it also cures all conditions….that with all boons (including regen) makes it a good panic button.
they had a few interesting things to say about this on the “revealed” podcast…essentially the point was: why is it being spammed? because 4 and 5 aren’t good enough on s/d. if it gets significantly nerfed, those should be balanced up…
so how could all skills in s/d work together better? maybe a longer daze/better damage on the sword sneak attack. and a longer cripple on dancing dagger. maybe shadow return heals/removes conditions if stealthed. synergy like the synergy in d/p would be great.
I feel furious!
the chaos maestro boon support thread gives a great set of options. with elements of those builds, mesmers function a lot like guardians…you can still deal moderate-good damage, tank, heal, and give every boon in the game (no stability) to your party on a fairly regular basis. you can also keep up lots of regen, might, vigor and fury especially on meleers. with another source of group might in the party it’s easy to get to 25 stacks. since I started playing that style, I have noticed people in groups marveling at their own (furied and mighted) dps. all that other utility is also there.
others are right that boosting party survivability is only necessary in mediocre-bad groups…even in a good group if your heals/protection/aegis can make a difference between staying on melee for dps, or going ranged for survival, you are effectively boosting group dps.
(edited by bobross.5034)
i think, if there was an op’d element of interrupts, rather than making cooldowns trivial, and interrupts slower, there should have been counterplay elements. foe example, make it costly to miss an interrupt (e.g. 1 second self-stun). so if you suspect interrupts coming you could cancel your own skills and dodge to try to fake out mesers, and cause them to hurt themselves….alas we got a useless mechanic instead.
But you dont get youre opponent of balance atm. You have to blow tons of cooldowns to reliably interrupt a keyskill that reappears every 2 seconds. And now tell me, what brings your oponent more of balance?
15-25 seconds permanent stun/daze at a 1.2k range or
3-5 Interrupts setting potentially uselsess skills on a 2 second CD?
yup, I don’t get that either…didnt want to mention in case someone with a nerf stick saw it….it certainly doesnt make sense that daze/stuns (hard locks) should be more effective than confusion (an increasingly soft lock) or interrupts (skill-based lock) seems like they should be reversed.
got moa’d the other day (mesmer vs mesmer) and went on the offensive. with enough toughness, it just subs out one autoattack for another. I won that duel…the moa part was more of a diversion than a threat. I have rarely used it myself…with the long cooldown, I’d just forget it was on my bar anyway.
i’ve been playing s/d, and those rabbits continue to go down very fast.
eww…maybe part of the same change as the bouncing change?
if frequent interrupts can lockout just one skill-like a self-heal, it can be very powerful. not sure at what point it becomes OP’d but I get why a nerf like that may have happened….I think what they’re going for with interrupts is keeping the opponent off balance, rather than making them incapable of acting.
The biggest issue for itV is the lack of viable counterplay to it .
You literally have to guess when the mesmer is going to use the aoe pull, so it cant be reliably dodged/blocked. Best you can do is SyG for group stability if you manage to react within the 0.25second casttime of temporal curtain and the possibly instant follow up of pull.
I think you’re using a very narrow definition of “viable counterplay” , if your definition is being able to immediately react to it and dodge roll away, well I agree, that’s probably not going to happen. Then again dodge is kind of overpowered for the same reason, since there’s no way to react to a dodge and un-dodgify it. Backstab has a similar issue.
Counterplay is not just about countering a specific move as it is happening, it is also about countering a strategy. If the strategy is to abuse itV, well then that strategy is still on a cool-down, and the first form of counterplay would be to adjust one’s timing. If itV is being used to interrupt important skills, then the counterplay would be to use fast casting skills, and if needed preceed an important skill with a filler skill (with a longer cast time) so the interrupt gets wasted on that, or to run out of range prior to using that skill…or as a thief, use superior mobility or stealth to get that skill of without the opponent being able to see the cast. If the itv strategy is to keep the opponent incapacitated for some time then counterplay would be stun-breaks/stability. There are several ways to react and get up immediately, so that it doesn’t serve to incapacitate. If itv is being used to counter Shadow Refuge, then the counterplay to that counterplay is to use Shadow Refuge as a decoy, while actually lining up backstabs. There are so many ways to work with this, but you are focusing too much on the cast-time of the skill to notice them. Lastly, if the mesmer is spamming that itv, every time it hits cooldown, the easy way to stop this is to put some pressure on the mesmer so that they have to switch to staff as a defensive option (if they’re GS, then sword/focus is their defensive option). These are all just a few viable forms of counterplay when dealing with fast CC.
A few clarifications.
IE has always worked with iMage. It is only with Staff Clones that it doesn’t work.
Fury on yourself does not give your Illusions higher critical chance, and Might on your Illusions does not boost their damage. Only Might on yourself gives your Illusions higher damage, and only Fury on the Illusion gives it higher critical chance.
I have not checked this patch out myself yet, but if Clones are hogging all the bounces (negating IE’s double tap for your own WoC and wasting all the Might boons) then overall I’d say this patch is a nerf for condition Mesmers.
It could possibly work for phants since they’d benefit from Staff boons, but said boons aren’t exactly persistent so keeping them on at just the right time for their attack cycle would be a bit of a chore at best.
Overall this is a huge shame if it’s really true, I used iElasticity so that Staff had some sort of pressure damage. Even then it necessitated me shadowing my target up close in melee to get the extra bounce off.
the might is as it should be…with signet of inspiration and winds of chaos (plus sigils and runes) it is not unreasonable to get 20-25 stacks of might and apply them in aoe. If phantasms got the power boost from you + might, it would be ridiculous.
Are you sure about the fury thing? I had heard otherwise from others on these forums.
My thief’s sword is hilted, not shafted. Did I do something wrong?
Nah man, what if your Clone does 10 damage? Now it does 11.5 damage.
They should nerf that…seems way op’d.
Funny how your only counter-arguements mention a whole other thief mechanic instead of actually comparing the CC Skill with another CC skill. What if I mained ranger or any other class? Boom. All your bad arguments wouldn’t have any significance, they really don’t in the first place anyways. itV is overpowered whether you’re playing thief, ranger warrior or whatever. Yall need to stay on topic, we are supposed to be talking about general CC and whether itV is overpowered compared to other skills.
[img]http://cdn.memegenerator.net/instances/400x/38244111.jpg[/img]
Also, throw mine isn’t on the same level as itV. itV can be placed on walls to pull people. At long ranges, throw mine has a clear animation as you can see the hand motion and the mine coming towards you. Compare that with itV where as soon as you see the hand motion and curtain appear you can be pulled.
If you mained ranger, we would be talking about powerful pet mechanics, and you would be complaining about the focus reflection trait, not itv. This is because Rangers aren’t hurt by itv the way thieves are…other classes deal with it just like other knockdowns and cc. It bothers thieves because it is a direct and hard counter to their potentially op’d skill, shadow refuge. I also play a thief in roughly equal amounts as my mesmer, and SR lets me do some pretty great things, like get out of combat when completely outnumbered without dying, or stealth stomping/reviving…something that no other class can do that well. The reason we brought up thief mechanics, was to put it in terms that you would understand, not to QQ about thieves.
You want us instead to compare this pull to other class pulls? Well while we’re at it why not compare our stealth skills to other class stealth skills? Does it make us underpowered that our stealths are not as plentiful or quick casting as yours? The reason we’re not comparing it to other classes is because Mesmers were designed to be kings of control and trickery. Their single pull should be better than other classes, not balanced to be exactly the same. By the same token, necros should have access to a few condition oriented skills that far surpass mesmer condition skills…you don’t see us complaining about not having access to epidemic, do you? It’s because it belongs with necros, and only necros.
In the same way, guardians should have better tanking/healing skills than other classes, eles should have better aoe direct damage than other classes, rangers should have better pet skills and thieves should have better access to stealth and mobility.
When you take a class’s core mechanic and start saying its overpowered because others dont have the same thing, you are arguing for one of three things:
1 – homogenization – everyone plays exactly the same thing, maybe with different colored uniforms. There are no op’d classes because everyone has access to the same things – if this is what you want, try a regular fps.
2 – easy mode – you want everyone else to get nerfed so that you don’t have to try or improve in order to win. What you don’t understand is that this is the same as 1. If one class becomes completely superior to others, everyone will play that class or quit. You wind up with a choice between everyone losing, or everyone playing the same class…in your case, thief.
3 – the illusion of balance – you think your own abilities are so good that you should win 90% of matches, and you ignore evidence that other, more skilled thieves are able to handle the mechanic you’re complaining about just fine. For example, a more cautious thief may hold blinding powder or roll for initiative in reserve in case of getting pulled out of shadow refuge, or may run from a mesmer before getting desperate enough to need shadow refuge (before turning around for a backstab). The problem with not noticing that there are other, indirect solutions to your problem is that rather than learn from your failure, you write off your failure as a game design failure. If a build or a skill threatens this self-delusion, it must be op’d. Even though you don’t realize it, you are still just arguing for 2. -easy mode.
Duelling Grandmaster Major trait: Furious Interruption – Joke? 4 Seconds of Fury for Interrupting in a Grandmaster slot? It would still be weak if it were in a lower tier, but grandmaster? Ok, one has to consider Chaosstorm random interrupts stacking quite some fury if lucky, and interrupting unimportant long casttime skills might make this senseable too. But still it doesnt compete if you want to actually Interrupt aimedly.
This GM Trait is not that bad. It has no CD. SO If u use some AOE Interupt and u get 5x interupt.. Well 20sec fury… Not bad.. But not handy enough too… Hahaha…
wait, so mesmer has access to 3(ish) aoe interrupts; diversion (traited), chaos storm and focus pull. they actually go nicely together as you could focus pull guys into warden, swap to staff, drop chaos storm, get some confusing bolts, hit diversion. bam 4 seconds of no one getting hit on your team, and if you’re against 5+ players/mobs, thats potentially 60 seconds worth of fury – the 4 seconds or so to do the combo. so lets say 20-40 conservatively. add in runes of altruism, and thats perma-fury. add in signet of inspiration, and you’ve got perma-fury on your whole team.
i think I see a build shaping up here.
Stun grandmaster is still better. With Diversion you statistically guarantee* yourself a stun.
*: As much as statistics allow. Without iPersona, a 3clone F3 will give you a 12.5% chance of not stunning and/or stunning only once. With iPersona, a 4shatter F3 will give you a 6.25% chance of not stunning and/or stunning only once.
If you position your clones well, you could potentially lock someone down for a while if they don’t have a cc-break or if they blow it too fast. Not sure how you’d finish them with this build, but it would be nice to stun someone while bursting them, especially with the “cookie cutter” shatter build traits of applying vuln on F3 so your MW(F1) will do massive bonus damage. I mean, you’re basically serving them to yourself on a platter by stunning them and applying vulnerability. You also give yourself some might (if you have iPersona) and can dish out some good joojoodamage. The only problem is you might have to trade out Deceptive Evasion making your shatter factory reliant on skills alone, not dodges.
interesting, so you might start with warden, force pull, chaos storm, phase retreat while casting iwarlock. if you started at medium range that should give you one pb, one med and one long shatter for diversion. follow up decoy and mirror image, MW and run away stealthed. really very close to shatter-cat’s combo, but you got more stuff on cooldown, and the target is probably stunned for some of it.
Duelling Grandmaster Major trait: Furious Interruption – Joke? 4 Seconds of Fury for Interrupting in a Grandmaster slot? It would still be weak if it were in a lower tier, but grandmaster? Ok, one has to consider Chaosstorm random interrupts stacking quite some fury if lucky, and interrupting unimportant long casttime skills might make this senseable too. But still it doesnt compete if you want to actually Interrupt aimedly.
This GM Trait is not that bad. It has no CD. SO If u use some AOE Interupt and u get 5x interupt.. Well 20sec fury… Not bad.. But not handy enough too… Hahaha…
wait, so mesmer has access to 3(ish) aoe interrupts; diversion (traited), chaos storm and focus pull. they actually go nicely together as you could focus pull guys into warden, swap to staff, drop chaos storm, get some confusing bolts, hit diversion. bam 4 seconds of no one getting hit on your team, and if you’re against 5+ players/mobs, thats potentially 60 seconds worth of fury – the 4 seconds or so to do the combo. so lets say 20-40 conservatively. add in runes of altruism, and thats perma-fury. add in signet of inspiration, and you’ve got perma-fury on your whole team.
i think I see a build shaping up here.
if you summoned hounds in a fractal run while people were dpsing, people might start asking for time warp…if they’re jerks, they might kick you from the group.
as a support build mesmer, I can give my whole group fury, 7+ stacks of might retaliationand timewarp at the same time (plus aegis / protection from chaos storm). the added dps of all of that on 5 people far outweighs a temporary pet’s damage.
is it ok to run a build/skill even if it is suboptimal? I think it should be, but don’t be surprised if some people complain. there are certain berserker warrior groups who want a mesmer specifically for time warp….they’ll kick a necro or thief outright, and they’ll do the same if you’re a mesmer who isnt providing support. on the other hand, some of those guys are jerks, and who wants to play with jerks?
someone posted about pulling through walls. I think they may have been referring to gates. like other aoe, the itv pulls people on the other side of the door, if they are near it….say repairing. if they’re tanky targets, its no big deal…they fall down, get up, keep repairing. if they’re squishy and there’s aoe on the door, they can die.
is that mechanic as intended? I don’t know, but it is consistent. other classes also have aoe that goes through the door.
should it be fixed? only as an addition to fixing all other classes aoe attacks…but even then, probably not.
why not? aoe on doors is actually an interesting mechanic for everyone. it makes siege more challenging for attackers and defenders. I have been on both sides of this and enjoyed the challenge of trying to repair a gate without getting aoed, and on the other side, trying to spot the repairers and pull/aoe them.
Wall-pulls do this too. it makes it interesting to be standing around without an arrowcart to aim during a siege for both sides. either trying to aoe and pull defenders from the walls without dying to aoe and arrowcarts, or as a defender trying to aoe without getting pulled, and if pulled, trying to survive. I’ve been on both sides of this too, and I prefer the challenge and danger to a simple, shooting fish in a barrel excercise.
if you want to play in easy mode, might I suggest farming in Orr?
this sort of thing is sort of viable but works better as a lock-down build than interrupt. dazes, stuns and knockdowns (i.e. focus pulls) count as interrupts if the opponent is using a skill, which is very often in pvp/wvw.
the grandmaster dom trait turns dazes to stuns, and maxing daze/stun duration improves this. making the opponent stand around like a dummy is apparently quite possible. someone posted a build called stunway or something like that.
also some of the things you mentioned,like the domination traits that apply vulnerability…there is also a similar major trait. together and using diversion, it is quite easy to quickly apply 25 stacks of vulnerability (and with another trait, you can make this work in aoe). pair this with a few back to back daze/stuns and a dps ally and you’ve got a dead opponent. even without the ally, you can do some good damage with phantasms in an interrupt/control build.
you are right that they are hard to play well, though…I certainly havent mastered it, just seen the potential.
There’s no reasoning your way out of senseless claims given the very profession you “main” is centered around the very same “unfair” nature that you’re claiming Into the Void utilises. Implement a one second delay prior to unstealthing before a Thief’s damage is carried out, and then you’ll be justified in requesting nerfs to Temporal Curtain.
I think enough people have covered why this topic is laughable at this point.
yup, or a 1 second cast time on blinding powder…or a requirement that you hit to be able to stealth with d/p. There’s all sorts of ways that we could nerf stealth to make it possible for people to react.
Nerfing stealth in those ways would make thieves into squishy warriors. Just like nerfing mesmer CC would make us into complicated elementalists.
here’s the issue, as we mesmers see it, or at least me. This class was made for combat control and trickery. If you look through the traits, you’ll notice that there are several trait choices that deal with interrupts. It’s as if they wanted this to be a class that can interrupt stuff…along with rangers. (this was how things were in GW1 in a major way, and it still survives here, but not as pronounced).
We have access to several interrupt skills
- diversion (shatter)
- Magic bullet (pistol)
- Illusionary riposte (sword offhand)
temporal curtain - illusionary wave (greatsword)
- chaos storm (staff)
Mantra of distraction
Signet of domination
All of those skills either apply daze, or in some way interrupt skill use, and there are traits for mesmers that capitalize on interrupts. Yet only recently have people even started playing around with the idea of an interrupt build. Why is that? Well you notice that I starred several of the intterrupts? Those are ones that have at least a 1/2 second cast time, or may in some other way prevent you from pulling them off immediately. Diversion, for example applies a daze, but only after your clones run to the enemy. So you have to have clones and they have to be in melee range for it to interrupt anything without a long cast time. Riposte shoots a slow moving projectile that dazes. Chaos storm may apply a daze, but it’s random. Because all of these are so slow/unpredictable, it makes reaction-based interrupt control very hard to pull off with mesmers. In fact, the only way these wind up working well is to ether stop very long and obvious cast-times or as part of a lock-down build. So while on paper, it looks like mesmers were designed to be interrupters…in actuality, we’re just frequent dazers/stunners at best (which is not bad, as those are very powerful mechanics too), with access to occasional interrupts.
The problem is, mesmers were obviously designed with control in mind. I do think it’s fair to say that a class/build with great CC shouldn’t also have great aoe burst damage, sustained damage and great survivability…so if your beef is that mesmers are OP’d, I’d go after us in those departments. CC is obviously designed to be a mesmer specialization, so swinging a nerf stick at it makes us into a clumsier version of an elementalist, and just makes the whole game more vanilla and boring. Also, we’ve already seen a huge nerf to both CC and damage with the confusion nerf, so most of us are not very receptive to ideas about nerfing something that very few people complain about, because it is so completely in our wheelhouse, and not OP’d (long cooldown, plus difficult to use other skill on the weapon).
The focus does need balancing…when you use it to apply swiftness, it should apply swiftness, the way the rules describe. It doesn’t unless you don’t already have swiftness. So if everyone has 2 seconds left of swiftness, your curtain does nothing. I know this was a fix meant to avoid people stacking multiple stacks of swiftness from one curtain, but the wells that give speed don’t have this issue…there are better ways to handle this.
Regarding void – it’s one pull on a medium (traited) to long cooldown.
Being a thief you have access to the same thing, also very fast casting.
sure it’s ground targeted, which makes it good in certain situations, but also harder to use in others.
There are a few ways to telegraph its use:
1) Mesmer is wielding a focus
2)Cooldown is probably done
3) The thief drops a shadow refuge
4) Some lucky soul is standing up close on a wall
5) Someone is trying to res someone
6) Someone is trying to finish someone.
sorrow, after reading some of your other posts, I’m sorry for attacking your thief credibility. you obviously do play thief, and are often helpful to others on these forums.
so, addressing your point, I think for me, at my moderate skill level, playing vs random moderately skilled players, I don’t see an issue. I imagine, like all things, it may scale differently with play level, so I won’t try to speak to its effect on high skill play, which may be very different.
one thing I do think is important to consider though is that it will take time to determine whether it is op’d. in every skill level of play, people need time to adjust. thieves need to come up with all the ways to abuse the skill, and other classes need time to get used to countering. Same as things like 100 blades, even if OP’d, there are counters, and as people know how to play against it better, it will change how it plays, and its impact on the meta.
So my suggestion to people complaining about the change is to wait, see how the community and metagame reacts and then in a month or two, we can have this discussion with more than just theory-craft on both sides.
wow, never ran prismatic understanding, or torch, so I never noticed the bug. Now that it’s fixed…well still don’t care for either.
my sense of stealth is we use it to briefly whipe targetting, and confuse opponents, not to try and sit in it like a d/p thief….that trait doesn’t change that, so it seems pretty worthless, especially considering the much better traits you give up to take it.
wow…gives some new ways to run supply. but you still have to contend with the cooldown, doesnt give you that much time to get far away and do lots of dmg. Also, I was playing around with it and water, and found that if swimming between points it wouldnt teleport me back, even a short distance.
neat ideas…thanks for the suggestion!
something else to point out about high lvl pve. there are many bosses that will one-shot berserker warriors (or even tanky guardians). being on a class that forces you to get good at dodging, and then having access to more dodge/evade than others makes you more survivable in these situations, not less…being better at kiting also makes you more survivable in many situations. sure, there are other times where you get cc’d which makes it very hard, or fighting in jumping puzzles, where dodge is not an option; but we have tools to deal with that too. there are also times when a guardian or mesmer is definitely the right profession for a job..that’s how things should be.
there are a few s/d builds on here that use minimal or no stealth. it seems to work ok in roaming, but requires some skill. in bigger battles, some stealth is very useful, even when using the shortbow. the important thing about stealth in those situations is it makes the enemy lose target, which is crucial to surviving when spamming aoe damage at medium range. this makes blinding powder a very useful skill in most situations.
shadow refuge is also great for situations where you need to get out, or for resing a downed target, or finishing off a downed target.
you can do fine without them. in wvw you can be useful to your team just running supply using your superior mobility with the shortbow…still stealth really makes a difference in almost all builds.
Flanking only really shines in SPvP when you use 2 sets of melee weapons but it’s not like it does crazy damage or any real burst. In WvW and PvE there’s nothing amazing about it to set it apart from daggers. It just gives you some survival utility. There’s no OP feeling to it. Heavy condition builds can actually shut them down and/or force them to stop FSing.
indeed, I noticed this too, a build aimed at spamming fs and stealing buffs will be high in trickery, which likely means low in shadow arts (or in damage-in which case it’s not at all OP’d). the lack of shadow arts gimps our healing and condition removal, so we become especially weak to conditions.
I find this brilliant in game balance terms. conditions were weak in the meta because boons do similar things but cant be easily removed. now theres a few good counters to boons, so conditions are on similar footing. on top of that, they happen to directly counter some of the builds that hurt boons.
shortbow thieves also do well event farming in ORR, but I think dungeons are more fun.
weird, I wrote in a-w-k-ward and apparently profanity filter caught it…
also, if you just turned 80, you probably have all rare gear…you’ll want to upgrade to exotic asap. that period is sort okittenward for any profession, since you will be outdone by better geared players. try to get in some dungeon groups, gw2lfg.com is good for this. CoF is a straightforward dungeon and thieves do well there. Also the rewards for it are exotic berserker gear, so a good choice for a thief. You’ll probably die a lot at first, but as you get to know areas, you’ll get better at dodging and popping stealth to avoid damage.
My sense of this build is you are pumping crit chance and crit dmg up a lot already, so pumping both more makes sense. So I’d try phantasmal fury, that should boost crit chance up to close to 70% for your phantasms, while boosting the crit dmg as well. I don’t know how the math works out, but my hunch is that in this build, + more crit dmg/chance for your attacks (e.g. blurred frenzy) and frenzied phantasms will work out to more than a bit of power/cond dmg and a flat 15% illusion dmg. Oh, and you get a bit of a boost from that confusion damage, though it’s negligible.
Probably not what you want, but I thought I’d point out, you can also put the 10 points in inspiration for phantasmal strenght…the boost to healing/vitality would make this a more defensive option.
Also, not sure about your playstyle, but I get the hunch that the goal here is phantasm damage. and not shatter damage. If that’s the case, you may be able to lose deceptive evasion, which then gives you the option of having furious and empowered phantasms…much more damage there, but fewer clones.
The mouse wheel for roll is a great idea should have though of that.
What ive been using for a while has benn 1-5 for weapons skills r(right strafe) e(forward) and w( left strafe) QASFG ( for my other skills) ` for weapons swap.
Im not oppressed to switching to different key binds if need be but is there anything wrong with that ones ive been using?
So i do need to get used to controlling character movement form the mouse and only switching to keyboard movement when i have to select something with the mouse?
if your keybinds work for you, no need to change them…unless you are really seeking a perfectly optimized set-up, which probably doesn’t matter except at the highest levels of play in any game.
Regarding mouse control, I use mouse to turn, but use wad to move forward and side to side. Then I also use mouse/tab to target (depending on how many opponents / how lazy I’m feeling). I also use mouse to ground target. Since you have strafing on the keyboard, it is trivial to move in reaction, even while selecting an opponent. The only thing you can’t do is move the camera around while selecting opponents…not a huge deal, really.
there are some general ways to set up keyboard and movement that certainly help as a whole in gw2, not just playing thief. I didnt come up with all of these, just listing the ones I use.
1)remap keys – 6-9 skills are hard to reach on the keyboard. assuming you use wasd for movement, remap them to nearby letter keys, or if you have a multibutton mouse map them there. I use q,e,z,x,c for these, after a while, you get used to it, and using that elite becomes something trivial, rather than requiring moving your whole hand.
2)dodge roll…this is important in general but especially for thief. mine is mapped to middle mouse button. I also took off double tap to dodge roll because it was not working consistently and hurt me during jumping puzzles.
3)replace turn with strafe. if you use mouse to turn, a and d can strafe instead, which is more useful for mobility.
4)get rid of backwards. this took some getting used to, but was a great change. walking backwards is slow. strafing while looking sideways accomplishes the same thing (i.e. being able to attack your target while moving away), but it also lets you move at full speed. As others have put it, walking backwards = self crippling. I remapped s to quick-turn, rather than move backwards. it took about two days to get used to, but it has really payed off in effectiveness and damage mitigation.
there are more little things but that should get you started.
(edited by bobross.5034)
It is an issue. I know you are enjoying your newfound FotM skill, but you have to stop to see the situation as a Thief player and look the picture as a whole.
Every thief said that the backstab combo wasn’t powerful; there was NO ONE who said it can use a little nerf, everyone said “if can be dodged”, “l2p” and all the BS we are seeing here again over and over. Fact is that it was overpowered and it was nerfed. So, probably, you should adjust your point of view and stop justifying any flaw with the more of the same arguments. Or, if you like, you can just say “ANet hates thief”, “just remove the thief class from the game” or any of the average whine we daily see in the Thief forum, then come back into your little corner of the world and start crying about how unfair the world is.
not sure what your point here is, is it:
ANET is always right, so when they nerfed stealth, it proved that stealth needed a nerf?
if thats the point, well then why are you arguing with ANETS decision? they buffed this, therefore it must’ve needed buffing.
or maybe your point is that thiefs always need nerfing.
if that’s your point then it leads me to one of two conclusions;
1-you’re on here complaining because this buff hurt your favorite build…maybe d/d ele. and rather than openly complain about it, you decided to pose as a thief player demanding a self nerf…if that’s the case, you should just switch to the newest OP’d class…I hear s/d thieves are pretty good.
or
2-you play thief and are just so tired of it always being so easy, so you want ANET to nerf it into hard mode. if this is the case, you can always just ditch your gear…try playing with lvl 20 weapons, or if you’re playing pvp, steady weapons are a nice change. if that’s not enough, you could play with no armor.
one more thing; I think the builds that are most hurt by this new ‘boon hate’ are the 1vX builds, that are so used to being able to take on a group. stripping boons makes thieves great team support in these situations and makes those builds a lot harder to play. I have no sympathy for whiners that want to be able to easily take on greater numbers…that is the definition of overpowered, and rather than nerf it, Anet has offered interesting counterplay options, which IMO is a good way to go.
To the poster of the “culture” thread:
See, this is one of the examples that I mentioned. Someone comes here, claims to be a thief and asks for a nerf. While they may have a thief, they are most likely somehow who just got pwned recently and want to feel better by thinking a skill is OP.
yup, I noticed that;).
I was wondering why the OP, a supposed thief, was wearing platemail…seriously though, thieves are still very squishy, and s/d requires a lot of skill to play well. the boon ripping combo also takes some skill to pull off, as you get a free evade, then you have to land a slow attack. it is obvious when it is coming if you’re spamming, so its easy to dodge. and if you are not spamming, then the boon rips are not that frequent. seriously, in the time it takes to rip boons, a d/d thief would have already finished the burst and be on his way to another target.
people with boon based builds are annoyed because there is now a hard counter to them, but s/d is easily counterable with kiting and well timed dodge rolls…play s/d for a bit and you’ll see that it is not at all op’d, just a fun and different way to play the class.
also note that most builds have hard counters, for example, stealth backstab thieves have a hard time with pbaoes….likewise many mesmer builds have a hard time with conditions. if you min max around one mechanic (i.e. boons) then there should be classes and builds that can easily ruin your day.
Well first of all, this is a thief forum — it’s not a mesmer’s tea party with their pretty big dress and flamboyant huge hats — over here, it’s cutthroat alley. Most of those who play Thief has this attitude and that’s expected, we usually pick a class that some how reflects our own personality. In many cases, out characters are a direct representation of who we are or what we would like to be. A player with the Thief attitude will never roll a mesmer and vice versa. Just a big difference in mind set.
Have you seen the hat on the thief Karma gear? Also, I’m pretty sure mesmers just have masks…though I’d love a flamboyant hat on mine. Kidding aside, I think I had a similar line of thinking as you, but I see similarities between thieves and mesmers in terms of focus on misdirection and deception. Both respond to brute force with subtlety, and can accomplish a variety of unexpected things. Those are the class mechanics that appealed to me, and it’s why I play both in similar amounts. Both require thought to build/play and both offer a lot of combat and utility options, making for varied and interesting play. So in my case, the things that drew me to one, drew me to the other.
I guess what I was trying to get at is maybe there are some players out here who got into thief because they’re careful planners, some who like it because they’re thoughtful tricksters, and others because they’re thrill seekers, in search of the ultimate glass cannon. I’m sure all of those people bring value to the forums too, in terms of quirky builds, or the ultimate dps configuration…And then there’s the e-thugs. who can’t seem to leave e-thug-life in the game.
And yes, my main complaint was not against qqers or responses to that… that’s the same on any class forum, and probably worse in this one (because of more qq). My complaint was about thief players giving others a hard time when they are just trying to share something or ask for advice in a forum specifically designed for those things.
(edited by bobross.5034)
Hi TheGuy, I wasn’t trying to misquote you there, just selectively quoting the passage that I disagreed with. Technically, that’s a direct quote, not a misquote, which would be if I altered it in any way. You could argue that I took it out of context, thereby obscuring your intent, and if that’s the case, I apologize, I must have misinterpreted your original post.
I agreed with the rest, and since it was a longish post, I thought I’d make it easier to read and pick the specific part I wanted to quote. So yeah, my goal was readability not obfuscation.
I also don’t think I took it excessively out of context, you acknowledged that thieves have some things to contribute to groups, but in the end you concluded that thieves are carried by groups. I disagreed with the conclusion, so that’s what I argued against.
Anyway, don’t want to get off topic too much. It’s clear we disagree, and it really doesn’t matter much, because as you pointed out, thieves aren’t getting a pve buff any time soon.
However none of this in some players minds will justify carrying a thief as that is exactly what the party does in most cases carry you.
totally disagree, i alternate between a boon/support/healing mesmer and zerker thief in pve, and find both useful. I never get complaints from a party about carrying me…i do sometimes get kicked by zerker groups looking for a mesmer, before we even enter the dungeon…but you’re only fueling their simpleminded approach to things. Thieves can be as good in many situations as other classes, and just better in quite a few…but skill does enter into it.
As for a thief who cant dodge or kite or manage aggro….well take that trait to make you do more damage in your downed state, maybe you can contribute that way.
thanks for all the constuctive responses, you guys are proving me wrong already. just one observation I had on the mesmer forums: there was a major nerf to confusion and mesmers were upset and complaining for about 3 days…then people started posting new build ideas, and it was like nothing ever happened. I know part of that is just that mesmer as a profession is versatile enough to roll with that sort of nerf easily. meanwhile if stealth gets nerfed that affects like 75% or viable thief builds. I guess I’m also wondering, if there’s a difference between the communities?
one thing I appreciate from reading all these posts is that because the stealth is so controversial, it really sets thief players apart from others, and maybe puts a lot of players on the defensive, especially when people start complaining. anyway thanks for all the comments, and sorry for my own complaining, woke up a bit grumpy this morning….
thief is not bad in pve…see the thread ‘thief and dungeon balancing’ from today. it also offers some interesting support options, and can work well in a pve group or solo.
yup, I do agree with you…there are many positive posts and portions of threads on these forums too…it just feels like that negativity is very frequent.
also, i didnt realize that the word I used would be caught by the profanity filter…guess I should have said, ‘ticking people off’.
Every thief should deny a stealth whiner a stealth rez at least once. (i have, to prove a point) :P
so wait, do you just try to res them and die? that would be the way to do it, so when they start telling you to use sr, you can point out that sr is op’d and you’re not using it out of principle.
hi Seras, thief is a fun class to play in both pve and pvp…there is some build variety and certain weapons play very different from others. Overall the playstle doesn’t change drastically from low levels to higher levels, but as you get skilled, you do notice nuances that open up new options. I’d give the different weapon combos a try in the low levels, and if you get bored quick, it may not be for you.
considering the things you mentioned; variety and support, you may want to give mesmer a try as well (though they don’t get good in pve till lvl 40). good luck!
Hi all, I play a mesmer and a thief and frequent both forums. I like both classes because they favor thought and strategy over brute force approaches. One thing I noticed is on the mesmer forums is that 90% of the people are either offering friendly advice, posting build ideas or having civil debates. there are the occasional trolls and mesmer haters who post demanding nerfs as well, but it’s minor.
On the thief forums I see something else entirely. I think it’s closer to 50% of people interested in sharing ideas and pushing the game forward, and the other 50% trying to shut them down. I get the feeling that while I gravitated to the thief because of the unique playstyle, others just did it because they like kitten ing people off. And whereas I came on the forums because I love the game and want to keep talking about it and brainstorming new ideas within it, others just come on the forums to troll. The thing is it’s not other classes complaining about how op’d thieves are, it’s thief players. Like they want to drive away noobs by taunting them when they ask a noob question, or insult someone for sharing a video thats not elite enough. When someone posts a build someone immediately has to tell them that they’re either dumb for making a weak build, or noobish for making a common/powerful build type, or that they shouldn’t be posting builds at all…well then what’s the point of class specific forums? It’s like they want the class to be completely OP’d and for no one else to play it, so they can feel like petty gods in game. And it’s not enough for them to kitten people off in game, they have to follow their fellow class on the forums and try to kitten them off here.
sorry for the rant, I’d just like for people to try to be supportive, or at least civil with one another.
I know…welcome to the internet.
ok, here’s what thieves have to offer in dungeons and fractals:
lots of damage
spammable aoe damage
unique group damage mitigation (blinding powder/shadow refuge, etc.)
plentiful dodges and stun breaks
great for running self or a group through trash mobs
great for kiting.
here’s what thieves do poorly in dungeons;
face tanking
currently thief is bugged in ascalonian catacombs, such that in p2 after the tranformation to ghost, we lose all our skills 6-9. that means no self heal. even without a self heal, I made it to the final boss and stayed alive till he was at 1/4 health….this is just because thieves are so good at avoiding damage.
in ac, there are several places where you have to take out graveling burrows that can get tricky. I find myself one of the most useful players on the team in these. I hit the burrows hard, with aoe, which also helps thin the gravelings, all while kiting and avoiding any damage. as I run by hodgins, I drop a shadow refuge on him, to lighten the load from the person trying to keep mobs off him….doing these things, I’ve finished tough battles even after party whipes.
yup, so aside from that bug I mentioned, thieves do just fine in dungeons.
in cof I did p3 for the first time with a pug that included another thief. the guy that was explaining what to do said it was the first time he’d been through one of the tough battles without a party whipe. this is because me and the other thief helped take out loads of mobs fast, and we helped revive people quick with stealth.
in fractals I do fine, even with no agony resistance.