth in DAOC was epic. I mean EPIC. Much worse than in GW2.
People whine about stealth but not their own overpowered abilities in MMOs.
Truth.
And it’s because they don’t like it they complain.
Stealth attacks were unstoppable in DAOC vanilla.
Imagine a dude who can wait in stealth FOREVER then when he wants to kill you he does and you die and there is no counter at all and most times he gets off scot free.
GW2 had one button real perma stealth and then Ultra high burst combined with initially unpurgable stun CC.
Perforate Artery, Creeping Death, Stunning Stab = dead. The second was a FOUR SECOND stun.
This followed by a Dragonfang, which was an 8 second stun if they were still alive (this for infiltrators).
You have no idea about the whining level in DAOC vs GW2.
Please. Stop. With. That.
This in no way describes GW2 stealth.
kitten how confusing. If it doesnt round up that changes a lot of grear choices
can you link where they talk about trait changes hadnt heard that
I’m sure this has been discussed but i just switched to P/d so am curious
2- Body Shot – if i want a projectile finisher ill use dancing dagger – more damage + cripple – I’m not good enough to know to use Body shot if I have 3 rather than 4 initiative.
I think vulnerabilty doesn’t increase condition damage. No synergy with mainhand pistol. This trait seems poorly thought out.
3 – Shadow Shot – I suppose could be useful. If I’m in melee range I CND to stealth. I suppose might use if have 4 rather than 6 ini. I usually have 6 ini though since I’m P/D.
Maybe use if under revealed debuff but practically i don’t use it.
Suggestions – Body Shot – some sort of interrupt?
Shadow Shot – Maybe a stack of confusion for shotting them int he head?
Seems like 2 is totally useless and not a good return on initiative.
For 3 maybe I should try it but meh, I want to CND.
@doomdesire – this is interesting. You lose 180 condition damage swapping from Carrion to Giver’s (for example) and get 7s bleed duration (1.7*4 = 6.8 = 7 seconds) with your setup.
So for your runes you need to pick that back up to be equivalent on damage (for example).
I actually think you should keep the Carrion weps and the condi damage because Givers use precision which is a wasted stat for Condi thieves.
The do Three (instead of 2) runes of the krait which will give you 165 condi duration = 7 seconds (this is the tipping pt – 160 only gives u 6 seconds).
This is helpful because I had 2 runes of afflicted and 2 runes of the centaur for the bleed duration, i’ll dump those and get 3 runes of the necromancer for the extra vitality – so, a little bit more health would be the result + a little more condi damage for 7 second vs 8 second bleeds.
I think i like that more.
If someone in wvw hasn’t cleansed their bleeds by 7 seconds they are dying anyway
I have switched to P/D + SB in the last 2 weeks and for me it is the most appropriate spec. I do 0/0/30/20/20. This is for WvW
1V1 it is really good – you can win or leave. I open the fight with poison field from the SB and then use the pistol and CD.
In small groups it is also great as you are often perceived as nonthreatening and you can load people up with bleed stacks.
In Zergs you just use SB as per normal.
The class I have the most trouble with is Guardian (esp Shout), but you can’t own everyone.
You can apply/reapply the bleeds very fast so if someone has average condi removal you can still win. If they have good condi removal make sure you mix in poison with the SB.
I have been doing this for 2 weeks and have never used the 2 or 3 button – perhaps this should be looked at?
One thing I found after lots of trial and error – when you C/D and stealth get far away from the guy before you open fire with rapid fire. This allows you to heal, remove condis and confuse them. Initially I was just letting them have it without counting down the 4 seconds of stealthy goodies.
These threads make me /cry because I die all the time and am supposedly OP.
If I die with such an OP class what does that say about my skillz?
ty
/15char/15char
I did the canach mine maze
I did subdirector null
the patch notes say “Added new single-player instance for the culmination of the story.”
I’m confused about this and have tried searching – sorry if this has already been answered
i think both teams can utilize the same builds.
so cant your own S/D thief steal the boons back?
or is this just anti thief?
good thing is you will never face this attack again because
a) it’s a horrible broken build currently (for the thief)
b) it was nerfed into oblivion
you found the one thief in gw2 still using it.
and while tehre may be things that are near impossible to counter this is not one of them
If you see this again (you wont) hit your stun break and dodge.
or just wait for the 1/2 second stun to end and then dodge
he cant move to chase you.
Thank you, this is what I had concluded as well. Is there a view as to why they have a skill that no one ever uses included in the weapon set?
You would rather stack the bleed with no-initiative 1 than spend initiative on 2.
Does this escape the mods or is it working as intended?
Skill 3, whilst not typically used, does have some situational use I think but 2 seems to be not useful.
Under what circumstances would you use body shot (p2)?
Does anyone use it to stack Vuln or as a physical projectile finisher?
This mostly for WvW.
I’m mostly asking to see if I am missing something I should be doing.
yeah, thanks. I was hoping you could make it like steal. I find it’s hard to get it where i want it when im moving around so fast
is there a way to shdowstep to your target (like Steal) without using the ground target?
I honestly believe that if someone spends 15 badges + Karma to get 2 badges max I have already won, live or die.
sorry im at work – do you have to be stealthed to set the trap off or does anyone running by the trap set it off to destealth people around the person
it will have something to do with limiting the amount of times you can stealth and for how long.
thanks, yes did do and have always rm turned – i guess i just have to practice
thanks for the advice I will try it.
Can yo comment on the S/D build?
Hello,
I have gone through the BS DD/Condi DD/Dagger Pistol and am now going to try Sword/Dagger (with SB)
I generally have issues getting in line and backstabbing people. Maybe I’m just too slow. Anyway I wanted a build that has a lot of “hold still” and isn’t so positional. I thought maybe this is it.
I also found that for me the Black Powder, HS, then backstab just wasn’t reliable (my issue I know because people use it well vs me)
Gear selected for what i have now. Any view on trait/gear selections would be helpful. I have a zerker armor set but I like Valk for the HPs in WvW
I like roll for Initiative as an extra withdraw (also when running away tunring around and withdraw/roll for initiative is a great contact breaker for zergs.
This is the build im trying
“QoL buffs usually make things better yes”
Unlikely then
Wouldn’t this make thief a better class?
“3). I agree that going stealth and then frantically spamming the 1 key, hoping for a backstab, should be detrimental.”
How do you think thieves backstab?
People are freaking running all over the place. Nobody stands still for your backstab.
It’s amazing how often people want to make it so hard for thieves to be able to actually use their class mechanics.
People complain about the mechanic and then want to make it super hard to actually use it.
Try and apply this logic to other classes and tell me what you come up with.
if Class A attempts to use their class mechanic but fails their class mechanic should fail or cause something bad to happen to them
Just dumb.
If A guardian might blows you and you block it doe they get chilled?
That would be just as dumb.
What classes get penalized for trying and failing to use their abilities?
“Just as a counterpoint to this, if pricing changes were allowed, I could see a case where the casual seller would suffer due to automated, or even dedicated sellers – lets refer to them as “algos” for simplicity. If, as you propose, there are forces at work to maintain spreads, this inherently benefits them. Meaning that at any time, an algo would be able to readjust their offer to ensure their sales receive priority over a casual market player who isn’t monitoring their sales. Similar to what you describe happening now, only at an accelerated and unchecked rate.
What this leads to is sales being dominated by algos in the less liquid markets. A common seller would have to get extremely lucky in their listing timing to catch a buyer before being undercut in order to have have their order filled. Likewise on the buy side."
Excellent point, the one thing that I would change about my OP was the observation that a person or group of people do the manipulating. Since my OP I’ve done some experimenting and it’s clear that the algos (bots) are already hard at work.
The speed at which the market moves when the spread is threatened makes me think it’s automated. It’s not like it’s hard to build a single market algo that can monitor a market as slow moving as the TP.
in any case, spreads will tighten (if you can change your offer prices) and this will benefit players at the expense of gold extractors/sellers.
To be clear, i’m not against what’s going on in general. markets that are poorly set up should be ruthlessly exploited. One must assume that ANet either wants it this way or doesn’t understand what they have done. if it’s the former, so be it, it’s their game. I wish I had more time to corner the various markets.
If it’ the latter this thread has some good suggestions on how to fix it.
Im nto sure about jack a lops – i have never looked at the market or tested it like the precursor market.
It only makes sense to do this when the spreads are big – there are a lot of frictions in making RL gold profit
1) You extract the spread in Gold minus the aforementioned trading frictions.
2) You then sell to a gold farming biz on their bid (they have a spread too) unless the one IS a gold farmer biz (more likely)
3) Because their is an official gold buying rate set by ANEt the profit potential for our of game gold buyers is smaller than in games like WoW.
That’s why at the beginning I said it wasn’t that much RL money being made for a pretty irritating mechanic for actual players (artificially high spreads)
You guys make some good points. In order for the market to be manipulated and spreads kept artificially wide it doesn’t have to be one group or person doing it.
I tested the theory and watched the movement in the market and spreads and it was indicative to me that there is someone acting as a market maker and aggressively defending the spreads.
If your evidence suggest otherwise perhaps we could PM each other to discuss.
I find it difficult to believe that in a market that is
1) Highly illiquid – the precursor markets are definitely low liquidity
2) Has large barriers to efficient market making – again, this is the case here
3) Unregulated
that people wouldn’t extract rents from/profit from said market, particularly when it is so easy to do so. Gold selling sites exist, they sell gold, this is an easy way to extract gold.
Anyway, if you don’t think people are defending excessively large spreads, we can agree to disagree – it’s not something I’m up in arms about – I just thought it was interesting.
What I don’t understand is why you can’t change your pricing, this will increase the frequency of transactions, compress the spread (which is good for everyone but market manipulators) and you can then simply vary the tax to get to the appropriate level of gold sinkage.
Those of you saying “it’s not true” – every global market that has these sorts of constraints has seen and will seen the sort of manipulation I’m speaking about.
A good example of what will happen when you remove artificial constraints can be seen by the NASDAQ market going decimilized. They removed an artificial constraint (minimum 1/16th spreads) and the spreads collapsed, liquidity increased, and trading costs diminished
&ensign – I hadn’t considered the storage aspect – they should still let you change your pricing – it will achieve the same thing
Ok that was long – here’s how you fix it. The costs associated with trading are a gold sink built into the system by ANet (like the mystic toilet). MMOs need these, but not to profit riggers. Instead, change the current system in order to make it MUCH harder to keep an artificially wide spread. Some ways:
1) Charge more as a transaction fee and remove the listing fee – tighter spreads mean more transactions and more gold sink from transaction fees – do the math and set it so the sink is equal after the change.
2) Keep it the same (5% listing fee) but ALLOW PEOPLE TO CHANGE THEIR OFFERS – not remove them without penalty. This will yield even more gold sinkage as transactions will go up and listing fees will remain the same.
3) Ban the riggers – the work of 30 minutes, it’s simple to see who’s doing the rigging– MMOs almost never do this. I often thought it was because they didn’t want to lose sub fees – in GW2, no idea.
4) Ban external gold buyers – again, simple, and I do understand why MMOs (never) care about external gold sites and can get into that privately if anyone cares.
If you do any of these problem solved. For ANet, If you don’t have any traders at ANet happy to consult for free and demonstrate what I mean.
TL/DR – the precursor market is rigged, people take RL money out of it, it’s simple to fix, and I don’t understand why they wouldn’t do it.
Dislaimer – i just thought this was interesting and I’m not trying to call anyone out or get anyone in trouble.
I’m curious what Arena Net’s thought process is and reasons behind some decisions about trading post economics. Fair warning I trade markets for a living so some of this draws on personal knowledge. . This will be very long, there will be a TL/DR at the end if this bores you, and some wild kitten guesses and accusations all in good fun. This is not a rant, I love the game, and I’m just a little geeky about these things. There will also be some math. Here are some things I’ve noticed (I’ll use the precursor market as an example where I’ve seen first hand what is up)
1. The precursor market is controlled and rigged externally, either by a person with a lot of time who wants to make a small (IMO) amount of money or a gold farmer outfit with access to cheap labor who wants to do the same. The amount of money they extract (real life money) is pretty small for the irritation they cause the player base (IMO)
2. The way the trading post works encourages wide spreads and makes it much easier to rig due to the way it’s set up. Specifically the listing fee and the selling fee, and the fact that you cannot change prices.
3. This causes (artificially) wider spreads for players wanting to buy and sell items that accrues as (RL) profit to the ones rigging the market.
Markets by nature are efficient if the number of regulatory impediments to price discovery and liquidity is low. The opposite is also true. IN GW2 there are a few notable things that make the markets inefficient and subject to manipulation. First, most markets have 2 expenses that cause friction to trading – commission and regulatory duty. Commission usually accrues to the broker helping you sell – in GW2 this doesn’t exist because everyone is their own broker.
The second, regulatory duty, is a tax that is levied by the regulator, be it the NYSE or the HKSE or whatever. In guild wars we have two – a flat tax of 10 percent when you trade (high but whatever, doesn’t matter) and a 5% listing fee that is only borne by the seller. The listing fee is the issue, but only because you cannot change your offer price.
In any market I’m aware of If you haven’t traded you can cancel or change your bid/offer without penalty. In GW2 you can cancel your offer(with penalty 5%) , can cancel a bid with no penalty, and cannot change either your bid or offer once posted.
Markets are more efficient when there are no frictions for placing, amending or cancelling bids and offers. More efficiency means tighter spreads (the spread is the difference between what people are willing to pay and where people are willing to sell). The spread accrues to the “market maker” and in this case it accrues to whoever is controlling/rigging the precursor market. TIGHTER SPREADS MEANS BETTER PRICES FOR THE LITTLE GUY.
Since the listing fee for sellers is so big, a normal person cannot make a mistake, it’s too costly. Say you get Dawn and you want to sell and the market is 550-625 ( a spread of 75 gold).
You will notice there are a huge amount of bids and just a few offers. This is because the rigger controls the supply. The highest bid will ALWAYS be the rigger. The lowest offer will ALWAYS be the rigger. (I shouldn’t have said always because they are not probably on 24-7). In an efficient market if the market is 575-625 and you would sell for 600 you just list for 600. In GW2 however if you list for 600 they just list for 599 and you are out 30 gold that you will never get back. He doesn’t care if people sell on the bid side – he knows what size of inventory he wants and he knows the market will always grow.
The rigger then drops his bid. The spread remains the same or close to it. The seller cannot compete twice on the offer (lower his bid – he cant afford ANOTHER 30 gold) – what will happen after a period of time is he will take away his offer and sell on the (often rigger’s) bid who then relists it at the offer side of the spread – he makes the spread, the players loses his 30 gold (TWICE – hitting the bid costs you 15%), and the rigger makes the spread between the bid and offer.
There is nothing wrong with this per se in the real world – but this is just a game. The rigger makes the spread and then sells the profit on a gold site (gold site gold sells for about 15-20% less than in game gem store gold – it varies).
I haven’t done the math on what I think they take out of the system in RL money, but it’s not much but Imagine it’s a normal part of their profit from running a gold farmer biz.
“Shadow Shot seems to be bugged and still lets you land Backstabs(although…I suspect this might be nerfed soon)”
spam 3 – 1
?
You guys are kidding yourselves. This is a massive thief nerf any way you look at it no matter how they implement it.
“Use Shortbow to immobilize/cripple people”
How do you immobilize with BS? Dev Venom + SB?
I love the sunflowers setup above but i find people can kite me. How do you get them to hold still to kill them?
open on Fort Aspenwood
US server?
/15char ….
need help jq/15char
coming /15char
looking for NA balth attampt or open
OH Pistol 4 would be worth it if it did zero damage and the description read “prevents heal and only heal if it hits”
This is very cool, innovative and aggressive. Unfortunateley the zerg QQrs will think it unfair because of those traits.
Prepare for nerf