Guild Wars 2

sorrow.2364:

I’ll help you. Let’s compare just corrupt boon (more similiar to FS due to the fact they are both single target):
1. LS has higher boon removed/time ratio.
2. LS is more reliable and forgiving. Once you miss the first or it gets dodged, it can be used again because the boon removals are split into multiple, lower costing, casts.
3. LS deals more damage compared to Corrupt Boon.
4. LS is a weapon skill, that means you have one more utility slot.
5. LS can be also used for devensive purposes due to evade.

1. Corrupt Boon has better “Spike” removal (as it removes all boons on 1 use, rather than 2 every 1s if spammed).
2. Melee range is required for LS, and the skill is telegraphed with a 1/2s casting time, where as corrupt boon is range 1200 and instant cast.
3. Corrupt boon converts boons into conditions, meaning it can potentially cause any combination of – damage, reduced healing, increase CD time,CC (both soft and hard styles).
4. You got me there. It’s part of ANets design to introduce a real cost to mindless spamming of boons. Remember how old FS used to remove 1 boon? Remember how worthless it was, because a bunker losing 1 boon for 4 init didn’t slow them down in the slightest? It was so bad bunkers would eat the first swing, even though it removed a boon, so they could be sure to either dodge the second swing (due to its high damage) or punish you while you were locked in the .5s second swing animation. (That’s all if the pathing wasn’t awful that particular time you used FS)
5. FS evades, and does not steal boons as well as doing awful damage. LS Screams “I’M ABOUT TO HIT YOU WITH LS. IF YOU’D LIKE TO DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT, YOU’VE GOT HALF A SECOND” – there’s a rather large difference.

You keep arguing, I’ll keep telling you – Mindless spamming of boons (this awkward phrase brought to you by insane language filter) is clearly detrimental to the game – ANet saw that, and introduced an additional cost to mindless spamming of boons, just in case a necro with corrupt boon wasn’t around. Now, people have to actually think about when/where/why to use their boons, rather than just starting a fight and thinking to themselves “Whelp, time to throw up everything I have because I can keep them up for nearly the entire fight and there’s no necro around to punish me for it”.

Its a good thing.

How is it you thought that one class, primarily using one specific utility would be enough to properly counter boon spamming? Despite the fact that multiple flavors of bunker make heavy use of boons, there are (or maybe were?) a number of other specs that took advantage of spamming/stacking boons as high/long/fast as possible because they realized it had almost no downside. There needed to be a consistent counter, and now there is.

At this point, I’d say we just ignore each other in this thread from this point out – you’ve yet to give what I feel is a solid argument for your side, and I’ve clearly yet to give you what you feel is a solid argument for my side. We’ll just have to agree to disagree.

It doesn’t need to be reverted to infinite range.
What it needs is for IS to be a “shadowstep” (requires a path), and for SR to be a “teleport” (does not require a path) to prevent kittenty pathing from denying the full return distance.

sorrow.2364:

evilapprentice.6379:

I agree “Just dodge it” is generally a poor argument – You usually have incentive to dodge a whole bunch of things, and pointing out “you can dodge X!” does nothing in particular for how you’re supposed to deal with the rest of the abilities. This case however is different – you can literally ignore every strike that isn’t LS or CS, for a variety of reasons – they do awful damage, leave the thief open for counterattack, cost way too much initiative, etc…

If you only have a single animation you have to watch out, which has kitten cast time (in this case just 1 skill, we’re talking specifically about LS since your argument is that 3 spamming is too strong), you can reasonably say “just avoid that skill”.

Please explain how FS isn’t limited. Also, while AA is “unlimited”, it does require striking the first 2 swings and 1.5s. You only really have to dodge LS, though you probably want to dodge CS because it does considerable damage and comes with weakness/cripple.

If you’re running a “bunker” without access to enhanced endurance regeneration and some CC, you’re not really running a bunker now are you. Your low power bunker should still do considerable damage to a GC thief.

Any thief just spamming 3 should be a joke to you – the fact that it isn’t makes me think you don’t really know how to play your bunker class.

Ignoring the fact that I don’t know how you can define “awful damage” the average 1.5k thief deals per sword hit, also if you want to dodge only LS and you are a really good dodger, there is always a LS you CAN’T DODGE for the simple reason that endurance is lower then initiative.

Using all your dodges on a spammable skill like Flanking Strike is a waste. You know that after you dodged the first, the second will come and so on. I prefer to use my dodge to avoid an Updraft, Backbreaker, Bull’s Rush, Corrupt Boons and Moa Morph. Those skills are powerful, but once you dodged them it is GUARANTEED that the caster isn’t going to use that skill again until the recharge time has past. That is a well spent dodge and a balanced situation.

How can you bring the “you can dodge” argument on a skill that can be used on average every 4 seconds?

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQJAsYlYmKOHcS6E/5Ex2jdKUeqVgmdP4qVrKA-ToAg0CnIKSVkrITRyisFNIY+B

Recall how I’ve said, time and time again, that CS and LS are the only skills that hit hard? I hope so, because it’s about to come up.

Please compare the numbers you made up to the cold hard facts I’ve provided in the above link. “1.5k average” (especially against a bunker) is a pipe dream, and silly to just make up considering anyone has access to gw2skills. Also note most S/D thieves don’t run 10 points in DA and Assassins sig (preferring 10 trickery and Inf sig), so 90% of the S/D thieves are hitting significantly weaker (280 power weaker, to be clear) than the above link (which still isn’t striking for “1.5k average”). I suppose a 1.5k Slash crit on a target under 50% and at around 2000-2200 armor is pretty doable, but not “Average”.

You shouldn’t just be dodging – you should be trying to fight them in between the dodges. Bunkers win fights due to attrition… is this your first day? You’ve grown too accustomed to spamming boons because pre-patch, they had absolutely no downside.

Also, If you’re fighting multiple people, tough kittening luck. By your argument, any strong but avoidable skill needs a nerf because other people might be fighting around you. Bola->HB’s /Eviscerate is broken, Swap->BF is broken, etc etc etc… Prioritize your dodges the way you want, but no crying one skill isn’t worth dodging and yet still too powerful.

I’m sorry you don’t like the initiative system. I’m sorry you don’t like that there are no longer 0 downsides to maximizing boons/duration. Now that there are opportunity costs associated with spamming boons the game is better for it – I’d suggest getting used to it, because ANet agrees.

sorrow.2364:

I’m not considering FS for WvWvW, of course. If you’re saying that you see more D/P thief then S/D, I wonder it you’re talking about WvWvW, since they are quite popular there, while in PvP I barely see one per day.

No. Dodge isn’t a counter.
Justyfing something with dodge is a very poor argument.

Dodge is available as a counter to everything, even an one-hit-kill skill. Does it mean that if there were an one-hit-kill skill it would be balanced? No.
Does it mean that if there were a “Steal all boons” on initiative it would be balanced because it can be dodged? No.

Also, dodges are limited. AA chain or FS aren’t.

If I give the time to a glass S/D thief to land on me LS 6 times, probably I’m a boon bunker with not that much damage (Oh! Look the coincidence!) or I probably ran out of endurance on the first 2 LS.

I agree “Just dodge it” is generally a poor argument – You usually have incentive to dodge a whole bunch of things, and pointing out “you can dodge X!” does nothing in particular for how you’re supposed to deal with the rest of the abilities. This case however is different – you can literally ignore every strike that isn’t LS or CS, for a variety of reasons – they do awful damage, leave the thief open for counterattack, cost way too much initiative, etc…

If you only have a single animation you have to watch out, which has kitten cast time (in this case just 1 skill, we’re talking specifically about LS since your argument is that 3 spamming is too strong), you can reasonably say “just avoid that skill”.

Please explain how FS isn’t limited. Also, while AA is “unlimited”, it does require striking the first 2 swings and 1.5s. You only really have to dodge LS, though you probably want to dodge CS because it does considerable damage and comes with weakness/cripple.

If you’re running a “bunker” without access to enhanced endurance regeneration and some CC, you’re not really running a bunker now are you. Your low power bunker should still do considerable damage to a GC thief.

Any thief just spamming 3 should be a joke to you – the fact that it isn’t makes me think you don’t really know how to play your bunker class.

sorrow.2364:

evilapprentice.6379:

It does not clearly mean that there’s something wrong with the set, persay. That’s a possibility of course, but it’s not clearly the case, and I disagree with you.

Another possibility is that Boons are too strong and prolific (it’s more of a fact since ANet has acknowledged it), and a set that denies them while remaining viable (but not as strong) outside of just denying boons is a smart choice for anyone trying to win a game.

Another possibility is that most of a thief’s weapon options are garbage/subpar – D/P , SB, and S/D are the only things you’ll see 9 times out of 10 because they’re our only competently designed weapons. Instead of nerfing S/D, perhaps we can bring P/P up from the bottomless pit its currently in. Make it so that P/D isnt a 5-1 trick pony that’s insanely easy to counter because all its damage is stacked into 1 easily cleanable condition. Do something to give me a reason to take S/P over S/D, because even pre-patch I didn’t want to rely entirely on my AA for damage. Do something to D/D to give us a reason to take it over D/P, because currently there is none.

Also, I see plenty of thieves still running D/P. In fact, I rarely see other S/D thieves – they’re almost all D/P. Does that set need to be nerfed too, just because its part of the 2 (Pre S/D patch it was the only) non-sb sets we have that you weren’t at an automatic handicap for taking?

Do you usually play WvWvW? Are you NA or EU? Because D/P is a rare sight here.

Regarding boons, if they really were overpowered, then S/D is far move overpowered because it not only removes them from the enemy, but it also applies them to you on the same duration!
So no, it isn’t a matter of boons being to strong. I refuse to believe ANet is that stupid at balancing.

I see it as an attempt to give more counters to boons because they were too widespread. Fact is that they succeded in that they wanted to do, but the counter is too strong and it needs a futher balance.

evilapprentice.6379:

Just because you can’t think of anything doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.

It’s called Dodge. You dodge when the thief pulls his arm back, and he does laughable DPS, and can’t steal your boons. You obviously can’t dodge everything, but you can eat every Slash, Slice, Infiltrators strike, Flanking Strike, Dancing Dagger and Cloak and Dagger he throws your way – as long as you don’t get hit with Crippling Strike and LS, You. Win.

You also have the option of any control-denying CC – that’s not quite as universal as dodge, but any bunker has at least some at their disposal. You’ll probably want to save those for when the thief uses Inf Strike to lock you down for the LS.

There you go, I just won you the game.

I KNEW IT!
I knew you would have brought into the discussion DODGE, the mighty counter of everything and the justification of every OPness.

You can dodge the first LS and you can dodge even the second one.
What about the third? And the 4th? Yeah, you may have enough endurance to dodge the 5th also. But what about the 6th?
Be careful! If you fail to dodge any of the LS, you are essentialy buffing your enemy!
No. Dodge isn’t the answer to everything.

OF COURSE YOU KNEW IT, BECAUSE ITS THE ANSWER YOUR SO UNWILLING TO ACCEPT. I also mentioned control denying CC (KD/KB/Launch/Fear/Stun/Daze etc), which as a bunker you should have a fair amount of.

It’s not as if I’m asking you to watch for several different animations, or that there’s a huge list of moves you have to dodge – you literally have to watch for 1 animation to dodge, and that’s it. The skill’s involved are only available at the end of an AA chain, or for 4 init. That is not a giant list of things to watch out for. If you had to worry about all the skills you were eating while you saved your dodge’s for that 1 thing, it would be a different story – lucky for you, S/D does kitten damage outside CS and LS.
If the thief gets 6 LS’s off on you, you’ve done something wrong – the only dangerous S/D thief is a Glass S/D thief, and if you’re giving him the time to FS/LS 6 times, I don’t know what to tell you.

sorrow.2364:

evilapprentice.6379:

It does not clearly mean that there’s something wrong with the set, persay. That’s a possibility of course, but it’s not clearly the case, and I disagree with you.

Another possibility is that Boons are too strong and prolific (it’s more of a fact since ANet has acknowledged it), and a set that denies them while remaining viable (but not as strong) outside of just denying boons is a smart choice for anyone trying to win a game.

Another possibility is that most of a thief’s weapon options are garbage/subpar – D/P , SB, and S/D are the only things you’ll see 9 times out of 10 because they’re our only competently designed weapons. Instead of nerfing S/D, perhaps we can bring P/P up from the bottomless pit its currently in. Make it so that P/D isnt a 5-1 trick pony that’s insanely easy to counter because all its damage is stacked into 1 easily cleanable condition. Do something to give me a reason to take S/P over S/D, because even pre-patch I didn’t want to rely entirely on my AA for damage. Do something to D/D to give us a reason to take it over D/P, because currently there is none.

Also, I see plenty of thieves still running D/P. In fact, I rarely see other S/D thieves – they’re almost all D/P. Does that set need to be nerfed too, just because its part of the 2 (Pre S/D patch it was the only) non-sb sets we have that you weren’t at an automatic handicap for taking?

Do you usually play WvWvW? Are you NA or EU? Because D/P is a rare sight here.

Regarding boons, if they really were overpowered, then S/D is far move overpowered because it not only removes them from the enemy, but it also applies them to you on the same duration!
So no, it isn’t a matter of boons being to strong. I refuse to believe ANet is that stupid at balancing.

I see it as an attempt to give more counters to boons because they were too widespread. Fact is that they succeded in that they wanted to do, but the counter is too strong and it needs a futher balance.

I don’t ever WvW – it’s a PvE mode where gear/level imbalances exist, so it doesn’t interest me. I don’t want to win a fight because I’ve got better gear, more levels or a bigger zerg.

Balance is based around TPvP/SPvP for a reason – everyone has access to the exact same gear from the getgo, map size is small and designed to be fair to both sides, and team size is capped at 5 – those constants are what allow balance. If you try to balance around 20 man fights, gear imbalances, level imbalances, or 4000 units of open space in every direction, you’re going to make an awful game.

Note: I’m not making the claim PvP > WvW, just the claim that you need a controlled environment with equality to generate true balance – SPvP is much, much closer to that than WvW.

sorrow.2364:

evilapprentice.6379:

That’s a question that’s impossible to answer with the information you’ve given me- we’ve established that the thief is playing poorly (since he’s just spamming 3), but we haven’t established if the bunker guardian knows what he’s doing.

Noob/Inexperienced player vs Noob/Inexperienced player? Who cares who won, both players could stand to gain some experience and a better grip of the mechanics.

Noob Thief vs Bunker guardian – The Guard wins hand down, because 3 spam is not a substitute for knowing how the game works, no matter how hard you try to sell that angle.

Skilled thief vs Skilled bunker guard – Probably the thief, since ANets thought process behind FS-LS was to bring some counter play to the rampant boon stacking/duration maximizing specs that were dominating the meta.

I get why people hate Mesmers and Thieves – their mechanics were designed to be confusing. They’re the class you’re going to have the hardest time with if you don’t know what they’re capable of ahead of time. Mind you, that was a conscious decision by ANet (if you don’t believe me, please see the entirety of the Mesmer class). Being confusing to fight is part of the design, you’re supposed to learn how to counter it, not come running to the boards to cry for nerfs.

Pretending you can thrash people just by spamming 3 was probably true for the first 3 days after the patch, when people were caught of guard. They had minimal experience against S/D, FS finally pathed correctly, and Anet made the smart decision to split the strikes so the thief wasn’t a sitting duck for half the duration of every FS (So even those who knew how S/D worked were in for a surprise). Now that people have had a week (way longer than that, but It didn’t take more than a week) to play against it, it’s just a strong spec with applicable counters like any other.

Actually, I fail to see any counter to S/D thief. The only counter I see is not running boons. Period.
It isn’t a matter of getting better or I don’t know what, any S/D thief who is just pressing 3 and weapon swap sometimes will melt any boon-bunker, the skill level isn’t that relevant.
You can try that build by yourself in t-sPvP, it is too easy to kill boon-bunkers compared to the efforts you put into doing so.

Just because you can’t think of anything doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.

It’s called Dodge. You dodge when the thief pulls his arm back, and he does laughable DPS, and can’t steal your boons. You obviously can’t dodge everything, but you can eat every Slash, Slice, Infiltrators strike, Flanking Strike, Dancing Dagger and Cloak and Dagger he throws your way – as long as you don’t get hit with Crippling Strike and LS, You. Win.

You also have the option of any control-denying CC – that’s not quite as universal as dodge, but any bunker has at least some at their disposal. You’ll probably want to save those for when the thief uses Inf Strike to lock you down for the LS.

There you go, I just won you the game.

sorrow.2364:

bobross.5034:

sorrow, after reading some of your other posts, I’m sorry for attacking your thief credibility. you obviously do play thief, and are often helpful to others on these forums.

so, addressing your point, I think for me, at my moderate skill level, playing vs random moderately skilled players, I don’t see an issue. I imagine, like all things, it may scale differently with play level, so I won’t try to speak to its effect on high skill play, which may be very different.

one thing I do think is important to consider though is that it will take time to determine whether it is op’d. in every skill level of play, people need time to adjust. thieves need to come up with all the ways to abuse the skill, and other classes need time to get used to countering. Same as things like 100 blades, even if OP’d, there are counters, and as people know how to play against it better, it will change how it plays, and its impact on the meta.

So my suggestion to people complaining about the change is to wait, see how the community and metagame reacts and then in a month or two, we can have this discussion with more than just theory-craft on both sides.

I made a sort of prediction about how the change will affect the meta and it isn’t that good. I’ve wrote it some posts ago.

I like the thief, don’t get me wrong, and for that reason I don’t want it to be considered the noob-friendly profession, neither I want the build variety of the profession being destroyed (which is a known effect of having an above average weapon set).

Right now in PvP every thief you encounter is running S/D, which is sad other then harmful to the health of the game. This clearly means that there is something wrong with that set and it should be looked at as fast as possible.
Being slow with fixes and waiting the meta does not help. The meta after little balancing patch grow up quickly, what you’re seeing now is what you are going to see till the next balancing patch.

I’ve explained what is wrong in my opinion and how to fix this because, to be honest, it can be denied that there is something wrong.

It does not clearly mean that there’s something wrong with the set, persay. That’s a possibility of course, but it’s not clearly the case, and I disagree with you.

Another possibility is that Boons are too strong and prolific (it’s more of a fact since ANet has acknowledged it), and a set that denies them while remaining viable (but not as strong) outside of just denying boons is a smart choice for anyone trying to win a game.

Another possibility is that most of a thief’s weapon options are garbage/subpar – D/P , SB, and S/D are the only things you’ll see 9 times out of 10 because they’re our only competently designed weapons. Instead of nerfing S/D, perhaps we can bring P/P up from the bottomless pit its currently in. Make it so that P/D isnt a 5-1 trick pony that’s insanely easy to counter because all its damage is stacked into 1 easily cleanable condition. Do something to give me a reason to take S/P over S/D, because even pre-patch I didn’t want to rely entirely on my AA for damage. Do something to D/D to give us a reason to take it over D/P, because currently there is none.

Also, I see plenty of thieves still running D/P. In fact, I rarely see other S/D thieves – they’re almost all D/P. Does that set need to be nerfed too, just because its part of the 2 (Pre S/D patch it was the only) non-sb sets we have that you weren’t at an automatic handicap for taking?

Daecollo.9578:

It does not do enough to have its cost, it needs a huge damage buff or the initiative cost to be lowered, it should deal as much damage as swoop at least.

Shadow Return should be free and its bugs should be fixed.

For a person who’s got a reputation for requesting absolutely ludicrously bombastic buffs to existing abilities… this one takes the cake.

Perhaps SR needs a fix now (I see people mentioning that the 1200 return is useless because of poor return pathing), but the idea that it should be free, and that IS Should be cheaper or do more damage is just….you’ve jumped the shark dude.

sorrow.2364:

evilapprentice.6379:

Or perhaps fight some opponents with half a brain. Anyone who dies to 3-3-3-3-3-3-3-3-3 from an S/D thief is either new or awful – anything was going to kill them.

Who is more bad? A thief that spam only 3-3-3-3-3 or that bunker guardian who is in difficulty against him?
Who deserves to lose the encounter?

That’s a question that’s impossible to answer with the information you’ve given me- we’ve established that the thief is playing poorly (since he’s just spamming 3), but we haven’t established if the bunker guardian knows what he’s doing.

Noob/Inexperienced player vs Noob/Inexperienced player? Who cares who won, both players could stand to gain some experience and a better grip of the mechanics.

Noob Thief vs Bunker guardian – The Guard wins hand down, because 3 spam is not a substitute for knowing how the game works, no matter how hard you try to sell that angle.

Skilled thief vs Skilled bunker guard – Probably the thief, since ANets thought process behind FS-LS was to bring some counter play to the rampant boon stacking/duration maximizing specs that were dominating the meta.

I get why people hate Mesmers and Thieves – their mechanics were designed to be confusing. They’re the class you’re going to have the hardest time with if you don’t know what they’re capable of ahead of time. Mind you, that was a conscious decision by ANet (if you don’t believe me, please see the entirety of the Mesmer class). Being confusing to fight is part of the design, you’re supposed to learn how to counter it, not come running to the boards to cry for nerfs.

Pretending you can thrash people just by spamming 3 was probably true for the first 3 days after the patch, when people were caught of guard. They had minimal experience against S/D, FS finally pathed correctly, and Anet made the smart decision to split the strikes so the thief wasn’t a sitting duck for half the duration of every FS (So even those who knew how S/D worked were in for a surprise). Now that people have had a week (way longer than that, but It didn’t take more than a week) to play against it, it’s just a strong spec with applicable counters like any other.

sorrow.2364:

Dahkeus.8243:

If you’re not getting the ego boost you need from playing at a disadvantage, then just unequip your offhand or something.

lol.

It’s not about ego, it is about challange.
Have you idea of what a competitive game is? Is a game where there isn’t a build when you can press 3-3-3-3 and win. And GW2 aims to become a competitive game.

Or perhaps fight some opponents with half a brain. Anyone who dies to 3-3-3-3-3-3-3-3-3 from an S/D thief is either new or awful – anything was going to kill them.

Hey guys, I found a perfect place you can continue this discussion.
http://www.reddit.com/r/circlejerk/

Daecollo.9578:

evilapprentice.6379:

sorrow.2364:

evilapprentice.6379:

The point isn’t “you can always dodge it”. No one dodges infinitely. The point is that the skill isn’t instant cast or a very quick cast (like .25s), and it has a fairly distinctive animation (IE, if a Sword MH thief pulls his arm back, you know for sure its a skill you probably want to dodge). You always know when the skill is coming.

Yes, Inf strike is an option, but at the cost of 3 init – 5 if they have to clean up an SR to gain access to IS again. When you consider that you need to spend 3 init for FS every time you want to LS and at minimum another 3 init for IS (if they don’t have SR up) it’s a reasonable combo, rather than something a thief can spam endlessly.

Something nobody mentioned is that LS is incredibly similiar animation-wise to the 3rd sword autoattack and, you know, nobody wants to dodge the autoattack.
Also, consider that arm animations are fairly hard to notice, expecially if the Thief is an Asura which has a model 70% smaller than any character, which bring us to another flaw of this game.

What are you saving your dodge for, FS? DD? Most S/D thieves at this point don’t bother with CnD (outside of interrupting a stomp), since without SA, the stealth doesn’t offer much, and its costs 6 init for crap damage.

Do explain why you wouldn’t want to dodge a swing that does nearly the same damage as LS, and carries cripple and weakness with it, especially since another complaint in the thread is that most thieves would use IS to ensure the LS strike. Crippling strike and LS are the only skills worth dodging/attempting to interrupt with CC in the current “Wah, spam 3 more noob” meta.

Oh, and I mentioned specifically that the animations were identical. Its actually right in the post you quoted. Additionally, any animation is hard to see with an Asura – that’s a poor design move by Anet that’s true across every class and ability.

Your crazy, I use C/D to cure conditions/heal up, switch to dagger and backstab, then black powder and heartseeker into them again.

Daecello, if you’re running S/D – D/P and points in SA, you’re not running the “Wah, spam 3 more noob” spec everyone is crying about, which was my point. Those builds run Double S/D, and in those builds, CnD has a small number of very specific uses, as Psy above pointed out.

sorrow.2364:

evilapprentice.6379:

The point isn’t “you can always dodge it”. No one dodges infinitely. The point is that the skill isn’t instant cast or a very quick cast (like .25s), and it has a fairly distinctive animation (IE, if a Sword MH thief pulls his arm back, you know for sure its a skill you probably want to dodge). You always know when the skill is coming.

Yes, Inf strike is an option, but at the cost of 3 init – 5 if they have to clean up an SR to gain access to IS again. When you consider that you need to spend 3 init for FS every time you want to LS and at minimum another 3 init for IS (if they don’t have SR up) it’s a reasonable combo, rather than something a thief can spam endlessly.

Something nobody mentioned is that LS is incredibly similiar animation-wise to the 3rd sword autoattack and, you know, nobody wants to dodge the autoattack.
Also, consider that arm animations are fairly hard to notice, expecially if the Thief is an Asura which has a model 70% smaller than any character, which bring us to another flaw of this game.

What are you saving your dodge for, FS? DD? Most S/D thieves at this point don’t bother with CnD (outside of interrupting a stomp), since without SA, the stealth doesn’t offer much, and its costs 6 init for crap damage.

Do explain why you wouldn’t want to dodge a swing that does nearly the same damage as LS, and carries cripple and weakness with it, especially since another complaint in the thread is that most thieves would use IS to ensure the LS strike. Crippling strike and LS are the only skills worth dodging/attempting to interrupt with CC in the current “Wah, spam 3 more noob” meta.

Oh, and I mentioned specifically that the animations were identical. Its actually right in the post you quoted. Additionally, any animation is hard to see with an Asura – that’s a poor design move by Anet that’s true across every class and ability.

Softspoken.2410:

evilapprentice.6379:

Ls is telegraphed in 2 ways.
If you just watched the thief use FS, you know he has LS available.
If you watch the thief pull his sword arm back, 1 of 2 things is coming – Crippling strike, or LS (both with kitten cast time)- They’re both swings you’re probably going to want to dodge.

Not really buying the “1/2 activation means someone can always dodge it” though, since that applies to a large percentage of weapon skills. It’s an especially suspect argument with the presence of immobilize on Infiltrator’s Strike.

The point isn’t “you can always dodge it”. No one dodges infinitely. The point is that the skill isn’t instant cast or a very quick cast (like .25s), and it has a fairly distinctive animation (IE, if a Sword MH thief pulls his arm back, you know for sure its a skill you probably want to dodge). You always know when the skill is coming.

Yes, Inf strike is an option, but at the cost of 3 init – 5 if they have to clean up an SR to gain access to IS again. When you consider that you need to spend 3 init for FS every time you want to LS and at minimum another 3 init for IS (if they don’t have SR up) it’s a reasonable combo, rather than something a thief can spam endlessly.

Softspoken.2410:

So does nobody use flanking strike, then wait for a clear opportunity to use larcenous strike? Because the 5(?) second window you have to use it sort of encourages that tactic, rather than just mashing 3 twice.

I ask because I’ve seen it implied a few times that LS is actually easy to dodge / bait because FS telegraphs it, but… Strictly speaking, it doesn’t. You can do a couple things between FS & LS.

Ls is telegraphed in 2 ways.
If you just watched the thief use FS, you know he has LS available.
If you watch the thief pull his sword arm back, 1 of 2 things is coming – Crippling strike, or LS (both with kitten cast time)- They’re both swings you’re probably going to want to dodge.

Yamsandjams.3267:

evilapprentice.6379:

Yeah, FS-LS does slightly more DPS (roughly 15%) than AA chain, which is to be expected from skills that cost Init.

That’s my point though. Not all skills that cost init need to have superior damage if they provide something else. You’re already paying init for evasion and boon stealing, but you’re also getting superior (or at the very least, comparable) damage on top of it.

Infiltrator’s strike does not offer superior damage because of the utility it provides.

Dancing dagger does not provide superior damage because of the utility it provides.

Cloak and dagger does not provide superior damage because of the utility it provides.

Other skills are that way (i.e. heartseeker, unload), but they also don’t provide the same level of utility (at least by themselves).

So FS-LS does not need to have superior damage to the auto-attack chain just because it costs initiative, and especially because it provides some unique utility.

Does this make the skills unbalanced? I don’t know. However, if FS-LS does need balancing, it’s probably best to hit it with a damage reduction instead of a utility reduction (i.e. less damage, not kitten ons stolen), because the utility is the core of the skill, not the damage.

FS/LS is more than fine. It does slightly more damage than AA in a set that is characterized by its poor burst but strong consistent damage, all in a class that has low health and poor defensive options and generally relies on burst damage to remain relevant.

People don’t like fighting thieves. It’s unfortunate that they don’t just sit there and get demolished, but people will eventually get used it.

Edit: Let’s also not forget the second point I mentioned – S/D does extremely poor damage as a weaponset if you can avoid crippling strike and LS. If you nerf LS, you’ll have a weaponset that has a single DPS move at the end of a 1.5s long AA chain – IE, easy to dodge, and easy to pressure a squishy thief out of using (since they’re so reliant on FS and SR to avoid damage, ruining the AA chain). Against players who don’t stack/rely on boons, LS is just a decently hard hit that makes up for how weak the weapons other attacks are, and can be mixed into the playstyle effectively. LS Can do less damage the second Slice, Slash and FS do more damage.

…I’m in the PvP forums. I’m talking PvP changes. Nothing I’m saying will have any impact on PvE, because I’m talking PvP only changes.

Yamsandjams.3267:

evilapprentice.6379:

Yamsandjams.3267:

Daecollo.9578:

It has the same damage as sword auto-attack.

Actually, I think it’s a bit more, although I am only comparing actual damage instead of DPS.

And that is my entire point. The skill is supposed to provide evasion and boon stealing, which is what the initiative cost is for. However, it will still give decent damage output at the same time. If it didn’t have quite as much damage, you could still rely on it just as much for utility, but you’d have to switch it up more often to ensure you killed someone.

As such, I’d say any balancing done to the skill (not that it warrants a ton of balancing anyways) is much better as a damage reduction instead of a utility reduction (i.e. only stealing one boon, evading for 1/4s instead of 1/2).

S/D has 2 swings that do anything close to decent damage – Crippling Stike (Sword AA chain finisher), and LS. Both are highly telegraphed, .5s activation time swings. Every other attack does sub-par damage. While these 2 attacks do alot of damage, they have pre-requisites, and as such bring the overall DPS of S/D up to acceptable.

If LS is doing too much damage, FS and both AA swings preceding the finisher need a damage buff.

As a point of reference – with 2119 power, against a Heavy Target Dummy
-Slash and Slice do 622 damage, no additional effects, and have .5s activation times. They are both part of the AA chain that leads to Crippling Strike.
-Infiltrators strike does 582 damage.
-Flanking strike does 582 damage, and is a 3init pre-req for LS.
-DD does 388 damage (It’s not intended as a direct damage ability, but since it’s part of S/D’s weaponset, we should look at it)
-CnD does 778 damage, and costs 6 init.

I was comparing the entire auto-attack chain to the FS-LS chain, not just LS itself.

Does FS not still do 2 hits? I was under the impression that it did, although I haven’t bothered to watch in game, just assumed that it still did. Wiki had it listed as two hits as well.

Also, with that sort of damage on the auto-attack, you’ll probably be hitting for about 900-1k DPS on 2600 armor before crits or any other bonuses. That doesn’t sound that bad… mind you I’m used to playing lower DPS builds.

I don’t follow your last paragraph – those numbers are what the skills strike for (average of the variance at least) on the heavy target dummy (which has 2600 armor) for the power that I listed. I pulled the numbers from gw2skills.net, and just tested myself in the mists.

Post-Patch FS is 2 strikes – 3init for the evading strike, which chains to a 1init LS, instead of both strikes firing on 1 use of FS for 4 init.

AA chain and FS-LS are actually pretty comparable – they do very comparable damage per second.
AA chain does 622+622+1010 over 1.5s = 1502dps
FS-LS does 582+1166 over 1s. = 1748dps

Yeah, FS-LS does slightly more DPS (roughly 15%) than AA chain, which is to be expected from skills that cost Init.

Yamsandjams.3267:

Daecollo.9578:

It has the same damage as sword auto-attack.

Actually, I think it’s a bit more, although I am only comparing actual damage instead of DPS.

And that is my entire point. The skill is supposed to provide evasion and boon stealing, which is what the initiative cost is for. However, it will still give decent damage output at the same time. If it didn’t have quite as much damage, you could still rely on it just as much for utility, but you’d have to switch it up more often to ensure you killed someone.

As such, I’d say any balancing done to the skill (not that it warrants a ton of balancing anyways) is much better as a damage reduction instead of a utility reduction (i.e. only stealing one boon, evading for 1/4s instead of 1/2).

S/D has 2 swings that do anything close to decent damage – Crippling Stike (Sword AA chain finisher), and LS. Both are highly telegraphed, .5s activation time swings. Every other attack does sub-par damage. While these 2 attacks do alot of damage, they have pre-requisites, and as such bring the overall DPS of S/D up to acceptable.

If LS is doing too much damage, FS and both AA swings preceding the finisher need a damage buff.

As a point of reference – with 2119 power, against a Heavy Target Dummy
-Slash and Slice do 622 damage, no additional effects, and have .5s activation times. They are both part of the AA chain that leads to Crippling Strike.
-Infiltrators strike does 582 damage.
-Flanking strike does 582 damage, and is a 3init pre-req for LS.
-DD does 388 damage (It’s not intended as a direct damage ability, but since it’s part of S/D’s weaponset, we should look at it)
-CnD does 778 damage, and costs 6 init.

The more I think about it (and the more I read here), the effects should likely be split.
Keep weakness as 50% endurance regen debuff, no need for any further mechanics changes – leave the abilities that currently apply weakness and their durations as is.

Introduce a new condition which reduces all damage dealt by some manner (specifics to come later) and selectively choose some subset of abilities/traits/whatever that already apply Weakness and also have them add this condition for however long (Duration is a playtesting issue).

This way, there’s no need to re-work weakness application/durations in the slightest. By separating it into 2 conditions, and choosing which abilities get to apply it, we can leave abilities that are already strong AND apply weakness alone, and add this new condition to underpowered/Underused abilities/traits that involve weakness as a way to bolster them.

My suggestion for the new condition would be a blanket 10-15% damage reduction. I also like the idea of an additional effect that if the afflicted player scores a critical strike, the duration is extended X seconds (I’m thinking 1-3 seconds, but this is a playtesting issue.), but that might be too anti-spike for the current meta.

Myrmidian Eudoros.4671:

I agree that D/P is the best designed set by a mile. Yes, I over simplified for the sake of discussion here.

That said, there is one reason to take mainhand dagger that trumps all, and it is the Backstab combo. You are going to go to extreme lengths to get off as many backstabs as possible, because from the perspective of resource consumption vs. output it is by far the best skill on the set. EVERY other skill there (regardless of OH choice) only serves as part of the combo (in the case of using Head Shot to interrupt the heal) or set up (in the case of Black Powder) so that you can pull off more backstabs. Other uses for the other skills on that weapon set are extremely infrequent and/or mistakes.

All you’re looking at is damage – there are other reasons to use abilities. With 0 points in SA, living in stealth for constant backstabs isn’t even that great with D/P – it’s only made good by all the things you can get in 30SA that makes constantly stealthing worth it. There are again times when an HS or shadowshot is far superior to Backstab.

Example – Even with 30 points in SA, from a pure Damage standpoint, Trying to set up a backstab when your target is under 25% (and maybe even 50%) can be pointless – you Can shadowshot->HS for for greater damage and more mitigation (Thanks to the blind from SS). Also, not entering stealth means you are still on point for conquest maps.

Myrmidian Eudoros.4671:

The problem with thief isn’t specific to any of the weapon sets, but more of a design choice that was not a very good one. Thief is the only class in this game that has to manage a resource pool (initiative) for skills rather than CD’s. This is coupled with not having CD’s on skills, so the most efficient way to play thief in ANY weapon set is to be VERY repetetive in skill use that only changes situationally.

Think about it for a second… Depending on weapon set you might use your stealth combo then its 2,2,2,2,2,2,2 or whatever your stealth application is or you build to 5,1,5,1,5,1,5,1. It doesn’t matter which weapon set thief is in. There is an inherent design flaw that makes playing thief well nothing more that having situational awareness and reliably repeating the same combination of button presses for the given situation.

If they got rid of the initiative system and gave thief CD’s like everyone else it would improve the class (IMO), but that kind of redesign isn’t likely to happen, so I suppose get used to pretending that you aren’t basically emulating what a macro would do more efficiently.

This is an over-simplification and a misunderstanding.

D/P is the perfect counter-example. It’s a well built set where every ability has a purpose at nearly any point in the fight. It’s almost always better to pick your best suited skill rather than just spam HS with D/P – there are often times shadowshot and head shot are the superior choice to HS, even when HS does more DPI. There are times you’ll hit BP primarily for the blind so you can AA safely, and only use it for stealth if your target tries to bail. 2 is not always the best choice in D/P (and IMO, it’s not even often the best choice).

If all of our weaponsets were half as well built, thieves would have no problem with weaponskill diversity. Unfortunately, with D/D, if you aren’t aiming for stealth, 2 is your only intelligent option. If you’re running P/P, spam that 3. Heck, even in S/D you’ll be hitting 2 and 3 85% of the time because the designers gave us almost no reason to use 4 and 5.

Tl:Dr – Initiative is not the source of skill spam, bad design is. Once the dev’s give thieves skills that can be effectively applied to various situations, you’ll see less skill spam. Until then, we have to use what we’re given if we want to win.

Arganthium.5638:

Weakness is actually a seriously underestimated condition that really is only bad if the opponent has a high crit chance. However, realize that bleed and burn aren’t very good if the enemy has high vits, for example; also realize that, if nothing else, this does provide a very good source of reducing endurance regen.

That’s part of my point – Weakness is currently a mixed condition – 50% less endurance regen is pretty universal, which makes the condition worth using in the first place. The other part is intended to reduce damage.

Who does the scariest damage? Glass cannons. Which player is least effected by the damage reducing portion of Weakness? … Glass cannons. There’s a bit of logical inconsistency to that.

There should be a condition which reduces the damage burst classes do – I’m not saying it has to be Weakness, or suggesting what % the damage should be reduced (That’s a play testing issue). Weakness should either effect both non-crits and crits (probably at different %’s for balance reasons), or they should introduce a new condition that reduces damage, and just make weakness an endurance regen debuff.

Kasama.8941:

evilapprentice.6379:

Kasama.8941:

But if you removed the combo finisher from Heartseeker, and then changed Black Powder to cost 4 initiative, it would make pistol/pistol a lot more viable.

So your suggestion to fix P/P is to destroy D/P’s synergy and nerf HS for no reason just so you can slap a (ultimately ineffective and ill conceived) band aid on P/P.

Can’t Tell if trolling or genuinely clueless.

The only synergy dagger/pistol has is a stealth trigger, which is something that off hand dagger already can do. But the fact that you rely on a stealth trigger to make a weapon set viable, says everything about how broken the Thief is. If gaining stealth from weapon sets is all the Thief’s got going for it, something needs to happen. At least my change would make it interesting to play.

Still cant tell if trolling or mentally deficient from too much time on the boards.

“If your class relies on access to its designed defensive measures and primary class mechanic, it just proves how broken it is. Taking away that access would make it interesting to play”.

Hahahahaha.

Kasama.8941:

But if you removed the combo finisher from Heartseeker, and then changed Black Powder to cost 4 initiative, it would make pistol/pistol a lot more viable.

So your suggestion to fix P/P is to destroy D/P’s synergy and nerf HS for no reason just so you can slap a (ultimately ineffective and ill conceived) band aid on P/P.

Can’t Tell if trolling or genuinely clueless.

PowerBottom.5796:

No1 cares about the dmg-reduction effect of Weakness, because it’s basically non-existant, because:

- Most DPS-classes have about 50% crit-chance, so at 50% of attacks, it won’t do anything. (50% chance)
- Then, the 50% of non-crits have a 50% chance to be affected by it (25% chance)
- Then, those 25% deal 50% less DMG (12.5 % DMG-Reduction)

But wait, that wasn’t all, because the 50% of hits that can be affected by weakness aren’t equal to 50% of the DMG, because the crits deal up to 200% of the DMG of the normal attacks, so we can reduce the overall DMG negated by 50% again!

This equals a measly 6.25% DMG-reduction.

—> It really is only about the -50% endurance-reg.

But taking into account the logic above, if it would actually affect crits as well, the DMG-reduction would skyrocket from 6.25% to 25%, which is IMHO a bit extreme!

Which is why I specifically mentioned that there might be some need to split the DR values of crits and non-crits.

Like you pointed out above, the damage reduction portion of weakness is currently a joke for GC spec’d classes – it might as well not even be there for anything other than the endurance regen debuff.

The worst part is it’s more effective against players who try to build balanced builds – there’s been copious bashing of the Burst/bunker dominated meta (less so recently, actually, but still), and weakness just helps reaffirm it – the more survivable/hybrid/tanky you try to be, the more effective weakness is against you.

My point is, if part of the effect is so paltry as to be almost useless, why have it there? Either find a way to make the dmg reduction portion relevant, or remove it entirely.

Zelyhn.8069:

There is already a mechanic that reduces damage on all attacks: protection. Chill also fulfills this purpose in a way.
If weakness affected all attacks it would be redundant and would be boring.

That’s a boon you apply to yourself (and at time others) that reduces all damage from all sources.

Weakness is a condition you apply on a target to target basis (and at times against groups of targets) that reduces just the damage they deal.

Chill doesn’t directly affect the damage a skill does, so does not bear mention.

I understand how you might find the skill redundant, but “boring”? Is weakness currently an “exciting” condition?

Doomdesire.9365:

Einlanzer.1627:

Doomdesire.9365:

The number 2 pistol skill is a joke. #3 is good in terms of damage and need no buff. #1 is great as is and is vital for P/D condition thieves.

They should outright remove the vulnerability from it and add boon stealing. Every #2 pistol shot steals a boon. Increase initiative cost to 4

No, try reading the above post again.

I’m sorry, I didn’t realize this was a dictatorship and we weren’t allowed to present our own opinion, your majesty.

His point was that he wanted to address the main problem with P/P – these posts always eventually turn into 15 people throwing out their suggestions, 30 people chiming in on said suggestions with tweaks/their own suggestions and so on… and the original intention is lost. I’ve made a very similar post on the subject (and then I go do the exact same thing in this very post like a dunce).

His point is, let’s focus on making Arenanet aware that there is a problem with P/P, instead of throwing out dozens of suggestions until this entire thread turns into an uncoordinated mix of suggestions of all flavors (good, bad, broken, useless, etc), and people talking about said suggestions, rather than the real problems.

Why are crits unaffected by weakness?

I’ve never quite understood the logic here – GC’s are the build you’d most want to hit with weakness, yet they are the least affected by it. It seems like the condition was made to punish people who decide to go hybrid – the more crit% you sacrifice for survivability stats, the more potential weakness has to shut you down.

Maybe the numbers would have to be split (one damage reduction % for non-crits, and another for crits), but does anyone else feel weakness should reduce damage dealt for all attacks?

Zacchary.6183:

Adept:
Minor: “You’re open!” – Gain 1 Initiative upon evade. (5s CD)

I: Defensive Stance – 10% chance to suffer glancing blows instead while wielding a sword or dagger in the main hand.
II: Momentum – 5% damage, crit damage and chance while moving.
III: Throwdown – Stealing from behind knocks down opponent for 2 seconds and damages them. Crits add 1 more second of knockdown instead of increased damage. (I had to put my Aikido in there c:)
IV: Dancing Blade – Lotus Strike and Crippling Strike are unblockable. (10s CD)
V: Whipwire – Scorpion Wire is replaced with Whipwire and damage is reduced by 50%. Scorpion Wire now slightly lifts target off the ground. If Scorpion Wire cannot pull target to you, you go to target dealing 150% damage.
VI: Residual Signets – Signet recharge time increased by 50%. Passives still available after activation.
VII: Reflexes – 20% chance to evade when attack would have dealt 10% or more of your hp in one hit. (10s CD)

Master
Minor: En Passant – If an attack were to deal 15% or more to you, instead it is evaded and you Shadow Step behind your opponent. (This does not work with Shadow Ram.)

VIII: Reluctance – Pistol Whip is now a combo.

1. Pistol Whip: Smash offhand pistol into your enemy and Stun them (1s). Costs 3 initiative.
2. Blade of Fury: Slash at your enemy repeatedly. Costs 2 initiative.

IX: Defender – 5% of Power is converted into Toughness. (no deduction in stats)
X: Coup De Grace – Augment 3rd attack to the first slot skill when sword or dagger is equipped in main hand.

• Sword: Viper Strike – Stab the arms, legs, pancreas and arteries with 4 blindingly fast stabs. Causes Weakness, Cripple, Poison and 4 stacks of Bleeding. (all 3s)
• Dagger: Turn the Blade – Rip your dagger from the enemy and bleed them profusely. Causes 3 stacks of Bleeding while reapplying Poison (3s).

Grandmaster
Minor: Trigger Happy – 1st slot pistol skill is replaced with Trigger Happy combo.

1. Spray and Pray: Shoot 3 times. 50% chance to cause Vulnerability, Cripple, Weakness or Bleeding every shot.
2. Drill Shot: Shoot a bullet that drills itself into armor and causes vulnerability. 2 stacks of Vulnerability (4s).
3. Pot Shot: Follow up by shooting the Drill Shot that is dug into the armor. The already penetrated armor helps Pot Shot ignore most of the armor so long as it hits it directly. 20% on crit to ignore 75% of armor rating.

XI: Shadow Ram – Shadow Step, Shadow Pursuit and Infiltrator’s Signet Active launches targets. Enemies between you and target are knocked down (1.5s). No damage is dealt. Cooldown for these skills increased by 30%

XII: Reckless Abandon – Increase Initiative costs by 1. Increase damage dealt per Initiative point spent.

You’re Open – No CD or 1s (to avoid the PW issue you pointed out)
Defensive Stance – Will never be slotted. 5% static DR is clearly inferior to your other suggestions. Instead, maybe 3s of 100% glancing blows after a crit, 10s CD? something like that.
Dancing Blade – Do blocks allow an AA chain to continue? I just realized I’ve never noticed, as I tend to stop attacking when someone starts blocking. If blocks do not advance the AA chain, the CD isn’t necessary IMO. If they do, maybe 5-8s CD.
Whipwire – too mechanically complicated, would never be implemented.
En passant – I see the being shadow-stepped behind my target “randomly” as rather disorienting. Like the concept, not sure of the execution.
Reluctance – Again like the concept, but an entire trait dedicated to 1 skill in 1 spec seems too narrow.
Coup De Grace – Do these augment or replace the final strikes current functionality? I’m assuming Augment – Viper strike does too much.
Trigger Happy – Again, a minor trait dedicated entirely to 1 skill on 1 weapon seems too narrow.

The others seem pretty cool – the best of which is Reckless Abandon. I like the idea that you can build a thief to be less spammy and more bursty.

YourOwnFear.2743:

evilapprentice.6379:

I’m going to start this off by saying that you’re obviously a good player, and the below isn’t a personal attack.

That being said, what’s so impressive about this? As far as I can tell, this is what happens when you take a giant open space and fight in the middle of it rather than being forced to fight around objectives. Teleporting around a giant map where your escape vector is “any direction away from my opponent” rather than limited by map design and overall small size seems like common sense. The fact that you don’t have some point where you “have to be” (IE, a capture point) means your free to engage and disengage at will. The people chasing you (rather than splitting up between where you are and where your return circle is) are just wasting their time. There’s no penalty associated with spending 20s out of every minute running away so as to let your skills Cool down.

What it boils down to is you’re baiting people. They’re more interested in “not letting you get away” then playing intelligently. Like I said earlier, you’re clearly good at it, but it seems like anything a competent PvP S/D thief could pick up in an hour.

I don’t understand the indirect attack on the op. I understand you say you are not attacking him but in reality you are. He never tried to promote a build for spvp or tpvp. It was clearly a fun video of him trolling some people in wvw. I really don’t understand the point of your post. We all know that wvw and pvp are 2 different things and all builds don’t give mirrored results in one another.

Op keep the videos coming. It was very entertaining. Don’t mind the doom and gloomers.

What is this, the daytime Emmy’s? Does everything automatically deserve a little round of applause? Why are you assuming OP only wanted 100% positive responses, and nothing else? I’m going to operate under the assumption he wanted some exposure, and some opinions.

My opinion is he has a good grip on the class, but the video remains unimpressive. Note that “unimpressive” isn’t “You suck go home”. It’s “Meh, this isn’t anything special” – if “It was average” is now considered an insult, I don’t know what to tell you. On top of that, I made it a point to compliment the OP’s skill to make it completely clear it wasn’t a putdown, and you still managed to misinterpret. S/D is very powerful outside of small PvP maps, even more so when people focus too hard on killing you, and less so on playing intelligently – a video showcasing is only a few steps above a thief posting WvW Backstab ganks IMO.

Pyriall.5027:

@Evil…let the pv3 people have their moment. Just because it isn’t spvp/tpvp doesn’t make it any less enjoying for those playing and obviously people in the thread enjoyed watching it.

I’m not trying to bash anyone’s moment – Like I repeatedly said, OP is obviously a good player. Doesn’t mean its impressive however. Didn’t say the video sucked, or OP shouldn’t have posted it…I’m just not particularly impressed.

Also, my point of bringing up PvP wasn’t to insinuate PvP > WvW or anything like that, just that some skills go from balanced and fun to silly when you remove the restraints of PvP – IS/SR are powerful skills in PvP… they’re apparently kittening hilarious in WvW.

http://cdn.memegenerator.net/instances/400x/33838591.jpg

I’m going to start this off by saying that you’re obviously a good player, and the below isn’t a personal attack.

That being said, what’s so impressive about this? As far as I can tell, this is what happens when you take a giant open space and fight in the middle of it rather than being forced to fight around objectives. Teleporting around a giant map where your escape vector is “any direction away from my opponent” rather than limited by map design and overall small size seems like common sense. The fact that you don’t have some point where you “have to be” (IE, a capture point) means your free to engage and disengage at will. The people chasing you (rather than splitting up between where you are and where your return circle is) are just wasting their time. There’s no penalty associated with spending 20s out of every minute running away so as to let your skills Cool down.

What it boils down to is you’re baiting people. They’re more interested in “not letting you get away” then playing intelligently. Like I said earlier, you’re clearly good at it, but it seems like anything a competent PvP S/D thief could pick up in an hour.

TheMightyAltroll.3485:

Stealth is not supposed to be a hard counter for Conditions when it is also a hard counter for other forms of damage as well. Your points are nonsense, and I had made no point that it was OP in 1v1s alone. If my Deathshroud passively removed conditions, healed me, and removed targeting, then regenerated, what would that be hard countering?

Please, just learn to play. Go find a TPvP team and practice. Play some games, learn some new tricks, and have some fun. There’s literally nothing else I can do for you right now, as your rather entrenched in your ridiculous ideas.

Einlanzer.1627:

Ugh. That’s all I have to say.

You could say more. Do you disagree with my assessment? If so, Why? I wasn’t trying to put you down, I’m just firmly of the opinion that P/P without some sort of defensive measures is still a free kill. On the incredibly unlikely chance Anet at some point realizes P/P is a joke and comes to the boards for some ideas, I’d rather not see them just buff vital shot and call it a day.

TheMightyAltroll.3485:

Stealth wouldn’t be nearly as bad if it didn’t have such enormous damage mitigation. Your passive aggressive post proves literally nothing, nor does it provide any valid point other than “NOU!”

I cannot kill a good Stealth based Thief with conditions. They are practically immune to them.

Welcome to hard counters.
http://na.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?p=17735942

I apologize if you view people pointing out that you’re wrong (with fun witticisms and just a hint of sarcasm) as “passive agressive” but I was actually being “plain o’l aggressive”. You’re obviously a thief troll (with an undeservedly high opinion of itself, apparently.)

You balance around skill and the idea that everyone has the same access to gear – while that can theoretically happen anywhere, the only place it’s guaranteed to happen is in TPvP when organized teams face off. Those players don’t seem to have a problem with stealth (in fact, most rate thief somewhere toward the middle in effectiveness), therefore stealth isn’t a problem.

The game isn’t balanced for 1v1 duels. If that was the case, Bunkers would broken.
If you have a problem with it, it’s an indication of an issue on your end.

Jumper.9482:

evilapprentice.6379:

Jumper.9482:

Egorum.9506:

even easier, just make body shot a reverse heartseeker with a lower damage coefficient due to it being ranged. deals more damage if the opponent has more health, and less as the opponent’s health decreases. then make it a backwards leap. bp->body shot->sneak attack with unloads as a tactical ini sink if you can afford it.

this way both power builds and condition builds can use the set.

I like this.

The immediate issue that comes to mind is P/P – D/X. Use Body shot for great DPI on healthy targets, switch to D/P when they’re low to take advantage of HS’s great DPI on low health targets.

Anything that doesn’t include shortbow is a step forward.
(Actually, this set has absolutely 0 mobility so probably wouldn’t be too popular…)

All I envision is the thief boards awash in the tears of people who were body shot kited until 50% then mauled by D/P.

And although not exactly “mobility”, D/P – P/P will have powerful tools to dictate the range of fights.

Jumper.9482:

Egorum.9506:

even easier, just make body shot a reverse heartseeker with a lower damage coefficient due to it being ranged. deals more damage if the opponent has more health, and less as the opponent’s health decreases. then make it a backwards leap. bp->body shot->sneak attack with unloads as a tactical ini sink if you can afford it.

this way both power builds and condition builds can use the set.

I like this.

The immediate issue that comes to mind is P/P – D/X. Use Body shot for great DPI on healthy targets, switch to D/P when they’re low to take advantage of HS’s great DPI on low health targets.

TheMightyAltroll.3485:

I LOVE this train of thought: “Only newbies and baddies complain about stealth, because you know, Stealth is perfectly fine, it’s everyone else that needs to l2p.”

I’m glad you love it, because it’s true.

If you doubt it, ask any TPvPer how they could possibly deal with with this almighty brokenness that is stealth. I’m sure they’ll extol for hours how it’s a constant struggle to keep the 5 thief teams from dominating the top of the leaderboards with their effortless 2 spam and lolskiddaddle whenever they start losing. Heck, I’m surprised people who TPvP play anything other than thief.

Just a few notes to cut you off in advance.
WvW is classified as a PvE mode for a reason – balance is designed around everyone having access to the exact same gear. If you want a game that designs around gear imbalances, go play a gear treadmill MMO.
Beating hotjoin zerglings isn’t a hard thing to do. You use hotjoin to learn – if you can’t be bothered, don’t come and cry on the boards. Or do, you’ll have plenty of company.

@Einlanzer
And you’d still have a weaponset that offers absolutely nothing in the way of defense for a thief – No evasiveness, no stealth, no way to slow down your opponents. Melee will close and eat you alive.

Quick, name the only ranged weaponset in the game that has
No way to affect speed positively OR negatively (no swiftness for you, No cripple/chill to use on your enemies)
and
No way to root an enemy
and
No way to KB/KD an enemy
and
No weaponset abilities that incorporate movement
Aaaaand you’ve just named P/P. Oh, it’s range 900, on top of all that.
Every other ranged weaponset has At minimum one of those attributes. P/P would be a kitten set in any classes hands, the fact that it also doesn’t offer a thief access to its defined defense mechanics (Stealth and Evasion) is just icing on the top. Even if you crank the damage through the roof, you’d be 100% utility dependent for defense, which is just bad design and wont be much fun.

Body shot is currently completely worthless. No matter what you do to unload, leaving it the way it is will probably only elevate it to “meh”. Body shot also needs something (which is hard to determine since we also need to fix Vital shot, unload, and the weaponsets basic “ranged weapon” abilities)

Jzaku.9765:

I think that some people should understand that with smoke fields, warriors would not have direct access to stealth like thieves do at all! They will have to use up a leap or blast finisher to achieve stealth, and this leads to a certain amount of predictability. For example, if a warrior bull’s charges through a smoke field from a distance away on an axe/shield weaponset, it’s still extremely predictable what he will do next (eviscerate or shield bash then eviscerate).

But from what I’ve read (and experienced), that’s not the issue.

Warriors don’t have a problem dealing damage – they have problems lasting in a fight to keep doing damage. The game doesn’t need 2 flavors of squishy burst damage – thieves already got that pretty down pat. It sounds and seems to me like warriors want the option to do solid, steady damage while remaining durable, so that they can pressure in team fights.

As a side note – smoke field + leap is explicitly direct access to stealth. Indirect access is what they have now; some leap finishers but no in-class way to produce smoke fields.

I won’t claim to know warriors very well. I know their general problems, but none of the in depth stuff.

That being said, why not just add some defensive measures to existing abilities? Tack on some blocks and short duration protection to weaponskills and AA chains.

Perhaps an adept trait that adds X/2 seconds of protection at the end of an AA chain that takes X seconds to complete (so add 1s of protection to pulverize, .75s to hammersmash, etc). Or maybe a singular block for 3s upon completing an AA chain instead.

Maybe a minor trait that grants protection/stability for Xs and drops a condition on burst skill activation. Or Replace Adrenal health with a direct heal on burst skill use (the actual numbers of which I’ll leave to someone more experienced with Warrior)

In fact, most of the defense trait line looks pretty awful (remember my disclaimer, not so knowledgeable on warriors) as for reducing damage taken goes.

Geiir.7603:

…called OP in every single MMO that implemented it…

I’m super glad you chose the correct phrasing. It’s been CALLED OP because bad players don’t like it. It can be frustrating when you don’t know what you’re doing for someone to appear out of thin air and kill you. When you refuse to learn the game, and it keeps killing you over and over and over again, I’m sure it becomes infuriating. Luckily, we’re under no responsibility to cater to bad players whims.

When you know what you’re doing however, it’s perfectly fair.

Boomslang.4352:

One question to all the thieves who quit WvW or are threatening to quit the game: How many times have you actually stepped on an anti-stealth trap?

I was trolling three guys in JQ BL yesterday and killed a yak that they were trying to guard. One of them ran off and when he got back, I saw him crouch for a few seconds. Obviously, it was a stealth trap so I never came close to it. Upon killing the next yak that passed by, I decided to try stepping where he placed it just to see what the QQ is all about.

Did I die from being revealed? Nope. Between Infiltrator’s Strike+Shadow return, Shortbow 5, Shadow Step+Shadow Return, the defenders had no idea where I was headed.

My point is, although I play only about 2 hrs of WvW a day on my thief, I have never stepped on an anti-stealth trap. The time that I deliberately stepped on one, I still had all the tools in my utilities to juke the hell out of my opponents.

I hate playing my thief because its core mechanic rewards a no-skill player like me way too much. But come on guys, let’s be realistic here. There’s not even a 5% chance that you will step on a trap while playing WvW. If someone plants a trap for you then it’s your clue that you are over-staying in your roaming area and are proving too much of an irritation for them to even bother planting a trap.

This trap is bad for thieves, but I don’t share your tears. Why you would even bother buying new gear or changing your build or quitting WvW for the really small chance that you will be killable for 30 seconds is just a lot of QQ for me.

And again, it’s not about the actual cost/application effectiveness of the trap, how well it can be used on thieves, and so on – I’m not a fan of Anet introducing any effect that effectively invalidates an entire traitline, some traits outside that line, multiple utilities, and more for any class.

If the trap were meant to solely target portal/veil bombs, it could have simply pulsed a 3s reveal every second for 10s in the same radius. 30s reveal is pretty clearly targeted at thieves caught in the trap.

TL:DR – You shouldn’t wants traps targeted at shutting down a huge chunk of a classes functionality, regardless how well you can play around it. Its lazy, kittenty, kitten poor design, and it’s only a matter of time before it’s used to kitten up your class, and this game in general. Furthermore, accepting the trap as is makes you a bad, lazy player – I don’t want to beat an Ele because I dropped a trap that locked him into his current attunement for 30s, I want to beat him because I outplayed him.

I’m just going to keep copy/pasting this until people realize it’s not so much about the effect of the trap as it is the message it sends, and the precedent it sets.

EpiChlo.4072:

evilapprentice.6379:

EpiChlo.4072:

I have been seeing complaints to how bad we are being nerfed, that we should be “deleted”, so on and so forth. I have a few things to respond to.

1. We are useless without stealth, will die easy, can’t do anything, ect.
Please learn to adapt. There are many builds that work without stealth(my first thought is D/D Condition or Unicorn Build) You can play any of these AND do great damage. It’s just differen’t.
And if you still want to play backstab or some other build be prepared for revealed and learn to play around it. We have many ways to move fast. Shadow Step, SB 5, Heartseekers ect. Use other forms of damage that don’t require stealth. Even backstab builds can use heartseeker and do a good amount of damage. Or help a group with basilisk venom.

2. You wont be running into them every 5 feet. Most solo players wont drop them and if they do it’s super obvious. The animation is slower than other traps, takes longer than any stealth besides shadow refuge and if someone shadow refuges you can use your stealth trap(you have them too) and counter their wasted shadow refuge.

3. Worthless in a zerg.
Well this is partially true. But if you are a squishy thief were you ever much use in a zerg? If you just run with them stealthed you aren’t helping them fight. You can’t push cause you insta die. But let’s say you get hit by a stealth trap, oh no one person in the zerg can’t do anything. Except stun people, and do large critting heartseekers.

TL:DR
Don’t complain because you can’t adapt or don’t want to become skillful enough to play while revealed.

And again, it’s not about the actual cost/application effectiveness of the trap, how well it can be used on thieves, and so on – I’m not a fan of Anet introducing any effect that effectively invalidates an entire traitline, some traits outside that line, multiple utilities, and more for any class.

If the trap were meant to solely target portal/veil bombs, it could have simply pulsed a 3s reveal every second for 10s in the same radius. 30s reveal is pretty clearly targeted at thieves caught in the trap.

TL:DR – You shouldn’t wants traps targeted at shutting down a huge chunk of a classes functionality, regardless how well you can play around it. Its lazy, kittenty, kitten poor design, and it’s only a matter of time before it’s used to kitten up your class, and this game in general. Furthermore, accepting the trap as is makes you a bad, lazy player – I don’t want to beat an Ele because I dropped a trap that locked him into his current attunement for 30s, I want to beat him because I outplayed him.

If you truthfully wanted to out play him, then you would enjoy this trap. It’s adding another mechanic that says hey, screw up and it could hurt you a bit, or hey this guy is standing in one spot for 10 seconds, maybe he’s dropping a trap. The trap isn’t a 1200 radius until you proc it. But besides that it doesnt shut off much but 3/8ths of your trait line(if you go 30 in shadow arts) If you can’t survive 30 seconds without 30 trait points then maybe you should take a break and get some practice.

The unadulterated idiocy contained herein is kittening astounding. There is no point in trying to converse with you. Have fun with your Iwin button – you’re obviously going to have need of it. When an S/D thief shreds you anyway, feel free to come request a trap that locks down dodge and evasion for 30s.

Some examples of equal idiocy
Truly skilled ele’s can win while staying in 1 attunement for 30s.
Truly skilled Mesmers can with without spawning clones or phantasms
and so on and so on…

jportell.2197:

evilapprentice.6379:

None of this has anything, at all, to do with my point.

My point was (and still is), don’t pretend that 8k Mug crits (pre-nerf) were possible, and don’t pretend that 4k mug crits (pre-nerf) were typical. 8k mug crits did not exist, and 4k mug crits were a result of a GC satisfying conditionals on multiple traits, all of them very deep in their trait lines.

8k mugs maybe not. I don’t think I ever said they hit 8k if I did my bad. Also for a Mesmer to get good burst he must have a very specific build at least 30 into one line and 20 into another. However we only have one trait that increases mindwrack damage over all… by 20% which really isn’t all that much considering that mug is an very high percentage increase since it went from a skill that does no damage to does well over 2k+ damage. Also thieves can repeat their burst every 4 seconds. If you fight a target that doesn’t go down to your first mug+cnd+backstab. Wait 4s (I think it should be 3 still) restealth. And do it again.
Also honestly thieves would do better if they didn’t take mug at all.. And they tried building a more balanced build. If they do that and still take zerker amulet+power runes they are still very tough to kill and can stack might to almost 25 full time depending on the runes… Currently if you build the 25/30/0/0/15 with all zerker amulet and runes… Any bunker will laugh at you and dance on your corpse. They aren’t meant to be bursted.. But you can still wear on them.

Now as for the op argument of nerfing mindwrack like mug. Once again mesmers suffered massive nerfs in this last patch for PvP and WvW as well as several others before that. Mindwrack is garbage damage to begin with and to pull it off you need to do at least 3 separate skills before that plus a different shatter. so that is 6 illusions and two shatters. The thief combo went Steal+CnD+Backstab rinse CnD+backstab til target died… The only thing that changed was mugs damage. Was it over the top maybe did it wreck the thief class no. I didn’t even start pvp on my thief til after the nerf. Right now mesmers are general stuck in the shatter build…

You never claimed Mug was critting for 8k – your name simply got pulled in to the discussion via exaggerators.

Your synopsis of thieves “being better if they didn’t take mug at all and instead built more defensively” is again an issue of either inexperience with thief, or trolling. Thieves more than any other class in the game gain the least by speccing defensively. We have no access to stability or protection as boons, have no way to gain invuln/direct damage immunity, have no block, and have poor (when compared to other classes) access to regen. Thieves, more than any other class, gain the least by sacrificing DPS stats for survivability stats. Even the dev’s agree, which is why they’ve stated (in a SotG) that they’re looking to allow thieves to spend more points defensively without impacting their burst (since their vision of thieves still has them being the highest burst and the best mobility).

Wolfey.3407:

How about:
If person leaves a pvp match tournament or not during a match the following happens.
-Deduction of 200 Glory, if glory is at 0 nothing is deducted.
-Debuff is placed on your account “Dishonorable”
Dishonorable effects:
-20% Reduction in speed in pve/pvp/wvwvw
-20% Reduction in Armour in pve/pvp/wvwvw
-20% Reduction in Damage in pve/pvp/wvwvw
-Not able to join any pvp matches for 30 minutes
The Debuff lasts for 30 minutes, does not disappear if player logs off or switches characters.

Has enough of a sting to discourage quitters, but also doesn’t totally screw over players who accidentally get screwed over by life (emergencies, power going out, etc.)

Allow me again to direct you to this – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ViF6JRNjTk

While I agree there should be some manner which discourages/bans leavers, the options you’ve provided are “dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb”. If you penalize real people with real people priorities along with leavers and kittenty players, all you’re doing is further alienating a dwindling PvP community.

Think before you post.

jportell.2197:

evilapprentice.6379:

jportell.2197:

evilapprentice.6379:

GankSinatra.2653:

evilapprentice.6379:

jportell.2197:

Mug only depended on mug.

Except 3 posts prior to yours that I quoted, I pointed out exactly the kittening opposite. Mug only does “insane” damage if you’re running extremely high power and satisfy the conditionals on a number of DPS oriented traits.

If you can’t make your point without ommitting facts, hyperbole, or just outright lying, it’s probably not worth making.

Also, as a side note, mug is a trait.

You omitted the fact its a minor 5 point trait.

10 point major, since I actually know where abilities I profess to have knowledge about are located.
A)There’s no need to point out where mug is – If you don’t know where mug is on the traitline, what makes you qualified to come to the boards and kitten about it?
B)2 of the 3 traits Jportel claimed where necessary for Mind wrack to hit hard are…I bet you’re going to feel silly when I finish this sentence…10 points in.

Dude, you’re a thief basher all over the forums, you should be better at this.

But also compare backstab to mindwrack… that is the big difference. Thieves can still pull of gnarly burst without mug thanks to backstab. Also thieves can pull off their burst every 4 seconds mesmers need at least 10 seconds.

Let me clarify – I’m not trying to weigh in on Mug vs Mind Wrack – I don’t know Mes’s numbers well enough to express an opinion on the matter, and unlike most people on these boards, I’m not willing to call something OP/UP/etc unless I feel like I completely understand all the factors associated.

I was simply pointing out that “7-8k Mugs” don’t exist, and “4k mugs” were a product of extreme Min/Maxing combined with a number of conditional DPS traits One of which requires your target to be below 50% health. New players who don’t truly understand what’s going on are going to come to these boards to try to figure out why they’re getting pasted so hard – when they have trouble with thieves, and come to boards and see idiots crying about “7-8k mug crits pre-nerf”, confirmation bias kicks in and we have a whole new wave of idiots. I’m just trying to prevent that.

I referenced your post to point out what a misinformed/trolling poster Gank was – he’s all over the boards crying about anything thief related; my guess is his mother did not love him.

As far as your point, I was clarifying – claiming that mug “Only needs mug” to crit like a beast is disingenous/misinformed. Mug Only needs Mug to work (obviously), huge crits (In the 4k realm) with it come from being a min/maxed GC thief and satisfying a number of conditionals, one of which requires 30 points in the Crit/crit damage traitline AND your target to be below 50% health.

Well for mindwrack to do insane damage the Mesmer has to have a huge set up as well. I was never really in favor of the mug nerf even though it was a trait I never used. WAS it a little strong for a 10point line? Perhaps… is it now? Most definitely not. One Mesmer trait that may need moved up is “shattered concentration” It has the ability to rip several boons at once… however if they do that they should bring harmonious mantras down a tree because nobody and I mean nobody runs mantra heavy builds in pvp.
Also in general thieves that took mug also took all the other traits to make it hit like a truck… In reality steal does no damage to begin with so taking mug was a XXXXX% increase in steals damage… Also with my thief that has absolutely no traits in power lines I can still land 5k backstabs on the regular…5k damage every 4-5 seconds… Mesmers can simply not do that… If they are shatter based then their phantasms might hurt… If they are phantasm Mesmers then you have nothing to worry about from shatters…. And hybrid Mesmer builds can’t do both things amazingly well. Nerfing mind wrack will force mesmers into either bunker builds which still aren’t very effective when compared to d/d ele/bm ranger/guard bunkers… We can try running confusion builds but unless they up confusion damage in PvP it’s hard to keep sustain going with that. The point is thieves have very viable builds that have nothing to do with mug and even with the mug nerf the damage from a thief with the same traits pre nerf is better than a Mesmer mindwrack hands down.

None of this has anything, at all, to do with my point.

My point was (and still is), don’t pretend that 8k Mug crits (pre-nerf) were possible, and don’t pretend that 4k mug crits (pre-nerf) were typical. 8k mug crits did not exist, and 4k mug crits were a result of a GC satisfying conditionals on multiple traits, all of them very deep in their trait lines.