Guild Wars 2

Man, this reminds of 3rd grade.
[Nappa] Nostalgic. [/Nappa]

Zenith.7301:

Everything in this game is telegraphed, and considering people have 3 dodges at best in the beginning of a fight, and you can root with infiltrator strike before a larcenous (it’s a saved ability you don’t need to use immediately) so they can’t dodge makes your nitpicking pointless.

Pop signet for ini, pop roll for initative, voila you have far more high sustained damage than your target can dodge, and your resources recharge a lot faster than your target’s while having high evasion time.

And yeah with prec signet and fury from either lyssa or the critical hits traitline or from stealing is pretty reliable crits. I look at upwards of 67-70% crit chance.
Don’t talk out of your kitten as if some of use don’t have thieves we play and exploit.

The sword auto is not crappy. The first 2 hits crit for 1.5-1.7 k, and cleave while the third attack is a larcenous strike in exchange for cripple and weakness instead of boon steal.

So now we’re throwing in the Init cost for Inf strike and Shadow return to this “Sheer Burst”? Now we’re talking about 20-25 initiative in a 5-6 second span – it’s pretty clear you don’t know how to play a thief. Let’s also not forget there are blocks, immunities Snares, roots, and general CC to go along with those dodges(and before you cite evasion again, LS does not evade)

Stating Facts is not nitpicking – you’re making generalizations and rounding up. You have to find some way to dismiss it because otherwise you don’t have a point. Some examples
- 65-70% crit is not the same as 100% crit – specifically, in you’re example, “4 LS’s crit for 3.5k-4” -No, on average, 3 out of 4 of them do.
- Your “3.5k to 4k crits” is an exaggerated number. You can get roughly 3.5 k crits against a target with 2000 armor when you have over 6 init, your endurance isn’t full AND your target is below 50% health. Fulfilling the conditions for 2 25 point minor traits and a grand master trait while isn’t a “typical” situation – you should expect a glass cannon fulfilling all it’s DPS boosting trait conditions to hit you really hard. It’s not nitpicking to point out how you’re just making up numbers, which I did in the last post – you ignored it because you can’t argue against facts.
- Slice and Slash do crit hard – they also leave the thief wide open for counterattack. Since the only way to do damage in the spec is to go full glass cannon, that’s a bad thing. The cast time and aftercast of the second and third swings of AA make them your lowest priority attacks – you need to be good and play close attention to whats going on if you want to use them.
- Not many thieves use RFI – Shadowstep is vastly superior as a stunbreaker, and as a condition cleanse. It can also be used to stomp, used for mobility, and its CD is 10s faster than RFI.

Even if the little picture you painted above was true (lets be totally clear, it isnt), what would it matter? Is it strange that GC thief spending ALL its initiative and ALL its utilities might be dangerous? The same can be said of any class, really.

I see your little wail about stealth later on in the thread – I’m thinking you’re just another forum member who likes to cry about everything a thief does. Don’t worry to much about being completely wrong, at least you have alot of peers here.

I’m trying 0/30/0/30/10 with S/D-S/P. I find black powder and pistol whip fairly useful in situations where double S/D might not have been the best choice.

vincecontix.1264:

evilapprentice.6379
Well with the current meta of high lvl tpvp the thief class as a whole need some addressing. On its own yes pp has a few weakness but if you mix it up with sd its a really powerful set. You have all the mobility and escapes you will need and one of the highest ranged dps. It addition with sd you will be able to deal with high retaliation build.

While P/P is out, you have no weapon based mobility or escapes. Maybe you have the highest ranged burst (I don’t know the numbers well enough to agree or disagree), but you certainly don’t have the highest ranged DPS – your only damaging skill costs 5 init, is a long channel, and competes with your 4 init interrupt and your 6 init smoke field (which is the sets only defense).

You’ve got no AoE, and no trait to turn the shots piercing – the best thieves get is a 50% chance for shots to bounce to 1 additional target – lets also note that said trait competes with Bountiful Theft, Hastened replenishment, and Sleight of hand – all very strong traits (Hastened replenishment arguably so, but it can still be considered strong).

Again, I’m glad you like the set, and that you feel powerful using it, but the fact remains P/P is bad, and your spec is weaker for trying to cram P/P into it in a useable form.

ensoriki.5789:

vincecontix.1264:

TheMightyAltroll.3485

Yea i agree with you duels are not really that important its more for a bit of fun and to show p/p wep set for thief isnt as bad as people think. I do have footage of absolutely dominating in spvp matches with this build uploading them soon. I also realize that pawning in spvp isn’t that impressive as the skill level of some players is absolutely terrible. Tournament footage of the build is next on my list.

No it is as bad as people think.
No one says that P/P can’t kill or gank. It’s just all our options are superior, P/P has a niche that well isn’t significant enough to justify it at the bottom line and it’s risky to take with it’s limited defenses.

Or to put it in perspective.
A mesmer throws down Illusionary Unload. Now that Mesmer has its own P/P thief, better incombat mobility, and more secure damage mitigation while that unload not taking away from its use of utility skills via a initiative system, instead it fuels its illusion mechanic.

I think people talk ill of body shot these days out of habit, the skill is significantly better than it used to be and is starting to line up with what Jon Peters said about the set. Which by extension made P/P a better set as well, but it’s still a duck set and what thief wants to be a duck.

Either way do you, and take it as far as you can.

I still disagree about body shot – it’s another utility skill on a set that already has 2 pure utility skills – headshot and black powder are amazing, but they do no damage. You rely on 1 2 3 to do all your damage, and 10 stacks of vulnerability for 3 seconds is nothing special. It competes with Unload for init consumption, and it’s only compatible with Unload (since AA is condition damage based).

It’s not as awful as it once was, and I suppose it might be useful in a group scenario, but 3 seconds is an awful small window for coordination, and can easily be nullified by a teleport/dodge/block/immune. Maybe when the disparity between AA and Unload is addressed, body shot will be in a better place. It’s been a year tho, and P/P is still a thief’s worst set by far.

vincecontix.1264:

TheMightyAltroll.3485

Yea i agree with you duels are not really that important its more for a bit of fun and to show p/p wep set for thief isnt as bad as people think. I do have footage of absolutely dominating in spvp matches with this build uploading them soon. I also realize that pawning in spvp isn’t that impressive as the skill level of some players is absolutely terrible. Tournament footage of the build is next on my list.

P/P is exactly as bad as people think.

- Auto attack and Dual skill are at direct odds with each other (one’s based on condition damage, the other power/crit)
- No Escapes
- No Mobility, No mobility hindrance
- Body shot is still a severely under performing skill. Head shot and Black powder are good, but pure utility skills – that leaves AA and Unload to do all the damage, see point 1.

I’m glad that you have fun with it, and that it works for you. But the point still remains that P/P’s extremely poor design needs addressing.

Its unfortunately too stealth reliant for Capture point play, and the TTK is much too long. P/P might be fun, but it’s just dead until it sees an overhaul.

Don’t take that as bashing, just being honest.

ThatShortGuy.4672:

As a cheap substitute for the combat log you want there is the report after you’re defeated. It shows what damaged you the most to the least. You can even sort it by player.

That sadly doesn’t cut it in alot of situations

- I’ve been dying mid-evade alot lately. In at least 3 of those breakdowns, there were no DoTs listed. I can’t quickly look at the combat log and piece together what happened.

- I took a break right before the big warrior patch. I come back and fight a warrior who just wont drop. I was trying a hybrid spec at the time, so I wasn’t paying close attention to my damage numbers. Was I doing crap damage? Not critting enough? Or was the warrior just healing through it all? I have no idea, because I can’t take a quick glance at an effective combat log for feedback.

- There’s no timeline to the report. I can’t see when things happened.

I Don’t think color coding, filtering, and combat log recording down/condition application is a big request. I’m not asking Anet to deliver anything special, or hard. An effective combat log is important, and I’m a little surprised how bare bones GW2’s is considering their goal is esports.

Chase.8415:

It’s kind of funny how you demand ArenaNet to “fix” the combat log ASAP, after admitting you haven’t played the game in 8 months.

It’s not like they’re going to lose anymore money, you have gave them nothing to begin with.

I haven’t sat down and checked the combat log functionality in 8 months. Also, the actual number was just hyperbole.

Please try to read and understand the post fully before replying.

Aza.2105:

evilapprentice.6379:

Hector.6950:

For me personally blind is very anoying, because i can’t use my second skill effectively when being downed (my main is ranger). In other words, blind is just as effective as stabillity when it comes to killing a downed person. As it is so easy to spam, it makes Necro’s, Guards and Rangers downed abilitys pretty much useless. Other then that blind is fine.

Devs, mayby a good option is to make downed skills immune to blind?
Or mayby an immune to blind trait when being downed. That would be nice

The only classes which can’t use their second downed skill absolutely are Warrior, engineer, and necro.

Guardians and rangers #2 is instant cast, so even in Black powder, you can burn the blind with your 1 skill and immediately hit your 2 skill before the blind pulses again. It’s happened to me plenty of times.

That’s if you get the timing right, but with lag it can make doing that quite challenging. And of course, they will just drop black powder again.

If you’ve successfully gotten your interrupt off, BP didn’t counter your downed interrupt skill. If they had to drop a second BP, congrats, you cost a thief 12 init for a stomp.

Hector.6950:

For me personally blind is very anoying, because i can’t use my second skill effectively when being downed (my main is ranger). In other words, blind is just as effective as stabillity when it comes to killing a downed person. As it is so easy to spam, it makes Necro’s, Guards and Rangers downed abilitys pretty much useless. Other then that blind is fine.

Devs, mayby a good option is to make downed skills immune to blind?
Or mayby an immune to blind trait when being downed. That would be nice

The only classes which can’t use their second downed skill absolutely are Warrior, engineer, and necro.

Guardians and rangers #2 is instant cast, so even in Black powder, you can burn the blind with your 1 skill and immediately hit your 2 skill before the blind pulses again. It’s happened to me plenty of times.

It’s been almost a year. Now I haven’t checked recently (in about 8 months I guess), but as far as I’m aware, the combat log still doesnt:

-Allow color coding of any kind
-Allow filtering of any kind (By enemy, enemy NPC, friendly effects, etc)
-SHOW HEALS
-Basic status reporting (“You were poisoned!”, “You were downed!”)
-Time stamp down to the second

You know what I don’t need to see when I’m checking my combat log after a stomp? 30 listings for “Trail of knives” – I don’t care what my downed ability damage was, I’m more curious what downed me, so I can try to avoid it next time. I’m not going to drop the game or sit in spawn for 3 minutes while I sort through the mess that is our current combat log trying to figure out exactly what happened.

I understand Anet has alot of requests, and they need to prioritize, but the current combat log is shameful. It’s not even adequate for a F2P MMO – how much time and effort can it possibly cost to add the ability to color separate lines and filter data? Those are the basic components of every combat log of every MMO I’ve ever played.

We’d also like some more transparency – Let us know exactly what’s happening in combat…every little piece of data, go ahead and stick it in the combat log (as long as you enable filtering prior) – we should be able to carefully scrutinize whats going on in every fight so we have some idea what we need to change to become better players.

I realize this second request is a bit more complicated then the first, and I’m willing to wait for this one – there’s no reason we shouldn’t have color coding, filtering, and heals showing in the combat log ASAP tho.

Zenith.7301:

Juan Ignacio.8903:

u can only put 2 blind fields with full init and 3 after a few sec, the only way to have perma blind some1 is that they are dumb enough to stay on the blind field forever.

If they don’t stand on the blind field, you can spam heart seeker to stack stealth and gain 16-25 stacks of might on a signet backstab spec and crit high toughness builds for 6k backstabs.

So it’s a loss either way. You need to be permablinded to keep the thief from stacking stealth and might, but being in the field keeps you blinded.

Dual.8953:

Defektive.7283:

evilapprentice.6379:

Defektive.7283:

Fenrir.5493:

As someone stated before, on paper we can say a lot of things but the reality is that thieves DO spam blinds.

Either that or spam evade frames.

Either way it’s pretty cheesy. But it begs the question of why does it exist? Possibly because the class is weak without it? IDK, won’t really know unless we took it away.

You’re the defektive everyone talks about/to when they’re talking warrior strats/TPvP, right? If not, you can ignore this next part.

Assuming you are, don’t you think “Won’t really know unless we take it away” is a bit disingenuous? Is it really that hard to envision what you could do to a thief if they couldn’t evade alot or blind you? You’ve certainly fought some while TPvPing, you honestly can’t imagine what a free kill they’d be without those defensive tools? Come on.

When people were crying endlessly about stealth, Anet finally gave thieves another way to survive with usable, effective evades. Turns out people think those are broken too!

I think conceptually a Thief was supposed to be a get-in and out quick class. Something that can move quickly, dispense damage, and get out with out a scratch.

That comes down to intelligent teleports, stealth, and being ‘slippery’ to a target.

In-game however, it’s taken a bit further when abused by Blinds and Evades. You’re looking at a class that can teleport (on a weapon skill), teleport as a stun break, teleport to defend (or attack) a point. Then they become amplified by consistent evade frames in-combat and AoE blinds they can apply to a large portion of the enemy.

The problem then comes to light. Is a thief a sustained DPS, or a strategically placed missile that’s difficult to pin down? Warriors were supposed to be the sustained DPS, but it sometimes feels with all of a thiefs Blinds and Evades like Warriors are etched out.

So do thiefs NEED these skills? I’d arguably say yes to the evades, but no to the Blinds (atleast, the sheer amount of them right now).

---

Overall, I think a lot of people have gotten used to a very specific playstyle for each class. To consider or adopt a strategy that is different than norm to them comes as an insult. This drives people to new classes instead of innovating their current one.

I think this emerged because they made S/D, P/D and Sb as non-burst sets. They need the sustain to function, and unfortuately D/D and D/P have some access to thier sustain options. If they hadn’t made LS so good, S/D would have stayed in relative obscurity. S/D’s tricky to buff, buff the wrong skills and S/P would overtake it.

Except 3.5-4k crits on larcenous strike that can be chained 3-4 times isn’t sustained. It’s sheer burst with ridiculous sustained on top of it all.

The sword auto 3rd part of the chain hits nearly as hard as larcenous, costs nothing, and applies cripple and weakness.

Sigh.

4 seconds of Highly telegraphed abilities isn’t “Burst” – every LS is preceded by a whirling, swooshing stab for .5s, then an obvious .5s arm kitten animation that lets you know “LS IS COMING!”. 3-4 times in a row is 15-20 Init – even with 10/0/0/30/30 double S/D weapon switch, you just blew all or almost all your init in 4 seconds…meaning no Inf strike, no shadow return, no more tricks up your sleeve.

Also, 3.5k – 4k crits (Not hits, Crits, which apparently we can rely on to always happen) is a rather subjective number. Any S/D thief who “spams” FS/LS is running 30 acro double S/D – there’s literally no other way to support the init cost. That build sacrifices alot of power to get the traits it needs for sustained init regen. To get those kind of crits I’m probably hitting another glass spec, and those numbers aren’t impressive on glass v glass.

The third part of Sword AA costs 1.5s and 2 kittenty swings before it – if you can dodge LS and CS, you just nerfed swords DPS by a huge amount, as they’re the only abilities that do any damage for the set (and lucky for you, they have the exact same animation, so it’s super easy to know exactly which ability to dodge).

Don’t use hyperbole and made up numbers to reinforce your point, there’s enough misinformation on these boards already.

We won’t be seeing a new mode for a long, long time – possibly ever.

Anet is still currently balancing their classes for the conquest game mode – that balance is different than say, CTF or TDM – especially if they want this game to become an esport.

Even when they get conquest balance to a point where the community feels everything is working, it’ll be a nightmare to introduce a new game mode because then you have to design any new balance changes with both modes in mind.

How useful is a slow bunker guard in CTF or TDM? How will the boards handle the stealth spam burst thief QQ in TDM? How do you fix those issues without screwing up Conquest?

Valkyriez.6578:

Abusing what exactly? Are you saying that having a second account needs to be in some way monitored or policed?

I’m not sure what OP was going for exactly, but what I took from it was that Anet needs to examine how rank decays – they currently have a system where you can get your “main” account into high standing, then just 1 game a month to keep it there while you screw around on a secondary account. It defeats the whole purpose of the leaderboards.

You can’t really police second accounts (and even if you could, it would be pointless and kitten off the community), so they need to change the way leaderboard position decays to discourage this silliness (I’m making the assumption OP is correct – I have no idea how prevalent second accounts are for leaderboard abuse purposes is).

Maybe SoloQ will help fix it a bit? Players who can’t always play with their team can Solo Q on their main accounts and not have to worry about team rank… though Anet will still need to make some adjustments to rank decay rate regardless.

Tracker.6483:

evilapprentice.6379:

Jomo kenyatta.7351:

personally i think hes made some very reasonable points all 8 boons and remove all conditions isnt in line with the other skills and especially with elites like basilisk venom having such a short cooldown it really does need to be reworked.

You’re comparing an ability tied to elites that cleanses conditions (heavy in the current meta) and gives 5s of boons at max once per minute to a number of static, always on effects. All boons for 5 seconds can vary wildly from very strong to near useless, depending on the situation you use your elite in – always on effects are…always on.

Being tied to the elite means that at times, you’re blowing your elite just for a condi cleanse – maybe the elites effect won’t help much now… but it had to be done – that’s a fair tradeoff IMO.

For Thieve’s, Basilisk Venom is never blown as a fair tradeoff. The application lasts a while to be used on his next attack which could be some time later.

Not saying that means the runes are OP; just wanted to point that out.

A properly timed BV can be devastating. A randomly applied 1s stun isn’t anything special…lots of classes get 1s stuns, and they aren’t an elite or have a 1s casting time or anything like that.

You should just miss 1 target. Not a perfect solution, but fair enough to both sides.

Lordrosicky.5813:

evilapprentice.6379:

Jomo kenyatta.7351:

personally i think hes made some very reasonable points all 8 boons and remove all conditions isnt in line with the other skills and especially with elites like basilisk venom having such a short cooldown it really does need to be reworked.

You’re comparing an ability tied to elites that cleanses conditions (heavy in the current meta) and gives 5s of boons at max once per minute to a number of static, always on effects. All boons for 5 seconds can vary wildly from very strong to near useless, depending on the situation you use your elite in – always on effects are…always on.

Being tied to the elite means that at times, you’re blowing your elite just for a condi cleanse – maybe the elites effect won’t help much now… but it had to be done – that’s a fair tradeoff IMO.

So you think a 45 cooldown skill which does the following is balanced:

1, Gives you every boon in the game (inc stab) for 5 seconds
2, Cures all conditions on you
3, Gives you the ability to stun a target the next time you hit him.
4, Cast time 1 second

Look at signet of stamina. 1 of those effects on 60s cd. Look at save youselves. Not even 1 of those effects on the same cooldown.

I am gonna put this in op because it proves my point.

As opposed to an ability that’s always happening, and doesn’t require the use of an elite skill? Yes. You’re going to have to come to grips with that.

Let me paint a simple scenario for you – I get jumped, and they drop a bunch of condi’s on me rapidly. I use BV for Lyssa… Guess what – I just wasted my elite! Basilisk venom on a target at near full or full health with all it’s CD’s and heals is nothing, it’s a clear waste of my elite. How could you not understand that?

There are a ton of situations where Using BV as a condition cleanse means you’re not using BV for its intended purpose, essentially transforming your elite into a condition cleanse, IN ADDITION TO being forced to take precision runes (instead of ones more tailored to your spec, if you don’t need the precision). That’s alot of conditional pieces to such a “broken” rune set.

Save yourselves is an AoE condition pull AND a stun breaker for a class designed to cleanse conditions easily – in what world are you comparing that to Lyssa runes? You do know the value of a stunbreaker, right? Because the above sentence leads me to believe you don’t.

You just don’t like it because you’re a necro, – we get that. You made it abundantly clear when you started crying about Engi’s and Warriors getting skills that counter a condinecro, you just don’t like it when anyone is given tools to stop you from facerolling a win. You’ll get over it, hopefully.

Lordrosicky.5813:

Zenith.7301:

Thieves are so full of crap. Even if lyssa didn’t remove any conditions they’d still use it because with basilisk venom they get all boons for 5 seconds, including aegis.

It’s like a built in save yourselves with a lower cooldown and stability and aegis on top.

Most importantly because you’re using basilisk venom to burst popping that aegis lets you stay offensive as does stability, while allowing much more team fight sustainability via prot.

On a tiny, tiny cd.

Someone else who gets it.

Yes, I too would pick one of the very few people who agrees with me in a veritable sea of dissent if I was in your position too – it doesn’t change the fact that the argument is weak, and being picked apart by the majority of responses.

Jomo kenyatta.7351:

personally i think hes made some very reasonable points all 8 boons and remove all conditions isnt in line with the other skills and especially with elites like basilisk venom having such a short cooldown it really does need to be reworked.

You’re comparing an ability tied to elites that cleanses conditions (heavy in the current meta) and gives 5s of boons at max once per minute to a number of static, always on effects. All boons for 5 seconds can vary wildly from very strong to near useless, depending on the situation you use your elite in – always on effects are…always on.

Being tied to the elite means that at times, you’re blowing your elite just for a condi cleanse – maybe the elites effect won’t help much now… but it had to be done – that’s a fair tradeoff IMO.

Look at all these necros posting! So many of them, clearly OP. We should nerf them.

DiogoSilva.7089:

Spammable auto-evade skills are unfun to play against, and are one of several details that contribute to making this game’s pvp less enjoyable that it could be. Hope they’re redesigned someday.

Me too! Until then I can only work with what’s given, and those things should work reliably.

Silferas.3841:

Solution: Characters get locked upon entering the queue -> Build templates are implemented -> templates can be switched before the game starts -> promotes variety (otherwise non-optimal builds see some play, because of necessity) -> promotes balancing (developers are under pressure to bring up to standard non-meta builds on most classes)

/thread

This thread was over 30 posts ago – the best option is to allow a team to use the 3m prior to a match to switch character and build a decent comp without seeing what the other team is doing. This will allow solo q to run well built teams without all the silly counter comp character switching. Your suggestion still allows for bad luck to stick you with bad class composition – as someone else said, why not reward players who can play more than 1 class effectively?

Softspoken.2410:

Are you seeing anything in your combat log? If it’s direct damage, there should be a damage entry between your hits of Pistol Whip.

TBH, I didn’t even consider that. The combat log in this game is so kittenty, It generally doesn’t bear looking through (at least in my experience). Unless its gotten better and I just haven’t noticed, I’d have to stop playing and sit at spawn, scrolling through all the damage that happened after I was downed, hoping I can remember exactly what was going on when I got downed.

I did check the downed damage skill breakup a couple times, and nothing stuck out to me.

Lordrosicky.5813:

JinDaVikk.7291:

Lordrosicky,

Look dude stop QQ your on the wrong thread. This is about lyssa being op not about engis traits, or warrior skills. For that matter your a freaking necro who can on multiple occasions send conditions to foes/heal more and remove all on half the cd of lyssa

No on is taking you seriously….

posts like yours hurt the forums.

If the runes are used by so many people then they are clearly OP

By your moronic definition of whats OP, Necro’s need a huge nerf – they’re literally everywhere in hot join – So many people are playing them so they are clearly OP. Have fun with that.

@Defektive (couldn’t quot due to length)

To each spec their own – D/P is a more “missile” spec where BP is its main source of defense. S/D is a more sustained spec where evades are the main source of defense. S/D can generate alot more evades than D/P can generate AoE Blinds, and even single target blinds. I won’t claim to be perfectly knoweldgable on thief TPvP meta, but atm, I can’t think of a single spec that effectively mixes and matches both Blind spam and Evade spam – there’s no spec that supports that kind of initiative expenditure for a spec to do both. If an S/D thief is “Spamming” evades, they’re running Jumpers double S/D 30 acro weapon swapping spec. If the thief is D/P, you just don’t have the init to “spam” Black powder.

The AoE on Black powder isn’t that big – just like any AoE, it’s something you’re supposed to exit ASAP. Anyone can melee the thief in the BP by circling around the effect. At worst, you should be eating 1 blind from a 6 init skill – that’s not exactly game breaking. I doubt anyone is running the “Blind on stealth” trait in SA because Shadow Rejuv, Shadow’s embrace, and Infusion of shadow dwarf it in general utility.

I don’t think stealth should be considered a core gameplay mechanic for thieves anymore. it’s certainly the core of some specs, but with S/D being improved, and some trait setups supporting S/P, thieves finally have non stealth options. Dagger offhand can barely be considered stealth access at this point , with how kittenty CnD is – it’s easily dodged due to being so telegraphed, high init cost, and can be neutralized by block/immunity/evade. The only spec that still has effective stealth is D/P. The point of this is, D/P is the “Missile” spec, with temporary, expensive defensive mechanics intended to support their ability to burst, and S/D -S/P is the sustained, mostly (if not entirely) stealthless spec that relies on evade frames and teleports to stay alive.

I took a month long break right before warriors got their big buff – the difference is noticeable. Warrior survivability has gone through the roof (in comparison to pre-patch) – in a glassy spec (62% crit, 45% crit damage, 3200 power base) I can watch a hybrid warrior eat 3 full PW’s and heal half the damage I’ve done with 1 move. I’m not claiming they’re OP by any means, or even “Fixed” (I don’t really have the experience with warrior to make that kind of claim), but they’re undoubtedly better than they were, and it seems like they’re carving their own niche out with LB specs, CC specs, and Psuedo-bunker specs that don’t rely on boons to survive for a reasonable length of time.

Maybe thief is competing a bit with warrior in the sustained DPS role, but there appear to be some emerging roles for warriors that thief doesn’t compete with on any level.

Pyroatheist.9031:

Pistol whip can easily mess you up on retal. It’s an aoe cleave attack, hitting 3 targets 9 times each for a total of 27 hits. If you take 230 damage from each proc, you will receive a total of 6,210 damage purely from retaliation.

I appreciate the info, but I understand that – my health isn’t steadily declining, it’s disappearing in a big chunk. Perhaps server lag is the culprit? Again, my ping is generally pretty good, I don’t imagine 4k damage happening all in the span of .25s

TGSlasher.1458:

@garethh
Did you know, runes of lyssa are the only condition duration runes (+10% all conditions duration)?

As Garethh pointed out, Nightmare.

Also, most specs have a “favored” condition (the one they have the best access too), and there are plenty of runes that lengthen the duration of that specific condition.

TGSlasher.1458:

evilapprentice.6379:

TGSlasher.1458:

evilapprentice.6379:

Sixth time.
Sixth time today, I’ve been dropped by direct damage mid evade.
Did the definition of Evade change while I was gone for a month? WTF is this anet?

Could have died to someone with high ping. Getting stunned during your normal evades, that’s the fun part of this game. Wish I had 40-90 ping, even just for 1 day :/

It’s not regular – I pay for battleping because the game is basically unplayable without it. Without battleping, I float around 80-110, with 150-200 spikes… which for a thief, is unacceptable. If my skills don’t fire within 50ms of when I hit them, I might lose half my health.

I’m willing to accept maybe I’m missing something/ at fault some of these times – but 6 times? I didn’t miss something 6 times – something is definitely up.

WHAT!!!!
I sit about 300-400 with 500-600 spikes. (200 on a very very very very very very od chance, usually 250). 250 with Battle ping, which I refuse to pay for.

How do you play? That’s not me being an kitten, I’m honestly curious. As a thief, I don’t have the luxury of an ability not going off til .3 – .5 seconds after I hit it.

ensoriki.5789:

PW’s evade frames don’t begin right after the stun.
Now that being said yeah some abilities do go through evade. Im pretty sure the Fear Rune goes through evades so if you hit them and it procs it doesnt care if you are evading.

More than a handful of times I PW a necro, and the fear on stun proc has already been triggered but I get feared again and the only explanation is the runes of….undead or nightmare whichever it’s called.

I’m not talking about the beginning of PW – I’ve had this happen a few times toward the beginning or end of PW, and discounted it as a combination of the ability not starting/being over, and a bit of lag.

When I say 6 separate times, I mean directly in the middle – I’ve been swinging away, I still have a few swings left in the animation, and BAM, I’m dropped by direct damage. Every time I’ve checked the combat log for conditions and nothing – on at least 3 of those occasions, no condition was dropping me as instantly as it did (losing 3-5k HP Mid PW animation).

SmoothHussler.6387:

Lordrosicky.5813:

Options:

1, Add ICD of 70 seconds
2, Make it so it doesnt give stability
3, Make it so it only removes 3 conditions on use

These would all be cool.

So…..pretty much make it useless?

More obfuscated thief kittening. People are starting to realize that the “Waaaah, Thief” threads don’t get as much attention as the general playerbase Learns to play, so more extreme measures are needed.

Malcastus.6240:

garethh.3518:

Malcastus.6240:

I
I can understand why thieves especially would love this thing, as it makes you nigh invincible for 5+ seconds. It is ridiculously over the top for the thief profession, and who knows, perhaps the warrior will be OP with this in the future.

Lastly ask yourself: “Would I want to use another set of runes instead of the complete Lyssa set?”. If your answer is “no”, it is too strong.

If you want to QQ about overused…
Most pro dps/roamer run runes of the scholar.

You do have to remember, that it is on a 1->1.5s cast, all elite skills that is.

I am stating the obvious really. Show me ten other 6th set abilities that are as strong as Lyssa’s.

How much does 1 second cast time mean when you can cast it from stealth?

This is about the insane 6th ability that by no means is in the same league as other runes, which I find amazing – not in a good way, mind you.

---

AND regarding your last post, garethh.
I did suggest that all the offensive boons be stripped of this rune set, so that warriors and thieves would have access to condition cleansing, which is what you are saying is missing from thieves.

Do you not agree that taking the insane component away from the Lyssa set, which would be every boon (which grants you 5+ secs of near god status) would make it properly balanced?

Hey, I forgot every single player who uses Lyssa has access to many different forms of stealth.

Oh wait, that’s just thieves. But wait, some thieves don’t even use stealth! Man, that was a pointless statement.

Furthermore, as good as the 6th rune ability is, it lasts 5 seconds – many rune bonuses are permanent. That means they last aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaallllllllllllllllllllll the time. 5 seconds of “near godlike status” (I’m using your terms here, 5 seconds of every boon can vary from fight changing to nigh useless depending on class/spec/situation) is still 5 seconds of every minute, at best. Do we want to nerf all the runes that offer a permanent bonus, since their uptime massively dwarfs Lyssa?

TGSlasher.1458:

evilapprentice.6379:

Sixth time.
Sixth time today, I’ve been dropped by direct damage mid evade.
Did the definition of Evade change while I was gone for a month? WTF is this anet?

Could have died to someone with high ping. Getting stunned during your normal evades, that’s the fun part of this game. Wish I had 40-90 ping, even just for 1 day :/

It’s not regular – I pay for battleping because the game is basically unplayable without it. Without battleping, I float around 80-110, with 150-200 spikes… which for a thief, is unacceptable. If my skills don’t fire within 50ms of when I hit them, I might lose half my health.

I’m willing to accept maybe I’m missing something/ at fault some of these times – but 6 times? I didn’t miss something 6 times – something is definitely up.

Malcastus.6240:

It definitely
Lastly ask yourself: “Would I want to use another set of runes instead of the complete Lyssa set?”. If your answer is “no”, it is too strong.

Really?

Look at the other precision rune options. If you wanted precision (and aren’t a ranger) and didn’t answer “Of course I’ll take Lyssa runes”, we’re playing a different game. Perhaps the other precision runes need a buff to be competitive.

Ashanor.5319:

rsq.3581:

The problem with being blind to the other team’s composition is that you can’t switch up your strategy to match the other team. Not even necessarily change your own composition or abilities but your splits; seeing certain classes on the other team should change your opener — this is an important facet of a game and should not be removed.

Sorry, but it should be removed. Teams developed strategy in other MMOs without knowing what they were up against before the match started. They called out the strat after they figured out what the other team was.

Knowing what the other team is is completely unimportant, you are just used to it being there.

+1.

Why are people still discussing this? The obvious solution is to allow solo q to adjust their team, blind to the other team. Arguing against it is just, well, silly.

Sixth time.
Sixth time today, I’ve been dropped by direct damage mid evade.
Did the definition of Evade change while I was gone for a month? WTF is this anet?

NinjaYoshi.3429:

Could it be that you were hitting an Ele using Shocking Aura, or someone that had retal up? I know Retal goes through evades and still does damage, and although I don’t know for certain, I think the effect of Shocking Aura goes through evades as well.

Shocking Aura might have been the cause of of the stun – I don’t think it was, but I can’t say for sure, so I’m willing to assume that was the case.

For the damage however, It’s not possible – I dropped from 4k hp to dead in the blink of an eye – Retal can’t do that. I’ve been running hotjoins since I posted this, and it’s happened again – I watched 2.5k HP disappear in the flash of an eye mid PW – perhaps Retal and slow server reporting was the culprit here, but I’m being generous with that – it looked more like a single hit dropped my HP.

Topher.1684:

IMO, those poisons should have just been f2-f4 for all they do for us atm. All the traits could still work that way too (cds may need a rework).

I kind of like this idea as well. The recent buff to steal makes it kind of hard to justify however. Pre-Buff, venoms generating additional class skills might have been a good fix. Now however, we need something else.

By static, I mean “In place”, like Pistol Whip or Blurred Frenzy.

3 separate times, just today, I’ve been hit with some sort of direct effect in the middle of Pistol Whip.

I’m not talking about an effect hitting me at the beginning or ending of PW – right in the middle of my sword swings, I’m stunned or downed by direct effects (IE, Not downed by condition damage).

My connection is running between 40-90 ping (i’ve monitored it extensively, the numbers don’t variate from that). So what gives? Why are effects hitting me right in the middle of a guaranteed evade? I brought it up in a couple of hotjoin’s, and other classes (mostly mesmers) brought up encountering the same problem – some direct effect hitting them in the middle of an evade skill.

So, other PvPers, have you noticed this?

Anet, what gives?

Fenrir.5493:

Thief is one of the most broken classes i have seen in a mmorpg, , the mechanics of that class are terrible designed, SPAMING is their main mechanic, trying to copy the energy system of wow but implemented it without the finishers that prevented rogues to spam their abilities, they couldnt spam their most powerfull abilities with that mechanic, but here in thieves of wars we have anything like this so they can cheese spam all day.

Stealth is broken, leting them to spam abilities from stealth until they hit, entering stealth can be achieved in combat and by multiple abilities.

They have the ability to evade and teleport all day preventing their opponents to catch them, but they can catch their foes with ease.

Ando now the blind…

But all this problems come from one origin, the cheap spam core mechanics of thief class, i never going to take any thief seriously in this game because of this, any thief is using and abusing a broken game class period.

Quiet you.

Honestly, I wish I could engage you on a more sophisticated level, but you’ve proven yourself incapable of such. All I’ve got left is to hopefully shame you into silence. Fat chance, I know, But what can I say? I’m the gambling type.

Defektive.7283:

Fenrir.5493:

As someone stated before, on paper we can say a lot of things but the reality is that thieves DO spam blinds.

Either that or spam evade frames.

Either way it’s pretty cheesy. But it begs the question of why does it exist? Possibly because the class is weak without it? IDK, won’t really know unless we took it away.

You’re the defektive everyone talks about/to when they’re talking warrior strats/TPvP, right? If not, you can ignore this next part.

Assuming you are, don’t you think “Won’t really know unless we take it away” is a bit disingenuous? Is it really that hard to envision what you could do to a thief if they couldn’t evade alot or blind you? You’ve certainly fought some while TPvPing, you honestly can’t imagine what a free kill they’d be without those defensive tools? Come on.

When people were crying endlessly about stealth, Anet finally gave thieves another way to survive with usable, effective evades. Turns out people think those are broken too!

threothree.2618:

I think one of the major flaws with venoms and traps is that it’s not that the effects are in particularly bad, it’s the fact that there’s better skills to spend your precious utility slots on.

So… why not make them kits?
Each kit could have 3-4 effects (venoms/traps) in them. Extra kits could be added to add diversity and fill in the consolidated slots.

There’s probably more that’s needed but I think this would go a long way to making them viable.

Engi’s pay a hefty price for their Kits – the worst weapon choices in the game.

Though thief isn’t much better, it still has vastly superior weapon choices than engi, and would be a bit unfair to them for thieves to all of a sudden have access to kits.

Kharr.5746:

Quickfoot Katana.8642:

Erwin.5603:

It will probably be locked after the game starts. /thread

Then we need a Dev Confirmation

Not really. Currently your characters skills are only locked after the match starts, but you can log in and out to swap to a character with a different build (e.g., you may have a bunker ele and a spike ele, and you can switch between them mid-match even though skills are supposed to be locked).

Character locking is a fix for this blatant exploit.

And that has absolutely nothing to do with what we’re talking about here.

OP’s request is WHILE WAITING FOR A MATCH TO START, can players switch characters so we don’t get awful comps in soloq. OP and Jax suggested not letting teams see each others comp so people aren’t switching for the pure purpose counter-comp, but just so that they can have a competent team composition themselves.

Topher.1684:

evilapprentice.6379:

- snip -

I love this idea, but your numbers would need fixing. A 15 sec cd on some of these is too low imo (4.5sec chill, on a 15sec (12sec with 20% reduc) is too strong imo. But overall a VAST improvement on the current venom state. Who ever though front loading all these charges on a 45sec cd, with potentially no affect (with a thieves attack speed all charges could be spend in 1-2 secs) was smoking something powerful. Now maybe if we could activate these charges like mantras…

Also I think you would need an internal cd on the passive, or lower its chance. As I mentioned, D/D thieves attack at an incredibly fast rate, so 20% might be a bit too much (but then s/? attacks slower, hence my suggested internal cd) like once every few seconds (greater then 2sec less then 5sec)?

After some back and forth on the suggestions forum, I posted a more balanced version of this idea over there. I’ll copy/paste the changes below.

Updated Version

Venoms in general – 25s CD (excluding Basilisk Venom), Both passive and active effect. 5 CD on passive effect per venom. Passive effect is base 15%(Might need adjusting?) chance to trigger

Spider venom –
Passive: Poisons for 2s.
Active: Poisons 3 times for 2s a piece, bleeds 3 times for 6s a piece.

Devourers Venom –
Passive: Cripples for 2s
Active: Immobilizes 1 time for 3s

Ice Drake Venom –
Passive: Torment for 2s.
Active: Chill 3 times for 1.5s, torments 3 times for 4s a piece

Skale Venom –
Passive: Burning for 2s
Active: Burning 3 times for 2s,

Basilisk Venom (CD unchanged)
Passive: Bleed for 2s
Active: Stun 1 times for 1s

Traits:
Potent Poison: Unchanged
Venomous Strength: Gain 1 stack of might for 8s (debatable length) every time a venom triggers (included passive and active triggers)
Quick Venoms: No longer lose the passive effect of venom’s when they’re on CD, 20% faster venom CD
Residual Venom: Increase passive trigger chance by 4% per initiative point spent on the attack. (This way trigger rate is tied to a finite resource, so auto-attack doesn’t become a condition spamming delivery vector)
Leeching venoms: Effect reduced by a great degree – the venoms I’ve designed above trigger much, much more often, so the additional damage/heal would need to be reduced alot
Venomous Aura: Slightly bigger radius, includes passive trigger chance while in radius as well, otherwise unchanged. Passive trigger chances do not stack – 2 venom share thieves running spider venom still only have 1 chance to trigger per attack.

I could also see mixing up the passives of some (Like say switching spider and skale’s passives) so that the difference between the passive and active leads to situations where its important to use the active effect.

Kwll.1468:

Locking is fine. The situation the op mentions can happen in reverse. Thats what makes it balanced. There will be times where you can be potentially helped by this or hurt by this randomly. The moral to this story is play what you think is best and deal with the consequence. No cheese stacking thanks. If you think having a bunker is so important queue as one every time.

Except Jax’s suggestion is 100 times better. It allows 5 random players to work out what works best for them without being “Cheesy” at all because you can’t see the other teams comp. Why deny people the ability to work together just because its solo q?

Jax.5261:

Make it so it isn’t locked up until the match begins but you also can’t see your enemy until it begins, don’t open the gate and don’t show them on the scoreboard

With this idea there is NO downside to anybody’s point of view, this is of course the best and most obvious way to go about this problem (which is also the reason the complete opposite was implemented).

This. This is the best compromise, clearly. Thread over Anet – just do it this way.

stof.9341:

evilapprentice.6379:

That won’t help, TBH. Most players aren’t proficient with multiple classes. If you get 2 players who primarily know Warrior, 2 who primarily know thief, and 1 who primarily knows Mesmer, who’s going to bunker?

And so what? The top spots in the soloQ leaderboards would be reserved to the most polyvalent players? Is it bad?

Yeah, it would be.

Like Lord, I don’t find it fun to play a bunker – should I be penalized for not liking one of the class options? Should we penalize people who don’t have the time to become proficient in multiple classes, just looking to have fun and be competitive with the 1 or 2 classes that they have time to play with?

That’s what Team que is for. Solo q is for the less serious player who still wants a challenge.

stof.9341:

Rerroll.9083:

Maybe they should copy wow where you can queue as dps, healer or tank

Or they should copy DotA where you actually select what you play as after the teams are formed and you can start discussing strategy with your teammates :p

That won’t help, TBH. Most players aren’t proficient with multiple classes. If you get 2 players who primarily know Warrior, 2 who primarily know thief, and 1 who primarily knows Mesmer, who’s going to bunker?

maladikt.2180:

But where is the limit? You see the opposing team and a couple of you change the class you are playing. The other team reacts to that by making their own changes. After that you make another set of changes as a response. You do this until the clock ticks out and the match starts?

What if a chunk of the ISS breaks free and comes hurtling through the atmosphere midgame and its resulting crash severs your internet connection? What if a tornado blows through and you lose power?

That’s the kind of question you’ve thrown out there. You can’t shoot down what is a very legitimate concern (Bad team comp) with a silly “What if” scenario that doesn’t apply as universally as “Bad team comp”.

Beside One team having a bunker and the other team not having one (which WILL decide games against similarly skilled players, whether you believe it or not), there’s also a number of other scenario’s where players are going to want to switch out and balance their team – it doesn’t make any sense to lock character choice on solo q.

I do like something along the lines of what rerroll mentioned – allow people to select roles at que time – it wouldn’t be easy, and you’d have people identifying themselves incorrectly out of stupidity/trolling, but it’s better than locking a team of DPS down against a well built team for a 10 minute roflstomp.

Fenrir.5493:

Juan Ignacio.8903:

im sure that if u keep whining about this they will nerf it and then all the thieves will be using sword and then u dudes gona start whinning about the unlimited dodge.

Well if the mechanic is broken then yes… but the core problem is the thief itself, the spammable core of the class is the problem, no CD on skills is a completely broken mechanic.

And yet somehow, the game perseveres. Even in the presence of this clearly, completely broken mechanic. It must be divine intervention.