cleanse early, they don’t apply condis consistently but rather in bursts. You WILL get a long duration burn early on, and it is quite likely you will get confused so pay attention so you don’t kill yourself
If they pull out bombs, back off til they waste all the good ones and switch out
decide if you are going to spike them or blind them. grenades and bombs are very hard to land hits with, so you can often just dance around at range and spike them every so often. If they are glassier and not using grenades, just dropping black powder on them and spamming autos into a heartseeker when they run can be pretty effective.
Ferocity changes reduce critical damage from the current situation, I have read.
they are boosting amulets to compensate for stat change AND a little bit for loss from traits as well… idk how u can be on the forum and not know this yet but oh well
Nobody knows how meta will look.. ppl are going to be experimenting with tons of ele’s, 4 swap warriors, and soldier amulet + intelligence sigil builds.
Stone heart probably won’t be able to perform well right away in tpvp but expect to see people testing out cavalier builds on the higher hp classes (perhaps guardian with vitality traits/runes) that will make things even rougher for normal power builds… driving us even further towards condi dominance.
Although there will be both generosity/purity sigils, we have yet to see if they will make any kind of impact vs condition builds at all (at least we don’t have to worry so much about confusion flying around)
its always pretty rough, but basically it boils down to
1. not killing too many clones
2. stealth a second or two after they stealth
3. have bountiful theft to get past their protection
4. stick to them as hard as possible when you can, even if you have to hit + dodge their block skill to do it
I have a solution—make them invisible because there is basically never a time you want to be targetting them (okay rarely revive spirit) specifically and they just get in the way
Didn’t read much of this but isn’t OP just flat wrong? You still can rank up at 80 it just doesn’t increase the #, so he gets like a zillion more chests than somebody 55
For most classes I play, this game has indeed turned into condition management online. Watching your own and enemy condis takes more attention than actually fighting
going mid might just lead to a protracted 5v3 that takes way too long to resolve in this meta
However by staying home you run the risk of being next-leveled and your team facing 5 enemies at mid. The correct response is to rotate with a teammate that has no CD so they can either decap far or guard home. With no communication all you can do is trust them not to totally wipe… You can move up but you need to keep your eyes open so nobody slips by
Mobility. It is no longer an option, it has become a necessity for basically every build.
They should get rid of passive +25% traits/signets and just increase everybody’s base speed, and alter swiftness for balance.
Mobility utilities should be buffed to the point of shadowstep/judges intervention—so good that you don’t feel like taking them puts you at a disadvantage… Because the builds that need them, REALLY need them.
Same with mobility skills… Not everyone should have as many as warrior, but greatsword 5 should be the standard they are balanced around
Clone/phantasm attacks should reveal the mesmer
Also clones should not be able to proc incendiary powder, this is clearly an unfair advantage vs engineer that no1 else has
Also clones should not be able to follow and attack a target out of sight from the mesmer, this defies game logic and punishes players for outsmarting the mesmer (ranger pet is ok it is intelligent and sucks anyway)
This thief post is literally the same ppl posting the same crap that has all been done before. It’s just spam at this point
Thief has a lack of builds or viable weapon sets? I don’t even know what to say to this it’s just wrong. Every single trait tree and every single weapon set sees significant use. There are condi glassy and tanky thiefs…
if you are talking about pve then every class has only 1 build==> whatever has highest dps
Describe the “normal killshot build”. I’m curious to see the differences.
I’m running it now out in WvW, using mostly berserker gear because that was what was in my bag and Berserker’s Power instead of Burst precision. A couple of fun/funny fights so far. Auto crit will definitely smooth things out though. I will be looking at Signet of Might over Banner of Strength for Zerg-Vs-Zerg as Aegis IS a bit of a pain.
Its basically as you’ve said. Often use FGJ / mark because they can be instacast during the killshot itself. I always use signet of might because… well it adds power, I NEVER activate it. Also banner of discipline not strength… 2 banners is no bueno
zerker power is just >>>> burst precision if you can have lots of fury/crit chance
Well all this game boils down to is a players ability to make decisions and time button presses… it requires very little continuous coordination and for most things doesn’t require very rapid reactions or either. Trying to use “skill” as an argument just sounds a bit silly to me.
Bottom line is that pvp is a big part of the game, and within existing modes 1v1s do occur with reasonable frequency. For pvp’ers, who wouldn’t want to practice when there is a chance? For non pvp’ers, this could be a great way to screw around and experience some pvp in a friendly way.
Seeing some players fighting each other could bring some life into an otherwise fairly artificial and lifeless world
Seems entire thing is based on the false assumption that anet wanted to boost effectiveness by 6%. They didn’t. They wanted to increase it by exactly what you calculated, which corresponds to a 6% stat increase across the board.
Crit damage is being nerfed. There is no way to get around it.
Reverting mug nerf is probably the single worst thing they could do to all of pvp. Try to remember why it was nerfed in the first place.
I used sleight of hand before they added the steal reduction… I agree that it is a bit OP, but it does have a huge opportunity cost as well. Maybe there is some middle ground.
I disagree with your points on shortbow… Usually spamming #3 is a sign that the thief is in really bad shape (they had to swap to shortbow after all). If possible I think the skill should be sped up so that it doesn’t last so long when used 4+ times in a row.
Edit: to Ricky saying s/d is untargetable… I think this is only partly true. Good players recognize their evade frames on flanking now and target swap with CC effects so they don’t have much chance to start spamming anti-focus dodge rolls. Zerk s/d has some decent counter play in this way, but I believe it will need reevaluated with the new changes coming up to runes/sigils. Will intelligence/energy soldier amulet s/d be a thing? Idk but soldier s/d can be surprisingly strong already even without speccing into evades
If you cast glyph while in fire attune and then swap to earth afterwards, it will continue to proc burn for its entire duration.
Burn does huge damage per stack, provides another condition to screw with cleansing, and the glyph procs every 5 seconds iirc so cleansing isn’t even that good against it (compared to signet which is totally wasted if cleansed). Additionally procs cannot be dodged/blocked so it seems like a natural inclusion.
It turns you into an engineer for 30 seconds, seems like a good deal to me.
edit: it’s a 3 second base burn, so will easily burn for 4 seconds with +33%. With 700 damage burning ticks that’s almost 3k from each proc. The reason this skill never got used in the past was eles needed all their utilities just to survive and could never last long enough to make use of this…. that may be changing
Anybody who says dueling isn’t a part of gw2 is living in dreamland. Half of the highlight videos are WvW players in duels and every matchup has fight clubs running somewhere.
How hard could it be to allow WvW type interaction in pve areas? For all purposes WvW IS pve already, except certain players are allowed to attack each other.
Most players will probably never use duel. Many will though, and I think it adds a great deal to the atmosphere of the game just by existing and being seen. These kinds of changes should have significant priority even at the expense of some ‘convenience’ features that don’t really add anything to the overall experience
Made this topic ages ago when we heard about this gear merge and everybody ignored it.
The real kicker for us pvp’ers is that we will not be able to equip the vast majority of our good looking gear because our characters are not all level 80 in pve.
I suppose with the separate “pvp” section in the hero tab they might work around this, but that creates its own problems
you don’t mention glyph? Doesn’t glyph proc burn if you activated it while you were in fire attune?
Anyhow this does sound neat, but will probably be held in check by a few things… namely ICD on blinding ashes, it’s non aoe attacks, and it’s lack of cover condition spam. Still could faceroll thieves though!
Cheese builds are builds that rely on your opponent not having a very simple counter.
Ex. Death blossom malice signet spam thief is cheese… It only works if they have almost 0 cleansing or stand on top of you
Evade spam thief is cheese… Only works if nobody can properly time/chain CC
Perma CC guardian(or venomshare) is cheese… Only works if they have no stunbreak/cleansing
Longbow ranger is cheese… Only works if nobody walks up to him
Strange that most of the cheese I think of is thief related… Go figure
Basically there is a chance that they completely demolish their opponent because they don’t have the counter. They work fairly often against noobs, but anybody with a real build is probably fine.
I fail to see how they are spammed for “high reward”. The only skill that could potentially fit this description is withdraw.
Not that your post is entirely without merit. Thieves are probably fine right now since they are all berserker… but as players begin to migrate into soldier or other defensive gear, things might get pretty abusive. Bow/bow has already reached this point on foefire and soldier s/d can tank pretty much anything, boon steal, and has the freedom to select any traits/utilities it wants (venomshare is my favorite).
I can easily see a resurgence of double s/d thieves with the new sigil rework… It’s gonna be a ride…
From the ready up discussion last week I got the impression that they are moving further away from the idea of templates. They are beginning to add features (single rune armor sets, 14 trait points) that make build swapping more convenient…. why waste the time if they are going to just give us templates later? Most likely this is just the means for having separate builds for pve/pvp.
A bit disappointing since now I could potentially want 3 different builds at a moments notice—conquest, skyhammer, or deathmatch.
well burst skills still get the bonus from berserker power and power is better than precision anyway so arms is pretty bad in terms of making a giant killshot (especially if they don’t have bleed yet cause killshot is the opener)
in general the gameplan is “stack as much +% dmg as possible” since they are multiplicative…
72% is fine, just trigger FJG immediately before the killshot goes off for fury.
of course get bloodlust stacks with your offhand weapon (greatsword). You can argue that sigil of air is better ofc, but all this goes out the window next patch anyhow
its pretty easy just 30/10/0/0/30 with 3 signets (elite, power, precision) and FGJ stacking as much power/crit dmg as you possibly can with gear
typically bloodlust sigil on offset, force on rifle, and scholar runes for max opener.
alternatively you can get your crit rate to 80% with enough assassin gear so it always crits as well and use zerk on the rest.
The air/fire definitely getting toned down damage wise but as a thief myself I might consider putting them both on shortbow to get an opening burst then immediately swapping to d/p with different sigils.
Yes I had a really fun and squishy build but seriously!? Why is the system allowing me to get one-shot into oblivion!? Whatever build one uses this shouldn’t happen..
Lowest base armor, lowest base health, running a “really fun and squishy build” (full zerker?). One shotted…
Shoo damage dealer, shooo
IF you have nothing decent to contribute to the thread except to insult other forum posters because they want to nerf the class you play, then don’t post. thief will eventually get a nerf and when it does all of the thieves that do play this game will either adapt, reroll, or quit. contributing nothing constructive in threads designed to bring problems with the class as a whole to attention to the devs (though unlikely they will pay attention as it isn’t about elementalists) is just proving that you are infact what you have been called, a toxic element within this games community.
I’m sorry… He’s playing some sort of a squishy build on an already squishy class and then wonders why he’s being one shotted by another squishy/glass cannon build (more than likely)… And he insists that he shouldn’t be one shotted. You can’t have your cake and eat it too.
I’m insulting him because of this, not because of the class I play… if you truly think its because of that, well… congrats, i don’t know what to say.
So… Shoo damage dealer, shooo
Point is that the matchup is horribly lopsided. It would be okay if the ele maybe had a 1/4 chance of winning vs thief but even if he spots him first and is surrounded by teammates he still dies 9/10 times.
