Guild Wars 2

Swagg.9236:

Except that the current GW2 pvp metagame is condition-spam. It’s full of no-risk, low-recharge, no/low-cast-time procs and skills that just gives everybody conditions for free and almost constantly. It turns team-fights into cluttered nonsense and 1v1s into “Who presses the most buttons the fastest?” It’s by far the least healthy thing that you could do for GW2. It takes all of the risk and counter-play out of a pvp encounter.

However that’s all application Conditions themself are seemingly fine of their own accord. Anet does have to go through traits/sigils/runes/amulets/skills because their is a lot of gap between options and ones that are too strong and not strong enough.

Power is completely outclassed by Condition Damage at this point in GW2’s life. This is unhealthy because Condition Damage spam pretty much just lets you face-roll across the keyboard and get free damage on somebody. It negates the importance of dodging, blocks or invulnerability frames (not that the latter 2 are really healthy at all for GW2 given the prevalence at which they exist in the game) thus effectively turning combat into:

There is nothing inherit to conditions though that makes it that way. As you can block any attack whether it is 100% power or causes 3 bleeds so long as it’s not of unblockable class. Yes Random procs make knowing when to dodge/block/invuln unpredictable and a game of chance. That is the thing with RNG. After all Sigil of Air/blood/Flame are all power based random damage procs, that no one can predict. Ideally random procs get tuned down a bit.

Why is my name quoted in the above post?

Swagg.9236:

CONDITION DAMAGE SHOULD BE SUPPLEMENT TO POWER DAMAGE

So? GW1 had tons of lame Teambuilds as well – it was part of the game.

If there’s no possibility of making insane Lamerbuilds like NecroSpike, IWAY, Rangespike and stuff like that, I think theres something missing. Yes; we all hated those builds in GW1 and being a Player that always wanted to win “the right way”, I’ve almost pulled out my hair a couple of times cuz of those builds; but it made the Meta interesting and forced ppl to be creative and come up with new strategies etc.

• In GW1, degen alone wasn’t necessarily a viable way to kill an opponent most of the time (either via hexes, conditions or a combination of the two).
• In GW1, there weren’t instant-activation passive procs everywhere. Players could actually see everything happening and triggering.
• In GW1, we had the “holy trinity” to deal with gimmicky spike team compositions like R-spike or even condition spam. IWAY and SWAY were nerfed. Necroway was sort of bandaid-nerfed with that weird update to protection prayers (although, that took ages). The reason R-spike stayed around for so long was because it was more fair than the others. R-spike required line-of-sight, it could be mitigated through protection prayers and blocks, and it also had a distinct cool-down on the spike around which the opposing team could play. There really wasn’t anything anyone could do most of the time against the other three gimmick comps. That’s the trick: in GW1, you actually had to land spells/attacks consistently and in a timely fashion in order to bring down an opponent.

• GW2 doesn’t have the “holy trinity” to deal with skills/skill spam that not only deals damage but that may also render an opponent helpless to either defend or retaliate with damage.
• The current GW2 condition-meta promotes mindless, ranged skill-spam that front-loads conditions onto low-recharge, fast-activating throwaway skills and rewards the condition player for spamming skills and then running around while auto-attacking for the rest of the encounter. Since there’s no one to remove conditions for you and condition players get conditions for free almost instantly and on incredibly short cool-downs, it just burns players out far more effectively than if the condition player just invested into power.

GW2 has made power less effective than condition damage. By doing so, ANet has undermined the usefulness of dodging, positioning and timing that was supposed to be the fundamental base of GW2 combat.

The only way to heal this game’s pvp as it stands right now is to make risky, position-and-timing-based, power damage king.

Conditions in GW2 are not the same as Degen in GW1.
All damage conditions in GW2 are armor ignoring and as such fit the role as the “other” damage type.
Since GW2 does not differentiate an attack as Physical or magical it’s just “damage” they need something to get around toughness/protection/weakness so that plain “damage” doesn’t get walled. The existence of conditions ideally detracts from investment in toughness/protection/weakness in order to get in more Vitality/condition removal/- condition duration.

Like two people attacking a lion instead of one, ideally it cannot defend against two different people. Conditions are a necessity for the health of GW2 given that it makes no other distinction in damage types other than Life steal which is almost non-existent in the grand scheme of GW2.

I think I’ve seen this same thread for Rangers, Necros and Elementalists…

Imo Assassin’s Reward is for more sustain oriented specs that will be using multiple initiative skills. Given that I don’t see any reason to increase its base as they perhaps want to make Healing Power investment a more intriguing option than it currently is for thieves.

AOE balance. We feel that in PvP some AOE builds are too strong for the opportunity cost, and we’ll be bringing those in line in the next few patches.

You talking about this? That’s over a year old.
Don’t think that’s still being considered.

What reason is there to worry about pierce with the absolute break down of front/back line due to ample amount of gap closers and damage sources that will drop someone in a fraction of the time in a far more practical manor than attempting to line yourself up.

I’ll kill it off in one second
“Multiple professions of the same type on the team can’t share a utility”.
I’ll kill it off in 10 minutes
“Reduce the gap between professions”.

But really FoTm isn’t an issue, it’s complete fine that there are trends. It’s unrealistic to assume nothing ever gets popular.
The only thing that sucks is this gap between professions that seemingly is non-existant among upper 50 players…or so some say.

How many thieves can chill in melee with Signet of Malice. Given it only rewards successful proactive decisions?

HoT skills should be frankly garbage without toughness/ healing power investment. That base is too high atm. I wouldnt even say 200 was to low the scaling was at the time healing Signet wasnt used.

The game should focus on counter plays not specs. Introducing something just to keep War in check just makes it mandatory unless you want to be caught with your pants down.

Running S/P pistol whip early last year and the bloody eles with their stability and stun breaks I couldn’t get any kitten PW damage. Inf strike was shrugged off and black powder was ignored. Legit had to bail if I saw an ele and didn’t have a teammate for numbers advantage, auto attack damage got healed off while I took steady damage if I stayed engaged. The 100 nade engis and 100b wars were far more fun to bully.

Valentin.2073:

Hamish.1384:

Valentin.2073:

pls stop saying that spirit ranger is an AI build. spirits do not attack players. spirits are just like moving signets. it takes more than auto-attacking to play this build well.

Well, not really. If said Spirit Ranger is using SB then they its just passive auto attack spamming with the occasional 2 and 4 button press. So, no not much skill. If said Spirit Ranger is all melee, then yeah a little more skill and timing involved with the built in evades through many of the melee attacks.

Of course, in the end, just about all Spirit Rangers are maximizing defense and condi damage, which, in the end, is passive damage, so, apply condi and kite…again, no skill.

Regardless, that’s the meta we play in.

a ranger needs to flank to stack bleed that’s why rangers tend to evade a lot when you’re fighting them 1v1. flanking takes skill and it takes time to master it.

The flanking requirements are so generous of is harder not to cause bleed then it is to do so

Atherakhia.4086:

Someone on the WvW forums came up with a really great idea to breath new life into this game. If they could introduce a new sPvP map based off MOBA games like Smite did, you’d probably have a ton of people giving it a shot.

Guild/Player housing is also high on the list of wants for a game like this.

I don’t know how GW2 would be as strong a Moba as Smite given the absolute lack of skill shots. The inability to customize yourself in battle as per normal moba’s, and that any customization done is permanent (the whole can’t switch weapon sets in combat, not to mention complete inability to redo traits in combat). The customization options that would be available anyways pretty much fall apart as well given the heavy amount of weak traits, runesets, sigils, weapon sets and even amulets. The lack of information that can occur even in 1v1, 1v2 and 2v2 situations (forget about a team fight). If GW2 was able to make a successful moba format within a year given the multiple issues it needs to resolve right now, I’d be amazed and would offer my praise.

I mean sure GvG/Foefire and Mobas have the same “kill the npc at their base” requirement, but in terms of the Moba style, GW2 seems completely distance from it.

Signet of Malice – Reduced active base heal by 50%. Your next attack will steal 50% damage dealt as health. Application is removed upon miss. Increased cooldown to 25 seconds from 15.

I disagree with this. Now shortening cus somehow i went over the 5001 limit.
To be frank the suggestion is balls.
Let’s look at it.
Signet of Malices passive rewards successful hit frequency. The more hits you get, the faster you get them, the more you heal. Unlike healing signet this heal can and will be denied by block, stun, daze, evade/dodge roll, kiting, and blind. Which means ideally as a thief you’re doing everything right by getting your passive to proc and your opponent isn’t avoiding significant amounts of damage if you’re able to continually proc your passive.
Now the active your proposing is scaling on hit frequency. Let’s look at this on a base level.
3275 is the base heal. Lets cut it in half
1637, maybe 1638 i can’t recall if GW2 rounds up.
So 1638 is our base heal for the active… Your opponent dodge rolls, you’ve healed 1638 health for your active heal. Guess it doesn’t matter if you’re poisoned since reducing nothing by 33% will stil lgive you nothing.
The thing with this active
1) It’s subject to evade,blind, dodge, block, CC (as you wont hit), kiting.

2) Weakness, Protection, Endure pain, and “Protect Me” all reduce your heal even if you do connect. 50% of 0 is well 0. Any of the two power negation skills properly timed will mean a good laugh. Weakness gets a nice RNG proc suddenly what heal. This also creates a reliance on critical hits for stable healing of a 1 hit active.
3) The passive of SoM has application to various levels with every weapon set except D/P which has nothing notable outside of the auto-attack chain. Given that everyone has 2 weapon sets, a thief will technically always have a weapon set with some sort of synergy with SoM’s passive. Not bad at all. This is not true for your proposed active. Lets break it down
1638 is the base heal on your suggestion. Lets say you are bursted and only have 2 k health left. Normally at 0 healing power you get 3275 health back and are now at 5.2k health. Let’s think of some normal numbers. So for your suggestion we’d be at 3.6k + 50% of damage dealt
S/D: 4-5k crit Larcenous strike. 50% of that = 2-2.5k health = 5.6k, 6k. For the grand total of an extra ~800 health if you successfully retaliate on your opponent with Larcenous strike. It must be larcenous strike (or crippling strike) anything else heals less. Any miss = inferior. If you dont crit, inferior. If weakness, inferior, protection up? inferior. The fact that you have to stay in fight and specifically land larcenous strike to get a comparable heal? Inferior. Inf strike will heal less

S/P: Nothing here hits harder than larcenous strike in a single hit bar crippling strike. Not practical at all, Active sucks here

P/P: Nothing here will heal for anything remotely relevant. Garbage

P/D: Nothing here will heal for anything remotely relevant.Garbage

Shortbow: Only an undetonated crit clusterbomb… no way in hell is this relevant. After being bursted no one is going to cast the 1s cast time signet, then fire off an undetonated cluster bomb, likely in a point-blank situation since you’re trying to heal immediately (otherwise you’d just hit the passive). Not that I did math on it. undetonated CB is what ~3k/2.7k? 1.6k + ~1.5k for 3.1k on a squish target? Lol nope

D/D: Heartseeker and Backstab.
D/P: HS, Shadow shot, Backstab. Well the bottom line is that you need to do 3.2k+ in a single hit damage to draw even with this heal regardless of weapon set at 0 healing power. To get healing power you have to lower your damage bar Hidden Killer Valkyrie backstabs. In reality the active demands Power+ Crit builds, and only D/D and D/P have any sort of notable healing from it. Where as the heal is the same atm for everyone, and the passive is design wise functioning for everyone but D/P.

If SoM has any big flaw to me. It’s that it’s passive isn’t toned to well Spvp. Outside of a zoo you often wont have the numbers or the clump to make Dagger storm some ridiculous heal. Generally you wont find 3 people who will just sit inside a Pistol whip to let you get a sizeable heal off of it. Unload does 8 hits, but its a channeled interruptible skill and so again the reality that successful hits only reward this heal make that counterable not that it matters since it’s not all that potent in reality especially given the refire rate of Vital shot. To that end it doesn’t really need to be some great pick in berzerkers, but it’s fairly mediocre even with healing power given all the faults. I would think it needs some kind of Spvp split from pve just to boost its healing power co-efficient to a more suitable level to promote something different.

Healing sig is strong as kitten.

A thief has to average 3 successful attacks a second for what the War gets rain or shine. Now I’m fine with assymetry signet of Malice has situations where it will outheal even Healing signet but the big thing is SoM is based on success. Blind Block evade kiting and cc all mean " you aren’t healing from that passive". Its fine that healing signet is an undeniable constant heal via the passive but it need not be so strong given that its constant and undeniable.
Sig of restoration is more reliable than SoM but it well isnt that great post-nerf. Frankly while I have no problem with a Heal over time beating out burst heals like withdraw, healing spring, and glyph of restoration. Its still a kitten lot of healing
Yeah 200 base sucked but nearly 400 is being a flipping pain in the kitten . If damage isnt ~ 400 you do no damage especially with other HoTs on the warrior such as regen and Adrenal healing. Something has to give as its definitely being a factor in the extreme requirement of damage required in gw2 as you need a lot to be relevant otherwise you seriously get shrugged off by something uninterruptible and unevadable unlike Signet of Malice.

So odd how it seems the bat of too strong just gets passed around instead of thrown out. I remember a breath moment of time where there was a vocal warrior is op group at launch though we know that was a l2p issue and thieves were more pressing. Then Ele mes and ranger then engi then necro and ranger and war. Tbh wouldn’t be surprised if at the end of January or in Feb there is an actual outcry on the strength of eles once again. Balance team has to get it a bit more in proportion.

Cast bars don’t register as an issue. Despite the unfamiliarity I sometimes feel when I log in.

With so few skill shots a lot of defense is put on available skills over positioning bar los. That’s fine because this is an MMO however Gw2 feels fairly extreme between offense and defense for a game where so much attacks are “guaranteed” with a target. Gw2 has quite the amount of invisible offenses as well via crit procs. The camera and I sometimes dont get along and there’s moments of time where you just twiddle your thumb on a node waiting for it to cap as your character stands on it as you watch the bar fill.

Run into two mesmers and while picking out the behaviours of a person are fine I have to tab/click through AI crap and hope none of the crap takes priority over what I actually want to select. Then deal with retargetting pains of stealth. When truthfully I wish the manual aim wasn’t balls so I could ignore most of this targeting crap from the get go and just put my arrow in his head.

When you want to try something and see your doing no damage through healing signet and there will never be that interrupt opportunity on the heal so you just straight have to throw in more and more damage on your profession of choice to stay relevant to a constant threat. Game of extremes.

Trying to predict instant abilities especially instant CC. Dont even know where cats bars become relevant to that.
Having to deal with node large aoes in this capture point format serving to frustrate. Spam dodge and I mean from more than thieves making the idea of punishment in general a crap shoot outside of CC given there is a sigil rune and traits to throw off any initial sense of depletion on that resource.

I’ve probably made a ton of run on sentences but when I think of gw2 and issues cast bars probably wouldn’t make a top 20 list. I wouldnt even call their absence an issue.

Mrbig.8019:

Hype.8032:

Jumper.9482:

Hype.8032:

However, before dec 10th it was widely viewed as underpowered and not worth using.

Actually it has been on-par with the S/D Acrobat since the Trickery changes were first introduced.
At the moment one on each team is practically required in group play for that incredibly overpowered/gamechanging 21s cooldown aegis+stab intterruption.

Calling d/p trickery required compared to say a bunker guardian in teams isn’t an equal comparison. But god forbid a thief having a role in a team right? I don’t see anything that makes that spec op, it wasn’t required before dec 10th and it wasn’t really buffed (you can argue it was but in my experience it’s roughly on par with before). The only reason why it’s considered required at all right now is because s/d was nerfed.

I’m not trying to be combative or insult you in any way, I’m just really surprised you think that spec is OP.

Point is it’s not really required.

There are plenty of teams running without thief in EU, but we know NA has always been another world.

Thief fills a nice niche, dunno why it should be nerfed even further (buffed maybe) and D/P trickery (which is not even the stronges trickery build) is a strong build, nothing more.

Mesmer can do the same with diversion-boon rip, with an average 30 secs CD ( with illusion invigoration) but with multiple dazes ( that, right now, are free mind wracks) but nobody complains ( i think it’s balanced).

Jumper, you’re talking about ripping stab stomps like a ridicolous overpowered mechanic, while in reality, stability stomps have ALREADY small counterplay.

We need more counterplay, i would argue to make stability ALWAYS first in boon rippings priority, even corrupt boon.

So people will finally start to learn to wait instead of spamming AoEs at first sight ( or corrupt boons as soon as you see MOAR BOONS)

Hmm I’ve been feeling this game would probably benefit long term by stability not being a boon same as quickness.

I wont pretend to be very knowledgeable on the subject.
However I’m not quite sure where Eles fit in, outside of a spike build.
Which is all well and good, but my opinion is that Elementalists aren’t really as flexible as they’re portrayed or as their mechanic would indicate.

I literally am dumbfounded at this notion that S/P doesn’t use headshot when it does it’s like saying P/P has no use for headshot when it does (not that it can really afford a damage dip)
Even further by this exaggeration of powder given its most frequent purpose on D/P.
Even further ignoring whats been real tea since forever Black powder sucks as a defensive skill.
This seriously comes into light when you look at S/P and P/P and hell ignore their duals. Black powder isn’t defensively suitably for that purpose given its cost. Not that it’s a weak skill by any stretch of the imagination but there is an explicit reason only 1 out of 3 sets sees more frequent use of it, and it’s not because of dual skills lol. It zones out melees, can’t stop range, and S/P vs D/P, while S/P can pistol whip the fault remains on D/P for themself walking into a 0.5s skill predictably (because thats exactly what is happening) when notable D/P can just watch the root occur and counter attack. Given S/P’s only defense in that circumstance afterwards is to dodge roll or utility skill given after the root finishes, you can just be smacked while shadow returning now.

Frankly my presumption is you’re looking at it at a D/P vs S/P standpoint (given the examples you have given), where frankly D/P has the advantage, especially given that S/P’s root is more pronounced with Shadow returns cast time. D/P’s do walk into Pistol whip, I’ve seen plenty of them do so, so I won’t say it doesn’t happen. However the reality is that fault is on them.

Jumper.9482:

Back many months (pre-haste nerf) when I dueled S/P against Caed, I would simply predict alot of his backstabs, turning around and catching him in a PistolWhip stun. If not, accidentally evading his backstab.

For warriors I’d just rather interrupt his eviscerate/shieldbash/etc with a Pistol Whip, evading anyone else who was hitting me that may have not been in powder range.

I’ve done it against every D/P I’ve faced. Why? Black powder isn’t a sufficient defense, it’s just reality. It’s not ground-targetted, you can’t plant it on anyone without putting yourself in melee range. Against a D/P thief, the can stealth at will while S/P has to utilize Headshot to try and counteract it, otherwise S/P is frankly put on the defensive, and the only tools that will actually aid you in that situation was shadow return and PW.

Headshot deals trash damage, which means it’s entire purpose is utility, utilizing headshot means a heavy dip in offense via Inf strike/PW, and putting more pressure on your auto attack.
It’s just real tea, S/P uses pistol whip, because Black Powder is a pbaoe defense that is frankly mediocre at that purpose hence out of S/P, D/P and P/P, D/P is the only one who gets its kitten reliably saved by that, and thats only because the leap finisher is stealth. If D/P didnt have a leap finisher, it would get the exact same usage out of Black powder as S/P and P/P I’d even say S/P utilizes it more since it’s in stomp range the majority of the time. Otherwise it is utility, excluding certain situations such as Stability bound foes or heavy/instantinterrupt situations where the initial vulnerability of PW just doesn’t justify using it over black powder. PW’s stun takes 0.5s to interrupt, it’s not a reliable interrupt in the same vein of headshot, and for clutch interrupts headshot is the go-to skill for all /P’s.

This skill now ignores aftercasts and cancels other skills in queue. Increased initiative cost by 2 to 6 from 4. Increased damage by 25%. Reduced bleed duration by a similar amount.

I support this. Some hypothetical kitten in my head that might disagree with this, but it sounds quite reasonable. a 6 ini cost means that degenerate useless weak spam that pops up every once in awhile isn’t even remotely appealing, but it becomes a more practical dodge, with the damage to justify it.

Some things like dancing dagger, don’t sound right to me, given you’ve mentioned nothing about its kitten velocity that is fairly relevant to its success, of which it has little atm.

Increased projectile speed/improved tracking. Increased base damage by 200% to 366 from 122.

On the low while I agree with fixing the problematic hitrate of scorpion wire, I think it should remove a boon instead of a damage increase.
The thief is pretty much the third strongest boon remover behind necro and Mesmer, but lacks any utility skills to do so cementing it into bountiful theft or Flanking strike. This just increases the premium on bountiful theft, and makes it even more desirable than it would be had it some form of competition. In addition to this both Trickster and Bountiful theft, compete for the major slot (unless someone sacrifices their GM), and by letting a Trick have half the boon removal of Bountiful theft, it will start to increase the pick-up rate of Trickster. Making the skill increase it’s own pick-up rate and utility at a base level, and increasing the frequency of a trait pick up.
tl;dr: Take same pressure off Larcenous and Bountiful by giving another alternative.

I agree with boosting traps, but their cooldowns are pretty much fine where they are.
The traps should “ideally” cause a significant moment of vulnerability, but they need not do so frequently.

And S/P isn’t a 1-button build, wot. It’s been for eons one of the most diverse in skill usage (when PW hasn’t been broke by anet) build of the thief, rivalling the shortbow and D/P. Simply because every skill is functional even if Inf strike isn’t as lovely as it once was.
P/P falls in more simplistic areas however given that it’s damage is lacking everywhere else, where S/X doesn’t have that issue given the strength of the auto-chain, and S/P’s lack of snares outside of Inf strike, giving headshot use as an interrupt since you are not always in range for PW’s. BP’s to stomp, and team support. Yeah not sure where that 1-button experience is coming from.

There’s some good stuff in here, going to say BP shouldn’t stun break.
Be nice if it was ground-targetted like its original implementation though, would be plenty of use for that vs Shadow refuge at it’s current CDR. Not saying I agree with everything else but these are what caught my eye initially.

Your options against boons are limited, trickery aids that.

Reading the forums I have noticed every thief who speaks is some kind of undeniable expert player at the game but at the same time they are only effective on the lowest class of players by their own admission, thus anyone with an issue is beneath them.

Chaith.8256:

ensoriki.5789:

This forum still believes condis just appear in thin air without an attack successfully landing?

You’re correct, obviously. But it’s understandable that people believe this considering the way that players get ganked by Necromancers from 900 range without any give-away as to their position while the victim panics and knee-jerk-reactionary dodge spams.

I understand the frustration or the guessing game to stay alive vs certain specs however its a sad affair that the misconceptions about how conditions work continued this far past launch.

This forum still believes condis just appear in thin air without an attack successfully landing?

To be honest I found chills worth outside of a snare hard to practically quantify. I dont really notice the impact of chilled enemies CDR. Even when not playing thief I dont recall it being that noticeable. I’ve felt weakness more threatening.

I have not played recently but popping out of lurk mode.
Mez stealth builds have always been annoying with various levels of failure and success.
Stealth in gw2 isnt paired off that well as I see it, partially because GW2 still is tied significantly to tab-target gameplay of traditional MMOs for all its fluidity.
Not everything is a skill shot and several skills straight do not function without a target. The manual targeting is understandably poor.

Stealth + teleports gives zero indication of positioning and puts a heavy emphasis on defenders who have limited proactive options they can take due to the workings of the game. Mix in invuln its a headache. Not really something to give a kitten about when its not played but the gameplay really strips an individual in most cases of their momentum they would have used to finish this. I recall a couple. Mezs I know running condi specs and very the past two months and even myself farther back. Its a somewhat lame clusterkitten of defenses.

Fortunately it loses power amongst aoe/cleave the battles so be wary of node assaulting a mesmer and it shouldn’t be so bad.

What game is balanced?
You don’t need perfect balance, the ideal is to have balance close enough that human error allows for variance in results.

1.Do you find Gw2’s Combat interesting to play?

Fairly, sometimes I’m like “wtf is this” when I see that a Healing signet + regen, will out HPS the DPS of trick shot while poisoned.

Also do you find the combat interesting to watch? Why or why not?
Im not much of a spectator in general. But I rather sit in a corner facing a wall for 10 minutes and meditate than watch GW2.

Should just change it to a passive 20/25% reduction to Stun, daze, Fear. With the next CC giving you swiftness on a 30s ICD.
Would be far more reliable.

I know what you mean, Im saying the situation you paint is possible atm but clunky. That would be less so if it split. However doing the same scenario post-split is less damage within the same timeframe. Yes you could fit all your whips in, however post-patch PW actually does land most of its hits, so it’s really split it to guarantee all damage. Especially given the ease of preventing Swap vs dodging an Inf strike.
Even then it wouldn’t be the same since (in the same setting of S/D) arbitrarily throw out FS/Stun to Inf Larcenous/Flurry which is the more common occurrence then trying to dodge an attack (given S/D’s track record post-split).

But I find the S/P kit feels weird due to a mentioned change, and I don’t feel a split will make it more appealing for myself, especially with what has occurred. So after playing today I think I’ll return Smite or play Elementalist until something is done for Shadow return as I find PW as a skill in a good spot but the set is too easily forced into relying on stun breaks to stay in “the fray” that they said they wanted sword to be in.
Til next month.

New heal is a good addition to the repertoire of the thief.
Vigor isn’t the main selling point of Bountiful theft, and it’s loss is not that large.
Ini changes are for the better, builds without ini traits are stronger for it. Which means they’re making headway in their diversity goal.
I have not tried it with S/D since I became pretty much Perma S/P in January but shadow return breaks the flow of the set a lot right now. To the point I’m starting to rather it just not be on the set anymore until they do their tweaks. I doubt S/D feels as fluid as well. It’s pretty easy to predict thief vulnerability and unfortunately hard to catch’s design doesn’t actually make it fit the role you would take it for…which is situations such as this.
Venoms gained more flexibility and I think they did well with this new skill to broadening that aspect of thief play.

I’d say the thief has been put into a decent transitional period, where frankly it feels incomplete, but they’ve put ground work in this patch to put the thief in a more polished and ….wholesome(?) direction than before.

You essentially already do this in S/P with Headshot. The kit is not Pistol whip alone.
If a mesmer channels a phantasm for instance, you headshot it, inf strike, PW, this is cohesive. At melee range you can already do the same but you aren’t going to cancel PW to Inf strike, because that just straight out does less damage in the same time frame than just letting PW complete itself when a mesmer can’t damage you anyways because you are evading.
With Shadow return normally (well prior to today) doubling as your second advantage to avoid damage, if the stun, flurry, headshot and BP were insufficient.
S/P really didn’t have defensive problems in the slightest prior to shadow return having a cast time and abilities flowed together.

Not to disagree that a split has advantages. They can do what they want, I’m not going to lose sleep over Anets designs decisions.

Basilisk Venom works given the more bursty oriented aspects of thief play where it gives you time to cement in damage. Coupled with a low cool down time the skill is extremely functional. For PvE? Eh not so much, elsewhere it is fine.

I find it good because it’s not as “elite” as other elite skills, it being more like an ordinary utility slot only makes it more practical than “every 3 minute” elite skills which are not available the majority of the time, where as Basilisk venom is often used.

Pistol whip is working just fine to me, don’t see need of a split in relation to that. The damage flows better than before making the skill feel a lot more like one entity than two.
However, Shadow return feels off and that bleeds into the kits flow.

Whether it will be an esport or not shouldn’t be an immediate concern.

Eh seems like a gw1 route.
The skills we’ve had up to now are “Core”.
Everything a beyond is additional. To this extent it creates a type of horizontal progression for new (and some old) pvp players to strive for, as they’ll be able to get a couple of new abilities for themself. However the Core skills are all fine of their own accord, so you are still competitive without the current 25, at least for current meta.

If the game is based on team play which it is, this is not intrinsically an issue, as your team is able to resolve the requirements to allow a necro to do damage to an ele. In the same vein that you “dont focus the tank” in other team games, a Necro wouldn’t focus an Ele with Diamond skin knowing that it takes them long to do meaningful damage as long as they’re >90%

I don’t think it was the best way implement some condition defense but it’s not criminal.

Seems like the heal sucks.
My hands were behind my back and I used my tongue instead, in cleric amulet, S/P tryingcan’t dodge for kitten shadow return.

Thief heal is good.

Was considering it with my S/P.

Interesting choice. For the intention of Venoms it’s not too shabby. Yhr ability to heal an ally for 5k shouldn’t be bad at all. If anything under certain conditions its one of the top heals in the game. However it is conditional.

Now if they want to improve thief support this is fine its not shabby at all however Venoms by them self are displeasing. They’re akin to banners, spirits, conjures in being team based but unlike the rest they aren’t inherently team based until traited.
You could say Auras are the same way bit Auras are weapon skills not utilities.

Venoms may not even be so displeasing if not for the precedent to have every one of them on a kitten CD.

This helps the venom support build to an extent however venoms at a base level remain very weak outside of dev and basilisk for the CC.
I don’t doubt the skill is useful but only in a specific setting.

Ultimately I think to bring venoms in a better light, venom share has to be restricted to share “less”. Eg it shares 3 stacks of spider , 2 of ice drake, 1 of dev, 1 of basilisk, 3 of skelk and 2 of skale and start dropping cool down times on a base level.

Color code the profession icons, and have them go white when your teammates Elite has been utilized. If they refilled their color in tune with the elites recharge, even better.
Small thing, might help some people.

Would probably improve gameplay to make dodge more accountable.
You can mentally count skill cooldowns if you wish, and adjust for CDR, but Dodge can be very inconsistent due to vigor popping in and out as well as traits/runes/sigils on top, not to mention wild strike 10 endurance gain.
It wouldn’t hurt the games depth to make it visible.

/ghosting

I found Bountiful theft a god send when I ran trickery S/P many eons ago.
For my perspective, Bountiful theft isn’t really about stealing boons, that is flavor. What it’s really about is counterplay to the absurdity of boon duration/spam professions can put out, giving you a window of vulnerability that you can capitalize on.

How many Guardians I used to see pop Stability and because of Bountiful theft I could Haste+ PW them regardless for the kill which otherwise I would have been denied. Elementalists hiding in Armor of earth back when they were one of the top dogs, and I could tell them to go to hell in a hand basket.
It’s a phenomenal trait (if only due to scarcity) that is already a strong choice if you want to go in Trickery.

Tired of these Rifle Sword/Axe Wars.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

ensoriki.5789:

A lot of stuff they could play with but what Einlizers(?) been suggesting would be the easiest.

I agree that it would be the easiest but it doesn’t solve the problem, his suggestion is just a “band-aid” solution.

P/P and D/D needs surgery, not bandage.

It’s not really a bandaid.
Think an ADC in a moba, or well most “ranger” archetypes (like even our rangers shortbow) in typical mmos, or even FPS games with abilities where your “auto-attack” is the greatest long-term source of damage. It’s putting it into that sphere.
The other option is to keep the auto attack meagre to put emphasis on the abilities but at the moment the abilities I would say still don’t flow that well to make it meet that goal and it’s hard to do it right given we use a global resource.
Ergo ~ Increase the auto-attack to go towards a certain design (which is valid and not a bandaid), or increase other abilities towards another (which is also valid but would quite likely take longer).

I think either way they’d have to look at a couple skills again even if they did increase the auto-attack but P/P would feel the improvement faster if they started there.

Meh I feel it should have the cast time and reduced infiltration buff but usable while stunned…srs.
…with a damage increase.

The ways in which I see most sets designed as
a) Auto attack based – Significant damage is put on the auto attack and your skills are utility to support that (See ranger Shortbow)

b) “Caster” based – the auto attack itself isn’t very significant, your other skills however are, which means insteady of the steady damage output of an auto attack based weapon set, you have a more “burst” oriented weapon

c) “Support” based – The auto attack may or may not be powerful, but the skills are really about utility/auxillary purposes such as the Elementalist Ice bow or guardian staff.

There’s possibly a lot more ways to categorize sets but that’s a quick outlook. Imo P/P right now plays more on the caster side. If you look at D/x sets while the auto attack is strong, in some sections of the game it’s really not about the auto attack, in others the auto attack is a bit more important. P/P’s auto attack is crap, so you’d think it a “caster” but that’s pretty wonky to do with the initiative system, given the global resource restriction. Only way a “caster” P/P works given the initiative system is for the skills to have significant utility to incentivize their use instead of players funneling into one option. I don’t think they’ve achieved this yet. Granted many thief sets in general funnel, and we’ve seen this over time 5-2-1 play, 5-1 play, 333333 play on multiple sets, 2222 on multiple sets. They may eventually get thief exactly where they want it.

Back to P/P… the support given isn’t all that impressive at all as a whole given the kit, so players still find themself funneling into unload though to a lessened degree to before.

So really you could a) go with what Einlaizer(?) has been proposing for eons, and bring it to a more auto-attack emphasized set. Or you have to well make the kit more supportive. That’s going to be “tough” to do given how the weapon sets work in this game. Einlizers request is probably the easiest route for them to do given their weapon system.

They could have experimented with ini costs, higher damage on unload but 6 ini, 2 ini on a body shot with that 5s vuln on 10 stacks.
Possibly change the whole mechanic and make it unique or something like Body shot or unload put a mark on a target which makes them take additional effects from other skills eg. “Target hit by unload is marked, body shot immobilizes a marked target and removes the mark, headshot dazes for 50% longer, black powder, grants aegis” some crap like that.
A lot of stuff they could play with but what Einlizers(?) been suggesting would be the easiest.

Thief will probably be in a rough patch for December. No idea for how long though. I thought it would take them 3 months to remember PE but it’s taken them half of that. So Anet can be full of surprises.