I should add that there is a very real possibility that the addition of more stat combos on amulets will be a massive hit to thieves. The real counter to a thief is damage, but currently there is no set between zerk which dies too fast and soldier which does too little damage.
More amulets could still be nice for thieves but they will be running less bursty anyhow
Ofc thieves don’t LOOK op, cause nobody is allowed to play the builds they destroy. They have as much influence on build diversity as the ENTIRE condi spam meta that doesn’t let players make builds that have trouble with conditions.
Teleports are the largest offender because they negate 90% of defensive mechanics instantly and thieves can run so many of them with absurdly low cooldowns. This means that glass builds which rely on skills for survival simply can’t compete
OP is confused I think.
crits still have a baseline of 150% damage with 0 ferocity.
the builds that stack the most ferocity obviously lose the most
It has been argued that gearing to 100% crit rate by mixing assassin/zerker is stronger than full zerker already; and will lose slightly less than full zerker itself.
I’m sorry, but how exactly does this information pertain to the subject, and what exactly are you arguing? Base critical damage likely isn’t changing. Ferocity is supplemental. You admit that crit damage/precision builds deal better DPS, yet then state they end up better than berserker builds after this change. Seeing as I just explained why they end up facing a bigger reduction, which you admit to, how do they continue to have better numbers afterwards?
Why is the target berserker armor in particular and why is this change actually useful aside from hindering speedrunning and downleveling (who cares?)? It’s just not logical.
Zerk is optimal in dungeon, no extra precision is required to hit 100% b/c ascended. You said in very first post that this change hurts precision builds more than zerk and ur just wrong. Many of the whiners are WvW players though who should mix armor but don’t.
Speed running (full zerk) is not just faster, it’s safer too.. It’s just better
It’s repeated team stacking that ruins hotjoin experience.
OP is confused I think.
crits still have a baseline of 150% damage with 0 ferocity.
the builds that stack the most ferocity obviously lose the most
It has been argued that gearing to 100% crit rate by mixing assassin/zerker is stronger than full zerker already; and will lose slightly less than full zerker itself.
Roll condi engi
/thread.
well you can troll hotjoin with immortal shaman amulet + signet of malice + assassin reward d/d d/d because players are too dumb to kite you
edit: full zerk p/d actually hits hard with #3 but it has no place outside of dueling. regular p/d can distract bad players all game but really has no place either because it does nothing
eh… everyone is already running full bunker max cheese mode…
Yea this is what I thought at first, but realize that they CAN go more bunkerish if they spread out less (stick to 2 points) because 4 bunker cheese is much harder to kill than 3 bunker cheese
Obviously there is a balance to be had here; if kills were worth 100 points then no team in their right mind would attempt to 3 cap because somebody would be getting ganked very quickly. Grouch is right that the game would be come more defensive… people would just play the same builds but group up and use 2 point strats, leaving bursty teams still out of the meta.
I’m not sure how to determine what the right number would be to make both viable, but I guess a slight nudge couldn’t really hurt
snip
Hambow’s effectiveness vs thief is entirely based upon combustive shot or landing a miracle earthshaker; I do not think this is characteristic of the matchup as a whole.
The issue of other classes being able to deal similar damage is simply the issue of efficiency. Thieves can reliably apply damage quickly and safely escape—much moreso than a mesmer or an elementalist.
If you ever see a fight between a decent mesmer and a decent thief it becomes very apparent that half of the mesmers “escapes” are entirely futile—they are matched teleport for teleport by the thief, who doesn’t have to do anything besides press a button because target hasn’t been dropped. This is great; I love this about thief, but if the mesmer is not spamming all of their other defensive cooldowns they are nearly dead by this point… which they should not be.
Trying to arrange a situation of nerfed survivability for theives does absolutely nothing but make them obsolete—as I said in the original post, thieves are relatively balanced in the current meta—they cannot stand to lose much effectiveness.
The point is that nobody can shift the meta anywhere else because a glass cannon thief is waiting to pounce on them from out of range as soon as their dodge roll finishes.
I wanted to consolidate the huge array of complaints about thieves into a thread that discusses the source of the problem—thieves are simply too effective as a class, causing enormous problems when attempting to scale their power level.
The thief single handedly excludes all other professions from glass based builds
Thieves in the current meta are, in my opinion, in a pretty good spot. Berserker thief vs soldier warrior feels like something of a slog for the thief, but left alone neither has an overwhelming advantage.
Compare this to a “non-meta” matchup such as berserk thief vs berserk ranger and you find there is literally nothing the ranger can do to outside of banking on their opponents total ignorance of the ranger moveset to come out ahead. At the same time, non-glass(non meta) thieves are perceived as almost totally worthless in the majority of situations.
If we want a meta where players have to consider whether or not the opposing team runs a thief, and alter their builds accordingly, then the current state of affairs is fine. However this is not what I think players are asking for—and GW2 is not set up for the type of “pick-counter pick” matches we see in MOBAs.
The thief profession has been balanced around glass builds in a defensive meta, while only becoming more effective the lower their opponents armor is
Making thieves less effective versus low defense builds while maintaining effectiveness against armored opponents should be the goal of balance in the future. Trying to target specific abilities of the class (stealth, backstab, shadowsteps, mug) which are characteristic of this flaw has only led to increasingly frustrated attempts to create an impossible equilibrium.
Anet has hinted in the past that they are thinking about revising base damages on the thief’s attacks so they can move them away from burst skills for damage and toward auto attacking for damage (which makes them more vulnerable while DPSing), and this could be one solution; but I feel this could ruin what makes thieves interesting.
Personally I think the best bet, if technically possible, would be to give certain thief attacks (backstab, etc) an element of armor penetration(ie. using a weighted armor value instead of the targets true armor value) so that their power can be toned down across the board without thieves becoming totally useless in certain matchups.
duel servers are generally places for relatively new pvp’ers to learn their class better and explore builds.
good players don’t go to duel servers to practice with randoms because they only need to practice vs tournament specs, and very few players in duel servers run tournament specs
hopefully with this insight you can stop flattering yourself thinking spvpers are all inferiors human beings
personally in the few times i have checked these servers out I have never experienced the type of thing you are talking about
The influx of new players makes it seem like there is no meta because they all run glass power builds.
Top end hasn’t really changed though; they’ll learn eventually
Ppl asking for full customizability are nuts, we would just end up with a bunch of dire and healing/toughness/vitality builds.
Giving too much freedom actually LIMITS diversity
Torment was a major fail… The number of times I’ve actually stopped moving to reduce the damage are near zero.
Should be -50% damage AND duration if you stop moving
Legionnaire
+798 Power
+569 Precision
+284 Toughness
+284 VitalityThis combo and dire are the two which should never be seen. This combo would ruin the game instantly. With that being said, I fully expect anet to introduce this stat combo because they want to use it on their warriors just so they never die and have even more dps.
Personally I think this is one of the best sets they could add. The pace of the game really slogs when builds are forced to take soldiers to have any amount of staying power; giving them an offensive option that isn’t as reckless as berserker but can still deal dps would be great.
It seems you are worried about this stat combo pushing out berserker… but the matchup between legionnaire and zerk is pretty close to the matchup between zerk and zerk imo
Not everyone has enough character slots to try out every class. If I want to try an engi, I might not find the play style I wanted because the new heal skill and certain stats were gated. As an example, maybe an experienced player would have figured out a new meta bunker build using AED and a certain tanky stat set that was gated. Too bad no one wants to invest 25 skill points and overcome whatever ‘speedbump’ they’re going to implement because that’s their ‘free character slot’ that they delete/recreate to try different classes. Keep in mind, almost all the new heal skills are non-meta and considered bad, so the likelihood of investing 25 skill points to test it out is even less. This is hurting build diversity.
You are basically validating their design choices. They add unlocks and refuse to add templates because it makes people pay to unlock character slots. They would never approve changes that might lead to $$ loss
Staking a vampire won’t kill it you need to cut off head
just take more thieves into your dungeons
thief can burn off defiant stacks so fast it’s outrageous
Heresy
Thief not deepsing if they are playing red light green light with defiant stacks
Crit sigils being toned down, maybe way down. If they only do 500 dmg, force will probably stay.
Right now lightning can hit very hard and does far and away more than force. A normal lightning hit can easily be 1300-1400. This means you would need to deal over 25,000 damage per lightning hit to make force “worth it”; a very unlikely scenario in pvp.
I can see them cutting sigils at least in half with the changes, probably more. If air sigils only do 500 dmg per proc(but they would proc on time more often), you would only need to do 10,000 dmg to make force “better”. It is still a pretty close margin, a thief’s opener will probably benefit more from force, but as the fight goes on they end up about the same unless you are fighting somebody very evasive.
So look to see how much damage the new sigils do. If they are 500 or higher, using both will still be a good idea. The end result is probably going to be weaker than fire force is now if you ask me.
Edit: Seems like zerkers are getting hit triple in the next update. Directly losing damage from the stat nerf, other builds are getting additional stat combos(when zerk already has their optimal), AND the best sigils for DPS are getting nerfed with the excuse that they are being balanced for the new system.
(edited by ens.9854)
More likely the on crit sigils, or at least fire/air, will no longer be BIS for dps (in pvp) due to massive damage nerfs.
I guess its gotta be force + something, so I’m sure many people will still opt for fire/air, but in spvp be prepared to face gazillions of energy sigils
every combination that contains +284 vitality :P
The biggest thing we need is a combination that is in between soldiers and berserkers. In theory this should be Barbarians, but vitality is essentially a garbage stat past 400 or so, so nobody uses it.
Ele would benefit from a good power/precision/healing combo (maybe with vitality).
seems like burst is going to be getting a bit of an indirect nerf, since they already have their optimum setup
I would like to say that “ferocity” is a silly and confusing name for the stat.
Pls use something sensible (or stick with crit dmg lol).
How about critical severity?
Critical bonus?
Critical power?
Critical KABLAM factor?
WHAT ?!
They’re just renaming CriticalDamage as Ferocity.
This “new” stat will have the same values other stats have (instead a fixed critical damage amount) and every N (somewhere between 13 and 17) points of it will grant a 1% damage increase.Instead of having items like:
+47 Power, +34 Precision, +2% Critical Damage
We will have:
+47 Power, +34 Precision, +34 Ferocity
And finally, the total amount of Ferocity will be translated to Critical Damage at a fixed rate.
oh why didn’t they just say that
they said it wasn’t % based so i was like wtf
Don’t want players overwhelmed?
Give them TEMPLATES so they can get optimum setups easily.
I’m confused… so they are changing crit dmg basically so that it is not affected by power?
Doesn’t this make builds that can ignore power in favor of precision or precision/ferocity? So like rabid and rampager amulets will be very good in pvp because you don’t need the power to make them hit hard?
OR will precision basically become useless without ferocity so that these builds stay somewhat where they are? (ie. crits do not start at +50% dmg)
Not sure about this one. It doesn’t seem to actually change much. D/p would just become identical to d/d in practical play, either teleporting mid black powder or using the spare initiative to shadow shot to their target afterwards.
Perma stealth has already been somewhat nerfed but I don’t get into WvW much so maybe it’s still a problem?
It’s probably too strong for s/p as that set is already seeing play without any stealth and is probably too strong for p/p giving easy sneak attacks (p/d can already be a bear, just imagine that with lifesteal and ranged stealth)
A certain pretty good thief runs 4 signet s/d in tpvp matches in order to gank other thiefs and ultra squishies. Obviously high depends on what opponents you are facing so have another character to swap to :P
Rather Caed is intelligent enough to realize when people are beyond reason or meaningful discussion and instead used the opportunity for comedy. As a guard main thief 2nd I agree with his sentiment.
I would test the heck out of this.
Is this discussion still going on? Look the idea is not to counter stealth but to counter thieves.
Stop looking for ways to make stealth not hurt you, start looking for ways to lock the thief down when he is revealed; unlike pu mesmer, thieves do not have aegis every time they exit stealth to stop you from CCing them.
Doesn’t matter if you are fighting stealth thief or evade thief, it’s all just reaction time and timing
You get a near instantaneous slice(auto attack) after the larc hits, so it could easily add another 4k
Your mistake is trying to meet the problem head on.
killshot says hello
deathblossom thief unkillable by petting zoo def. dumbest
really i would vote for pistol/nade/bomb engi, seems like they do nothing special(skill rotation? wat?) and still melt people -_-
pls dont necro these posts
this is being fixed in the next build
confirmed in the past few days
It want my anecdote. Corner cases can be found anywhere. What if a warriors defy pain activates just before he clicks defiant stance, that’s 10x worse. If you want to talk about a feature that gets thieves killed, make a thread about failed teleports.
Never said they shouldn’t change it, but people are not being objective about it.
I am being perfectly objective about it – my entire argument is about objectivity. A trait intended to be positive should, at worst, have a neutral effect.
In your example, endure pain did not penalize the player – it just did nothing, which is my entire argument. The worst that should happen is no effect, not a penalty.
You misread. Defiant stance is the heal skill that only heals you when you take damage. Defy pain is a trait that activates, just like last refuge, based on a warriors hp pool. This situation penalizes the warrior if he doesn’t have the superhuman reaction time to stop himself from activating his heal when defy pain incidentally triggers.
I speak from experience that last refuge is extremely rarely negative if you are aware of it and being purely objective. If you want to mash buttons and need something to whine about it is a perfect scapegoat.
I wasn’t referring to you specifically; but people are being stupidly over dramatic about how bad last refuge actually is… I have survived countless times where I would have died without this trait, and won many duels because of it. There are also plenty of times that it triggers and I am able to cancel out of my attack to take full advantage of it. The number of times that it triggers and I break it AND I need to stealth in the next 3-4 seconds are nearly nonexistent; but I recognize that some players may have trouble with it in certain playstyles (x/d WvW troll builds in near death oh kitten mode). Unload is emphatically not one of those situations… how were you going to panic stealth yourself anyway?
(edited by ens.9854)
It want my anecdote. Corner cases can be found anywhere. What if a warriors defy pain activates just before he clicks defiant stance, that’s 10x worse. If you want to talk about a feature that gets thieves killed, make a thread about failed teleports.
Never said they shouldn’t change it, but people are not being objective about it.
a boost of hp in valor or honor traits would be logical in my opinion
lowest hp on probably the tankiest class of the game is messed up.
No it is completely logical. Having tankiness and the MOST hp wouldn’t be balanced at all, but unkillable, then we would just have another warrior
First off, most people over rank 20 react to a backstab in under half a second (even though it is extremely unlikely a thief opens with backstab and not heartseeker or cnd). Second, even if you a not running last refuge, if that thief backstabs you under 25% you are going to die if you attempt to do anything other than teleport away, including stealth. In this case the blind from the effect is still beneficial.
A lot of people are quick to blame things after the fact without really considering if they would have actually survived otherwise.
The only change that could be made that wont create an outcry of “thief OP free passive immortality” is changing it to a stealth that doesn’t give reveal or bonuses but can still be broken immediately as suggested by Ichishi a few posts ago.
I won’t say this skill hasn’t saved me, but I have sunk a lot of hours into thief and can see how it can screw over some1 new to the profession that aren’t prepared for it and treat it like a “shouldn’t need to think about it bc it’s passive” trait. (Such irony)
This is incorrect – a positive passive trait should not penalize you, it should at worst just have no positive effect.
If you weren’t paying attention and LR went off, the absolute worst that should happen is you don’t get stealth. Penalizing the player (inadvertently of course) with revealed is not an acceptable outcome – you shouldn’t have to change your playstyle just to avoid being penalized by a supposedly helpful trait.
You speak as if the only way LR would ever penalize you is if you weren’t paying attention – there’s plenty of situations where your best course of action is to do something immediately rather than wait for LR to trigger – you should not be penalized for making the best choice because of LR.
If your health is that low, it is extremely rare that you would not want the stealth, and if you can’t stop attacking for a quarter second when the hit is incoming then I’m not sure the revealed is going to matter.
The irony is that there have been countless threads in the spvp forum for many weeks about how awful and brainless “passive play” is, and some of the same people are here looking to create more
I love how we are suppose to be the “jack of all trades” in a game where the trinity doesn’t exist making every class technically the jack of all trades since every class has to do everything because of the lack a trinity but yet we have to be sub par at being the jack of all trades. Has anybody else thought of this?
I think the idea was supposed to be that eles would rotate through the different roles with their attunements. Indeed, 30 arcana and/or 20 water works a lot like this—you get a burst of healing when you go water and a burst of aoe in fire, and a burst of single target in air (and ?? from earth). The problem is it is completely unsustainable and cannot out DPS a healing signet on its own.
Meditation guard with speed runes is my favorite hotjoin spec(lol).
DPS guard is fine but even thief has more team support. The only reason to bring a guard instead is for their CC effects (but what team comp needs more CC?)
It’s just very hard to make a balanced guardian build because their survival is so dependent on increasing toughness to improve eHP and healing. You can’t run offensive jewelry on a bunker trait setup and last more than a few seconds in melee, but their DPS drops to nothing if they run soldiers in a non meditation build.
Perhaps Valkyrie stats should be changed to power/toughness healing/precision?
Clearly it should give aegis/prot/regen cause that seems pretty balanced kappa
I won’t say this skill hasn’t saved me, but I have sunk a lot of hours into thief and can see how it can screw over some1 new to the profession that aren’t prepared for it and treat it like a “shouldn’t need to think about it bc it’s passive” trait. (Such irony)
You could change the skill, removing the blind and changing it to a 3/4 sec evade that stops everything but reviving, should give ample time to react to its activation. Keep the stealth of course.
Also Improved stealth doesn’t seem like a bad idea either
Hehe, tried this with other weapon sets at all? I hear larc strike=>slice can hit pretty hard, faster than cnd backstab.
Replied to this kind of thing before; venom is fine. It works best in the builds that are meant to run it, burst builds.
With mug it becomes instant cast so you never have to worry about somebody dodging it. With bountiful theft it ignores both stability and aegis. It is long enough for even a d/d thief to get off a backstab, or an entire pwhip to land (purposely whiffing the first part). I wont mention venom traits cause they more or less lock you into silly builds (although stunlock into immob lock with say cluster bombs is hilarious)
Hotjoin is another thing entirely, there hasn’t been a day when I haven’t been called all kinds of names, but I enjoy the banter and give it right back. Only thing I take seriously is tPvP, otherwise I just lay back and relax and have fun, sometimes at the expense of a very frustrated hotjoin player.
Ty
I must say I do enjoy some trash talk, we’re playing on asphalt not in Chicago stadium, kids get way too offended by a normal occurrence.
I’ve never seen a ‘stealth counter’ that I couldn’t easily find a workaround for as a thief based on cursory experience playing it. The fact that these ‘counters’ get results simply proves that thief promotes unskilled play.
found it
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Stealth_Disruptor_Trap
As a pvper I like to WvW sometimes because it’s so easy to show off and faceroll other players.
Solution to make pvp better:
Add more bad players. Add more teammates to watch us kill them.
Or maybe just need a better game mode with emphasis on movement and clutch plays
I still have an open question as to how the Thief would be equally compensated for a significant straight nerf like this.
Think before you backstab. If you know a class has access to blinds and aegis, then you are to bait them into using it and then backstab. Is that really difficult?
How is a thief going to apply enough pressure to a guardian/engi/necro/warrior/ranger to “bait” him into activating his skills before even attempting a backstab? I’m sorry but are you playing the same game? Most thiefs get crushed by guardians and engies even without this suggested nerf.