Guild Wars 2

Coloxeus.3480:

Lokheit.7943:

I keep hearing how the meta is full of unkillable “condi bunkers” from every profession and that’s making things harder… yet I haven’t noticed it much :S

When I see that kind of opponent I tend to eat him for breakfast (and I’m built for support), but I guess it’s related to me being P/D with loads of Poison too so most times I never even notice that 4K armor as my damage is done through conditions and sometimes leeching armor ignoring damage through venoms (and I don’t even use caltrops, just P/D in a venom sharer setup) and I cancel a great chunk of their heals with poison (starting a fight with steal traited for poison and Spider Venom keeps it up a huge lot of time).

It has merit that you didn’t want to change your build and still managed to find a way to defeat him (I also refuse to change my build), but the Thief has multiple ways to eat those guys alive. Thief doesn’t need to be a zerker all the time, from my experience we can excel at conditions and at team support despite how many players sniff at that idea.

i changed my build to 10/30/0/30/0 with Mug trait and i can poison him everytime i use steal 5 trait on deadly arts. my previous build is 0/30/0/30/10 no poison at all

I’m not sure of the warrior’s build, but isn’t he running with Cleansing Ire? If so, it should take him about 2 seconds to realize that saving his burst for after your steal is the way to go. Even if he doesn’t have cleansing ire, 12 seconds of poison every 35s is going to help, but not change the game here.

You were not impressed by SHbow’s damage in an earlier post, but you’re not taking Shbow for its damage. You’re taking it for Poison and Weakness. Choking Gas + Cluster bomb, and you can use disabling shot to put cripple on him as a cover condition if need be – Now you’ve got 4 conditions on him (Poison, weakness, bleed, cripple), though the cripple is admittedly short-lived. You can also use Whirling axe in Choking gas to stack up some extra poison.

Also, as a side note – when I ran Jumpers double S/D, I switched Inf Sig for Assassins Sig and also ran 10 DA over 10 Trickery – the difference 280 total power makes is tremendous. You might also consider switching Sigil of Accuracy for Force, and if it fits your playstyle, side strikes for Signets of Power. A bit less init regen, but then again you’re hitting hard enough to not always need all that init for additional FS/LS

Rayya.2591:

personaly i don’t have any problems with initiative, and i do not use any utility’ or traits that boost initiative. You might need those traits on popular P/D build if you spam black powder.

Mind sharing your setup?
Also, I believe you meant D/P.

Ask them why we’ve had lag/unresponsiveness on PvP servers since the last patch. Many people have been experiencing a latency issue between when they activate a skill/dodge, and when it goes off. It kills any skill the player might have, as I’m sure you can imagine, not having skills go off when you press them defeats the purpose of the game. It doesn’t matter if the game is perfectly balanced if my skills don’t activate when I press them.

This all from a PvP perspective, just to be clear.

Currently, thieves seem to be the only class that are nigh forced into taking traits that affect their weapon CD’s (Initiative regen traits).

The base regeneration is abysmal – I don’t think there’s an effective thief spec out there that doesn’t dedicate at least a few minor/major traits into regenerating more initiative. This appears to me to be for 2 reason –
A) As a stated above, base initiative regen is a joke – you’re going to be nigh worthless unless you can regenerate initiative steadily or recover alot of initiative in a short period of time to burst with.
B) No matter how you spend your trait points, there is going to be at least one initaitve regen trait that is mathmatically better than taking any other trait choice occupying the same position (or you’re automatically taking it because it’s a minor in the trait line you’ve specced into)

There are 6 major and 3 minor traits that affect initiative regen (or base init pool) in some way – only one of these has an additional effect other than regenerating more initiative (Signet use). In addition 2 utilities regenerate initiative in some way.

Every other class in the game has the option to take traits that lower the CD on a specific weapon, and also offer a secondary benefit.

What I’d like to see is a departure from this – boost base initiative regen, so thieves can actually be effective without relying on initiative regeneration traits. Then tweak the init regen traits to balance things out (“tweak” in this case means “reduce” – I’m not asking for faster initiative regen, just less of an extreme between the speed of traited and untraited init regen), and add secondary effects like every other class has. The secondary effects can be tied to specific weapons (just like every other class) to help limit them and define play styles.

This would make thief a much more interesting class with better options then going some variation of the few cookie cutter builds that are available, IMO.

I have to agree with Lopez here – this isn’t what I’d call traditional lag.

On the rare occasion, I’ve seen everyone jog in place/mindlessly run the last direction they were seen moving, but this has been the vast minority of my experience.

Most of the time, you can move correctly wherever you want to, there’s just a noticeable, game breaking delay between when you hit a skill and when it goes off.

There are a lot of options, there’s just the question of where’s that sweet spot between useful for S/D (And to some extent S/P) without being OP. The blind in front option is good as it gives an option for TS to still be marginally useful against targets with Stability.

The following suggestions are in addition to the daze, unless otherwise noted.

It could just be changed from a daze to a stun/KD, as has been suggested

It could provide protection or stability for a short period (not likely, or particularly useful, since your target will be dazed…)

It could apply poison for a decent length of time (something S/D could make good use of)

It could apply some stacks of might/some swiftness/some fury to the thief

It could apply immobilize (but that would be much stronger than just changing the daze to a stun)

It could apply some stacks of vulnerability

It could grant Aegis

It could transfer a condition to your target (I actually like this one – with Shadow return, you get to make the choice of cleansing a condition or suffering it for a bit to see if you can transfer it to your target)

It could purge a boon (which isn’t all that great considering LS steals 2, but I thought I’d list it)

It could apply weakness

Still happening Anet. Where’s a response?

ArtemisEntreri.4138:

I like TS as is right now. Up the damage a bit. Hit harder from behind would work with me or add a bleed stack from behind.

Blind and Confusion x3 @ 5 seconds from the front or Daze and bleeding x3 @ 10 seconds from behind.

The freakin icon has a serrated blade for crying out loud.

What good is a bunch of condition damage in a direct damage weaponset? Mixing and matching doesn’t work well for D/D or P/P, we shouldn’t introduce it to Sword Mainhand.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Am I the only one who see how overpowered this would be?

I mean AoE dmg+poison at 1200 range from an off-hand? >.<’

This is too good in comparison to SB’s Choking Gas. :/

EDIT:
Don’t get me wrong, I like it for my S/D, but I have to be honest how broken this would be.

Range 900
Velocity increase
first target is poisoned
Cripple actually last the listed duration

I think that’s what Dancing Dagger needs.
Velocity increase to counter its current biggest issue (being kittenty at actually hitting and slowing down targets)
Poison one target to help dagger OH compete with Pistol OH
Cripple lasting the correct duration because, well, that’s how it was designed.

Just a couple things
- DD has already been reduced to 3 init
- As someone else pointed out on the boards, DD is currently bugged – the Cripple does not last the listed amount of time (more like 3s IIRC)

DD’s biggest current issue is velocity – it moves so slowly, people can sneeze and the attack will miss. What DD needs most is a velocity increase, so it can reliably hit targets who are moving at a slight angle from you (while allowing people moving parallel/specifically trying to strafe your attack to still avoid it).

Once we address the velocity issue, we can talk about other things. I think poisoning the first target would be a good addition (and leaving the total targets at 4) – Dagger OH doesn’t have an interrupt like Pistol OH does, and a ranged poison would be nice as a heal mitigator – hitting every bounced target with poison might be a bit much though.

It’s extra infuriating as a thief to hit a weaponskill…not see any response…hit the button again…then perform that action twice in a row.

I see a dev found the time to thank someone on these boards recently for their opinion, how about addressing this issue as well?

1/10, much too obvious.

Static.9841:

evilapprentice.6379:

Withdraw

Same, it’ll register that I’m hitting it because the icon has the ‘being pressed’ animation, but nothing is happening.

Exactly.

I don’t mean to spam responses with little content, but this seems to be the first post that’s gained any traction regarding the issue. This has been happening randomly literally since the patch – some days are ok, some days the issues are minor and relatively rare, and other days it’ll happen for an hour or 2 straight. For a month. I’d love for Anet to actually acknowledge this and let us know wtf is going on.

Vena.8436:

evilapprentice.6379:

I’ve got a separate post concerning this issue (which I assume to be lag) up at the moment.

I’ve been having terrible lag spikes through out the weekend where this would happen.

Press a button, say Shelter, and I just stand there… Shelter eventually goes off or I am dead. Or I attempt a dodge and it doesn’t fire off until I’m in the middle of casting a skill.

My internet was fine as far as I could tell but it was very odd in that it only occured at a very specific point in time and only for about an hour. I thought it was WvW being its usual self but there was nothing going on on the map, and later when we had a 3-way clusterkitten in Garrison the game was running smooth.

I’ve had these issues (in varying severity) since the last patch, and I’ve looked into Everything
My Ping, my internet speed, possible packet loss, etc etc etc. The issue is definitively not on my end. There’s something wrong with their servers.

Yup.

I died multiple times over the weekend because Withdraw and Roll For Initiative decided they didn’t want to do anything. My client clearly knew I was using them… they just didn’t want to do anything. I’m not talking “Oh, an eviscerate hit me .2s after I hit RFI, BS!” I mean “Hey, I got hit with an immob and now I’m eating a full, un-frenzied HB’s despite slamming on Withdraw/RFI 15 times”

I’ve had Inf Strike wait 0.5-1s after being pressed to actually teleport to my target, which of course was in a middle of their dodge roll, instead of going when I actually pressed the skill and they were just standing there.

I’ve got a separate post concerning this issue (which I assume to be lag) up at the moment.

@Blood
- You might have noticed my initial post pointed out that I’ve gone through ANet’s support options. Though they genuinely tried to be helpful, it did not resolve my issue. In addition, this in the sPvP forum because I’m experienced the issue in Hot Join (All I do is PvP, so its possible I’d also be having an issue in PvE, but that’s beside the point). As i mentioned, this game is all about the combat style – timing and positioning are key, and when there is random lag, you can’t do either of those effectively. The lag is ruining my ability to play. I refuse to even try Solo arena until this is fixed – it’s annoying to lose a fight/game in hotjoin because of lag, but I’ll get over it. I’m not losing arena matches because ANet’s servers/patches are garbage.

@Super
- Thanks for the suggestion, but my drivers are up to date (I’ve even tried rolling back a version in case the newest drivers had issues, which is sometimes the case)

@Syndarin
- Thanks for sounding off. Hopefully some others will point out their having issues to and Anet will respond? I mean, I know we’re not their PAX tourney team, so we don’t technically rate, but it’d be nice to try and squeeze what enjoyment I can from the current meta before their new patch screws up everything even worse.

Are you ready for toughness/vitality/healing power bunkers?

Or Power/Toughness/Precision “Glass Cannon’s”?

Wanting more diversity is fine, but it just doesn’t work here. The game’s had countless balance patches that take into account the current limited amulet choices. More Min-Maxing won’t help.

Does anyone know?

Lets say a thief uses Devourers venom – If I attack my target twice, and both times they block/evade/are invulnerable or I miss due to blind, both devourer venom charges are consumed.

I’m asking do passive Spirit procs function in the same manner? Which of the following ways do Spirit procs work –
- Every time a Ranger makes an attack, there is a 35% (or70%) chance a spirit passive triggers. If the attack “is negated by Blind, Block, Evade, Obstructed, or Invulnerable”, the passive trigger is consumed and on ICD.
- The spirit ability only has a chance to trigger on a successful hit, So “Blind, Block, Evade, Obstructed, or Invulnerable” attacks don’t even have a chance to trigger spirit procs.

I’ve officially done everything I could from my side to make sure that I’m not responsible for this issue.
- I’ve checked my internet speed, and it is consistent
- I’ve monitored my ping, and it is consistent (and thanks to Battleping, acceptably low. Without it, this game would be much less fun to play)
- I’ve had my ISP check packet loss, there is none.
- I’ve contacted Anet support, used their support tools, and everything has come up clean.
- My computer is more than powerful enough to run the game (especially at the settings I’m running it at. Short version: SSD, 6990+6970 in crossfire, I7 overclocked stable to 4.8ghz, 16g ddr3 ram)

But various times today, I’ve been hit with random .2-.5s lag. I’ve watched myself die while absolutely spamming Withdraw or Roll for Initiative. I’ve watched skills fail to fire for half a second, completely randomly.

This has been an issue since July – I can’t be the only person experiencing this, the servers have to be at fault. For a game that places such a high value on positioning, timing, and free firing skills, this seems unacceptable to me.

When are these issues going to be addressed?

I’m just curious, do the passive triggers work like thief venoms?

From previous patch notes:
“Devourer Venom: The number of uses on this skill’s effect will now decrease if an attack lands or if the attack is negated by Blind, Block, Evade, Obstructed, or Invulnerable.”

Are spirit triggers consumed under the same conditions, or do they only have a chance to trigger on a successful hit?

After dropping a ranger, he cried “Spam 3 more”.
I poisoned him with SHbow 4 to neuter his healing, weakened him with SHbow 2 (in Choking gas) to neuter his DPS. He ran, and I used steal/inf sig/Inf strike to keep on him/pin him down, and used FS/LS to drop him.

But he lost to a thief, so obviously it was “3 spam”, and he just had to cry about it to “save face”.

yski.7642:

How about making it an entirely separate form of stealth like the mesmer skill Decoy that is not affected by revealed and doesn’t (I think?) cause it? That would solve all our problems as far as I can tell.

You’ll run into situations when you BS someone, and in less than 2 seconds, get this form of stealth (allowing a second BS in half the time or less than the usual revealed timer would allow you) – I can’t really speak to how OP this would be (from a scale of “not at all” to “obviously”) but the community would be in an absolute uproar about it.

Arganthium.5638:

evilapprentice.6379:

Why ditch the Soldiers ammy? Admittedly, I’m only running this in hot join until i get used to it, but against better skilled/higher ranked players I’ve been doing phenomenally well. There’s definitely a bit of a TTK problem with some specs, but at the worst I can currently win any 1 on 1 given enough time (assuming I dont get outplayed). If a second player is required to deal with me, I’m giving my team an advantage (and If I’m lucky, I can contest a point quite a while). If I’m forced to bail, I have the tools to get to another node and try again in minimal time.

Shadow trap I get, even if I don’t love it.

It depends on your role. I know what you mean, that the first build could essentially take on multiple opponents at once, hold a point- whatever. This one, for me, is maybe a bit more fun though because I just like the higher damage, and I don’t get tons of people jumping on me saying I’m a bad player for running a tanky thief.

I’ll probably go back to trying the soldier’s ammie again though. I’m just throwing this build out there for people who really love high damage to get into the trait spec, since it’s clearly far different from pretty much any other S/D build (or, for that matter, any build in general) that you tend to see.

As for Shadow Trap… I don’t always like it that much, but it essentially gives me another point that I can go to at any time, along with Shadow Return. Shadowstep, on the other hand, was limited a bit by LoS problems as well as a lack of range compared to Shadow Trap. I’ve played fights where I’ve literally walked from one point to the other and placed a Trap between them, then started fighting somebody on a point, chased him when he was running away, and then used Shadow Trap as a positional weapon with extreme success by predicting where he was going. It’s obviously also extremely good as a method of going from one point to another. That being said, I absolutely hate when the trap fails, but when it succeeds it can be a game-changer. I’d definitely suggest it for the Zerker build; for the Soldier one, it depends.

I should also mention that, since this seems to be a fairly condi-focused meta right now, that Zerker amulet is really good as a counter to this meta. Soldier’s, on the other hand, is great against direct damage but not as much against, say, a condi necro or a Spirit Ranger, simply because the toughness suddenly means virtually nothing. As it so happens, the math favors Zerker in a condi-focused meta, or in a meta with a ton of bunkers. While the second isn’t true (and isn’t likely to be true any time soon), pretty much everybody agrees right now that there are a ton of conditions in the current meta, or that the current meta allows condis to be extremely strong. That’s basically going to be the main justification for Zerker’s, therefore. Once the meta changes (hopefully!), I may very well go back to Soldier’s, which is going to be favorable in a more direct-damage focused meta.

Yeah, I decided to start running Shadow trap in anticipation of trying out solo q once the next patch rolled out – I ditched it in a rage when it failed to port me correctly 3 times in a row. Properly functioning, I get the versatility – like you said, being able to zip back to a point is insanely useful. In a team (assuming it functions properly), it can be invaluable. IMO, its even stronger with a soldiers ammy, because you can force a player to waste their time trying to neutralize a point while you hold it as a thief (not something you commonly see a thief doing). Sure, a zerker thief might drop that same player, but 10/0/0/30/30 soldiers can probably hold him and a second player if they show up long enough to give your team an advantage.

ATM, just running hotjoin however, Shadow Step is too powerful – even if the LOS is garbage, dropping 3 condi’s/ breaking a fight changing stun can be game changer. I’ve come back from less than 10% health to drop a MS/H warrior who was over 50% health because I was able to break their stun chain with SS and heal.

Surprisingly, I’ve had little trouble with conditions. Condi engi’s can be a tough fight (they’re the class/spec I’ve lost the most fights to), but so far, I’ve won most of my fights against Spirit rangers/Necro’s (amongst those players who played with some modicum of skill).

Why ditch the Soldiers ammy? Admittedly, I’m only running this in hot join until i get used to it, but against better skilled/higher ranked players I’ve been doing phenomenally well. There’s definitely a bit of a TTK problem with some specs, but at the worst I can currently win any 1 on 1 given enough time (assuming I dont get outplayed). If a second player is required to deal with me, I’m giving my team an advantage (and If I’m lucky, I can contest a point quite a while). If I’m forced to bail, I have the tools to get to another node and try again in minimal time.

Shadow trap I get, even if I don’t love it.

Rezzet.3614:

the answer to OP’s question is simply that thief’s skill ceiling is too small wich means even unskilled players can dominate other classes without putting much work wich is why they end up being a disaster when they face skilled players that know how to counter thiefs

I think you don’t like thieves/have a “forum” knowledge of them. That’s the only justification I can think of for such a silly, inaccurate opinion.

Coloxeus.3480:

Siroso.2769:

Only lesson I see here is that running two identical weapon sets can lead to a lack of options… If you had changed to a shortbow, the poison field would have worked wonders. Decent uptime on poison is a hard counter to healing signet and banner regen.

shortbow? if my larcenous strike can only hits him for 2k critical… what else can my shortbow can do? potato damage? while his HP regen is 1k / sec. passive heals and i put 10 on deadly arts so i can poison him on steal and Mug trait to last longer… my previous build was http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAs4YlYmSOHcy7E/5Ex2DfKUe6VgsdP4qVrKA-TsAg0CnIKSVkrITRyisFNKY/x8DA that’s why its really hard to fight in his banner territory

As much as Arganthium can be a condescending prick, he’s 100% right on this one. If you were running his Boon steal S/D SHbow spec, you’d probably win. It’d still be a long, hard fight, but it’d fare exponentially better than double S/D.

Double S/D is dead at the moment for a couple reasons.
A) Team fights. There’s so much AoE at the moment, you’re going to get mowed even between your constant dodges.
B) Sustain specs. Choking gas (and Cluster bomb for weakness) Nueters the kitten out of sustain specs. You wreck their damage and their passive healing. It’s a slower fight, but thanks to Mug, Assassin’s Reward, and Withdraw, and boon stealing, you’re almost always going to come out on top in the end. Worst case scenario, they send more than 1 player to deal with you and you give your team an advantage.

I’ve been running Arg’s spec for a couple days (Just in hot join, but against high-ranked, experienced, good players), and it’s just child’s play. You have what you need for most encounters, and the tools to bail and get to another point in those fights you cant win.

Excalibur.9748:

evilapprentice.6379:

Excalibur.9748:

Swap it with shadow’s embrace if you must. anything else would be underpowered compared to its current state for a build that utilizes it.

Shadows embrace feels kind of strong – that’s considered one of the “Required” traits for SA, and its a rather powerful one.Giving players another major trait they can take (since one of their bread and butter traits was moved to minor) seems like too much. I can’t say for sure it would be OP, but at first glance it certainly feels so.

Shadow protector is a good choice specifically because (IMO) it’s powerful enough to be useful, it just exists among other traits that overshadow it.

shadow protector is certainly decent for a stealth heavy build but it will not have the potential to really save you like last refuge currently does. shadow’s embrace is the only trait that can potentially have the same effect.

If we’re limiting ourselves to something that will save you in a pinch (like LR is designed to do), just have LR give the thief 2-3s of automatic evade at 25% – there is literally no stealth based solution that will always work – either it will at times screw the thief, or at times be OP.

Excalibur.9748:

Swap it with shadow’s embrace if you must. anything else would be underpowered compared to its current state for a build that utilizes it.

Shadows embrace feels kind of strong – that’s considered one of the “Required” traits for SA, and its a rather powerful one.Giving players another major trait they can take (since one of their bread and butter traits was moved to minor) seems like too much. I can’t say for sure it would be OP, but at first glance it certainly feels so.

Shadow protector is a good choice specifically because (IMO) it’s powerful enough to be useful, it just exists among other traits that overshadow it.

Kaon.7192:

This still won’t fix the rather common scenario of LR triggering right before an attack lands (i.e. a C&D, or shortbow shot), in which case the attack will trigger revealed after LR triggers.

Best solution I can think of is still to swap any of the other Shadow Arts adept major traits with it.

It should probably be switched with shadow protector – 10s of regen sounds like alot on paper, but it doesn’t fire if the target already has regen, which makes it a good choice for a 5 point trait.

Shadow protector also already has really strong competition in the rest of the SA tree, so while it’s not underpowered, it’s definitely below the power threshold of other trait options in the line.

I don’t think people are thinking through the “It should cancel the current action and grant me stealth” thing. While Last refuge would undeniably be better if it did that, it would still be broken – I don’t want the game deciding to cancel what I’m doing for any reason. Sure, it would be helpful if I was about to use a skill that would reveal me, but what if I’m in the middle of using a skill that’s going to end the fight?

While that situation is rare, I still don’t consider any situation where the game decides it’s going to cancel the action I chose as “beneficial”. Last refuge should be changed to something beneficial that has no costs/penalties/drawbacks associated with it.

Yet another issue a PTS would address. Anet could be pushing out incremental updates to a PTS which would solve a number of issues. The playerbase would be happier, having a place to escape the games current awful meta. Anet themselves would be at an advantage, with players extensively testing their changes for them. Best of all, they wouldn’t be changing the games meta before a tourney event.

Nearly everyone would be happier and patches would be better tested if we had access to a PTS – why haven’t we forced a dev response on the lack of a PTS yet?

Ghostwolf.9863:

evilapprentice.6379:

If you were targeting the ground, why would your other ranges be unaffected? It doesn’t effect other ranges, why only leaps? In addition, it’s inconsistent. You can angle your camera in such a way that your leap goes a reduced distance…then, without moving or touching your camera in the slightest, your very next leap will go full distance. If you were aiming with your camera, you should get consistent results – perhaps it does work as you suggest, and Anet has taken over a year to fix the issue (that wouldn’t be new for Anet), but I’m still convinced it’s a bug.

What other ranges are you talking about?

All ranged skills can be free-aimed on the ground, which reduces the distance they travel since they hit the ground, same with non ground targeted leapfinishers, however, leaps causes the character to enter a fixed animation which resets other animations including aim, so with a bit of lag or early press the 2nd leap can go straight forward and full distance since it’s using the reset aim that the leap animation set, and follows the characters direction no matter where you point the screen, this would be the real bug if something is a bug. :p

Yup, you’re right. Did some more testing with Shbow, and even though the results are inconsistent, it points to what your saying (the attack should be going towards the ground and its not), rather than what I was saying.

My apologies to Daniel Boon (Arg), and others. Thanks for clarifying this for me.

Excalibur.9748:

FS/LS needs to be made better, not more spammable. It’s already being spammed as is and we have a bad reputation of doing mindless “3” spam.

We have to ignore the Reputation – people still cry about HS spam from time to time. Mindless FS/LS spam is exactly as effective as mindless HS Spam – it’s useless. Used at the right time, however, both can be very effective.

LS is fine at 2 initiative – it does a lot. I’d prefer to see FS remain3 init, and return 1 Init on hit.

What really needs to be looked at is base thief initiative regen. Thieves need better base init regen, and the traits that affect initiative regen need to be adjusted accordingly. Thieves should have something similiar to every other classes “% Faster CD and additional effect” based on wielded weapon.

Ghostwolf.9863:

evilapprentice.6379:

What direction you angle your camera shouldn’t effect the distance your HS travels – it doesn’t effect other ranges, so why should it effect HS? Camera angle isn’t “Targeting”, because your character always performs actions in the direction they’re facing, regardless of camera angle. In addition, if it was an intended effect, it would always happen at a particular angle – as I’m sure you’re aware, it doesn’t.

It’s not a bug, since you can target where your abilities should go using the right mouse button and your camera center, so targeting the ground that way is the same as targeting a player at close range which makes the leap finisher travel over a shorter distance. Thief is not alone with this.

If you were targeting the ground, why would your other ranges be unaffected? It doesn’t effect other ranges, why only leaps? In addition, it’s inconsistent. You can angle your camera in such a way that your leap goes a reduced distance…then, without moving or touching your camera in the slightest, your very next leap will go full distance. If you were aiming with your camera, you should get consistent results – perhaps it does work as you suggest, and Anet has taken over a year to fix the issue (that wouldn’t be new for Anet), but I’m still convinced it’s a bug.

Pre-patch (when FS/LS was combined), FS used to strip 1 boon. Bunkers typically ate the 1 boon loss, and countered/dodged the Second swing (now called LS), because losing 1 boon was deemed less detrimental than dodging the big swing/countering it while the thief was open.

1 boon isn’t that much to a boon bunker, which LS was primarily designed to counter.

In addition, if you’re using a camera angle to short-change your HS to get 4 HS’s through 1 BP, you’re exploiting (IMO). Daniel Boon up there might disagree, but he doesn’t have much to back up his point other than “If you don’t believe me you’re an idiot and I won’t discuss anything further.”

What direction you angle your camera shouldn’t effect the distance your HS travels – it doesn’t effect other ranges, so why should it effect HS? Camera angle isn’t “Targeting”, because your character always performs actions in the direction they’re facing, regardless of camera angle. In addition, if it was an intended effect, it would always happen at a particular angle – as I’m sure you’re aware, it doesn’t.

Delta Blues.8507:

Viking Jorun.5413:

Same concept as the warrior: Low skill floor so there are a lot of bad players, but a high skill ceiling to where a skilled one will be borderline invincible.

except the bad warriors are usually not nearly as bad as bad thieves imho. Simply because they get better base stats. I mean a GC warrior will still have way more HP and armor than a GC thief, which means more survivability. As long as more snares/stuns etc.

I think the point is that a thief, if played badly is gonna suck on the big stick way harder

All this still assuming both chars are properly/almost properly geared.
I think that the thief class itself just punishes you harder for mistakes, while maybe giving you bigger damage to take down unaware casuals easier.

As someone else pointed out, most thief defenses are “all or nothing”. They rely on dodge and stealth – eat an attack you should have dodged, you’re taking the full damage. Eat an attack in stealth, you’re taking full damage.

While the above is true for any class, it affects thieves more due to dodge and stealth being their only real defensive mechanics. They do not have utilities/elites that grant invulnerability/psuedo Invuln. They have no blocks. They have no access to protection/stability/aegis. They have no traits that automatically fire one of the above abilities at a certain % of health. Their non-stealth condition cleansing is lackluster, and not everyone wants to put at least 10 points in SA and rely on stealth so heavily.

“The full damage” (from paragraph 1) is usually devastating for a thief as well as they gain the least out of any class by specing defensively. You can’t hold a capture point while in stealth. Its hard to stay on point while you’re trying to dodge all the big swings coming at you and the AoE raining down all around you. Your access to regen is poor (Out of all of our regen traits, Pain Response is the only one that isn’t automatically inferior to other traits in the line). It’s hard to have a sustainable build without access to at least protection OR stability. The defensive boon we have the best access to is vigor, which is for dodging.

There’s also the lowest base health pool, and average heals. The Effects on thief heals are pretty awesome, but the overall healing is rather mediocre. SoM is in a tough spot because our high hit volume weapon sets (P/P, S/P, P/D to some extent) currently have problems ranging from “Niche Effectiveness” to “Universally useless”.

Arganthium.5638:

evilapprentice.6379:

I’m still waiting for your take on my last post Mister Pioneer.

I’m more than open to the fact that I might be wrong, I’d like to hear your take on why you think HS not going the full distance isn’t an exploit in light of the points I made earlier.

I really, truly, honestly don’t care about this HS debate any more. If you think that changing a game mechanic (camera angle) through a fully legitimate way to change another game mechanic (distance) is an exploit (a method of changing game mechanics using illegitimate methods, ie not game mechanics), then I really don’t think that discussion with you is worth anything whatsoever any more.

OK, I’ll bite Daniel Boon.

Let’s pretend that camera angle is considered a “game mechanic”. I’m willing to pretend that the angle you are viewing your character at somehow affects the games physics engine, as you claim.

Why is it HS is the only skill we see this interaction with? The rest of your skills ranges are unaffected, regardless how you’ve aimed your camera. That seems really odd for a “game mechanic”.

Once your done with that one (an easy task for someone of your vast knowledge, I’m sure), feel free to educate me on why this game mechanic would be so inconsistent? I mean, I can aim my camera, Get a short jump HS, not touch my camera at all, and go the full distance on my very next HS. I’m not sure how that could happen to such a basic game mechanic. I mean, HS (and other leaps) are the only skills that are effected by this camera angle “game mechanic” distance variation, can’t they even apply it consistently?

I’m still waiting for your take on my last post Mister Pioneer.

I’m more than open to the fact that I might be wrong, I’d like to hear your take on why you think HS not going the full distance isn’t an exploit in light of the points I made earlier.

Arganthium.5638:

Now, as others mentioned in this thread, if you’re using HS at a wall and don’t go 450 distance, is that an exploit? You said it wasn’t, but aren’t camera angles just as much a feature of the game as are walls? Why shouldn’t camera angles not work similarly? Heck, if I’m facing a wall and I turn 180 degrees, when I use HS I’ll suddenly go the full 450 distance. If I turn my camera 60 degrees to the right, then I’ll go in a direction 60 degrees to the right. Is that an exploit? Both of those change distances, effects- whatever, but that doesn’t seem to be a problem to you. So, if I use HS towards the floor (which is essentially a wall), wouldn’t it make sense for me not to go as far as I otherwise would? Or is that still an exploit?

I answered the walls question, which is grasping at straws if you’re looking to use it as an example here. You can’t walk through/HS through walls – that’s a well established “Game rule” of how the games physics engine works. “How isn’t it an exploit if you HS into a solid object to stack stealth” is a silly point when we’re talking about finding a way to trick HS into not going the full distance over open terrain.

How would turning the camera angle 60 degrees to the right change the distance HS goes? Since when does HS (or any leap for that matter auto-turns for that matter) take into account what direction your camera is facing when calculating distance? Why would it?

If your argument is that “hs is aimed toward the floor”, there’s a number of problems with that. Why does an untargeted HS go directly in the direction your character is facing regardless of camera orientation? By your argument, you’re using the camera to aim the skill, but HS still travels straight in the direction your character is facing. Furthermore, I would expect every single one of your attacks should miss when the camera is overhead (doubly so if your camera isn’t aligned directly behind your character), since you’re “aiming” at the ground directly in front of you (where you’re aiming you HS, Right?) Since your other abilities ranges are consistent regardless how you face the camera, HS should follow the same rules.

There’s also a question of consistency. If this is the way HS was designed to interact with camera angles, it should work that way every time. It doesn’t. The trick seems to be to angle your camera overhead and hold the S key. Go ahead and try it – angle your camera, hold S, and hammer that 2. The results are inconsistent. You’ll perform some combination of short-jumps and full length HS’s. You’ll have a slightly higher success rate if you Hold onto your camera and “jiggle” it in between every HS, but that’s not foolproof either – at times you’ll go the full distance. I’ve had similar results from Savage Leap and Monarch’s leap. I’ve also tried all 3 skills just angling my camera, letting go of my mouse, and hitting 2 on my keypad – I receive similarly inconsistent travel distances.

YuiRS.8129:

All classes are like this.

There are just Thief players who learned to abuse the game and permadodge and those who didn’t. It’s learning curve and some people get there earlier than others. There are also those who refuse to abuse the system, because it’s so cheesy and feels like exploiting, plus requires no actual skill.

Yeah… no, they aren’t.

The warrior I rolled for funsies last week is literally nothing like this. It’s CC/Attrition build that outlasts other builds, and works well against condi’s. It’s defenses aren’t anything like “all or nothing”, so take the crybaby thief whining elsewhere.

OIIIIIO.7825:

evilapprentice.6379:

HS does not say “450 (unless you angle the camera all weird)”, it says “450” and then nothing more – anything that makes HS not go the full range (outside of game mechanics that are specifically designed to do so, which “The angle of your camera” does not fall under) is either a bug, or an exploit.

How do you you feel about using HS in front of a wall to stay in the BP and stack stealth?
This falls into that category based on the above statement, however I don’t think of it as either. This may be alluded to though when you mentioned “outside of game mechanics.” Just wondering

How are walls outside of “Game mechanics specifically designed to do so?” Walls aren’t passable. HS doesn’t make walls passable. That’s consistent.

Arganthium.5638:

snip

You’ve run S/D before, correct? Thanks to the reduced aftercast of LS and FS, you’re not “taking a risk” by landing slice, it practically happens automatically. Try it yourself in the mists – target a dummy, hit FS, and que a Dodge roll right as the FS lands – you’ll land a slice then dodge. The basis of the spec is to squeeze those slices in between your dodge rolls and FS’s, otherwise you don’t do enough damage to kill anyone. The judgement part comes when you try to fake your opponent out (continuing with the AA chain instead of dodging, throwing an LS in at odd times, etc etc etc), but you’re not doing kitten for damage with just 3 spam.

The conceded the first point was opinion. The second point however is a fact. Under Range, HS does not say “450 (unless you angle the camera all weird)”, it says “450” and then nothing more – anything that makes HS not go the full range (outside of game mechanics that are specifically designed to do so, which “The angle of your camera” does not fall under) is either a bug, or an exploit. It’s a bug that Cruuk has managed to parley into an exploit – most players wouldn’t want their HS going a shorter distance, but Cruuk has found a way to take advantage of that. Kudos to his ingenuity, but it’s still an exploit.

My third point has nothing to do with whether or not executioner is better than hidden killer – that’s entirely based on the spec, your amulet, your runes, etc… My point was 0/30/30/10/0 isn’t some inspired build – Oh look, someone took a bunch of traits that focus around being in stealth and are running it with a stealth stacking weapon set. What exactly do you see in that that’s so revolutionary?

If CS is so bad, where are all the 30/0/X/X/X thieves? With Panic Strikes ICD halved, I’d think 30 DA would be dominating the meta, right? Why are thieves anywhere putting any points into CS? Is it possible that Anet designed thieves to be big burst/poor sustainability, and CS helps with burst? You’re just spouting numbers and ignoring practical application.

Lux.7169:

Cruuks build is definitely unique and not an exploit. He focuses on a highly intensive stealth build which is extremely easy to counter.

He wants to pull 2 people to far while he dances around trying to prep his might-stacked BS. The problem being that without his 10-20 might stacks and stealth he is extremely weak.

Easy solution to never die to cruuk as a home-point bunker: whenever you see a black powder on the ground then stand in it. Eat a heart seeker to reveal him. His HS is EXTREMELY weak since he has very weak power and no might stacks on. He does SO much prep and it can all be ruined just by standing on his BP since HS has about a 400 hit radius. Easiest thing to counter in the game sine he never fights to keep the point contested.

There’s absolutely nothing unique about a stealth heavy burst thief build with scholar runes. That’s not to say it isn’t effective, but unique? Not even slightly. He plays it “uniquely” because he’s found a way to stack more stealth than the game designers intended, which is of course powerful when in stealth you’re stacking might, healing and dropping conditions.

As for “Not an exploit”, I’ll just paste this here, directly from Cruuk’s Guide.

“To have the best success with this spec you need to learn how to heartseeker 4 times through one black powder which is only achievable by aiming ur camera looking down over your character which makes your heartseekers not go as far allowing you to squeeze in the 4th heartseeker quicker. You have to do this combo nearly perfect for it to work or else you will pay the price of losing initiative. You also have to be aware of your suroundings and not hit something while heartseeking through black powders or else you will be left with barely any initiative and very vulnerable if you do end up messing up pop blinding powder to get back into stealth and reset.”

Word’s are Cruuk’s, emphasis mine. To use the spec to it’s fullest potential, you have to exploit HS’s inability to go its full listed distance by using a weird camera angle.

Just to clarify, I’m not claiming Cruuk’s spec is easy (I’ve messed around with it in the mists, it certainly isn’t), or that it’s ineffective (how could 9-12s of stealth on demand NOT be effective?). It’s just cheese – it’s pretty obvious (IMO, of course) that thieves were not designed to have 6-9s of stealth on demand. It’s even worse when you’re using an exploit to regularly get 9-12s of stealth on demand.

Back on topic, I agree with Sarrow’s post. Nail on the head.

Arganthium.5638:

Too many words to quote.

While following Jumper’s build won’t make you a “top thief”, the concept behind it is rather simple and effective. It’s well built because you’re paying attention to the aftercast on FS/LS to get as many slices in as possible (the spec is basically unplayable without this against competent players). Practice and knowing when to fight and when to run are pretty key for this build.

Cruuk’s build is solid mechanically, but bullkitten in practice and violates the design of thief in GW2.
A) Thieves in this game weren’t supposed to have 9-12 seconds of stealth whenever they wanted. There’s a reason (IMO) that Shadow Refuge has such an obvious and lingering graphic – it’s to explicitly tell the other players “Everyone in this circle is going to have stealth for 10+ seconds!” as loudly as possible. Hopefully they’ll soon balance smoke fields and leap that leaves Thieves in a solid place, but isn’t taking advantage of Anet’s poor mechanics design and slow response time.
B) It relies on an exploit. The very first sentence of a his “basic gameplay” section tells you to aim your camera so that your HS doesn’t go the full listed difference. I’m fairly sure the developers didn’t intend HS to go the full distance “unless you had your camera at a specific example”, so in my mind, it’s an exploit – It’s just as bad as when guardians where gaining permablock on one of their mace abilities – you’re knowingly taking advantage of an unintended execution of an ability.
C) Cruuk’s build is literally nothing special. 0/30/30/10/0? That’s not an inspired build, it’s practically cookie cutter. He swapped Executioner for Hidden Killer because he found a way to stack might/healing/condition removal via an exploit. Otherwise, it’s a very basic, obvious D/P build.

Point A is just my opinion, but B and C are a fact. The spec isn’t anything special or inspired, and It’s based on taking advantage of an exploit. It’s cheese.

If you’ve “almost never” supported putting points into critical strikes, you haven’t played a thief in sPvP. There really isn’t any simpler way to put it – you can play a condi spec that may or may not perform well in hotjoin but has no place in TPvp, or you can go power/crit which requires points in CS to be effective.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

evilapprentice.6379:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Nime.2089:

evilapprentice.6379:

D/P is superior to D/D in every single way in the current meta.

I can’t quite agree to this statement. Obviously D/P has a better variety and offers more diversity when it comes to adapting to a situation. But the initial Burst potential is higher with D/D than with D/P.

He’s talking about within the context of the “current meta”, whatever that is, so you can practically ignore it for the most part.

Other than D/P having the best gap closer, I also disagree that it is “superior that D/D in every single way.”

What does D/D offer that compares with a ranged interrupt and an AoE blind field?

What advantage does D/D have over D/P in a power/crit setup?

Given that you have to ask those questions will only lead to an unproductive discussion.

But for you to claim that D/P is “superior to D/D in every single way” is enough to know that no matter what is presented that you already made up your mind in that regards. So what’s the point of asking me those questions when in fact that there are many things that D/D can do that D/P cannot, which proof that D/P IS NOT superior to D/D in every single way. In most situation, perhaps.

I admit “every single way” was a bit of hyperbole, but the point of my post wasn’t to be argumentative. I’m honestly curious – I’m open to the fact that I might be wrong. Maybe I’m not seeing something about D/D that makes it worth running. As far as I can tell, in the vast majority of specs your likely to encounter in this game in the last 6 months, D/P has the better toolset – there’s the rare odd time where D/D would be better, but it doesn’t justify all the times its inferior IMO.

If Dancing Dagger worked more reliably, the story would be different – a reliable cripple at 3 init and 900 range is exactly what D/D needs – but it doesn’t work very reliably. I’ve literally seen “obstructed” pop up over a stationary player sitting in the middle of the graveyard – that’s just 1 extreme example, but the travel time is just too slow to be of any use on a target that isn’t already in HS range or charging directly at you. In addition, DB is just about useless for Power/crit. The evade time is so short that general latency and human reaction time makes timing an evade with the skill (the only thing I can think of doing with DB in a power/crit setup) almost impossible.

TheMightyAltroll.3485:

zone.1073:

Step 1: Make five+ engi, mesmer, necro, etc characters.

Step 2: Pop elite in team fight. Swap chars. Pop elite in every team fight. Repeat.

You cannot do that.

Nik Rane.6431:

No, they’re not going to give you the option to switch your character in-game. You would just use it to counter the opponents’ builds after you learned what they are. Stop being bad and prepare based on the 2 minutes of information that they give you before the match starts.

So you want the game to be based entirely on matchups. What happens if your team happens to be entirely condition based, and your opponents team is entirely condition resistant?

What a wonderful match that would be.

I’d like to challenge you to a Rock Paper Scissors match, but you only get one chance at beating me. Esports.

…Maybe you should…bring a varied team?

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Nime.2089:

evilapprentice.6379:

D/P is superior to D/D in every single way in the current meta.

I can’t quite agree to this statement. Obviously D/P has a better variety and offers more diversity when it comes to adapting to a situation. But the initial Burst potential is higher with D/D than with D/P.

He’s talking about within the context of the “current meta”, whatever that is, so you can practically ignore it for the most part.

Other than D/P having the best gap closer, I also disagree that it is “superior that D/D in every single way.”

What does D/D offer that compares with a ranged interrupt and an AoE blind field?

What advantage does D/D have over D/P in a power/crit setup?

Nime.2089:

evilapprentice.6379:

D/P is superior to D/D in every single way in the current meta.

I can’t quite agree to this statement. Obviously D/P has a better variety and offers more diversity when it comes to adapting to a situation. But the initial Burst potential is higher with D/D than with D/P.

Not really.
D/D
BV→CnD precast→steal→bs→HS til dead

D/P
BP→BV→HS→Steal before HS animation is over→BS→HS til dead

If your target is over 50%, those do the exact same damage. If they’re under 50%, D/P does better damage.

The only caveat I can think of is Mug – Mug might trigger damage After the Leap effect grants stealth and screw it all up, I don’t really remember. If that’s the case, D/D can use mug for the combo and D/P cant (but Mug can no longer crit, so it’s not really that big a deal damage wise, more setup wise).

You run D/P.

That answer isn’t intended to be dismissive, but it’s really the only answer, unless you want to sacrifice good utilities for those that might slow your target down a bit (though they’ll likely have escapes for those as well).

D/P is superior to D/D in every single way in the current meta.