Guild Wars 2

While you’re at it put 5v5 on top,

Obed.7629:

When I’m downed fighting visible players I have at most one chance to delay being finished (viz., by throwing a hammer), and the fact is that I’m already easy meat. Why make it completely trivial by allowing the thief to remain invisible while finishing?

There are multiple ways for all professions to disregard your hammer and kill you regardless. Mesmers can also stealth and perform the same feat. Thieves with a pistol can use Black Powder and the blind will make your hammer miss. Anyone with blind technically can make your hammer miss, such as Elementalists with Signet of air.
Also the various stability professions have.

If your efforts in down mode being reduced to nothing is what’s your issue here, everyone can do it to you whether that is a good thing or not. Every profession outside of the Elementalist runs into there downed mode being moot.

Eventually is fine, but there are more pressing concerns. Obviously UW can’t stay in its current state forever that in itself would look bad.

Edit: Can’t tell if working. Thought I moved faster, then realized I wasn’t wtf.

lightning combo fields just got more important.

Yinn.6507:

Build wars incoming. Allow weapon swaps only when all weapon skills are not under any cool-downs. No issues with amulet swapping.

Bolded. Everyone can see this. Everyone’s going to be re-evaluating their team in order to make people mesh as a unit instead of individuals.

If anything worried that certain professions will again be kicked out further because of their ability to mesh into the team as a whole when sets are fixed.

If anything I think it hurts the casual player the most, not the teams with the highest communication. We’re in for more emphasis on build wars.
Teams will make it out fine from this, but individuals are going to feel pain when we can’t exactly cover our weaknesses to the same extent. At the same time at a learning level, it’s not like you can just adapt to getting smashed anymore.

“Incremental changes”. Reading, not even once.

Though like Split says there feature lists that are more concerning, but who knows if they’re specifically waiting on a big patch like this for them, or just when they’re ready.

I get the in-battle significance, but against say, the new ranger speeds, you won’t see much of a difference in battle outside of people in base speeds or with swiftness. The improved movement signets for instance, will keep things the same while you are in stealth(assuming they take it) as before, but outside of stealth landing attacks like CnD will actually be harder vs them. Of course for those at a base speed, it’s going to be great for our positioning.

How come Ink shot isn’t mentioned? For WvW, Capricorn hotjoin, and PvE, underwater escaping just got a lot easier.

They can increase reveal to 4 seconds in WvW only and the issue will diminish.
Outside of that it should reinforce the thief as a hit and runner. Hit, get the hell out and come back.

Im giving up falling damage for it.
So you could probably jump off a cliff and I can’t follow you :P.

Warrior longbow was underwelming, and the thief Stealth is a trait, competiting with several others. If anything other traits need to be as interesting.

That being said I thought there’d be another Stun breaker added. Oh well.
Gotta test this stuff out if the client wasn’t being stupid as all hell right now.

Ink shot speed change. Thank you perhaps I can finally use it to kittening escape lol. You could practically outswim the bullet.

Fleet Shadow…I wanted it removed, but this change is actually really interesting. I like what they did with it.
Pistol Mastery… eh these damage traits are still boring as all hell as I see it, but eh it might be just the push it needs, doubt it though. On the other hand full GC pistol damage will get more absurd.

Ricochet is still a bad choice as I see it, might as well delete if you’re not going to commit. They’re afraid of it apparently, why have it if it scares you?
Also like Escape, spreading the weakness underwater.

I like how they went to make improvisation less kitten If it applies to Ele conjure weapons it might be more interesting than It looks.

Whips, bring back Scythes. Boomerang.

I think the framework is fine. GW2 has strong bones as I see it, but the meat on the bones leaves something to be desired.
Weakness in skill/trait or even rune/jewels/sigil selection can make it feel like there is less depth but it’s just variety. Some of the uninteresting/garbage traits need to get removed.
I came from gw1 and I don’t mind the lack of skill selection, was playing other games too so it wasn’t like it was “new”. If gw1 was all someone had or other games like it then sure it might be underwhelming. Mind you in gw1, I felt kind of like I do right now, certain things fly and certain things didn’t. The limitations were supposed to make more things fly and it’s not happening right now.

Ensign.2189:

Tulisin.6945:

The catch here is that Body Shot technically has a place where the thief is running a heavily defensive/utility based build and the damage granted to the group via Vulnerability is actually better than the DPS the thief could otherwise bring to the table themselves.

Absolutely. Basically, for any given set of stats, there’s a critical party size – above that limit, you use Body Shot exclusively; below that limit, you use Unload exclusively.

There’s essentially no team composition where you use both Body Shot and Unload (technically, there’s a slight benefit to be gained right on the edge where you switch from Body Shot to Unload once your target is low enough, but the difference in output is small and the boundary hard enough to compute that it hardly matters).

In practice, Body Shot is ‘dump initiative into more normal damage’, and Unload is ‘dump initiative into more normal damage’, guaranteeing you’ll always have at least one dead skill on your bar.

Hence why I suggest just dumping the Vulnerability onto Unload and making a brand new skill for #2, preferably a blast finisher.

While I like the idea.
I don’t think putting some area stealth is P/P’s cure. Projectile block/reflection would be nice, even if like Infiltrator’s it was part of a chained deal.

GW2 has Conquest, Keg brawl (lol) and WvW (….) for pvp, and only Conquest is at the same “prestige” of gw1’s 4 formats, not that RA was exactly prestigious.

GW2 is missing some features that GW1 launched with, which is odd, but it’s probably from the pve focus they gave. Unfortunate to the pvp side of the game, but it’ll come and I think they’re putting greater emphasis now then they were pre-release.

Keitaro Dragonheart.9047:

stof.9341:

Short anwser : No.

Long answer :

Hell no.

Such a well thought out, in-depth response. Your argument is clearly solid.

But for the sake of argument, please elaborate. If you can.

1. Affects lower levels of play in that low-level players remain incompetent vs stealth. In higher levels of play, makes stealth weaker as a result of observant players who….generally have less of an issue with stealth already. So essentially the largest demographic of stealth complainers, will see no difference and continue to do so.
Yelling their discomfort both on the forums and in-game they’ll continue to perpetuate a train of thought against stealth regardless.
At worst it’s so obvious, that the defense need not exist to begin with.

2. Technically does nothing about the damage, that many people complain about. Again much of these complaints are from a certain demographic of players but again, does not aid then. In the context of a Backstab or other stealth attacks they leave the thief visible anyways so….

3. This is not an fps, though inspired, the design doesn’t make it as significant. I’d say partially from a map prospective, when obstructions on certain maps can just be destroyed, part of the benefit a cloak has in an fps, is reduced.

4. At the end of the day, stealth is not Invulnerability, aegis, protection, defy pain, or stability. Making it’s defensive quality shutdown by just being observant seems ridiculous for a class in the lowest health tier.

A solution for the newest/worst of players that arguably won’t do anything for them…because they are what they are won’t stop their complaints. It just makes better players take down thieves easier when they already compete.

To be the majority of thief complaints I see are either “I got one shot” or “I got finished in stealth”. Anyone observant has no issues with the first and if they’re observant enough for the first, than the partial-visibility won’t be much of a bother either. Vulnerable to both damage and CC stealth finishing is nothing to stress over either.

All this whining for a hat?
People calling it a slap in the face?
Amazed at the entitlement.

Truth be told like the BMP’s in GW1 this will probably come down the gemstore somewhere in the possibly distant future.
People who bought PS3’s at launch didn’t get a refund everytime there was a price drop lol. I guess Anet is takie to be such pushovers that you can harass them into anything.

I’d agree for IR disagree for HT.

Body shot now inflicts Blind.
VS made faster or direct damage increased.
Unload to 111 from 101.

Einlanzer.1627:

ensoriki.5789:

Einlanzer.1627:

ensoriki.5789:

Lol wut.
The only DoT on P/P is vital shot, outside of that, the only thing it benefits from is Power and condition duration. Sure you can include Sneak attack if you disregard P/P’s lack of stealth access.

The only power damage on P/P is Unload, and it sucks up large amounts of Initiative, therefore the damage is supposed to be supplemental to the primary source of damage, which is Vital Shot.

Think harder please.

Take your own advice.

Power and condition duration benefit P/P the most.
The bleeding on Vital shot gets stronger by just increasing it’s kittening duration.
Vital shot?
Body shot? What benefits it?
Power and condition duration?
Unload? Power.
Headshot? Power.
BP? Power and condition duration.
Vital shot? Power, Condition damage, and condition duration.

The split between direct dmg and bleeding damage keeps the Pistol flexible otherwise P/D would only deal condition damage with sneak attack. However as a whole P/P benefits mostly from Power, not condition dmg, straight and to the kittening point.

Pistols benefit from power and condition damage, but they are condition primary. Again, arguing that point is just goofy. Despite that, building around Vital Shot currently is folly, because it is weaker than it’s supposed to be. Therefore, building power and spamming Unload is the only viable way to play P/P, and that’s the entire problem with the set, and is obviously not working as intended.

Therefore, your argument is supporting my points, not countering them.

That is only true for VS and Sneak attack which again are not the only considerations in a P/P build, this shouldn’t have to be reiterated. Painting the Pistol as a hybrid weapon is significantly as generalizing as calling the dagger one. Check the significance of conditions on D/P….exactly.
Thus the lol. If Unload caused Bleeding or Sigil of Earth was improved, P/P would be more relevant to the Pistol as a whole leaning to conditions when the reality is only 1 skill on the bar does, and 2 if you count stealth which dual pistols cannot readily access!
Making Tulsin correctly in that Pistol is only as condition focused as you want it to be, but lettuce be real tea. P/P is a power set.

Einlanzer.1627:

ensoriki.5789:

Lol wut.
The only DoT on P/P is vital shot, outside of that, the only thing it benefits from is Power and condition duration. Sure you can include Sneak attack if you disregard P/P’s lack of stealth access.

The only power damage on P/P is Unload, and it sucks up large amounts of Initiative, therefore the damage is supposed to be supplemental to the primary source of damage, which is Vital Shot.

Think harder please.

Take your own advice.

Power and condition duration benefit P/P the most.
The bleeding on Vital shot gets stronger by just increasing it’s kittening duration.
Vital shot?
Body shot? What benefits it?
Power and condition duration?
Unload? Power.
Headshot? Power.
BP? Power and condition duration.
Vital shot? Power, Condition damage, and condition duration.

The split between direct dmg and bleeding damage keeps the Pistol flexible otherwise P/D would only deal condition damage with sneak attack. However as a whole P/P benefits mostly from Power, not condition dmg, straight and to the kittening point.
It is not to say that the condition dmg of Vital shot is insignificant to the success of the set, but straight up what P/P brings to the table as a set. If you’re building solely around Vital shot, you should be looking at P/D.
Plain and simple.

Lol wut.
The only DoT on P/P is vital shot, outside of that, the only thing it benefits from is Power and condition duration. Sure you can include Sneak attack if you disregard P/P’s lack of stealth access.

Wut D/D is fun as kitten to play.
Only Frost aura as far as anyone I’ve spoken to, is underwelming as all hell.

When I say Shadow Refuge is oddly powerful, I mean like IA in terms of it’s out of battle effects and moving around the map. In battle, IDGAF. Not that it rubs me the wrong way personally, since it’s saved my life, more times than I can count.

Air.6452:

Infiltrator arrow should be nerfed a bit, and this is coming from a dedicated thief. That skill is definitely not used the way it should be (Most people don’t realize this, but it has an AoE blind where you land). Most people use it to run away, and that’s not really fair. The range should be reduced to 500-600m and should cast at least 50% faster.

I agree with the velocity increases, Cluster Bomb goes so slow that I am pretty sure it is actually defying the laws of physics.

IA as an approach sucks and is niche. Initiative doesn’t grow on trees. As long as it can be used to traverse area, that’s what it’ll be primarily used for even if it was reduces to 500m. Mind you I think both IA and Refuge are oddly powerful but lettuce be real tea here.
Other then that as has been said the SB is the model weapon. Powerful, useful in Power, hybrid and Cond specs. Utility you don’t get on other weapons.

Stealth is countered by not letting them enter it….
D/P is the only one difficult to prevent individually.
Cnd is difficult if you roll with Illusions, pet,minions, turrets, npc thieves, elemental summons or rockdog, 5 of those 7 are optional.

I don’t dungeon or PvE to all that much and I run magic find gear (should change that), but when pugging it, found myself contributing quite a bit. Brb, Smoke screen eliminating projectiles and Black Powder eliminating melee. Reviving people in stealth free of aggro for them and myself. Bosses I felt less attractive but quite useful.

Only worry I had was how well I’d do in a more co-ordinated team were stealth is probably less useful, outside of that the stealth feels pretty good with /P and Shortbow in dungeons to me.

Watch BS and VS get buffed. Unload is plenty strong already.
Doubt any changes will be “interesting”.

2 body shots followed by unload is weaker than 2 unloads.

Eh don’t feel the need. Just spam my slow kitten Clusterbomb, worst case scenario im on an arrow cart, woe is me.
Dem carts don’t fire themselves.

JonPeters.5630:

We are looking into this. I actually think P/P has a lot of utility. Blind field, daze, vuln stacking. However damage is a bit low. We are making some headway here in the12/14 build so be patient for one more week.

Jon

If it’s just a damage buff I’d be disappointed tbh. Is that all P/P is going to be?
I started playing with P/P more, using Smokescreen, interesting stuff there to be sure.
Should improve P/P’s anti-range game with a better combo finisher proc on vital shot. With the improving of traits of course.
I don’t think body shot needs to be removed, weakness or poison would improve it. Ricochet activating would make it a lot better as well.
As it is, it is certainly not a clusterbomb, heartseeker or Infiltrator’s Strike.

Or Stealth could Ignore the basic auto attack, and this issue would cease to exist.
Auto-attacks aren’t stealth attacks and the two cannot occur at the same time, no reason for the auto-attack to break stealth just screws up traits.

Movement speed.
If I recall. 10% movement speed while wielding a sword or spear. Acrobatics major trait.

It’s pretty power based since there’s no CnD and the auto attack is meh. If BP was less costly and the auto attack was faster it would fair better.

We had a trait called Martial Agility. Increased your speed with a sword.
They deleted it and put in Assassins Reward.

Would take Martial Agility instead of Fleet of shadows (srs).

His FS isn’t special. FS isn’t as inaccurate as it appears to be when you factor in the immobilize from Inf-strike and the enemies own position or skills. Is it Perfect? No, it’s not however while the 2nd hit is definitely hard to hit, the 1st is reasonable enough to connect.

Heartseeker, 0.5s CD
DB 0.5s CD
DD 1s CD,
CnD 2s CD.

Perfect.

Seriously though? Damage has to go up and durability. Infiltrator’s Arrow has to do damage or something other than blind, same with CG.
To be blunt, a mass overhaul that would create more balance issues than anything and set the game back.

You know what lets me strip stability? Flanking strike.
Now you want to remove that?
No thanks.

snizzle.6143:

Hello Guys,

My question ist, why should the Thief have a diffrent system than all other classes ?

Because it’s the thief gimmick, like Attunements, Toolkits, Illusions and pets.
/Thread.

My Feedback:
1.Corrosive traps could/should be merged with Master Trapper in acrobatics. The separation isn’t needed.
2. Get rid of Improvisation
3. Get rid of Fleet of Shadows.
Initial Strikes felt like filler from day one.

If the guards went into aggro when their lord was attacked this issue would reduced,

Taldren.7523:

frans.8092:

PP doesn’t have stealth on the weaponset skills. Switching has a cooldown. I suppose you could run P/D + P/P but P/P only adds blind, Unload does little damage, has no bleed and costs a lot of initiative, which is subsequently not available for Cloak and Dagger.
At the end you say both players battled for 5 minutes and the match ended a draw. How is that bad or unbalanced in favour of the thief? Because he didn’t go down? It’s only balanced if the thief looses?

The “Sneak Attack -> Unload -> Stealth and Repeat” does not exist, switching to P/P for unloads means there’ll be no Cloak and Dagger for a while

1. Everyone else non-Thief was dead … so only a thief can survive a thief? Apply Darwin’s theory to its end result.
2. Sneak Attack + Unload fits in the 5-6 seconds between stealth and grants the most number of hits in that amount of time.
3. You use Cloak and Dagger in the stealth rotation in which the weapon swap cooldown is not a factor.
4. You don’t get how this build works … This is not a burst “your dead” build … its a “I can out survive up to 5 of you and kill you all because you can’t do a kitten thing about my sustainable damage output” build.
5. You also greatly under estimate blind … between blind and the constant stealthing most attacks the enemy throw not only miss, but are wasted and put on cooldown meaning that not only are you healing/losing all conditions with the stealth … you are also denying everyone abilities to damage you when they might actually be able to.

frans.8092:

Wait, you’re saying that to ensoriki?

Uh, yeah … saying you can’t swap weapons in combat is a “WTF” moment.

Do you even Context?
Im talking re-equipping, in the middle of combat.

Elementalists can do just fine from PE.
A thief can’t “out survive” 5 players, lettuce be cereal unless the culling was so bad that he just isn’t visible but in reality, especially a build like that, he only targets one person with non-burst damage, and there are 5 bodies of which to interrupt any of that. Not to mention switching from P/D to PP is 10s cd before using cnd again, and even if you time it so that
Cnd-Weapon swap -wait-Sneak attack -Unload, Stealth last 4s at most, and sneak attack ends at 1st hit, and puts reveal on him. So with reveal he can;t immediately restealth and because he switched to PP he’s extended his inability to stealth (unless he burns Blinding Powder or Shadow Refuge). You’ve got 6s, to Imm/stun/daze/kd/launch/pull/push and screw him up even further. Should not be hard for a group. Blinding him also makes landing the CnD harder. If 5 people die from one thief “out surviving” them, they’re bad.
You said you play thief so you should know your own limitations.

Oh does PP in the build stand for Partyparty? Lol. /sarcasm.
I’d ask you the same question, when you put P/P as if it matters for Stealth discussion.

Taldren.7523:

Tulisin.6945:

Taldren.7523:

Tulisin.6945:

Taldren.7523:

The Thief PP/PD build needs to be majorly toned down. They never spend more than 50% of the time out of stealth and every time they enter stealth they remove conditions and heal.

That seems…unlikely, considering that P/P doesn’t have organic stealth.

Ok … so I made a quick movie to prove exactly how wrong you are …

http://youtu.be/v9gjTEFOg0s

Wish all arguments were as easy to win.

That is D/D+D/P, not P/P+P/D. You literally got none of the weapon combos right.

Yes, because Unload in my combat log is a D/D ability.

And since I run a P/P + P/D build myself I know what it can and can not do thank you very much.

Who cares what’s in your log, watch your own video that you use as evidence
Edit: How did he weapon swap…while in combat? Lol wot. If he did that just discredits again your statement on PP.

Taldren.7523:

Tulisin.6945:

Taldren.7523:

The Thief PP/PD build needs to be majorly toned down. They never spend more than 50% of the time out of stealth and every time they enter stealth they remove conditions and heal.

That seems…unlikely, considering that P/P doesn’t have organic stealth.

Ok … so I made a quick movie to prove exactly how wrong you are …

http://youtu.be/v9gjTEFOg0s

Wish all arguments were as easy to win.

They would be if you noticed that it’s not P/P. Which was his point.

Tulsin there is a P/D thrown in there but again no PP which again spits on his counter argument.

On his point of stealth uptimes, that’s inherit to /D thieves who strike you in melee range, and you’d have to show the the stealth itself available to them is too much, not just give a % of it’s upkeep, lol worthy.

Lol @ thieves and people who don’t play thieves understating and overstating the profession. We can not take every trait at the same time. However we can take measures to increase survivalbility while keeping high damage in combination with the standard utility choices.
Might as well keep it real.
Hotjoin pvp is 9/10 not real life, people see me enter stealth and literally just freaking stand there. No intention of attacking or defending themselves, and then whine on shout about how broken thieves are when they do jack squat.
On the flip you see thieves who telegraph their every move BRB “Basilisk Venom is up” common sense tells me they lose it within 2 attacks, dodge 2 attacks and it’s gone. Worse comes to worst, Stun break and I’m out of there. Thieves have to deal with thieves too. Elementalists can pop up Shock Aura and disregard the would be spike unless the thief has stability and dagger storm is our only ability that grants it.

Bunker thieves aren’t real life, since stealth makes them pointless to begin with. If they escape so what? Capture your point. You know how much time a thief waste in a 0/0/30/30/10 build with Soldier ammy? Durable as all hell but can’t hold a point because of stealth, and doesn’t deal enough damage to kill anything before reinforcements come 7 times out of 10.

/P sets need some love, srs.

When a thief attacks to lose stealth there is a timer… It’s a buff called reveal that makes all stealth attempts fail until it reduces. Play a thief and you’ll realize that.
In WvW the culling is a problem, in Spvp/tpvp less so.

They could increase the duration of Reveal in WvW and solely WvW to account for the culling.

Traits are supposed to let us enhance specific areas of ourselves right?
There is an unfair emphasis on stealth
Heartseeker into Black Powder
Heartseeker into Smokescreen.
Cluster bomb into Black Powder (Clunky!)
Cluster bomb into Smoke screen (Clunky too!)
Cnd, Hide in Shadows, Blinding Powder, Shadow Refuge, Stealth on Steal, Stealth on downed, Stealth if you lose 20% health in one hit, Stealth when health hits 25%, stealth on fall damage, condition removal on stealth, increased initiative regen in stealth, 2 initiative gain on stealth, 33% movement in stealth, ally regeneration on stealth, special regeneration in stealth, 100% critical in stealth, stealth last 1s longer, gain might on stealth, special skills in stealth.

Am I missing anything? Possible, because the amount of emphasis on stealth is mind-boggling, not because it exists, because in comparison other things are ignored.
Blindness is not improved outside of Condition duration, and in all cases where it’s applied via traits…it’s with stealth. Outside of armor runes, our only source of swiftness is 2s of…dodge.

It seems odd that with blindness also being so prevalent, we can’t trait for it, especially when out of our two off-hands, one specializes in it and the other stealth. With our only two-handed weapon, it also provides blind.
Wasted opportunity as I see it, and more favoring of D/D to be blunt. Two skills provide it in fields, but the fields can’t be increased, we can’t making Choking gas larger, or BP, or Shadow Refuge, or Smoke screen, nor our traps. Interesting stuff to specialize in just isn’t there. There’s venoms, mind you venoms suck without traiting.
Traps suck period, blindness is an after-thought, Poison gets a duration increase at best…
Then the non-thieves are going to come in here about Stealth, like it’s emphasis isn’t a clear statement that we should be using it… a lot as far I feel for it.
I’d love to go hunting back to those early interviews when we were told not to sweat Stealth. I don’t care about the power of it, but the emphasis on it sucks because it feels like other aspects of us are neglected because of it.