I did most of my leveling as dagger/pistol with a focus on critical strikes. blackpowder is great for survivability against normal mobs, and can combo with heartseeker for a stealth, which you can then follow with a backstab. Once you feel your damage is good take some points in acrobatics and grab signet of shadows in your utility skillbar. These will help you get around the map much quicker, and the 5 point acrobatics trait will help you get away from things you don’t want to fight. Once you’ve got all of this down just work on completely clearing level-appropriate maps, and do your personal story quests when you feel you can handle them, as they give a lot of xp. You can also pick up crafting professions if you have the materials to get 10 levels per profession over the course of 0-400.
I’m not gonna say he is, because you can get an infraction for saying that on a post (yes, seriously, it’s already happened to me once) but… Well, let’s just say report him and stop feeding him. Maybe he can be removed from the forum soon.
The biggest problem with thief in high-end PvE (like world bosses and dungeons) isn’t a really a thief problem at all but rather a graphical problem: Friendly Spell Effects. There’s so much KITTENFUR smoking and flaming and blowing up on the mob that you can’t tell if I’m facing his front or back, can’t tell if he’s charging up a one-hit-kill ability, hell, can’t even tell if you’re in melee range sometimes.
You lagging at your end because of your bad internet and/or gfx card/processor is your own fault.
i5 3570k, GTX 670, 8gb ram, 240gb ssd. Want to try again? My internet is high end broadband….
The stealth on thiefs is broken, OP and not working as intended in pvp.
Oh… that’s cool… yeah, go ahead and completely ignore the reply with accurate information and continue to reply with nonsense to other nonsense… No problem.
Same happens to Thief’s getting hit after they have stealthed.
Often I have stealthed and been hit by abilities still.
So it is entirely possible that it happens the other way around also.
Stealth doesn’t actually protect you, it just prevents direct targeting. Any strike that was already heading your direction will still hit. AOEs will also of course still hit. Untargeted attacks that are aimed in your direction will still hit. There’s also a bug where certain abilities can still target you when you’re stealthed., seen a lot with pet abilities. The only thing stealth really protects you from is an incoming finisher when you’re downed, and then that’s only if you time it perfectly.
First of all, that video was made before the heartseeker nerf. If the target itsn’t below 25% hp, it now does about as much damage as an autoattack.
Second, notice how often he’s missing? For every 5-6k attack there’s about 2-3 misses. That’s not efficient at all. It’s even worse on misses after the nerf.
Third, notice how he’s not alone? In every single one of those battles, someone else is doing most of the damage and some nice buffs and debuffs while he flounders around trying to LOOK OP.
That video is not proof of anything. It’s just some guy trying to be funny.
It’s not a stealth bug, exploit, or balance issue. It’s not directly related to the thief class at all. It’s a player culling issue. Just like how you can have an entire zerg get really close without becoming visible. They don’t know if they’re visible to you or not. On their screen, they’re visible. As far as they know, they’re visible. Arenanet just needs to re-prioritize the way player culling is calculated, and both of these issues should disappear.
The only thing you mentioned that actually is related to the thief is finishing while stealthed. This is possible, and I’m pretty sure it’s working as intended since other classes can finish while using their special abilities (such as a guardian finishing inside a bubble or a warrior finishing while invulnerable). Plus it helps make up for the fact that we have absolutely bollocks damage in our downed state even when we trait for it :p
Well it seems to me the actual issue is less with the pivot height – which should be lower, since your head is actually lower – but more with clipping problems.
An issue Norns share, if in the opposite direction and in tunnels.
Considering just how many player-clipping-issues there are – on top of the camera ones – this seems to be a general issue, not one specific to the asura camera. Fixing it by increasing the pivot height would be curing the symptoms, not the illness.
Perhaps. I see it as a combination of several issues, so it would be curing one of the pack. It needs several changes, but a camera height slider is definitely one I’d like to see. In any case, It would be nice if we could get some sort of official response on this issue.
They have started to flag videos so you can’t earn money on them , So people that are making a living out of posting youtube videos won’t get any food on their tables .
People who make quality videos are just fine. It’s people who just record game content without adding anything to it that they’re really cracking down on.
Also, I’d prefer if GW2 didn’t become an e-sport, thanks.
Speaking of stealth, there is seemingly extended thief invisibility, or possibly a cheating group of players (sometimes my and others’ health drops to almost nothing before anything pops on the screen). This is where I question when and if the given powers end and cheating begins
This isn’t directly related to the thief. It can happen with any class, and quite often does. The code that determines what should be visible is really buggy and lags behind a lot, resulting in things that should be visible not showing up. You can have an entire zerg invisible and they have no control over it.
As for your other complaints, all I can really say is learn to counter better. If you’re playing in a group, that build will be fairly useless against you unless your group just isn’t paying attention at all. It’s extremely squishy and relies heavily on locking down a single target with venoms.
Edit: There is ONE valid issue with the thief though. There seems to be something that causes Mug to do ridiculous amounts of damage, like 9000 damage when it normally does like 600 (or a couple thousand on a crit). Not sure what triggers it though.
I don’t think you’ve fallen victim to this. It just as the OP says and on the extended visibility part. From what I could gather there is apparently a bug/glitch or whatever going on for the thieves where they can elongate the duration of invisibility. It’s not that the lag is making them load later than they’re suppose to, how do I know? Because one has done the same to me as well, he went invisible in front of me and then did the same.
It’s more prevalent on thieves AND MESMERS because when they go invisible and then the game tries to make them visibile again, the game has to run calculations to determine his distance and if he should be visible to you. On his screen he’s perfectly visible, but you have to wait until the game decides that he should be rendered. If there is a lot going on in the area, this can take a while. This is why you see this problem in WvW but not much if at all in sPvP. It’s not a balance issue or an exploit, it’s just a server calculation that needs to be re-prioritized.
Speaking of stealth, there is seemingly extended thief invisibility, or possibly a cheating group of players (sometimes my and others’ health drops to almost nothing before anything pops on the screen). This is where I question when and if the given powers end and cheating begins
This isn’t directly related to the thief. It can happen with any class, and quite often does. The code that determines what should be visible is really buggy and lags behind a lot, resulting in things that should be visible not showing up. You can have an entire zerg invisible and they have no control over it.
As for your other complaints, all I can really say is learn to counter better. If you’re playing in a group, that build will be fairly useless against you unless your group just isn’t paying attention at all. It’s extremely squishy and relies heavily on locking down a single target with venoms.
Edit: There is ONE valid issue with the thief though. There seems to be something that causes Mug to do ridiculous amounts of damage, like 9000 damage when it normally does like 600 (or a couple thousand on a crit). Not sure what triggers it though.
My wife was asking about this earlier today. I didn’t notice the issue, but I guess the camera kept (auto) zooming in too close, and she seemed to feel it might be due to a recent change, too.
They’re prestige skins. Dual wielding means you are getting twice the amount of prestige weapons to show off.
But on the other hand, two-handed weapons are larger and more noticeable. Glitch, my Asura’s knives aren’t even visible out of combat because they are completely hidden in his coat.
The black lion NPCs at lion’s arch trading won’t happen. I’d like it, but it won’t happen. Why you ask?
Well, because lots of people are buying black lion express items off the gem store to facilitate the process. Any annoyance that results in gem sales won’t be removed.
I could be wrong, but different speed boosts seem to have different weights in-combat. My signet speed seems to drop to almost nothing as soon as I’m in combat, but the swiftness from dodging is still really fast.
this change seems to be related primarily to a weird bug/exploit for when people would fall down cliffs in alot of small steps and end up triggering this ability like 5 times in a row and getting 30 or more of stealth.
under normal circumstances (say, jumping down from a wall) you would only ever get 1 trigger anyway, and have no realistic way to perform this more than often then ever 8 seconds.
they just fixed a bug basically. this is not a power level adjustment (aka nerf) of any kind.
To reiterate, they didn’t fix the bug, they fixed one of the symptoms. The bug is taking falling damage 20 times off a single fall, and that remains unfixed.
I actually kind of welcome this change because the rapid blinding powder puffs killed my fps for a couple seconds, but they really need to fix the underlying issue instead of the symptom.
So you’re a mesmer, yes? Sounds like you just need to use your clones better. That thief could have easily wasted his burst on a clone and then been entirely useless against you. Or he could pretty much kill himself if you get some confusion on him during his burst. You saw him coming and chose to just sit there instead of taking preventative measures.
Plus these kind of thieves are pretty useless against a group. so if you were in a group and he managed to do this repeatedly, that means your group wasn’t paying attention to combat.
because they don’t understand how thieves work. They see a thief use the same ability a couple times without cooldown and automatically assume it can be spammed infinitely with no resource mechanic, because their class doesn’t have a resource mechanic. They don’t realize that using a couple 5-6 initiative attacks can prevent us from doing anything else if we don’t get initiative regen from those attacks critting. They don’t realize that a lot of other attacks have broken melee range and miss even if you’re in range (of course post-nerf even heartseeker can do this). They also can’t figure out how to counter anything, because they’re trying to have the same playstyle of just spamming damage abilities. You can completely shut a heartseeker or pistolwhip thief down with one button, if you put forth even the tiniest bit of effort in doing so.
Yes, if everyone is just spamming damage abilities, the thief will win. That’s how they were designed. But if everyone is putting forth effort to buff, debuff, CC, counter, etc, the thief actually comes out fairly low on the totem pole.
This is just a band-aid fix to prevent stealth stacking. The REAL issue is that you take falling damage several times on a single fall, but they’re taking their sweet time fixing that one.
I get the same thing occasionally. It’s definitely not from smashing buttons, as it can occur when hitting just 1 at a time. I’ve got dodge bound to a mouse button so even that isn’t 2 at a time. From my experience it seems to be a bug with stealth. It’s even happened when releasing falling damage blinding powder once or twice.
What’s wrong with condition damage? That’s probably the best bet in a lot of situations… pop in, put up some conditions, pop out. Kind of disappointing, but that’s where it seems to go.
Alternative idea: Add in a “donate to cause” button on WvW status screen that opens a list of upgrades currently being funded. If you can’t afford a full upgrade yourself, you start the upgrade, put what you can towards it, and other people can put money towards your upgrade by opening the WvW window. People who donate can get points towards a title track or something :p
You don’t have to be hardcore to be organized. You’ve got a team chat, make good use of it. Nominate someone who knows what they’re doing as leader, then do as they say.
free transfer should be only to go to low pop servers if it says full should not let you enter, and apparently this is not happening.
Free server transfers don’t take population into effect at all. They’re simply a consolation for the guesting system not being available, so we can play with friends on other servers.
Honestly anyone who thinks pistol-whip needs a nerf instantly lose credibility. The only way you can die to that is if you’re practically afk, not moving at all. It’s a very underwhelming skill in PvP and out-damaged by hundred blades in PvE.
Can you not move while pistolwhipping? It happens at the end of it’s cast, right?
You can move, but it stops the ability if you do and doesn’t refund the initiative.
Here’s how pistol whip works:
1. casting time. Takes about a second to fill the bar. When this bar is filling the thief can’t do any other attacks and pistol whip is dealing no damage, nor has it stunned yet.
2. pistol stun. Thief smacks target with his pistol. target is stunned for half a second, but it takes about that long for the sword strikes to start after the stun animation ends. thief is rooted during this animation.
3. sword strikes. good damage, but if the thief moves they stop. takes about 2-3 seconds for the strikes to all hit
All true, only I would add that you can move (and Steal) during #1 and the ability will still go through.
Yeah you can move during the warm-up cast timer, but not once the ability has started firing.
Honestly anyone who thinks pistol-whip needs a nerf instantly lose credibility. The only way you can die to that is if you’re practically afk, not moving at all. It’s a very underwhelming skill in PvP and out-damaged by hundred blades in PvE.
Can you not move while pistolwhipping? It happens at the end of it’s cast, right?
You can move, but it stops the ability if you do and doesn’t refund the initiative.
Here’s how pistol whip works:
1. casting time. Takes about a second to fill the bar. When this bar is filling the thief can’t do any other attacks and pistol whip is dealing no damage, nor has it stunned yet.
2. pistol stun. Thief smacks target with his pistol. target is stunned for half a second, but it takes about that long for the sword strikes to start after the stun animation ends. thief is rooted during this animation.
3. sword strikes. good damage, but if the thief moves they stop. takes about 2-3 seconds for the strikes to all hit
Honestly anyone who thinks pistol-whip needs a nerf instantly lose credibility. The only way you can die to that is if you’re practically afk, not moving at all. It’s a very underwhelming skill in PvP and out-damaged by hundred blades in PvE.
I love sword/dagger, more so than sword/pistol, but I can’t stand Flanking Strike. It either needs to work better, or switched out. I’d prefer Nine-tailed Strike honestly, it’s got much more damage and defense potential than a broken dodge.
Nine-Tailed Strike is downright broken. I can put it on auto-attack and get afk kills.
Flanking Strike definitely needs some work, though. My suggestion would be to have it cause a few stacks of bleed (maybe 2 per strike), since this weapon set is completely void of condition damage. Also fix the positioning of it so it puts you behind the target more reliably.
Steal will often go on cooldown without actually stealing anything when used on a hill. I assume this is related to the numerous shadowstep bugs that have already been mentioned.
Also this isn’t specifically a thief bug, but only really noticeable on thief because of our lack of cooldowns: If I accidentally double tap a skill it queues it up twice. There’s no way to un-queue it, and it doesn’t let me do anything else until the skill has been performed twice.
My only issue with the thief is pistol whip. Not only does the thief snare you it also stuns, and does massive damage. It’s basically a better form of 100 blades which is already stupid overpowered.
it stuns you for half a second. it immobilizes the thief for the full duration. Are you REALLY complaining about this?
Right now I say things balance out. On one hand we can hide in PvP/WvW easier. See Lurikeens from DAoC. But we have terrible camera problems looking down over walls and generally end up spending half the fight trying to find a good position where we can actually see something.
I would gladly lose the hiding advantage and even take a giant red bullseye above me if it got rid of our really bad camera issues.
