Guild Wars 2

Daecollo.9578:

ensoriki.5789:

It would be useful because it’s an upfront burst of damage.
I don’t see the point in making suggestions.
Unless Sundering strikes is improved, Mug will be kept (or should be) somewhat proportional to it at an upfront burst vs the increase over time that is Sundering Strikes.

Change Mug to do less then half its current damage.

Mug
Damage: 202
10 Vulnerability: 10 s
Knockdown: 2 s

You’re a funny poster.

1. You can cancel PW.
2. You can run while the Pistol animation is starting, you can no longer run while whipping.
3. If you are wary of the evade frames they will not punish you
4. You can in pw. 1. Press left or right, this will cancel. 2. press dodge.

It would be useful because it’s an upfront burst of damage.
I don’t see the point in making suggestions.
Unless Sundering strikes is improved, Mug will be kept (or should be) somewhat proportional to it at an upfront burst vs the increase over time that is Sundering Strikes.

Being launched into the air 3 storeys is funny, until you take fall damage.
Lucky me I was at full health or it would’ve been insta-defeated.
That is not cool.

Not quite, because if you use HiS after a backstab you have reveal on you regardless.

If your using HiS after you flee, than you have 3s of untargetted time to maneuver and remove yourself from the equation. Once those mobility buffs come in this should be be better, even if they don’t it’s honestly easy enough with Shadowstep/IA/inf strike+ Shadow return.

The significance is really if you use HiS mid battle and then plan to follow immediately after with Cnd+Steal. In which case it’ll flop If you backstab however during the HiS and use it’s stealth offensively, then again no change.

It diminishes the ability to use stealth back-to-back at whim, and puts it into a temporary strategic decision.

Im very glad they acknowledged some thief sets have trash mobility (P/P).

RedSpectrum.1975:

Sebrent.3625:

Without getting to play with it, the change from this basically just means that every time someone stealths, you know there will be a 3 second window in which they cannot stealth.

Those fighting a thief should plan to use the first 2 seconds for damage and maybe CC the 3rd sec to keep the thief unstealthed longer.

Those fighting as a thief should plan to use dodge rolls, interrupts, etc. during those 3 seconds.

As I said before, it could be good, but it could also not be enough or be too much of a nerf. It also affects Mesmers.

Sebrent I understand that mesmers will be affected, don’t get me wrong, but thieves get hit much harder since stealthing in a lot of builds is like our bread and butter.

It’s extremely marginal.
Just played a few games. This will not be significant.

Anyone who thinks we’ll be useless come next month, has lost their mind.

daydream.2938:

Karls overview of the classes has been done. In future sotg it need not be repeated. IT can be left at that.

I agree with this. At best if they want to reiterate they can do it in patch notes detailing why they made decisions that they did. Doesn’t really need to be in sotg specifically.

MakeitNeil.4561:

It is really annoying when the pistol phantasm, the berserker, the shatters, the necros chains, the ranger’s chains, and the Thif pistol chains hit me in stealth. When I’m on my mesmer and thief, it feels like I am always getting hit by chains in stealth. Not only is hitting people in stealth unrealistic, IT IS AN ANNOYING BUG AND I’M NOT THE ONLY ONE COMPLAINING! Especially for mesmers and thieves, this bug is annoying. We have no armor and when we are still hit in our refuge state (stealth) it ticks us off. GW2 needs to fix this bug. Chains do enough damage already. Stealthing during a chain should INTERRUPT them.

-Durzo Blint

Durzo blint…funny.

Getting hit by an aoe (shatter) ain’t no bug lol.
Only one annoying here is duelist since it fires off that 7k shot every 4-6s like kitten.

You have to copy & paste the link into your address bar.

milo.6942:

re: your points
1) yes. energy is a secondary resource that skills can alter. it adds depth to play.
2) the problem i’m addressing is one of pacing and matchups. gw2 skills are balanced with long cool downs, elites in particular. in order to justify calling a skill “elite”, it must be powerful. if it is powerful, it must be balanced. the only way to balance a powerful skill is to make its recharge high. if this were gw1, we could also balance the skill with higher energy costs, but lower cool downs (e.g. searing flames).

This is not true.
Skills also based on animation (cast) times. You see this with Meteor Storm in gw1 and GW2, and mantras.
Some elites are actually fairly weak but are strengthened by the protection of a boon (Dagger storm) and being strippable is part of their weakness.
If I strip dagger storm than interrupt a thief, his elite is finished.
So elites also balanced by strategies. For instance I can strip stability off tornado and interrupt.

Skills (in gw1) were sometimes also balanced with punitive qualities (blood cost), and some gw2 skills carry this attribute.
Then there is balancing based on range.
There are plenty of ways to do things without energy.

Thieves guild and Summon Elemental elites for instance can be killed prematurely ending their significance.

wish.3102:

ensoriki.5789:

Dasorine.1964:

So much for the “we wont be nerfing professions again”

A lot of this is going to not only cripple some thieves in pvp but many pve thieves.

Also the lack of stacking stealth makes shadow refuge useless, sure fixing being able to stack it via spamming attacks through a smoke fields maybe worthwhile doing, but stealth doesn’t last that long regardless and the majority of times of letting stealth fade and going back into it is for escape rather than assault in both pve and pvp.

If these changes go through without a LOT of discussion and some boost or things given back to us then I’ve lost all faith in ANET and their dirty dirty lies.

Watch the interview.
Hear when they say they want thieves to be better in team fights and think we are too weak in that department.
Hear where they say we could probably remove more boons.
Hear where they say our mobility should be better and Eles are doing our job.

Buffs are coming our way, they’re just reducing the cheese.

Ya, and those changes won’t be in this update. So THF is officially craptier.

K see you later brah.

Gamblit.5041:

Zog.3954:

Don’t forget they are going to bump our mobility as well. So if you need to get away, you will be able to when any one of those pop (we already can for the most part)

Stop spreading lies. They said “Looking to increase mobility for sets other than the shortbow”. LOOKING INTO IT. Do you understand what that means?

Also i find it rather disappointing that they didn’t mention anything about our AOE. No shortbow? No aoe.

" Sets other then shortbow"? What does it means?
Daggers have Heartseeker 450 range.
Sword have Infiltrator’s Strike 600 range.
Pistol – only weapon with out any ranged mobility skills.

Are they going to increase range on Daggers and Swords mobility skills ( why?), or add something to Pistols?

Or they may start by making Acrobatics a more significant trait-line for one.

to the above you. The sword hits 3 people minimum with auto-attack-inf strike, Pistol whip/Flanking strike, Dancing daggers hits what 5 people max? Black Powder affects 5 people as well.
You have melee multi-target and range multi target. Melee single target and range single-target…

They explained part of the reason Thief has such high damage was to power through boons. However they feel it’s possible to give them boon removal so they can deconstruct defenses, but in return they don’t need such high damage.

Whoa stealth on flanking strike?
I should’ve read the full topic.
kitten that kitten, no kittening way will i put up with that kittening bullkitten on my motherkittening S/P I will kitten up the town if that kitten happens to my kitten

They can double banner stats if they want but if “~” still puts your weapon swap into cooldown It’s indefinitely a set-and-forget.

180 toughness and Vit surely isn’t weak, but meh.

It doesn’t matter to me either way, but I think they’re fine the way they are.
S/P has a lot of upfront CC, and S/D has less but requires a bit more finesse.

Well since they are now guaranteed offensive measures if a thief remains in proximity for 3s. Can we get the channelled attacks off our kitten

RedSpectrum.1975:

ensoriki.5789:

It’s only a nerf if you sit your kitten spamming Cloak and Dagger.
If you’re actually playing the game you’ll rarely notice it.

No, you’ll still notice it. Im a patient thief, if I know a backstab isn’t worth it or I can’t get a good angle, I’ll wait it out, now I can’t do that.

Thought I just said that.
If you’re hitting CnD as soon as you come out of stealth you’ll feel it, otherwise it’ll be marginal.

AlietteFaye.7316:

Why is it that the devs feel the need to nerf and do away with 100nades, but not all of the other classes that can just as quickly/easily kill people in as many button presses? What exactly made 100nades any more powerful than the other classes doing the same things?

Sure, it could potentially hit more than 1 person. But there’s no way to keep more than 1 standing still with 100nades, so that’s not exactly a reason.

With the Thieves doing 2-shot backstabs it was a “l2p”. But no, not with Engineer. That’s broken and OP. I don’t get it.

Because they have a vision for the engineer, and 100 nades is far from it.

It’s only a nerf if you sit your kitten spamming Cloak and Dagger.
If you’re actually playing the game you’ll rarely notice it.

Dasorine.1964:

ensoriki.5789:

This is fixing it?
Combo fields are not just for the thief. If a warrior savage leaps through your field towards an enemy and gets stealthed. That is Supposed to happen. It’s part of Cross-Profession-Combo’s. You’re suggesting a breaking down of team-based mechanics for an individual problem. So you’re suggesting a Cool down on CnD upon success? That discredits it from the initiative system for weapons the profession is based on.
This makes actual sense as a fix instead of arbitrarily putting limitations on skills themselves and without discrediting the Smoke Field. You get, 3 or 4s of Stealth as a “break” from your enemies. At which point it’s fight or flight. Make a choice and take initiative (pun intended).

A warrior jumping through smoke field getting stealth yes, if he turns around and jumps through it again it counts as an attack so instead of stacking it he gets revealed.

The CnD fix is the harder one, cooldown probably wouldn’t be the way to go, but maybe on use it could give a debuff that prevents it doing any damage a second time, so you COULD CnD spam, you just wouldn’t acheive anything beyond being invisible and being invisible while not actually elminating anyone means your not just useless but more vulnerable.

These where just examples of ways to fix problems without blanket nerfing things

So you blanket nerf /D builds.
Or you nerf the smoke combo field, despite any other combo field in the game letting you leap in it twice. Many professions have 2 or more leaps and making team mates capable of (further) complicating your stealth by misplaced fields.

You’re not avoiding anything, you’re picking and choosing.

This change here structures the defense and what its roll is. Which is a temporary breather from targetting and AI.

They get to rangers…and spend 1 minute talking about how pets in fractals will benefit from your agony resistance…and how great sword needs a buff.
WHAT ABOUT SPIRITS
WHAT ABOUT LONG BOW
WHAT ABOUT OFFHAND AXE
WHAT ABOUT PET PATHING
WHAT ABOUT PET ABILITY DELAY
WHAT ABOUT THAT kitten SB NERF THAT WAS A “GRAPHIC FIX”

They said Longbow needs work.
Karl said he feels rangers need better utilities to protect them.

I swear people don’t listen at flippin all.

Daecollo.9578:

D/P thieves don’t really do damage…

Better tell all those thieves in Pvp they’re not doing damage.
Lol’d hard.

Dasorine.1964:

what pve encounters can be cheesed with CnD spam exactly? open world mobs around the place? most people can and do just run past them anyway, bosses? well your not really going to acheive much if you spend all your time stealthed, dungeon mob skipping? doesn’t help if your the only one that gets by.

Specifically in combat. You can easily atm just chain a mobs health if it gets cumbersome at any point as basically a “I goof’d” result, which was nonsensical even if not very effective.

Granted this is true for all changes but this would currently be just a straight up nerf to a profession rather than fixing unintended side effects, something they’ve claimed a fair few times they wouldn’t do.

It isn’t without context however, as again through the video they say favorable changes they want to give the thief.

I mean I wouldn’t even mind if it WAS just fixing the main “problem” area’s, such as preventing combo field abuse (have it so comboing counts as an attack thus revealing you) or overly spammy use of cloak and dagger (find some way to prevent cloak and dagger being used imiediately after stealth ends naturally for instance or remove all/most damage from it so the thief isn’t actually acomplishing anything) its the fact that its a blanket nerf to combinations that were not that strong for the cost or other stuff.

This is fixing it?
Combo fields are not just for the thief. If a warrior savage leaps through your field towards an enemy and gets stealthed. That is Supposed to happen. It’s part of Cross-Profession-Combo’s. You’re suggesting a breaking down of team-based mechanics for an individual problem. So you’re suggesting a Cool down on CnD upon success? That discredits it from the initiative system for weapons the profession is based on.
This makes actual sense as a fix instead of arbitrarily putting limitations on skills themselves and without discrediting the Smoke Field. You get, 3 or 4s of Stealth as a “break” from your enemies. At which point it’s fight or flight. Make a choice and take initiative (pun intended).

It by and large does not affect most builds or anything outside of silly play and legitimizes the system by meaning without using utility/stolen skills or combo fields. A thief is visible as much as they are invisible except in the case of 15 in Shadow arts. This let’s mobs be properly offensive against thieves and for players to form succesful attacks.

-Arenas are also a separation of players by skill because they are fair fights and rating can prove one’s skill over another.

.
While GW2 is certainly more balanced than it’s predecessor in terms of a 1v1 fight.
It still remains that fights are not exactly “fair” or concrete of skill. Build and circumstance plays a lot of significance.

The bold really isn’t that likely.

Dasorine.1964:

ensoriki.5789:

Dasorine.1964:

So much for the “we wont be nerfing professions again”

A lot of this is going to not only cripple some thieves in pvp but many pve thieves.

Also the lack of stacking stealth makes shadow refuge useless, sure fixing being able to stack it via spamming attacks through a smoke fields maybe worthwhile doing, but stealth doesn’t last that long regardless and the majority of times of letting stealth fade and going back into it is for escape rather than assault in both pve and pvp.

If these changes go through without a LOT of discussion and some boost or things given back to us then I’ve lost all faith in ANET and their dirty dirty lies.

Watch the interview.
Hear when they say they want thieves to be better in team fights and think we are too weak in that department.
Hear where they say we could probably remove more boons.
Hear where they say our mobility should be better and Eles are doing our job.

Buffs are coming our way, they’re just reducing the cheese.

Problem is this is another case of game developers thinking forum pvpers know everything and that everything in the game revolves around PvP and they think of doing changes without actually thinking about ALL the aspects of the games this will effect including things as simple as the actual skills being destroyed.

Um no it’s not?
They specifically said (if you watch the video…) that the reason certain changes haven’t been made is specifically because of the other areas of the game. Aoe nerf they wanted to do? They have to consider the other aspects of the game.

Stealth causing reveal? Smart for the entire game. It causes a lot of cheese for PvE as well. Has been straight out harassing World vs World on absolutely insane levels mixed with the culling they had, and is cheesey in spvp as well, especially for new players.
Right now you can go in pve, and chain CnD to marginalize a significant amount of PvE encounters especially as a result of the blind on stealth trait. Essentially making certain monsters largely shutdown by simplistic thief CnD spam. It’s good for the whole of the game. This is more problematic for when you say enter stealth to get some cooldowns up and then try to use Hide in Shadows or a Blinding Tuft you just stole and have to wait a moment to get the full effect of HIS or just decide you cannot wait and need to heal now regardless of reveal. This again is just reinforcing the role of stealth. Be in it, make a decision, to reposition or to fight back, and then move on. Only reason it sucks really is because of that previous patch that affected “Hate” in pve (which also affected Ranger pets), which means abusing stealth on them isn’t a tremendous strategy.

Sure I can see some things were a bit silly with stealth (aforementioned stacking stealth through combo fields which wasn’t exactly intended I daresay) but in general in pvp it was fine, even a little underpowered, in pvp it just took a bit of thought and learning (as it should, you shouldn’t be able to pop in to pvp and expect to never have to learn anything)

However again.
1.) They want to increase the Thief’s staying power in fights.
2) It’s large effects are basically CnD chaining indefinitely and flopped D/P assaults. Which were cheesey and in the later case far too relaxed. The former was incredibly silly as you could CnD at 4s as soon as it wore off you were back in stealth and visible for literally less than a half second if done right. Nobody in their right mind could react to it. So it was up to guess work, or NPC’s (turrets/phantasm’s) to give any concrete punitive measures for a thief otherwise just cheese harassing. Being able to do so wasn’t good for the game and you know it brah.

Lordrosicky.5813:

Ulalume.9584:

That’s what I took away from it:

-nothing is being done to increase the pvp population until the “core game is solid” whenever that may be.
-leaderboards will not distinguish between solo queuers (3v5) and premades. Basically, they track the win/loss ratio which means solo queuers = bottom feeders. This might kill what’s left of the population.

Thanks for asking good questions, guys. I wish there had been a polite way to interrupt Karl whenever he tried to explain the classes or other basic stuff. First rule of public speaking: know your audience.

The leaderboards are going to be a joke like QPs. O so your top of the leaderboard? Great! That means you just are super selective and always play with your guild on ts. Whereas those of us who solo or duo q alot (I do and I know alot do) will have bad ratings.

End result = leaderboard is a joke.

Yup.
Thing is I don’t understand the pt of solo que ratings, outside of matchmaking. Your team is randomly selected and the results are basically up in the air, so your rating is practically RNG based.

Is a team leaderboard going to be guild based, or are guilds going to continue to be a relatively ‘removed’ aspect of the game.

Dasorine.1964:

So much for the “we wont be nerfing professions again”

A lot of this is going to not only cripple some thieves in pvp but many pve thieves.

Also the lack of stacking stealth makes shadow refuge useless, sure fixing being able to stack it via spamming attacks through a smoke fields maybe worthwhile doing, but stealth doesn’t last that long regardless and the majority of times of letting stealth fade and going back into it is for escape rather than assault in both pve and pvp.

If these changes go through without a LOT of discussion and some boost or things given back to us then I’ve lost all faith in ANET and their dirty dirty lies.

Watch the interview.
Hear when they say they want thieves to be better in team fights and think we are too weak in that department.
Hear where they say we could probably remove more boons.
Hear where they say our mobility should be better and Eles are doing our job.

Buffs are coming our way, they’re just reducing the cheese.

Daecollo.9578:

Destroying the two classes only builds with one change, great suggestions. Now nobody will have a reason to roll thief and we can all make Guardians/Eles/Mesmers.

You are hilarious. Dudes say they want us to have better mobility than we currently have, we should be better with boon removal, and should be able to fight for longer without being forced to flee. Lol’d hard.

Sifu.6527:

I watched the entire video and paid close attention to the discussion on thief.

It sounds like the Dev, and in particular Karl, really don’t know what a thief really does nor have any real plans to tune them. He sounds like he was beating around the bush just to pass time to move on to the next class.

He said “Infil Strike gives thief massive distance mobility.” I don’t consider 600 range “massive” distance. Maybe he was referring to Shadow Return but how can a Dev that is in charge of class balancing mix the two skills? Nor did he mention that Shadow Return is buggy and is only reliable on a flat/horizontal surface. I’m not too comfortable with him in charge…

Shadow return is a chain skill of Infil strike, it’s really not necessary for him to mention Shadow return as it’s a packaged deal. With inf strike you are very mobile hell that’s the point of it. It’s like Aura of Displacement. You basically have free range of movement to scout/needle at things while removing yourself from the equation at whim. No one would’ve said AoD isn’t massive mobility, all of a sudden inf strike isn’t? Inf strike + Steal is moving 1500 units, and being able to go back 1500 units. That is huge zoning potential that can go even further with supporting utilities.
It’s like saying Ranger’s have lots of distance with Hornet’s sting. Monarch’s leap is part of the deal.

it’s shadowsteps in general (buggy), certain terrain just makes them go dumb and flop because they can’t figure out pathing.

Doesn’t change anything for me at all playing S/P except for very rare situations or CB + BP combo’s (which are rarely used). No biggie.
Will be lame for my S/D who trolled with it ocassionally but it makes sense, should be done. Healthy for the game.

As long as they give us some PVE buffs in the process, I’d be ok with the change. Stacking or chaining stealth is a cheesy tactic.

We’ll be getting better mobility, better boon removal, and generally more ability to stay in a fight.

Darnis.4056:

Todays SOTG was the best SOTG ever.
Thanks for coming back and talking to the players…

Seconded but Karl should be more clear and concise.

Darnis.4056:

Everybody saying mesmers getting buffed, I guess your ears closed when they said “Oh and we’re nerfing shatter into the ground”

Seems like it.
Every time they mention they want to increase build diversity people seem to rage “oh they don’t need more buffs” as if a profession is supposed to stay with lackluster options forever.

Balance changes sound mostly good (some sounded nuts).
If things are in testing that’s more reassuring than they’re usual “It’s in the works” so hopefully we see it soon. Progress still seems like it’s coming far too slow.

It was pretty well done on your side of things.
I think devs need to be more concise, and…well clear.
Balance comes up every Sotg, but it felt very improv on what was going on, be nice if they were pressured (or maybe they are) to just generally fire off “here’s the deal”.
Every month balance stuff happens, they should pretty much know at this point what is getting in, where they’re taking it and be able to deliver it concisely and with at least 70% clarity.

brunohstein.9038:

I lost the part about thieves.

Will we see any changes in this profession?

Reveal automatically activates on stealth ending, not just on attack. May or may not apply to Mesmer Stealth.
High damage was there because of a lack of boon removal. May see greater increase in boon removal to tone their damage down. They feel Mug is far too strong.
Looking to increase mobility for sets other than the shortbow. Feel Ele competes too well with Thief’s mobility.
Something about getting burning on thematically.

More boon removal, Less stealth, more mobility – GW1 assassin moar.
Do it, and I’ll throw 50$ in gems your way, maybe 60$. Will put food in your mouth.
Sounded good.

I know you guys don’t read the thief forums.

15 in DA, basically traits Shortbow to become Perma weakness.
It doesn’t have to specifically say “Shortbow” to have shortbow synergy.
Just as Combo skills may not say Sword but they do work well with S/P and P/P.

A ranger with a jaguar spamming crossfire will do more damage than a Shortbow thief single-target. Crossfire hits nearly twice in a second, and puts up 2 bleeds in that same time.But first you have to find a Ranger with a jaguar and somehow make that viable in a bezerker set.

Daecollo.9578:

ensoriki.5789:

Malices strength is in hit volume. It’s meh on an individual level, however the thing is unlike Withdraw and HIS, it gets stronger the more foes you hit.
Meaning Pistol whip goes from 900, to 1700, to 2500 health per hit assuming the 100 heal per hit. Healing 300 health per sword swing. In contrast against two foes even balled up, Unload only heals 800. Trick shot hitting 300 per health from range (no ini involved) is also very significant. Vs Vital shots 1.
The usage with caltrops and Dagger storm is well known.

But it should be rather clear at this time, Signet of Malice, is a heal for groups.
It really shouldn’t be holding it’s own in a 1v1 sense, Unless you’re traiting it to give you effects in line with your build/game plan. It’s strength is being the best Heal out of the three in situations where you’re hitting more than one person at a time.

In that respect it is plenty strong already. A mixture of Caltrops + PW for instance, will heal someone plenty if 3 enemies are hit. In exchange for 1v1 fashion you can trait it to give you 5s of might, 2 ini on use, and 12s RC which will give it marginally better performance when you need a burst heal. If you hit 3 enemies with Pistol whip, you’ll of hit 25 times out of that 56. Another PW is 50, 6 more hits for 56.
You can literally atm, do that under Haste in about 3/4s. In 3/4’s Malice can outperform HiS (30s rc) in raw healing, and still be active to do even more.
Without haste that will take you what, 10s? To punk out HiS? With 20 more seconds in your favor?

It relies way too much on RNG and how stupid your opponent is, and they won’t improve the heal amount without improving how much it heals for or putting a GCD on it.

Yes, if you have the perfect perfect world where everyone stands still and your not dieing it can heal for a lot. In that perfect world however only exists a few places and most of them are just farming areas for content you don’t even need it for.

In PVP, such situations are rare if not impossible to find. In PvE if your fighting a boss you would still only benefit from one target.

There is no RNG involved.
You hit, you heal. You hit two people, you heal twice. Everything is fixed and dependant on you’re own observation skills and positioning.
There is zero aspect of RNG involved in the efficiency of Malice unless you are using Ricochet for some unknown unholy reason.

It’s not about perfect world. I run HiS and rarely, Withdraw. It is incredibly common to cleave 2 or even three enemies with the auto attack or pistol whip. Not unusual at all to hit two people with inf strike. A WvW Zerg? Childs play. What you seem to forget is that it’s not just players as well. Hitting a ranger and their pet simultaneously? Extremely common. Hitting multiple illusions and/or Mesmer? Common. Engineer’s dropping supply kit, and you hit the turret, and the engi? Common.

It is not uncommon in any way to hit more than two people, especially in pvp where the main objective is to confine yourself to a circle which is a prime target for multi-hit skills to begin with.

WvW? Ever taken a supply base and you can’t hit two or three people? Especially if it’s being defended? There are tons of bodies going around, and SoM scales up instead of being static.

Fighting Jormag’s claw? Why take Withdraw, when there is so much to Trick shot, PW, and Daggerstorm? Bleed,burning and poison aren’t present, and the stealth doesn’t help vs a roar. You’re pretty much better of when fighting adds with Malice.
Same with Temple of Grenth.

There’s a reason those lol bleed thieves try to use Malice, Caltrops procs are quite efficient for what they are trying to do.

It’s nothing about “perfect world” it’s just reality, that Malice has it’s uses that it does well.

The thing with Malice to think about. If you get 56 hits in, you beat out HiS in raw healing basically, not counting for the signet boost that if used every 30s after 56, make’s the advantage fairly clear. If you’re goal is to do no more than 10-20 hits (burst) than Malice serves little purpose unless you trait it. In which case Malice can temp boost power and regenerate more Ini than any of the other heals ( 2-6 every 13s).
In the case you hit more, than Malice is the strongest heal right out, bug lack of Condt removal can counter it.

I look at your change and all I see is the removal of it’s specialty to fixed performance.
Malice has a niche, that is the reality. Like I said before hit 3 foes with PW, and follow with 2 chains of your auto to beat HiS. If you have caltrops up while you do so, you can easily beat out what HIS or Withdraw can do in 30s, in 10.

Difference between Necro heal?
I can kill the blood fiend in 2 seconds, it’ll never get an attack in and if he doesn’t kill it himself? He won’t get a heal from it either. His entire heal can get blown apart by a stray AOE, hilarious.

Malices strength is in hit volume. It’s meh on an individual level, however the thing is unlike Withdraw and HIS, it gets stronger the more foes you hit.
Meaning Pistol whip goes from 900, to 1700, to 2500 health per hit assuming the 100 heal per hit. Healing 300 health per sword swing. In contrast against two foes even balled up, Unload only heals 800. Trick shot hitting 300 per health from range (no ini involved) is also very significant. Vs Vital shots 1.
The usage with caltrops and Dagger storm is well known.

But it should be rather clear at this time, Signet of Malice, is a heal for groups.
It really shouldn’t be holding it’s own in a 1v1 sense, Unless you’re traiting it to give you effects in line with your build/game plan. It’s strength is being the best Heal out of the three in situations where you’re hitting more than one person at a time.

In that respect it is plenty strong already. A mixture of Caltrops + PW for instance, will heal someone plenty if 3 enemies are hit. In exchange for 1v1 fashion you can trait it to give you 5s of might, 2 ini on use, and 12s RC which will give it marginally better performance when you need a burst heal.

Are we ever going to see this year maps with more or less than 3 capture points?

Mrbig.8019:

If a thief shadowsteps away, a single shadowshot will kill him, as long as the burst crit, ( no point in using HS) unless he shadowsteps in Z axis ( in that case, GG you uberrobot).

Flaw is after shadowstep he can dodge, preventing the shot from warping, HiS and if you try to follow with your SS, he’s free to generally warp back before you finish pursuit.
There is also the delay before the actual hit of Shadowshot, which you can warp inbetween and since HiS doesn’t get canceled, it isn’t untypical for the burst to fail to conjure a kill.

You don’t have any changes you make for Spirit Watch Caed or you just decided to roll the exact same?

Note subject is in World vs World.
This thread will be ignored until March 26th, after significant changes have been made that may or may not affect your gameplay.
Have fun hombre.

Might play WvW again.
Lol’d hard after I killed a thief who fired off Sneak attack followed by two unloads and couldn’t see him for the whole lot.

Not much dif from venom share, do not count :o.
Stealthless Traps are where it’s at hombre.

Evan Lesh.3295:

I looked into this and have updated character select to work with PvP equipment and town clothes. Whether it goes into this month’s patch is questionable.

Surprised how I am always hearing you get things done.
They should double your salary, cus I don’t know what anyone else does.

They limit because they suck.
The precision on Signet?
Trash level once you reach level 80.

MrForz.1953:

SilverWF.4789:

Ha-ha, so like you:
Thieves using Assasin’s Signet? > Prepare a defensive move.
Thieves using (Any) Venom? > Prepare a defensive move.
Thieves rising their right arm? > Prepare a defensive move.

Yeah, it’s easy – easy like your cases, really ^^

Noone’s dumb enough to use Assassin’s Signet, and you have 30s to apply the Basilisk Venom giving you plenty of room to check for an engage. And… Tell me how you’re actually seeing a Steal coming like all the other cases I mentioned, this one coming from a decent Thief is only predictable… 50% of the time? Due to its instant cast nature? Don’t tell me I’m actually teaching you how to play one, baddie.

Um Assassin’s Signet is one of the staples for D/P thieves to burst you with.
The other options generally being Haste, blinding powder and Signet of Shadows with Ambush trap sometimes thrown into the mix. Wot are you talking about Willis?
To be honest, you’ll generally know from their weapon, and I’m quite serious about this. Thieves will rarely steal with the bow unless it’s specifically to finish someone off or their desperate, they don’t get the most mileage out of doing otherwise (generally).
So what you’ll often see is if they’re using a bow, they aren’t using Steal, it’s a matter of efficiency.
They’ll switch to daggers for instance and then Steal+HS, or Steal+ CnD, or Steal+ whatever because
1.) A fair amount get a bonus on dmg for you being conditioned and steal applies it
2.) It closes a gap which they’ll want done for their melee weapon.
3.) Can cause a nice spike in tandem with whatever melee skill they are using whether HS or CnD, or Pistol whip or Flanking strike or even Shadow strike.
D/P applies blind but blind is quickly removed so they can’t depend on it for their 10% dmg increase if they are running it. So what will they pop? Steal to maximize their damage. The need of efficiency generally reveals when Steal will be popped.
This is not in any way to say that Steal itself is some skill you see and dodge, it is not. It’s one that’s essentially developed it’s own meta-patterns that lead to it being predictable or able to adapt immediately to (stun breaks). Which is why it is not uncommon to dodge a Steal because how it is generally used. For instance if they peg you with a bow the whole time, and once you hit 50% switch to Dagger? It’s HS + Steal coming your way to insta remove you from 50% to dead. 99% of the time unless they are not aware of being able to do this. Dagger thieves on a general level of pvp, don’t have the capabilities to continually pop in and out of immediate danger range, presuming you have Melee attacks or aoe, so they want to end things quickly because they don’t handle drawn out conflicts (in that set) exceedingly well while having large killing power. So steal pops basically when the daggers are out. If they hit dat dere invisibility from range (say HiS/Blinding Powder/HS+BP) Steal is a common follow up.
It’s smart to pick up on trends, at least I would think so. I don’t know the name of any Necromancer weapon skills other than Life Siphon and Spinal Shivers, don’t need too, just pick up on trends. Mesmer stuff can be hard to dodge, but there are general trends which pretty much they all do without inconsistency. “Blurred frenzy the second something looks scary”.
It’s almost laughable. Shoot I myself have my own pattern, that can be picked up and predicted assuming you can stop it regardless. Forcing me to shift.

you can fix that from your traits and armors, if you decide to go for full glas cannon you can output high dps. If you go for tanky build you will backstab for 4 k and survive other’s bursts

On a level if burst goes down, so does possible damage output in a tankier spec.

Best advice is still ele forums tho.
Would say go D/D bunker or S/D bunker, but shoot you can do almost whatever you want if the goal is HJ or WvW.

FxyO.8243:

as soon as you see quickness buff just use elixir s. your instinct should be to dodge whenever a thief is on you anyways, so you have plenty of time.

all every bad player does is roll zerk thief use quickness and spam HSS.

I love when Engineers and Ele’s do this.
It’s like Christmas for me, since we have a trait that gives 2s of Quickness on critical.
They see Quickness, use Elixer S or Mistform, while I have Haste sitting on my bar primed and ready, and since you blew your real defense on that lil 2s quickness.
Be prepared to be smashed in by Auto’s/Pistolwhips or in this case, Heartseekers.

What you can do is if you have toolit. Gear Shield will straight laugh at the idea of a hasted Heartseeker, Unload, Pistol whip, FS (so long as the unblockable section isn’t enough to kill you).
If you’re running 100 nades, when they’re hs spamming, perfect time to go inside and just insta kill them straight up. Pretty sure it is doable in Elixir S form as well. So don’t goof it up.

Eg if it was me I’d pop shield in response to quickened animations, elixir S only if there just wasn’t enough time to do anything but.
Between Gear shield, Elixir S, and whatever else you may be running at the time. P/Sh for instance. You should be able to eliminate threat of HS being spammed at ya.
Other skills? Smoke vent can remove the damage of one HS, dodging will remove at least another if it’s being spammed, 6 ini removed, on a quickness level you’ll probably of removed 3 from the equation, so 9. If you can muster another dodge, you’re generally safe from that.

Oh and Slick shoes will knock them down. Stopping it in it’s tracks.

Yes it is generally speaking, for better or worse.
It is not Thief exclusive though we are certainly good at doing so.
You’re build may be your biggest issue atm, or a lack of team support to protect you.
I suggest heading to the ele forums and seeing what they recommend you play in PvP at least to get a good handle of what you’re doing in pvp.
Joining a pvp oriented guild may also be of value to you, don’t be discouraged.