Guild Wars 2

DoYourBestBear.6810:

Thief – initiative regen reduced to 0.8/second; build diversity requires a 1.1khp base increase at level 80

It’s been less than a month since regen was changed, seems odd to already suggest nerfing it. Also, do you envision the traits that were modified being changed back? If not, an extremely awful suggestion. 1.1k hp bump isn’t much without more survivability options, which you haven’t offered.

Skills
Cluster Bomb – damage reduced by 12.5%

I’m interested in the logic behind this – the travel speed prevents this skill from doing much in the way of damage unless your shotgunning point blank.

Shelk Venom – recharge reduced to 40 seconds

Still provably worse than Withdraw or HiS for anything not venom share.

Traits
Improvisation – changed description from bundle to possessing a stolen skill

The only good suggestion in the lot, but it would probably have an impact on WvW (asfik, not exactly a WvW expert)

Sleight of Hand – Internal cool down of 30 seconds

Seems awfully silly, since the other part of this 30 point trait reduced Steal CD to 21.5s. A 1 second daze already isn’t much for a 30 point trait, especially on a 21.5s cooldown.

You didn’t mention any of the Acro changes in the Dec 10th patch which aren’t doing anything to improve thief survivability (which was their specific intention). From your suggestions here, its my opinion that you’re not really qualified to better balance thief.

JETWING.2759:

The Good
- New Heal Skills (except Water Spirit and Signets, all them absurdly powerful)

Again, I’m curious, how is Skelk venom absurdly powerful? Outside of a single spec (venom share) its demonstrably worse than Withdraw and Hide in shadow in nearly every other realistic scenario. Even in a venom share build, you need great coordination to share the venom with enough people to make it worthwhile (and even then, it’s powerful thanks to 3 traits, not on its own)

- Some traits (….Sundering Strikes; Practiced Tolerance; Signet Use; Critical Haste; Opportunist; Infusion of Shadow; Vigorous Recovery; Quick Recovery; Assassin’s Reward; Kleptomaniac; Bountiful Theft)

How was the change to Assassin’s Reward good? Like I pointed out, its 1 additional healing per init spent for every 100 healing power you have. That’s not a buff, that’s a rounding error. The same for Quick Recovery – a trait that used to boost Init recovery by 25% now boosts init recovery by 10% – that change makes sense due to new init regen speed, but the fact that nothing was added to a master tier trait makes it weak, bland, and not worth slotting.

This is the problem with players opinions – there’s no qualifications to have an opinion. I just don’t see how someone who has any knowledge of Thief can say the Assassin’s Reward “buff” was something good.

Big Tower.5423:

Offhand sword first.

I’d prefer the weapons we already have access to be well designed first and foremost.
P/P is a joke
D/D is mostly inferior to D/P and still has a condition based skill smack dab in the middle of 4 power/crit skills
S/P’s dual skill needs more than a band-aid
S/D needs 5 skills worth using rather than 2 and a half.

D/P and Shbow are the only well designed weapon sets thief currently has access to.

rjinx.1378:

Shadow Arts 10 point trait Shadow Protector provides a higher healing yield for 100% less effort only requiring you to stealth once every 10 seconds vs Assassin’s reward which would require you to burn all initiative as you get it.

This intent of giving higher survivability to builds without stealth is a good idea, with a very poor execution basing it around a trait all thieves have hated (Hard to Catch) and moving a Good Master trait Assassin’s Reward to a Grand Master slot.

Want to fix this? Move Assassin’s Reward back to 20 point master trait or buff the starting healing 20 points per initiative.
Assassin’s Reward vs Regen boon (regen boon wins)
Assassin’s Reward vs Warrior 15 minor Adrenal Health (Adrenal Health wins, AT HALF THE TRAIT POINTS)

I agree with you on most points, but to be fair, AR does have one advantage over heals like AH and Regen – you have the option to spend init for a “burst” heal if you absolutely need it. I’m not claiming that makes AR good, but it’s only fair to recognize its strengths as well.

Fortus.6175:

The Good

-Thieves got some nice buffs, been seeing them more lately, specially in ranked. Initiative buff does incredible things although most people dont really notice that much.

I’m curious, what buffs do you believe thief got in the patch? What ranked viable specs are you running which the Init change made possible/more powerful/more versatile?

The only real change I’ve seen is 10/30/0/30/0 doesn’t need (or want) to run quick recovery anymore because its a very lackluster master trait now.

Just now, 4 separate times in a single 10 minute game, I watched my heal (an instant cast) skill light up (acknowledging that I hit it), and not go off. Spamming the skill 5-6 times, waiting up to 3 seconds before it went off.

I experienced no other latency issues during the game- my ping is monitored and solidly resides between 50-90ms. This wasn’t an issue of split-second timing, where another players skill might have fired just before mine due to the natural latency between separate servers and clients. This was not an instance of after-casts, queued skills, or being stunned/dazed in any way (it failed to go off immediately after a shadowstep) This was just 1-3 seconds of spamming my heal, and watching it wait to go off.

It’s never fun to lose, but its absolutely infuriating to lose because the skills you used at the right time don’t fire. This is not a new issue (though admittedly it was less severe in recent memory). What’s going on? How is this still an issue?

From the perspective of thief

The good

• The initiative changes lay the groundwork for better design in the future. The initiative changes potentially opened up new spec options that aren’t so reliant on either hitting extremely hard for every init spent or regenerating initiative rapidly. Unfortunately, at the moment, those spec options aren’t viable for other reasons. Once thief’s issues are addressed, this change will have more value.
• Perma-stealth via D/P is dead. Finally.

The bad

• Sword #2 changes – adding a cast time didn’t just prevent escaping stuns/facilitating stomps with the expenditure of 5 initiative and an additional utility. It also completely gutted any skilled play options sword MH offered. I still disagree that sword #2 had to be changed, but even if it had to be done this is absolutely the worst way to implement the change. Having Sword #2 remain instant cast but be disabled when stunned/stomping would have achieved the same goal and not lowered the skill cap on the build to non-existant.
• Vigor changes – Anet designed a class that relies on 2 things for survival – stealth and evasion. Thieves do not have in class access to protection or stability (Daggerstorm’s stability is to ensure a 90s CD elite isn’t canceled by a .25s daze), has no immune skills or blocks, has poor condition removal, and has no traits that offer damage reduction. The one defensive boon they had decent access to was vigor. Vigor uptime was reduced with no survivability buffs to compensate
• Survivability buffs in acrobatics – Hard to catch is not a trait anyone wants to slot. Players expressed this opinion the second the change was announced, and it was pushed through anyway. Losing control of your placement at the control of another player has more in common with a CC effect than it does with a positive trait intended to increase survivability. The assassin’s reward changes are mathematically insignificant. Firstly, Healing power is not a stat many thieves have room for in their builds. Second, even if they did, the actual change worked out to 1 additional HP healed per init spent per 100 healing power – that is a mathematically insignificant amount of additional healing, it certainly didn’t warrant bumping AR up to GM tier, and can’t be called a buff.
• Skelk venom – There are very few positives this heal has in comparison to Withdraw and Hide in Shadows. It’s comparatively inferior in most situations, unless you’re running venom share. It shouldn’t take 4-5 traits and 60 points to make a heal worthwhile. It should be strong on its own (Like Withdraw or Hide in Shadows), with certain trait selections that strengthen it. This is mostly due to the issues with how venoms are designed, and the existence of venomous aura – but that is nothing new, players have known venomous aura is the reason venoms are so poorly designed in the first place for a long time now.

The Missing

• With the initiative changes, initiative based traits were understandably modified. It makes sense that the traits should now generate less initiative. What doesn’t make sense is that’s where Anet stopped. The traits should have had other positive effects added to them to keep them interesting, worth using, and help differentiate thief specs. Opportunist and Kleptomaniac are now bland, underwhelming traits – minor additional beneficial effects would have helped the traits keep their power level and ability to help define specs in place – instead, they’re just worse traits now. Quick recovery is complete garbage – a trait that used to help regenerate init 25% faster now helps init regenerate 10% faster, with no additional changes, which is very poor for a Master level trait. At least you can avoid slotting Quick recovery.
• Survivability buffs – With the Acrobatics changes useless for increasing survivability, thief received nothing but survivability nerfs in the patch with the vigor changes. On top of that, our new heal does nothing to address thief’s awful access to condition removal. Post 10th, Thief is a much less survivable class with almost no buffs in recompense.
• Dialogue – When the preview went up, many opinions were thrown about. While there was a small amount of discussion, it felt token and sparse. It would be nice if each class had a dedicated employee who plays and is familiar with the class to discuss/weigh opinions/explain choices to the playerbase. Even if this person has to be a volunteer from the playerbase themselves, I’m sure one can be found.

Morinmeth.9823:

Just no.

I’m playing 7 out of the 8 classes of the game in PvP – the one I don’t play is ranger because I don’t like their current state. Been playing the game for about a year now and I have 2,8k hours in total. I’m not talking from a clueless person’s perspective, neither do I claim to be the best, I simply speak of facts the way they are.

The only advice I can offer is to spend more time with thief before you comment on it with such confidence.

You’re roaming in the forums crying about several stuff in pvp – in some you are right, in some you are wrong. The sword nerfs where too much maybe, but things are not as grim as you describe them. Thieves are perfectly viable if you don’t go the Heartseeker path. And the fact that you’re talking about tPvP viability when you didn’t even know that you can combo your animations makes me doubt a lot of the reasons you’re complaining.

My only posts in recent memory include Sword mh changes and acrobatics/vigor changes- mainly stuff about thief, the only class I feel experienced enough to make detailed arguments about. My opinions for the most part indepentently mirror those of top/experienced players, which leads me to believe they cant be too far off base. Please feel free to link any other recent posts, and qualify as to why they are “crying”. Furthermore, for someone so familiar with my post history, it seems odd you would mention HS at all – anyone who’s read my posts well enough to qualify them would know ive been exclusively sword MH since march. I’ve certainly explicitly mentioned it enough times.

The only reason I’m replying to you is because this is a thread to post some polite questions, not complain about stuff like that. Let’s keep this a positive and civilized thread, shall we?

I didn’t mean any disrespect – I wasn’t tryingto call you stupid, or any other derogatory term. My opinion that you lack the experience to accurately gauge thief is however unchanged. As you can see by Arg’s post in response to yours, he was referring to the ability of players to simply walk/Dodge out of the end of a pistol whip(due to the difference between stun duration/swing time that’s been present in the skill since launch) in his post – that was clear to me because I am familiar with the class. The fact that you referenced comboing PW with instant gap closers like steal/is/ss as if it were information that wasn’t over a year old (and as if those methods somehow prevented players from walking/dodging away from the last few swings of the skill) is what leads me to believe you don’t have the experience required to accurately comment on the class.

Morinmeth.9823:

Just lol. You can Steal/Shadowstep/do anything right as the pistol stun animation starts. That way, you always hit your stun on the enemy, plus steal, plus strikes. I don’t know what kind of thief you are, but you need to work on your skill timing.

Also, you can outplay warriors, since you have way more dodges than them. Retaliation is also a matter of awareness from the thief’s side.

Warrior is also a heavy armored class, which spells sustain. If they can’t sustain, they can do nothing. So no, I like that when I see a warrior, I immediatly have in my mind “oh, this guy is not gonna go down easily”. That’s how things should be. Maybe CC needs more nerfing, maybe damage needs more nerfing – but the sustain has to stay.

Honest question, because I am unaware. Do other classes have to deal with this level of misunderstanding, this much lack of knowledge and experience from other players who comment on their class?

Many, many players who have little idea of the reality of playing thief in competitive pvp seem perfectly comfortable insisting on how strong/viable things are, while the things they say make it abundantly clear how little real experience they have with the class. It doesn’t matter if it works in hot join, or if you have fun with it, all that really matters when we talk about pvp viability is tpvp viability, and in that realm thief is currently in serious trouble.

If you could discuss the issues laid out here, it would be much appreciated.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Survivability-via-Acrobatics/first#post3384144

Edit: Can you also discuss what impact our feedback has on potential changes? I feel as though a number of top thief player/theory crafters made a number of well reasoned, polite, constructive criticisms of the changes that went entirely ignored. The results are just as they predicted (thieves being very weak in the current meta/having very few effective spec options), and it feels as though they could have been avoided had Anet taken the time to dialogue with thief players concerning the changes/criticisms.

Interceptor.2653:

No, it’s not a matter of opinion – losing control and choice is always a negative thing.

… which itself is a matter of opinion. I guess that this is the basic problem of this thread, that you don’t acknowledge the possibility that your assertions could be incorrect. Just saying that something is an undebatable fact, does not make it so.

If you feel that losing control of your character at the whim of another player being a negative effect is a matter of opinion and not one of fact, we have nothing further to discuss on that point. I don’t feel you have the necessary understanding of MMO mechanics to contribute meaningfully to that discussion.

I mean, you admit that the loss of control is acceptable for CC skills because of their design, so why doesn’t it follow that HtC can do the same thing in exchange for a fairly hard to acquire effect?

Because that is their specific design – CC is supposed to be a negative effect enacted on another player, so that’s what it does. I already said that if HtC had a positive effect strong enough to outweigh the loss of control, the argument would be different. Regardless, losing control of your character is still an entirely negative effect, it would require other effects, specifically positive, to outweigh that negative effect – HtC clearly does not offer strong enough positive effects to do so.

Not running HtC was a perfectly valid defense prior to Dec 10th – every class has kittenty traits, nothing will ever be perfect, and no one is forcing thieves to take HtC. Since we’re specifically talking about the Dec 10th patch, where HtC was lauded as a survivability buff intended to allow thieves to continue to survive fights despite all the other nerfs, that line of reasoning no longer fits.

And here comes the hyperbole again. Lauded? Really? They just said “we are trying to improve the survivability of thieves in the Acrobatics line through easier access to the Hard to Catch trait and increased effectiveness of the Assassin’s Reward trait”. There is no high praise here, and in fact they worded it such that it sounds like this is literally an experiment to see if it improves the survivability of Acrobatics Thieves. They have access to all of the data that would support or refute such a thing, after all.

And that is the entire point of the original post – the effort was not successful, what are the plans to fix it. That was clearly pointed out in the last section of the original post.

And naturally, “despite all other nerfs” is phrasing entirely of your own construction. What they actually said, was that the intention was to “reward thieves who are actively engaged in the fight rather than those who are just dodging over and over again”. Which you’ll note is quite different from what you said.

I mean, seriously. Putting words in someone’s mouth, or making assumptions about their motives…

The vigor changes specifically target “thieves who dodge over and over again”. Their intention was to buff the survivability via acrobatics to reward players who are not constantly dodging. It follows that the acro buffs were intended to buffer the fact that thieves are now capable of dodging less often. Your interpretation of the post seems unnecessarily strict just to have a point to argue over.

why would anyone want to participate in a discussion under those conditions?

It appears as though you’re the only person in the thread who disagrees so completely. When you disagree with a few people, it’s probably just a difference of opinion. When you disagree with everyone, you might want to re-examine your position.

Interceptor.2653:

evilapprentice.6379:

Even if the end result has some positive attached to it(which is going to be rare), it’s not a good thing.

Seems like a matter of opinion, to me. HtC is not like Last Refuge; you can avoid it completely if you don’t like the implications of running it. Setting aside the various neutral/bad results, the one nice thing that it offers is a contingency that doesn’t require any reaction time. How many other traits offer something like this for a control effect?

Fine, lets turn this post into a discussion of just how specifically bad HtC is.

No, it’s not a matter of opinion – losing control and choice is always a negative thing. There might be a strong enough positive to outweigh it, but that doesn’t mean that specific effect is not negative. There is no scenario where someone else making the choice where your character is, at their whim and not yours, is anything but inherently negative – you are the player, you should always be making those choices except for when you’re disallowed by crowd control effects (since that is the point behind their design). Even if the choice made for you was technically better, it is a negative thing to take that choice away from you – you don’t have to agree, but it’s not an opinion, it’s a fact and can’t be debated.

Not running HtC was a perfectly valid defense prior to Dec 10th – every class has kittenty traits, nothing will ever be perfect, and no one is forcing thieves to take HtC. Since we’re specifically talking about the Dec 10th patch, where HtC was lauded as a survivability buff intended to allow thieves to continue to survive fights despite all the other nerfs, that line of reasoning no longer fits.

Interceptor.2653:

Arganthium.5638:

But that’s precisely the point. If the number of times that HtC comes up with bad results for thieves is far greater than the number of times it has good results, then are we really being “so breathless and hyperbolic about it”?

I’d say so (and in fact, I did), particularly since you asked me for a precise estimation of good/bad results but merely submitted “far greater” for your own, which is nearly unquantifiable. What does that even mean? I can come up with a hundred situations where HtC has a horrible end result, but I could do the same for good ones, too.

It’s hard to seem serious without acknowledging the good parts of HtC, however minor you may think that they are, because balance is holistic in this game by its nature. The OP is not bad — I agree with most of it — it’s just incomplete and less likely to get the desired results.

Since you refuse to stop derailing this thread, here you go.

Taking control and choice away from the player is never a good thing. Never ever. Even if the end result has some positive attached to it(which is going to be rare), it’s not a good thing. It removes the ability of the player to make choices based on the situation at hand. What if my target was about to die, and I’d prefer to hit a stunbreaker and finish them off? What if [insert any situation where I could just use a stunbreaker and accomplish a goal rather than being teleported away from the situation beyond my control and at the whim of another player].

It doesn’t matter if HtC happens to save me once in a while – taking away my control and choice over where my character is is always a negative effect. No positive HtC offers outweighs that – it is always a negative effect, even when it happens to be helpful as a consolation prize. The effect would have to be huge to overcome how negative it is to remove my ability to control where my character is, and when.

You know what most games call an affect that removes control and choice from the player? A Crowd control effect. HtC operates like a crowd control effect, always, even when it happens to save you.

Agree with me or not, for the second time, please stop derailing the thread. There are dozens of other threads you can discuss HtC in.

I’d prefer if this didn’t turn into a discussion about how everyone feels about AR and HtC, how they could be fixed, how they’re not that bad, how they work if you only take all these skills and other traits, etc etc etc – there are plenty of threads tackling that issue.

The intent of this thread is to hopefully have Anet come and explain to use their future plan for HtC and AR – even those of you who feel they’re OK skills seem to agree they did not achieve the survivability buff to thieves the developers intended them to, and I’d like to discuss fixing them for the next patch.

Thank you.

Interceptor.2653:

Viking Jorun.5413:

Even still, I have 500 healing power and am healed for 490 each pistol whip. I’d like it to be more for sure, but it has kept me alive in swapping to shortbow and spamming cluster bomb/choking gas for a quick 2k health when I get desperate. I can’t stay in a fight at that point though. It’s either break combat or die, and assassin’s reward only allows for an escape mechanic rather than a sustain mechanic.

You really need to combine it with Signet of Malice if you want to use it as a sustain mechanic. With that, now Pistol Whip will give you 1500+ health, and the AOE Shortbow skills can top you off really quickly in a mess.

A Grand master trait should be good enough on its own to merit taking. It shouldn’t just be useful when you take it with 1 specific heal and possibly a certain amount of Healing power. It’s fine for traits and specific abilities to synergize well, and strengthen each other, but if a GM trait isn’t worth taking outside of a specific setup, it’s poorly designed.

The discussion is also centered around the “buff” it received to push it into the GM tier – AR wasn’t awful at master tier, but it wasnt a great trait either. It received a mathematically insignificant buff, and was pushed up a tier as an attempt to increase thief survivability, that’s the issue at hand.

Interceptor.2653:

Hard to Catch is bad, but there’s no need to be so breathless and hyperbolic about it. HtC does actually help occasionally (even when disorienting), the problem is that it 1) “helps” when it shouldn’t, and 2) very often has a bad or neutral result. Pain Response is almost always more useful.

I don’t feel anyone is being hyperbolic. The worst effect a trait should have is a neutral one (unless it’s a risk/reward style trait that offers extreme benefits at the cost potentially extreme negatives, which HtC is not). HtC occasionally helping is awful, considering it’s a trait that’s always supposed to be potentially helpful, and at its worst have no negative effect. The fact that its intention was a survivability buff to counteract all the nerfs thieves received in the Dec 10th patch makes it worse, since the overall effect is easier to kill thieves with no new options for survivability.

JonPeters.5630:

Thief:
…
Also we are trying to improve the survivability of thieves in the Acrobatics line through easier access to the Hard to Catch trait and increased effectiveness of the Assassin’s Reward trait.
…

Unfortunately, it appears to me that these efforts did not have their intended effect.
Some observations and a question to the Devs.

Hard to catch
This trait is basically a handicap in trait form. Being moved in a random direction, for a random distance when hit with a CC, Even if you have stability, and most importantly at the whim of another player, does not increase survivability. It’s disorienting, can force you off points, and doesn’t even clear the control effect. The range as well is much too short to be useful – being moved a maximum of 600 away from the target that CC’d you does almost nothing . Any melee class can close that gap in a second, and every non-thief has access to 1200 range (or better) weapons. Generally in most MMO’s, being moved by an effect you don’t initiate or control would be considered a CC effect, not anything positive.
How did Anet envision this increasing thief survivability?

Assassin’s Reward
This change has 2 problems.

• It’s a change in healing power scaling.
  What thief has room in their build for healing power? Perhaps a Venom share build dedicated to healing their teammates and doing almost no damage themselves might find use in stacking high healing power, but Venom share doesn’t have 30 points for the acro line anyway, so it’s a moot point.

• 35% more healing power scaling equates to 1 additional point of health healed per init spent for every 100 healing power you have, when compared to pre Dec 10th AR.
  How did this math justify a bump from Master to Grand master? The trait wasn’t a “good trait” when it was in the Master tier, and the buff is essentially non existent. How could someone crunch the numbers, see what an extremely minor effect that this change was going to have, and still push it through as a buff?

Could someone from Anet come and have a discussion with us, concerning how we are supposed to use these acrobatics changes to increase our survivability? Failing that (I honestly can’t think of an argument that would sway me into beleiving these changes increased survivability), could we discuss how to change/improve them in the next patch so that thief has some options for survivability via the Acrobatics traitline, as you intended?

None. Just not playing (PvP is the only thing that I do in this game).

I’m not a huge fan of D/P, D/D is like less effective D/P in most situations.

P/D is too stealth heavy for capture point play.

S/D was first weakened by the LS nerf which prevented it from actually countering boon-bunkers, then Sword mainhand was finished off entirely by the IR nerf – S/D can no longer threaten boon bunkers, and S/X no longer allows for skilled players to make up for the S/X’s other shortcomings.

I think this request is fair.

Much of the thief community is confused at the recent changes – why some were necessary, why others were implemented the way they were, how the acrobatics changes increase survivability, etc etc etc.

It would be really nice if the dev’s hopped on and showed us how they use these changes to build and play a viable TPvP thief.

I like the idea of HTC being something useful, rather than a handicap in trait form, but steal already has so many traits tied to it. While being a stunbreaker is nice, that might interfere with it applying poison at the right time, regnerating init at the right time, dazing at the right time, healing at the right time…and so on.

Necrotize.2974:

Venoms are best in a VENOM build(go figure). Hide in Shadows is best in a STEALTH build(again, go figure) and Withdraw is best in any situation that does not require stealth or venoms. Saying one is definitively better than the others in every situation is simple minded and very arrogant.

Venom’s being best in a venom build makes complete sense. Venom’s being Underpowered outside of a venom build is the problem most thieves have with venoms.

HiS and Withdraw are solid heals on their own – they can be strengthened with traits but they are worth taking on their own. Skelk venom is not worth taking without investing 50-60 points in specific trait lines and dedicating 3-5 traits just to making venoms worth it. That is the problem thieves are having with the new heal – it’s the opposite of versatile, it’s useful in 1 very very specific spec which takes alot of coordination to make worth taking, does nothing to mitigate conditions, and makes the thief player little more than a buff dispensary.

Not to defend Assassin’s Reward (the 35% buff translates to 1 additional heal per init per 100 healing power), but you’re not taking into account the fact that AR is on demand. If you desperately need some health to live that last second until your heal comes off CD, you can spend initiative for healing, something regen can’t do.

It’s still a subpar skill for master tier, let along Grand master, and the buff feels non-existent. How many thieves have room for Healing power in their build? Who would make said room for 1 additional healing per 100 healing power?

CrazyDuck.4610:

Gwalch you can do HS 3 times in black powder which is plenty. I just get a few seconds of stealth, do a backstab then sword #2 out, rinse and repeat there seems to be no “cooldown” it feels like anymore because of the fast initiative regen I guess. And yes main reason for the spam #2 sword was on a guardian to let my teamates destroy him. It felt overpowered even playing as a thief, I am going to retire my mesmer in SPVP/TPVP for now:P Also Errant you obviously haven’t fought good thieves, I have seen some rank 50-60 thieves that will destroy any class/build very quickly and even if they are outnumbered. And after this patch it seems they are even better then before.

Everything you’ve written here is either hyperbole or outright lies. If you can’t make your point without exaggeration and misinformation, it’s not really a point.

Raven.9603:

Failure to see how rediculously OP unlimited stunbreak (and unlimited range for that matter) on shadow return are is pretty shortsighted, you really shouldve expected this.

Literally nothing you’ve said here is true. Pre Dec 10th IR was not a stunbreak, was not unlimited, and had a set range. It’s hard to take your opinion seriously when you can’t accurately describe the skills functionality.

Vhenom.5621:

I will definetely try D/D tonight, and try some testing on trais (pain response and shadow embrace)… i am already missing initiative, so i though quic recovery was a must, but maybe really dont make a difference, lets see… thanks

If you’re used to Opportunist/Quick recovery pre-patch, the post-patch version isn’t going to do much to solve your woes IMO. IS isn’t bad (since the active is a great gap closer/emergency stun breaker) and helps justify the passive.

Pain response will help with conditions, and 13s of regen works well with your steady trickle heal style.

I’d also test with Furious Retal over Practiced Tolerance – you don’t have the toughness to make the extra health really worth much, and 20% bonus crit for 13s when you drop your target into executioner range is going to make nearly every one of your swings a crit.

Sword doesn’t strike me as the weapon you want to use with SoM – slow swings, IR’s recent nerf, etc.

High burst also doesn’t ring true – It’s Sword MH – Dagger MH with the same setup would be high burst, with Sword MH it’s good sustained damage.

I’m not sure where you’re getting 350-600 AR heal per skill – GW2 skills (Which appears updated for the Dec 10th changes) is reporting 225-450.

I wouldn’t call 100 toughness over base tanky.

You could mitigate the low condition removal by swapping Master of deception (which is only helping a single utility) for Shadow’s Embrace. I’d also drop Quick Recovery for Pain response. Quick recovery used to boost your Init regen ~25%..now it’s 10% – hardly worth it for a master tier trait.

I’m not saying it won’t work, but I’m not confident it’ll be anything special without some testing, TBH.

Pyriall.5027:

S/D was the antithesis of skillful play. People clamoring that the nerf took away “skill” from the build need to honestly kitten what that word means. S/D was too forgiving, very similar to the current warrior builds. You could make mistake after mistake and still do well. That’s not skill, that’s broken.

Read OP’s post. If that doesn’t exemplify skilled play to you, I’m not sure what else to say to you. Many players just seem to dislike thieves because they can be frustrating to fight – frustrating to fight != forgiving, overpowered, or easy. S/D was a high skill cap build, probably thieves highest – the winners of the first cash tournament agree, most “top” players agree.

MADAIR.1948:

…..
These are all broken by the cast time that’s been implemented. I have a feeling maybe this wasn’t foreseen but it’s been turned into a self interupt which is gamebreaking in swordplay. Again I understand no being able to teleport while stunned but the cast time effects many things and combos not just stunbreaking.

It just feels clumsy and awkward and broken. It was a fluid dance of blades before. Poetry in motion (lol).

Thank you for your time and anyone plz feel free to add to it fellow thieves.

It was foreseen loudly and repeatedly by numerous members of the thief community, many of them top players, for the entire month and a half between preview and patch. Unfortunately it seems Anet decided to go through with the change anyway. I don’t understand why they decided to completely kill skilled play just to prevent stun escapes when they could have instead disabled IR while CC’d.

The SR->IR stomp reason that was listed in the preview doesn’t convince me – 5 init + a utility seems a fair cost to secure a stomp, especially on a class that can’t gain stability and relies on active evasion to mitigate damage. Even if this was deemed too powerful, they could have just disabled IR while stunned/stomping and solved the issues they feel IR had without gutting the skilled options that came along with it. It might have been more programming work, but IMO it’s better than gutting a MH weapon to the point where skilled play is no longer an option.

Interceptor.2653:

evilapprentice.6379:

Your arguments in defense of Skelk venom give me a very clear insight as to what you feel is good design.

They give as much insight into that, as they do in what I like to eat for breakfast. Someone else more aware of context might float the possibility that I was a contrarian making a Devil’s Advocate argument, but you’ve confidently come to the conclusion that we have disparate opinions on a subject that wasn’t even under discussion in the first place.

We probably have disparate opinions on what constitutes a “reasonable extrapolation”, though. Plenty of evidence for that one.

I failed to take into account the possibility you were championing what I consider to be a poorly designed skill “just for funsies”. I can only make calls based on the information you provide me – if you make arguments from what I consider to be a bad standpoint, that’s all the data I have to make judgements on what your understanding of good design is. If you don’t want people to make assumptions concerning your understanding of good design, don’t vigorously defend poorly designed skills.

Also, the following sentence

But why on earth does something “have” to be useful on its own to be worthwhile?

Is quite telling – the hallmark of good design is every skill being useful on its own. That’s what leads to build diversity and varied play. If there are many skills that are only useful when combined with very specific specs, you’re left with 2-3 cookie cutter builds per class, and a less fun game. Obviously every skill being useful on it’s own isn’t realistic – no game is perfect. It’s still the goal of good design.

nagymbear.5280:

Pavel.8531:

Let’s do the math on thief stun breakers… SS – 50s cd, RfI – 60s cd, IS – 30s cd. Not counting Haste(or shadow trap with the cast time, l.o.l.).
So except for IS(which, if I needed to use when in trouble for the stunbreak part killed me as often as saved me) we have only 2 stunbreaks with (almost)1m cd each.

But hey, let’s nerf pretty much the only advantage sword sets have over dagger mainhand, because small cat logic.

Lol, lets do the math on ranger stunbreaks as well then, shall we? Lightning reflexes 40s, Signet of renewal 60s, Protect me 60s, Quickening Zephyr 60s.
Necros: Spectral walk 60s, Spectral armor 60s, Plague Signet 60s, Well of Power 50s.

Now lets add to that comparison base HP, access to Protection/Stability, Access to Blocks, viability of condition specs and so on and so on…

You can’t just look at stunbreakers in a bubble, you have to take into account the class’s strengths and weaknesses as well.

Interceptor.2653:

evilapprentice.6379:

There’s absolutely no reason for us to continue conversing and derailing the thread (my bad on that). You and I have very disparate opinions on what good design is (IMO you have a very off base opinion on what good design is), and will likely never see eye to eye.

I don’t recall having ever given you my opinion on what constitutes good design, but given your penchant for making wild assertions in this thread, I guess it should come as no surprise that you presume to know what I’m thinking about on a topic we haven’t even discussed before.

Your arguments in defense of Skelk venom give me a very clear insight as to what you feel is good design. There’s no need to get defensive however.

Interceptor.2653:

stuff

There’s absolutely no reason for us to continue conversing and derailing the thread (my bad on that). You and I have very disparate opinions on what good design is (IMO you have a very off base opinion on what good design is), and will likely never see eye to eye.

Gwalchgwn.1659:

^yeah I think Evilapprentice meant forums as well… :p

That is exactly what I meant, for clarification.

VidurrRedhands.1964:

It is a stun break if you teleport 600 units away since that gap can’t be easily closed during the duration of the stun. Also, I’ve played both S/P and S/D and those builds usually have far from glass survivability since the burst is so low you have to have sustain in order to keep pressure on. You still have your evades.

In this quote you claim S/D and S/P have such low burst, but above you claimed S/D thieves could 3 shot players. Which is it?

In addition, we have ~40% less vigor uptime, so the statement “you still have your evades” should be changed to “You still have ~60% of your evades, which is the primary mechanic by which thieves survive due to the lack of protection/stability/blocks/immunes”.

And again, it is not a stun break. Stun is not broken. It is usable while stunned, but it is not a stun break.

Interceptor.2653:

evilapprentice.6379:

It doesn’t have built in conditional removal like Withdraw and HiS does, it’s burst healing is reliant on hitting your target (not always in your control due to blocks/immunes/etc). The other heals don’t rely on traits to bolster them into usefulness – they’re good on their own, like Skelk venom should be but isn’t.

Swapping a utility for more condition removal hurts your venom share spec which you invested 4-5 traits into – it’s already down a slot due to the necessity of taking a stun breaker.

There’s nothing wrong with a heal that venom share specs can use. There is a problem with a heal that’s only viable for venom share specs.

My basic problem with your argument is that you make a bunch of assumptions that aren’t really valid.

You say that Skelk doesn’t have built-in condition removal, but neither does Malice, and Withdraw and HiS both have big asterisks next to them: the first removes no damaging conditions whatsoever, and the latter only gets poison/burning/bleeding. Against confusion, torment, vuln, weakness, etc you might as well be running with nothing at all.

Withdraw and HiS both remove more conditions than Skelk venom – There’s no need for an asterisk, the statement “Skelk venom does nothing against conditions while withdraw and HiS do” is strictly true. Considering how deadly an immobilize or burning can be to a thief, there is a high value in the limited conditions those heals remove.

The burst healing is reliant on hitting your target, but it DOES burst more healing than any other option available, has easy synergy with Leeching Venoms, and the on-hit heals can be pre-charged. If you want a large amount of healing in a small amount of time, this is a good choice.

If you pre-charge the on hit heals, you’re sacrificing the activation heal, tanking your burst healing AND your Heal over time. It potentially has more burst healing – it also alerts your opponent to when it’s most advantageous to dodge/block/immune/blind your skills. It’s a heal that can be mitigated by skills that your opponent is already using to mitigate your damage. They don’t have to do anything special.

The statement “Skelk should be good on its own” is nonsense. Guild Wars is about skill synergy. Why shouldn’t this also apply to heals? Skelk works with either 30 DA or SA. Both at once is particularly good for Skelk, but not strictly necessary to realize benefits.

I don’t see how you could seriously make this claim. On one hand, we have heals that work well regardless of trait choices. They can be strengthened by traits, but are good heals even if your traits don’t support them. On the other hand we have Skelk venom, which requires at minimum 2 traits (Leeching/QV), most often 4-5 to be on par with your untraited heals. Skelk venom without at mimum QV and leeching venoms is demonstrably worse than withdraw and HiS in almost every realistic scenario. Backstab does the same amount of damage regardless how many points you put into SA – 30 SA certainly strengthens a BS build (longer stealth, healing in stealth, condition removal in stealth), but not taking any points in SA doesn’t make backstab a strictly weaker skill. Not taking venom related traits makes Skelk venom a strictly weaker skill. Skill synergy is “what can I do to make this already good skill better”, not “What can I do to make this underpowered skill functional”.

Shadowstep is both stun breaker and condition removal.

Which is nice, but comes with the added cost of using it for 1 means its unavailable for the other. Not a huge deal, except when all your other utilities are locked into venoms to make your venom share build viable.

Thief specs are all about tradeoffs; there is no build that has zero weak points or shortcomings. You choose what you can live with, and cover the holes as best you can. Skelk is no different in this respect.

Skelk is different in that it contains glaring weak points and short comings that don’t come close to being covered by it’s “strengths” in most situations. The only situation where it is a strong build is when you spend 60 of your 70 trait points and 4-5 of your 7 slottable traits in supporting it. It’s silly for a heal to only perform acceptably in 1 very specific spec.

VidurrRedhands.1964:

Thieves can three shot others and can be three shotted in return, sounds fair to me. What you guys want is a skill that is equivalent to a utility that has a 50 second recharge that can be used as often as you have initiative for it. Slot a different stun breaker. The only thing different is now the skill doesn’t actually act as a stun breaker even though the devs specifically stated they don’t want it to be a few patches back.

What spec can S/D thieves 3 shot? Even 3 LS crits aren’t going to drop anything but a elementalist with 0 additional toughness/vitality (which doesn’t exist, btw), and it’s not like you can use LS 3 times back to back anyway.

You appear to be mixing/matching specs – talking about S/D specs like they did 25/30/0/0/15 DD pre mug nerf damage. If S/D did that kind of damage in that kind of time frame, the IR nerf would be entirely justified. Instead, they do slow, steady sustained damage with glass toughness, and relies on evades pre-nerf IR to live long enough to kill targets.

And to be clear, IR has not been a stun break for months now. Being able to use a skill while stunned but remain stunned is not a stunbreak.

VidurrRedhands.1964:

It was a strength because it was overpowered, the only difference is now you can actually be pinned down with CC and have to use a stunbreaker, like everyone else. No other class has a pseudo-stunbreaker that is attached to a gap closer + immobilize that you can combo a few hits off then get out.

Except Mesmer, which has a skill with the exact parameters you described, and another psuedo-stunbreaker escape on a very short CD which doesn’t need to be set up ahead of time, and is on a ranged weapon so the gap it opens is entirely beneficial. It appears to me as though you just dislike thieves.

S/D works on dodging almost everything that isn’t an auto-attack – it does slow, steady damage in a glass setup. Without IR it does not have the tools to beat equally skilled players, since you can’t dodge literally everything. Don’t be surprised if you see S/D get a large buff to compensate in the future, you might have preferred it the way it was.

VidurrRedhands.1964:

If you can’t imagine why the change was made, you never fought a thief abusing IR. It is game-breaking to the point that you can not even begin to fight the thief as long as they manage their initiative (which is also easy). At least now, if you put yourself into a stupid situation, you have to pay for it like every other class/build.

Unlike every other class, thieves do not have access to stability, protection, block or immune.

If you want thief to play like every other class, give them the same tools as every other class. I’d prefer a game where each class has different strengths and weaknesses – thieves just had a strength removed with no compensation, which is disappointing to see.

Interceptor.2653:

evilapprentice.6379:

• I don’t see how Skelk venom was ever going to “Really shake things up” (Paraphrasing) – It’s provably worse (by a wide margin) than our other healing options except in a 30/x/30/x/x venom share spec, and even there it lacks condition removal and does little to bolster sustain for the thief player himself, which is where the sustain is sorely needed. Even if it was a solid heal in Venom share, why add a healing skill that’s only ever effective in one(und only vone!) spec?

What’s wrong with making a heal that venom share specs can use? That’s sort of the point of expanding skill choice in the first place.

Anyway, that’s nonsense regardless. Your hypothetical venom thief has Shadow’s Embrace for condition removal, can swap out a utility for more, and has plenty of access to sustain with Leeching Venoms (plus Shadow’s Rejuvenation when solo). And while Skelk is a worse heal over time than the other options, it’s a pretty good burst heal.

It doesn’t have built in conditional removal like Withdraw and HiS does, it’s burst healing is reliant on hitting your target (not always in your control due to blocks/immunes/etc). The other heals don’t rely on traits to bolster them into usefulness – they’re good on their own, like Skelk venom should be but isn’t.

Swapping a utility for more condition removal hurts your venom share spec which you invested 4-5 traits into – it’s already down a slot due to the necessity of taking a stun breaker.

There’s nothing wrong with a heal that venom share specs can use. There is a problem with a heal that’s only viable for venom share specs.

I don’t understand this patch at all.

• The assassin’s reward rework resulted in 1 extra healing per 100 healing power. This is what “35% more healing power” translates to – that does not feel like a buff to me, much less one that necessitated AR becoming a GM trait.

• Hard to catch is still designed to be detrimental to the thief, when it was intended as a survivability buff. It shares more characteristics with crowd control abilities (Loss of control, random direction/distance teleport) than anything else, and doesn’t break the CC.

• The Init changes were intended to stop pigeonholing thieves into certain traitlines for Init regen, which I like the idea of. However the current Init regen traits were simply nerfed with no additional functionality added to them (weakening those trait lines – quick recovery is now a joke, opportunist is bland and UP for a 15 point minor), and Power/crit specs are still pigeonholed into 30 CS for Executioner.

• The Inf Return change was poorly implemented – if they didn’t want the skill to work while stunned/mid cast, why not just disable it’s use in those scenario’s? A cast time kills skilled use of the ability, almost entirely removing skill as a factor from one of the thief’s highest skill cap builds

• I don’t see how Skelk venom was ever going to “Really shake things up” (Paraphrasing) – It’s provably worse (by a wide margin) than our other healing options except in a 30/x/30/x/x venom share spec, and even there it lacks condition removal and does little to bolster sustain for the thief player himself, which is where the sustain is sorely needed. Even if it was a solid heal in Venom share, why add a healing skill that’s only ever effective in one(und only vone!) spec?

• Vigor nerfs – Other classes with excellent access to regen, protection, stability, condition cleanses/immunity, and good armor options have access to high uptime/perma vigor. The only class in the game with no access to protection or stability, which can’t block or go immune, which relies entirely on evasion to mitigate damage… they get a vigor nerf. Again, I’m having a hard time following the logic.

Amaterasu.6280:

Quit complaining, any veteran thief will tell you sword #2 was broken. I am using the new shadow return just fine…you no longer have a get out of jail card, big deal. You have a stunbreaker for that reason. It’s time to focus on timing dodges and gameplay, rather than relying on sword #2 to save your kitten .

Except OP is a veteran thief, while I’ve seen your name on the boards a mere handful of times (Which isn’t an insult, just to say by your logic I should trust Arg’s opinion over yours)

J Night.3468:

to you maybe. i’m fine with it. i used to use power of inertia but i figured since i’m already dishing out major damage.. extra dodging would be better.

40% is a large percentage – your feelings on the subject do not affect the way the mathematics work, its the same ratio for you as it is anyone else. Your enjoyment/success with a particular trait/weapon setup does not make it viable in a competitive environment, and therefore cannot be used to judge how well said trait/weaponset is doing on the whole.

Excalibur.9748:

I’m going to slot in hard to catch in place of quick recovery.

Hey, gotta give it a try at least.

Just go with Assassin’s reward. It’s not good, but it isn’t an effect that teleports you a random distance/direction at another players discretion. IMO, Hard to Catch is a CC booster for your opponent.

30/x/30/x/x with Residual Venoms, Quick Venoms, Venomous Aura and Leeching venoms is the only way mathematically for the heal to be superior to Withdraw or HiS (HiS doesn’t heal more, but Stealth can have a very high value for many specs that’s hard to put a strict number to).

While the above spec grants good healing to your team in a coordinated scenario, the survivability it grants the thief player is questionable – it does nothing to deal with conditions like HiS and Withdraw do, and if you don’t land all of your Skelk venom triggers, the actual healing value starts to drop off steeply.

I feel it’s tied for worst new heal with the Necro signet, and was a very poor choice for a new thief heal.

nagymbear.5280:

No, not for initiative. Slot stun breaks like everyone else.

It hasn’t been a stun break for months. It allowed you to use the skill while stunned (like other skills in the game do), but you remained stunned. It seems silly to remove the “Can be used while stunned” functionality of IR without addressing the other skills that can be used while stunned (except of course for stunbreakers, which is part of their design).

The actual difference is about 1 additional healing per 100 healing power. Look on GW2skills before they update, and compare any spec to live.

Ignoring the fact that most thief specs can’t afford to stack healing power, that’s ridiculous. The term “35%” feels disingenuous when you realize it translates to 1 additional healing per init spent per 100 healing power.

Viking Jorun.5413:

reikken.4961:

buffed from
69 + 3.5% healing power
to
69 + 5% healing power

and moved to grandmaster

lol
what a joke. That is not grandmaster material.
elementalist 5 point minor trait is stronger than this

I’m healed for 508 each pistol whip and can regain initiative through steal, Roll for Initiative and base regen. I feel that people expect it to be a primary source of healing, and it’s not meant to be.

People want it to be worth a grandmaster trait – general consensus is that it is not.

style.6173:

As others have said, they moved it because they wanted to make hard to catch more accessible. It just shows the “balance” team has no clue about thieves. I doubt many people would take hard to catch even at the adept tier.

Of course they won’t – We’re talking about a trait that teleports the thief in a random direction, for a random distance between 1 and 600, and doesn’t break the CC. The skill shares more characteristics with CC abilities (Random teleport for random distance who’s activation is not under the players control) than it does with a beneficial ability, and it doesn’t break the CC.

DakSevkla.3278:

S/X Builds are DONE. NO MORE S/X BUILDS. SWORD IS COMPLETELY USELESS

Is it? I’m still using it. Feels fine. No issues, actually. A 1/4 cast time that allows me to move while I cast it doesn’t really affect me that much. In fact, the Buff to S/P #3 is pretty nice. I like it. I feel like I can take traits that aren’t JUST INITIATIVE in order to use Black Powder once in a while.

Go play Warrior and stop whining if you can’t survive out there anymore.

I’m glad you’re enjoying yourself.

Unfortunately, your level of enjoyment is not a metric with which we can measure competitive PvP effectiveness of S/X. By all of those metrics, S/X is dead.

Let’s take a look at the changes from yesterday. This is from a PvP standpoint.Please remember to keep your responses polite, or else your post will be infracted.

Assassin’s Reward – the 35% bonus to healing power scaling has 2 major issues.

• Thieves do not have room for healing power in their specs.

• With 609 healing power, Pre-Patch AR heals 93 health per init spent, Post-Patch AR heals for 99 health per init spent – that’s an additional 1 point of healing per 100 healing power. This doesn’t strike me as a buff, much less one that would necessitate moving AR up to Grand Master tier

Hard to catch – This skill has a litany of issues which make it entirely negative and unusable.

• The teleport direction is random, which is disorienting and potentially harmful to players. Losing control of your character is universally recognized as a negative effect in any MMO.

• The distance is random, between 0 and 600 – a short distance teleport does nothing, and even the maximum distance isn’t enough to escape most stun heavy specs (Hammer warrior?) or outrange most classes ranged weapons.

• It doesn’t break the CC effect.

How can this be considered a survivability buff?

Initiative changes – The intention here was to open up specs so they didn’t have to rely on opportunist and quick recovery for initiative regeneration

• Thief Power/crit specs don’t go 15 points into CS for opportunist. They go 30 points in for Executioner, because it’s the only way to deal enough damage in a power/crit setup to actually kill your opponent. Your Init change didn’t solve pigeonholing, it simply made 30 CS specs weaker.

• You completely devalued quick recovery – instead of giving the trait an additional non-init related effect to compensate and make it worth taking, you left it at 1 init per 10s. The trait is now nearly worthless; this observation was made numerous times when the patch note preview was posted.

Infiltrator’s Return – It was predicted this would kill sword mainhand, and after rudimentary testing, those predictions appear to have come true.

• S/X specs give up alot to do what they do. Stealth is either entirely devalued (S/D) or possibly only with utilities (S/P), meaning the thief is almost always visible. Sword mainhand does slow, steady DPS with stats a Dagger MH spec would consider “burst”. The spec relies on evading nearly every attack (including AA at times) to survive long enough to do lethal damage. Inf return was the only reason sword mainhand was viable – without it, you’ve killed sword mainhand. Again, predicted by the community.

Vigor Nerfs – 35-40% less vigor uptime for the only class in the game without access to stability or protection, no blocks, and no immunity skills.

• Thieves now have less endurance with which to actively dodge attacks, and were not given the survivability tools required to mitigate the damage from those attacks. This results in more easily killed thieves.

Skelk venom – Perhaps the most disappointing of all.

• Skelk venom is provably worse than Withdraw and HiS in any spec other than Venom Share – even if the heal was amazing with venom share (it isn’t, more on that below) this would be poor design – a new heal that only works with 30/x/30/x/x specs?

• If you dedicate 60 points and 4 major traits to venoms, Skelk venom becomes a decent group support tool, but it’s missing personal survivability which the thief needs. It does nothing for conditions – it only outheals Withdraw over time by using 3 traits (Residual, Quick venoms, leeching) AND only if you hit all 5 of your skelk venom triggers. After looking at all the other heals, I can’t help but feel this is tied for worst new heal with Necro’s signet.

Infusion of Shadow – The only deserved nerf.

• I’m ecstatic to see the death of D/P permastealth. I’ve always felt it was counter to the design of stealth in the game, and that it was cheesy. I wish they would have come up with a more elegant solution which would have allowed thieves to continuing using Blinding Powder while in stealth and SR to regenerate Init, but I understand the overall goal of the change and agree that it was necessary.

Dancing Dagger – The notes say “Dancing dagger’s tooltip changed to reflect actual cripple duration”, as if the cripple was always supposed to be lower than the tooltip. Either DD made it 2 years with incorrect cripple duration listed, or this was a stealth nerf.

The takeaway from all this? All of our nerfs were nerfs. Most of our “buffs” were also nerfs. Those buff’s that weren’t in actuality nerfs (Practiced tolerance, sundering strikes, critical haste) were so minor as to not mean much at all. The Class was average in competitive play prior to this patch – it’ll be non-existant until the next patch (imo) , and I for one am not excited in having to wait another 2-3 months for my class to not be clearly and overwhelmingly UP.

Just separate Venoms and the effect generated by Venomous Aura.

Instead of having Venomous Aura duplicate “Devourer Venom” to everyone in range when you use devourer venom, have Venomous aura produce its own effect that it shares. This way venoms are no longer limited in design by the potential to be shared with up to 5 allies – you can design venoms with powerful effects that share lesser/tweaked copies to other players via venomous aura.

Residual venom’s is also garbage – 1 extra venom strike for 30 points in a tree? It’s also being strangled by Venomous Aura, as that is the only time RV is worth taking.

Asthenea.1546:

I like hidden thief better, gives the opportunity for 5 more bleed stacks. Plus the enemy is confused on your position

CnD + steal is nearly the same thing, except with an initiative cost.

They won’t be confused thanks to SoH’s daze – if you see a thief, get dazed and don’t see a thief…he’s right next to you.

Like I pointed out above, the only real difference is the cost of 6 init – the potential benefits of leeching venoms far outweight what hidden thief delivers in this spec,IMO.

Of course not. The only remaining attractive part of GW2 PvP is the ability to jump in whenever I want and know I’m on even footing with every other player when it comes to spec/gear choices.

Viking Jorun.5413:

Oghier.7419:

Viking Jorun.5413:

Mathematically speaking, taking Improvisation over Quick Venoms with at least 10 in Trickery gives a lesser and more flexible cooldown when running full venoms.

With Improvisation, every Steal gives you a 20% chance to recharge your venoms, right? I don’t see how this is an attractive proposition.

If you’re only running venoms it’s a 100% chance..

Not sure what you mean here – just slotted venoms for every utility and BV, and had the cooldown not reset on multiple steals.