Guild Wars 2

Amante.8109:

Hopefully they figure out the scam faster than the three years it took us.

Well hey, that’s not completely fair. It was only really since June 23rd that thief got really bad. Before that, we were still able to fight people.

So…I don’t want to throw more fuel onto the flames (and I’m not sure if this was already mentioned so sorry if it was), but I’ve mostly stood on the sidelines for whether the Daredevil’s unique dodges being Grandmaster traits was ok.

For many of us, getting access to these dodges will not be a problem because we have a good pool of hero points. For the new player, they won’t even be able to experience these new dodges until after they’ve accumulated enough points. When they unlock the daredevil tree, they will see that they have one extra endurance bar. They will look at all of the other players who have just unlocked the first trait of their E-spec and see that they are playing with their new shiny toys.

From a new player’s perspective, this is terrible. The issue here isn’t even whether or not the dodges are deserving of GM trait status, but rather accessibility.

yLoon.5289:

But then again, is the pvp populations are sufficient enough to support this system? xD

It sounds to me like leagues is basically what you’re going for. The F2P model was probably also made to try to solve this issue.

Vornollo.5182:

With our survivability? I’d say Nomads gear and you’re a goner.

Shalien.9018:

I support it out of humor more than anything lol. We would all be the self-identified gender without fear!

OK my point is that they didn’t release the entire patch notes at Twitch con, so for all you know, this issue could have been fixed. Just wait until Tuesday when it comes out before you riot

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

yes, if they dun show it in the preview notes, it could mean that they do not care about it, forgotten about it, did not fix it etc.

No…if they didn’t show it in the preview notes, then it means that they didn’t show it in the preview notes. At this point, you’re just trying to find reasons to be mad at ANet. Stop it.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

preview notes.

zinkz.7045:

Thief +1’s and decaps better than anyone else, it isn’t a coincidence that nearly every decent team has had a thief for 3 years.

You want thief to be strong at 1v1, then ask to have the insane mobility nerfed, because when thief was strong at 1v1 it was one of the most broken things this game has ever seen. (when s/d was super strong for example)

If thief is strong 1v1 then when that is combined with that mobility it becomes broken, you can’t out-rotate a thief, nor can you escape, a thief can train other classes all other the map, that is simply broken, and at various times in this game it has severely impacted classes like mesmer, ele, etc when they lacked the ability or builds to deal with the thief build at that time.

Mobility is the problem, compare it to necro & condi engy, for three years necro has had a very strong advantage in a matchup with condi engy, yet this didn’t stop people playing condi engy, because the necro can’t train the engy all over the map.

This is interesting because these were my thoughts on thief as a thief player as well. However, simply nerfing shortbow wouldn’t work, because without it, thieves would be quite slow, which just doesn’t really fit with the theme of the rogue archetype.

Exciton.8942:

It’s funny that as some players claim thief is at its worst state, the class can still take almost a guaranteed spot in competitive teams. While other classes they complain about, sometimes can’t even get a spot.

So…while I agree with this sentiment, I think the point that everyone is missing is that the current thief is just not fun for many of us to play.

Pengy.9580:

Hi guys,

I am looking for some suggestions on future possible stat combos you all will be using as a thief…(Given the content is as challenging as they make it out to be).

Since I started I’ve always used berserker stats because it was just the best…Now I am thinking maybe berserker armor and PVT trinkets?

Help me get prepared for next month!

Thanks!

I think it’s too early to say. If you want for now, gather resources for after a new meta (if any) is established.

Ghotistyx.6942:

If you deal enough damage, you don’t need survivability.

Fine, but we neither deal enough damage, nor are able to survive. I posted some numbers about our “ridiculous burst” in the PvP forums. Against a competent player, we’re looking at a 0.5s window to deal damage to them after backstab. This leads to something like ~10k damage assuming all of it crits and is unmitigated (by protection or otherwise). I don’t think that being able to 100-0 is conducive to a skill-based environment, so the only reasonable option, in my opinion, is to boost survivability. How that will be done is up to debate, but it definitely needs help.

Edit: I should also mention that these numbers were found using the Light Armor golem, so these will be the highest possible numbers without modifiers.

Frightlight.3796:

My engi elite got a drone thing with a 30 sec cd that can only be used to rez 1 person or stomp 1 person I guess that’s pretty cool.

Haha…I guess when you put it that way, we’re both in the same boat. The difference here is that at least the rest of your E-spec is looking pretty powerful. Ours isn’t.

Coronit.9432:

I wouldn’t say so. Of course I use I-arrow a lot, but I use kinda everything sb offers: range cleave, short-distance-AOE/blast finisher, evade if needed, poison on downs and surprise shot for CC/projectile finisher, etc —> great feeling when you got TWO surprise shots up, slow arrow-speed ftw.
Its a alternative weapon if you need stay ranged, want to give support through the blast finisher….
I love the combo: surprise shot -> gunk (stolen) -> maybe more gunk ->blast finisher for damage and chaos-armor -> lot of fun
Shortbow is mostly great in mobility cause of z-axis (is that the correct word?) teleports. I,m not sure how it would be on flat ground against other classes.
I think a year ago someone wanted to see what is faster, heartseeker or I-arrow. Somethings changed since then, but the result was just a small advantage on I-arrow. (Everything normal for speedwas used -> swiftness, etc)

And no, I don’t think there are changes needed. Taking away some utility and improving damage wouldn’t be great. —> damage outside of bouncing and clusters still very low., while utility-nerfs would harm the weapon a lot.

Jana.6831:

No, I don’t. I guess that it’s the main purpose in pvp, but I’m a world versus world player and in fact I use all SB skills in that game mode.

The issue that I’m having with shortbow is that, as a thief, not taking shortbow causes you to lose the majority of your mobility. Because of this, I think that the class itself needs to become faster. If that happens, then shortbow will have to be reworked a bit. I guess what I’m saying is that I don’t want the “speed” aspect of thief to be exclusively tied to the weapon, but rather to the class.

To summarize, I think that shortbow should be a powerful combat utility weapon, but I feel that the mobility that it offers should be in the theme of the class as a whole, rather than in just this one weapon.

apharma.3741:

No they have countless blinds, teleports and evade frames instead.

There are only two thieves in PvP right now: D/p and S/d. D/p has gap closers but how is that helping them to survive if they are blinking into the enemy? Same deal with S/d, though I-Return is a blink away, I would hardly consider it countless (not to mention S/d is a rare sight nowadays anyway). As for having “countless” blinds and evades, we get one or the other. Definitely not both.

babazhook.6805:

At the same time were SBS mobility diffused to other sets no one would have reason to use SB and would warrant changes to that weapon.

I think that changes to this weapon are exactly what is needed.

Jana.6831:

I use it to “travel” but also to cap camps, weaken those with healing signets, evading necros and keeping the downed downed.

But you admit that the main purpose of this weapon is for I-Arrow.

fireflyry.7023:

I’m as kittened off as the next thief but lol at the melodrama.

No! You don’t understand! NOBODY UNDERSTANDS! /wrists

El Psy Congroo.7965:

Wait a second, so.. its illegal to play thief on PvP?
Wut? I don’t play any other prof. so I can’t play ranked?
Wtf is happening to this game..

We have become Quantum Teef. We are both OP and useless at the same time.

babazhook.6805:

it depends whether you talk in combat or out of combat. There a number of ports in combat that give great mobility without SB

It would definitely be out of combat. Shortbow is used for it’s travel utility, as I’m sure you know, but no other weapon comes even close to matching it. Admittedly, it’s combat potential is fairly low also, but I’d like the travel utility to be somewhat diffused into the aspect of the class rather than have it all concentrated in this one weapon.

Edit: using Irenio’s words: it’s just not healthy for the class

Raiden.1375:

I’m pretty sure on the last BWE Signet of Agility restored 100 endurance still. Not sure about Sigil of Energy.

---

As to all of the complaints about Daredevil traits not being strong enough: If all of the other elite specializations stay as strong as they were previewed to be, then I agree that Daredevil traits probably need to be better. I think the real problem is most of the other elite specializations seem to be so strong that they are not nearly balanced with core trait lines, making them almost required to take. I don’t think this was intended for elite specializations. If the other elite specializations get toned down then Daredevil looks pretty good so far, assuming some things like the dodges get fixed etc. A lot of our core trait lines do need more attention though to make them up to par(mostly Acrobatics), not even necessarily on par with the new elite specializations if they are supposed to be stronger, just at least on par with each other and other class trait lines.

So the question here then is what is considered the par? I really think there needs to be more communication from the team responsible for balance for this to really be fleshed out. As it is, we have our own ideas of what balance is, but we have no idea what the devs think is balanced. If we could get more insight on that, then we can help provide feedback for helping them develop the playstyle they think we should have…after all it is their game. We’re simply playing it.

Kocoff.7582:

We kind of have perma Switness too on Dash. 8 seconds of Switness on Dash pretty much leads to perma Switness. I get your point and all, but Thief mobility is not something to be worried about. That’s the one thing they cannot nerf.

Not jixing anything Devs.. not jixing anything.

I think the problem here is that we aren’t even that mobile without shortbow.

gannondorf.7628:

I love all those classes saying they are useless, diying etc (yes near all classes was saying the same thing)… If we listen to them all GW2 must be recreated completly.

What you say may be true, but I find it hard to get an entire forum to dedicate itself to that task. That should mean something more than just some being whiners.

Edit: Not to mention that there isn’t even debate over whether thief is weak. There’s debate over what can be done to improve it.

atlrising.5134:

dude its more, stealth, backstab…coupled with the venom which turns you to stone then your immob….yeah its 6.5k but think of all the damage you do while we are sitting there unable to fight back

Basilisk Venom is a 1.5-2s stun. It’s not like mesmers are without stunbreaker. From a quick look at metabattle, the meta PU mesmer in PvP runs Blink and Decoy. Blink is on a 30s CD and Decoy is on a 40s CD. Basilisk Venom is on a 40s CD I believe. With reaction time taken into account, suppose I backstab you for 6.5k damage, then proceed to begin my auto attack chain. The average human’s reaction time is .25s, so I would give you about .5s to react to getting stunned and reaching for your stunbreak. Both of your stunbreaks are less than or equal to the CD of Basilisk Venom. In that 0.5s window, I would be able to hit you with my first attack in my auto-chain, and maybe the second. By my testing, the first attack in my auto-chain Double-Strike deals about 550 damage per swing for a total of about 1100 damage. The next attack of the sequence dealt about 1700, so for the first two attacks in the auto-chain, the total damage is 2900 damage.

This means that for the effective duration of Basilisk Venom, I have dealt slightly over 10k damage to you. A significant amount fair enough, but nowhere near enough to kill anyone.

I will also point out that all of these numbers were critical hits, so this is the average of the absolute best cases. A non-crit backstab (which is likely to happen because we have ~60% crit chance) deals roughly 2400 damage. The non-crit auto attack deals roughly 650 damage total on the double swing, and roughly 900 damage on second attack. This adds up to a total of a rough average of 3950 damage in the worst cases.

This means that with our opening burst, we will never be able to kill anyone who has access to their stunbreak, much less a mesmer who has 2 with both on lower cooldown than our stun. Whether or not you believe me is not my concern. I am only providing the numbers.

atlrising.5134:

Bull kitten, let one stealth up behind you and you still say that.

So…do you want to know the actual numbers of a backstab against a light armored enemy?

After repeatedly using CnD and backstab on a light armor golem, the average came out to be 6.5k with a Marauder Amulet. Keep in mind also that there is a 4s Reveal period in which we cannot go back into stealth to stab you again. 6.5k is the average of our burst. Now tell me how that measures up against mesmer burst.

Not to mention…what kind of silly player would let a thief just sit behind them and repeatedly backstab?

Edit: I might add that this might be more than what a D/p thief might do because of the vulnerability caused by CnD.

atlrising.5134:

Heres why I say it was not needed, max stealth was 25s with torch 4, decoy and mass invis. We could cross the map from one side to another just like a thief (which no one is complaining about) and it would run out before we even got all the way across.

Most Mesmers dont even use all three, so our stealth is only around 14s total. It seems to me that everyone did not like it because when we stealthed you could not just instant burst us. It required you to put in more effort. I invite all my mesmer brothers and sisters to post here and cause a fuss. Make Anet see the error of their ways.

No one is complaining about thief because they don’t have the ridiculous burst potential that mesmer does.

Ohoni.6057:

Then return it to its former power and remove the Daredevil, that would be well worth it. I like the Daredevil well enough, better than most do, at least, but it’s nowhere near worth losing out on classic Feline Grace.

You KNOW that’s not going to happen. The best thing that can happen now is to have Acrobatics be successfully differentiated from Daredevil.

Ohoni.6057:

Just read the Twitchcon patch notes, at least we don’t seem to have been nerfed this time, which is a victory in and of itself, but where it the return of classic Feline Grace?

I think they’re afraid of returning it to its former glory because of potentially being overpowered with DrD. Whether or not that fear is justified is up to discussion, but I would say that it would be acceptable due to the opportunity costs of having to take Acro and DrD for the synergy.

Raiden.1375:

The requirement of being in range of a target to gain the stealth is mostly there to prevent Cloak and Dagger from being too strong. As for that being a weird mechanic, that is how it works right now, but it also currently requires you to land the hit to gain the stealth.

I guess just granting an effect without it being avoidable just seems like it’s usually a bug (mesmer shatter blind, ranger pet taunt)…I doubt people would be happy at us having that as an actual mechanic.

On a different topic, I was discussing a few things with some friends. I brought up the idea of making the boon steal portion of Bountiful Theft be baseline. They didn’t think it would be overpowered. So combining that with Raiden’s idea of having Bountiful Theft steal an additional boon, we can have Steal steal one boon, which would be augmented by Bountiful Theft to steal two if we so choose. The goal of this is also in the spirit of making Trickery less of a requirement while keeping to the theme of Thief. After all, with a skill called Steal, stealing a boon makes sense right?

Slowmelt.8547:

…Wouldn’t that be hell on some of the weaker PCs among us?

Ya but you have to admit it would be pretty funny if we just logged in one day to this mess.

Edit: I guess we could also just get abnormally huge weapons too

Zero Day.2594:

That’s cute…

Please hit us harder….

Oh I’ll hit you as hard as you want bby

Zero Day.2594:

Thief’s pistols have their barrels extended by 200-300 times the sizes. Range also increased to 1200.

Better this way.

Edit: Oh man..that just made me think of a potential April Fools Joke they could do…stretch weapon models into infinity.

Doggie.3184:

Pistol dmg buff 20%~ pew pew

And a buncha stuff I dont remember. :o was it good?

No.

Edit: I guess the complete answer is that we don’t really know. They had about 2 minutes remaining on stream when they got to thief, and they still had warrior to go through. The notes will be up on Tuesday so we will see what’s happening then.

Kocoff.7582:

Irenio just talked about it a little bit:

Patch Notes is NEXT TUESDAY

general
- all traps 5 min something.
- Rune of Vamp doesn’t work with mist form
- Reveal was bugged apparently where it used to reduce stealth duration… Now it just takes out all stealth immediately. (FML)
- Nerf Cripple

Nerfed in general

ele (D/D NERF with icebow just errthang – Mesmer (PU NERF Literally “for the good of the game”)

buffed in general
Engineer – Guardian- Necro (like a serious buff) – Ranger (huge)

Thief

-pistol damage buff 20%
- Potent poison 10 -> 33%
- Vigorous recovery 5 to 7
- epeditious dodger +

There wasn’t enough to cover everything.

I don’t feel good that he basically said 3 things for us…but let’s hold off on rioting until Tuesday.

Cynz.9437:

pistol buffs by 20% and swiftness duration…………… yeah that gonna totally help vs all the condis and elite specs of other classes……….. :|

…it’s something…

Cynz.9437:

blarghhrrkblah.3412:

Jana.6831:

Yeah, but it sure won’t get any better.

On the contrary, I think it can ONLY get better. Call me an idealist but until I’m definitively proven wrong, I will stay with this mentality.

dw balance changes preview in minutes…. lol

Trust me it’ll me good

Fixed bug that caused Revealed to last for only 4 seconds. Now lasts 20.

Jana.6831:

Yeah, but it sure won’t get any better.

On the contrary, I think it can ONLY get better. Call me an idealist but until I’m definitively proven wrong, I will stay with this mentality.

I just want to give a bit of advice…I think the title of this thread should be
“You kitten me?”

Tabootrinket.2631:

Specialization : the undead.

spec mechanism : M key.
When in walking mode, invincible to anything but thief’s pistol skill “headshot”, but get one shotted when touched by it, no down state, straight to dead.

This is too OP because all the thieves are the walkers.

Jana.6831:

blarghhrrkblah.3412:

Cmon guys…it’s not over. When HoT rolls around and we haven’t changed, then we can have our funeral…but for now let’s just see what happens.

:D

sorry

:D

:D

Not like it can get any worse right?

Slowmelt.8547:

blarghhrrkblah.3412:

but that doesn’t mean that it can just heal through all of the damage that we take.

Really?
That’s exactly what it looked like to me.
They have spammable healing for days
It’s going to be one shot kill them, fully stunlock them, or accept that they’re immortal.

Bunker guardians already exist. The principle isn’t anything that new, only difference being that they output heals instead of boons. Yea you’re probably not going to kill them 1v1, but their job is going to be to not die and keep people alive.

And still…read the post above yours. It’s all still beta. Things are subject to change. Lighten up a bit.

Cmon guys…it’s not over. When HoT rolls around and we haven’t changed, then we can have our funeral…but for now let’s just see what happens.

wolfpaq.7354:

I mean, we have an exact line from a developer saying that dodge will not be enough to survive.

You don’t need to know the exact details to recognize that this constitutes a problem seeing as the core mechanic and all grandmaster traits of our elite spec are entirely based on dodge.

Well honestly, I think that the point of raids is so that nobody will be able to survive without successful coordination. Sure we may not be able to survive with only dodges, but people aren’t necessarily going to survive with only healing either. Maybe Druid looks a bit too powerful right now (definitely did to me), but that doesn’t mean that it can just heal through all of the damage that we take. There’s going to be things that we have to dodge that can’t be healed. There will probably even be mechanics that prevent you from healing (such as agony). The point is we don’t know the entire picture yet.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Kocoff.7582:

I was talking to a guild mate, I made the claim that the way Druid looks for WvW , it may very well make roaming almost obsolete.

I am already seeing groups of 3 running around with Druid included. Lots of small mini squads and a major drop in solo roams.

Taking down a Druid would be a great challenge, and Astral Form is killer.

What do you think?

I just see people thinking “Everytime i roam there is a Druid who is shutting everything down. I might as well team up with one and wreck everything.”

the types of squads i ll start seeing:

- Bunch of Thieves. (Classic, best type of pugs)
- Bunch of Non-Thieves + Druid.

- a Mix + Druid.

A Necro, a Druid, and an Engineer walked into a bar and the bartender said, “Hey you! Wipe your filthy boots off the Thief before you get into my bar!”

I thought they didn’t let thieves into the bar ._.

wolfpaq.7354:

Can we talk about how this is a SERIOUS problem for the daredevil ? Our “mechanic”, and entire e-spec sounds like it’s going to be worthless.

The goal might have been to nerf the berserker meta, but thieves are getting shafted right along with it.

We don’t know how many unavoidable skills there will be in HoT. I think, at least regarding this, we are overreacting a bit. There are bound (kek) to be a lot of things that we will be able to dodge through with that third dodge that other classes won’t.

At least for now, we have too little information to make a solid judgment. It’s all speculation.

Shadowstep.6049:

I felt like it fits:

hahahahaha…

T_T

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Yes, just brush it off because it takes so many skills for the Thief to remove as much conditions as Druid by simply pressing one button.

Not to mention that even though Druid has that capability, their DPS don’t suffer while Thief has to make a trade-off every kitten time.

This is true to all other professions — survivability with no DPS loss.

I just want to point out that the numbers present at the time of the reveal are still very rough, and this isn’t the final version of Druid, nor is what we have currently the final version of DD. When the expansion comes out, and nothing has changed, then feel free to complain about whatever, but as someone did mention, everything is in flux.

Luto.1938:

Kinda wish Daredevil got the perma swiftness trait instead of druids… thieves have no role in pvp anymore… druids will have better mobility and better rezing capability (because when they are around no one goes down).

I don’t know about mobility. They might be able to walk faster but they have no teleports.

Shogun.7401:

So what’s special about Druid?

I’m sure there will be livestream notes later…but to say the least…tons of healing.

So I’m not really sure if this is the right place to ask this, but since it is the HoT forum and we are getting BWEs for HoT, I’ll just ask here.

So the question is if the tech used for BWE could be used for more public testing in the future. I think this would be greatly beneficial for everyone because we would get the chance to test out balance and feature patches for bugs, etc., before they get released. It could remain short, such as one weekend a few weeks before the patch’s designated release date or something, whatever works.

Thanks.

Showbiz.9725:

Revolutionen.5693:

Traits:
Deadly arts: 2-2-1
Critical Strikes: 1-2-3

Good luck!

Does do you mean by “2-2-1” and “1-2-3” exactly?

He’s referring to which trait positions you should take for each tier. I think 1 is the top line, so 2 is the middle and 3 is the bottom. So 2-2-1 means adept 2, master 2, gm 1.

Bllade.1029:

I’d like to bring back the topic of more Boon Stealing capabilities for the DD.

PvP meta has always been about boons. Giving boons, stripping boons, converting boons etc, but the action that you find most prevalent among many of the professions is the ability to generate and sustain their own boons.

This is a fantastic opportunity to balance this ever so increasing abundance of boons that were going to see when HoT is released.

With the introduction of specializations like the Herald and Tempest boons are going to not only last longer but they’re going to be much more available and easily accessed.

The DD can potentially kill two birds with one stone, on one hand they would have the ability to steal boons that they need to survive (since they’re expected to play with less stealth) and on the other hand forces enemies to think twice before they just pile on boon after boon without any thought of consequences.

This way development wouldn’t have to consider what abilities gave what boons, the player could figure that situation themselves and take what they believed they needed the most at that time.

This would certainly put the Thief back into a more competitive position against opponents like Prismatic Understanding Mesmers, D/D Elementalists, Engineers and Guardians and add more balance and counter play to this meta of rapid boon application.

It would be even more interesting to consider if a DD could steal “effects” like Super Speed and Alacrity.

I would say that this should be in the core theme of thief (which has a conniving scoundrel archetype) rather than the daredevil (which has the evasive brawler archetype).