Guild Wars 2

As far as I’m aware, you can’t turn or change facing while immobilized.

Am I wrong in that understanding?

If I’m not, what gives? I’ve had multiple classes (just tonight) change facing while immobilized – if my target isn’t actually immobilized, the ability isn’t any better than a cripple or chill for me (being a thief, facing is very important.)

Assuming this is a bug, is it going to be fixed on the 26th?

I might be making a big deal of it because its personally important to me, but a bugged condition is a pretty big deal – it affects any ability or trait which applies said condition; At this point in the game, conditions (which aren’t limited to a single class or spec, but a basic mechanic of the game itself) should work correctly and consistently.

FxyO.8243:

JimmyJazz.7943:

Look; That’s the style of thieves. That’s pretty much all they can do. They kill light/medium player styles. That is it.

It’s your nemesis, your counter spec. The game is designed like that, and I have nothing against it (I’m a DPS engineer).

Instead of getting frustrated, try to find a thief, a good one (r30+); And start dueling with him, until you find a window of escape.

Practice, Practice, Practice.

Thanks for the input but, sorry. This even being possible is horrible balance. give Thieves something else to stay alive or do damage. 4 shotting someone in 1 second isn’t rewarding for the Thief and sure as hell not for the player.

A single block.
A well timed dodge roll (I’ll admit this one can be hard, but not impossible – if you have a 900 range skill, you wait until it lights up and hit dodge).
Any of your numerous AoE CC’s.

Any of these would have absolutely ruined that thief for 45s. Its an all in spec – the thief blows a bunch of CD’s and a bunch of initiative – if it works, the thief probably gets a kill. If it doesn’t, the thief is a free kill.

In fact (in sPvP at least), the spec has been in decline for weeks. It’s extremely easy to counter, and telegraphs it’s attacks from across the battlefield (Dagger pistol is straight up better than D/D at this point. If a thief is running D/D, in most cases the player is either inexperienced, or going for instagib)

Seriously, I’ve been caught with most of this combo (hitting my stunbreaker late, etc), and (playing as a thief) still won the fight, because even with only 20% of my health left, that thief has no tricks left. The instagib player has to hope I screw up and let him catch me with a HS, or the fights over for him.

Verdelet Arconia.6987:

Archaon.6245:

Verdelet Arconia.6987:

1)not all rangers use traps, those are builds best suited for conquest maps only

Ehm…do you know that the whole gw2 pvp is actually based on conquest right?

Hotjoin much?

i had WVW in mind when i made that statement.
Nopes,i’m not a hotjoin player ,just a solo tpvp player mostly since feb

evilapprentice.6379:

3) Rangers have at minimum competent condition removal, excellent in some specs. While those excellent options might be locked into some specs, they are currently in what are considered the rangers best specs – so right now, Rangers have excellent condition removal. Lets not forget Healing spring, which also pulls conditions off, and is spec independent.

in which version of gw2 does healing spring remove conditions from the ranger?I’ve listed all the condtion removals from self that the ranger has, kindly state the excellent cond removal and also the competent ones that you mentioned ranger has since the ones in my list is fairly incompetent due to the fact that pet needs to be alive and nearby,,etc. Not like other professions fast cast and confirmed condition removed.Maybe i missed something after playing ranger for 1840hrs.I’ve made a mistake regarding the traits and corrected it accordingly in my first post in this thread.Sorry about that

It says so right there in the tooltip – and on the wiki. In my experience, “allies” includes self; perhaps that’s not the case with the ranger, but I don’t see why there should be an inconsistency (unless of course its a bug).

Then I thought to myself, “why not just sign in and test it?” Fighting chieftain, Healing spring periodically removed conditions from my ranger. Maybe this was bugged in the past and recently fixed, who knows, but it most certainly removes conditions periodically over 15s (I didn’t test enough to pin down the interval).

As for your condition removal being pet dependent, we’ve gone over that. Yes, there are stipulations for it, but the current popular Ranger specs (Traps, beastmastery) have pets that are often close to them – in the current meta, Rangers have strong condition removal. That might change if Anet every delivers on spec diversity, but at the moment its true.

Verdelet Arconia.6987:

1)not all rangers use traps, those are builds best suited for conquest maps only

2) pet AI is very incompetent,you can easily kite the pets as they need to be near you and stop in their tracks before attacking

3) Rangers have the least condition removal with regards to conditions applied to the ranger so that is our weakness,you can take a look at the list of condition removal at this website to confirm i’m not making baseless facts. http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Condition

2 Ranger Skills that remove conditions
Utility- Signet of Renewal — Passive: Cures a condition every ten seconds.
60 secs CD-Active: Your pet pulls all conditions from nearby allies to itself.

Pet needs to be alive for this to work, ranger need to be near pet to have the conditions transferred. If too much condition is transferred,pet usualy dies,thus reducing ranger dps and overall usefulness.

Pet skill- Purge Conditions (Juvenile Brown Bear) — Purge all conditions from yourself.
Pet needs to be alive for this to work, ranger need to be near pet to have the conditions transferred.F2 skill is not instant cast,pet will need to run to target and carry out the animation before the conditions is cured.Since ranger usualy fight at a range,this skill will take around 2-5 seconds to cast depending on the bear response

choice of 1 Ranger Traits that remove conditions.you can only choose 1 since both are 30 points in survival grandmaster trait.

Evasive Purity – two conditions (blind & poison only) from self upon dodge rolling 10 secs CD

Empathic Bond-Your pet will take three conditions from you every 10 seconds
Pet needs to be alive for this to work

1) So, just the entirety of sPvP then.
2) Not only do I have to watch the ranger for my ques to dodge/interrupt etc, I now have to make sure I don’t let the pet close. It’s hard not to see how much of an advantage that is. Lets also not forget that pets are separate from the Ranger – you can run a toughness/condition damage attrition build (who’s usual weakness is burst), and pick a pet that does decent direct damage – its not quite like having a burst thief on your side, but no other class has that option, thanks to the limited amulet selection.
3) Rangers have at minimum competent condition removal, excellent in some specs. While those excellent options might be locked into some specs, they are currently in what are considered the rangers best specs – so right now, Rangers have excellent condition removal. Lets not forget Healing spring, which also pulls conditions off, and is spec independent.

“Just kill the pet” is my favorite ranger argument atm – you make it sound as if pets were made of paper. Fairly sturdy pets combined with the powerful heals rangers get make it less than trivial to just down the pet and go for the ranger – I’m splitting my dodges, my CD’s (defensive and offensive) and attention between 2 relatively equally dangerous opponents (and thats just in a 1 on 1, I won’t get into hectic group fights).

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not claiming rangers are OP – I’m not qualified to make that call. Trying to claim that they’re anything short of Powerful and Useful in the current meta however is a silly – their current favored specs are well rounded, hard to kill, and do excellent damage, commonly with 2s on demand quickness on a 20s CD with no downsides (which is extremely powerful)

I would hazard a guess and say it has to do with current build diversity – Rangers currently have 2 specs that are considered tournament viable (As far as I know, maybe I’m wrong), and they’ve got good survivability.

That might not seem like much, but compared to alot of classes (IE, warrior), its more specs AND more diversity then they get. I’m going to assume a Spirit buff will come, but atm, the warrior class needs something immediately, while ranger can remain relevant and varied (comparatively to the other classes options in the game) for the time being and get their buff next month.

Not that I think that’s a particularly good excuse, just the reality of the situation.

Void.4239:

evilapprentice.6379:

You might also consider switching your runes to centaur – you could switch SoS out, withdraw at the beginning of a fight, do a dodge roll, and basically have permaswiftness.

You’d be losing some condition damage for power, of course, and losing 50% endurance regen on heal. The extra second of bleeding will take the edge off the condition damage loss though, and effortless perma-swiftness with all your cripple options might be nice. Giving all nearby teammates swiftness for 15 seconds on heal is nice too.

this build is all about dodging all attacks if possible :p
perma swiffness= no use as a bunker thief :p

loosing the 50% endurance on heal would break the build

If you slot Signet of agility over SoS you have the same basic function (100% endurance every 30s, instead of 50% every 15). You also get a condition cleanse out of it, and swiftness > SoS – though its not as clear cut as that, I would think the benefits would outweigh the slight negatives.

Edit: I’d probably also trade might on dodge for Fleet of foot – I imagine the condition that screws up the spec the most is Weakness, and cripple is probably high on the list too (as you’re strictly melee), and with the constant dodges, you’d be dropping those 2 conditions every 10s.

Fella Feller.4936:

First I’ve gotta say this is one of the best threads I’ve seen on this forums for a while.

I too would love to see a more sustained sword thief be an option. As others have said sustained fighting pretty much requires protection (and probably regen) to be effective in pvp. I also love the idea of confusion on the thief, and think it would really suit an evasion heavy playstyle. It would also give condition builds anouther damaging condition they really need to work well.

So how about;

Duelist (Acrobatics, Master Tier Major)
Gain 3 seconds of protection and 6 seconds of revealed when using a main hand sword duel (‘3’) skill.

Disorienting Evasion (Acrobatics, Grand Master Tier Minor)
Cause 2(?) seconds of confusion on your opponent when you evede an attack.

As to regen, Withdraw + 6 Runes of Dywana are one solution, though a built in one might be better, maybe a trait providing something along similar lines?

I don’t see why protection:revealed should be a 1:2 ratio. Protection doesn’t count for much during PW, as you’re already evading. On demand protection is also pretty powerful – I honestly prefer OP’s suggestion of X seconds on crit (either 3 or 4 IMO), non stacking (IE, you only gain protection on crit if you do not already have the protection boon).

Also, confusion-on-evade would need to be at least a few stacks (2 or 3 IMO) – our primary evade weaponsets are S/D, S/P, and DB D/D – S/D and S/P are power based with 0 condition options, so their confusions will tick for crap – it works for those builds because with this new trait you’re suggesting, you can build a more survivable Sword thief, allowing the time for even crappy confusion damage to add to your attrition win.

As to D/D, it would be powerful to give a constantly evading condi focused spec 2-3 stacks of confusion on evade, but lets be honest, D/D needs it – it’s a 1 trick pony. A second option to doing some damage would serve it well. In addition, it’s a nice skill check – your opponents wont be allowed to just spam AA and wait for it to connect to mark DB’s end; they’ll actually have to learn the timings and counter it properly. This would actually need some playtesting tho – I can see an x/x/x/30/30 ini/dodge focused spec evading 80% of the time and being severely OP.

You might also consider switching your runes to centaur – you could switch SoS out, withdraw at the beginning of a fight, do a dodge roll, and basically have permaswiftness.

You’d be losing some condition damage for power, of course, and losing 50% endurance regen on heal. The extra second of bleeding will take the edge off the condition damage loss though, and effortless perma-swiftness with all your cripple options might be nice. Giving all nearby teammates swiftness for 15 seconds on heal is nice too.

Amaterasu.6280:

evilapprentice.6379:

narcarsis.5791:

evilapprentice.6379:

@Narcarsis.5739

With the D/P Backstab build, how are you consistently getting into position without any sort of speed boost (Fleet shadow, SoS)? (As a side-note – the spec I run should also have an additional second of stealth thanks to MwS, but according to testing by another player on the boards, MwS is currently bugged and does not affect stealth gained by BP->HS)

I’m currently running D/P (25/15/30/0/0) with Devourers,SoS,Shadowstep and Basilisk. Good players tend to keep moving and dodging whenever I enter stealth; even with SoS, there are times where I have to decide quickly if I want to just let stealth drop or try for a front stab. Basically, what are you doing against players who know what to expect when you enter stealth?

For the backstab, patience and deception are your friends. Be patient with your burst and pressure them to use their defensive CDs (stun breaks, dodge rolls, etc). Once they’re gone burst them.

Positioning is something you’ll learn as time goes on. Think more vertically than horizontally. Get high ground and be patient, only go in for a kill when you can secure it.

P.S. I will not quit this game. And I’m always willing to answer questions – Through this post preferably.

I get all that. My point is, alot of builds are based around high endurance regen, or high mobility… Some people even use their 25% Movement signets. Mobility and endurance are very important in this game, and most classes that have access to high mobility/endurance regen tend to take it, and they’re generally not based on CD’s (and when they are, they’re generally very short CD’s). I Don’t see how a spec without some sort of movement speed buff (SoS, Fleet shadow) can reliably position backstabs against players running those types of specs who understand how a thief works.

Positioning comes with experience and learning to observe the other player. Backstab’s “back” range is pretty lenient…you could pretty much hit someone from the side and it’ll count as back…

What you need to do is learn not to approach the backstab combo from the front…even if you so much as dodge roll, rotate your camera a bit, then do the combo…you’re probably going to hit them from the side.

SoS does definitely help with positioning, but with experience and learning how to position yourself, you’re not going to need it.

Ok. Again, I get that. I’m not claiming to be perfect at it, but I understand the concept and generally try to position like that. Thank you for explaining, but that’s not my point.

For people who are moving at your speed or faster than you (which counts everyone not crippled/chilled when you aren’t running SoS/Fleet and dont have swiftness), and that know to move away from the position they saw you stealth at, how do you expect to ever get behind (or even in melee range) of that player? When I was running with Refuge over SoS (again, 25/15/30/0/0), people moving faster than base speed who knew how to play were generally a hard counter to BP→HS stealth entirely, because it was impossible for me to catch up with them (as long as they were moving generally away from me) without using shadowstep or steal. Switching to shortbow was generally the answer, but that’s not optimal in alot of situations. If they were close, there was the option of using HS without a target, so you shot past them and got a chance for the BS when they moved past you, but that’s not a perfect solution either.

I’d love to run Refuge over SoS in my build, I’m just wondering if there’s something I’m missing.

narcarsis.5791:

evilapprentice.6379:

@Narcarsis.5739

With the D/P Backstab build, how are you consistently getting into position without any sort of speed boost (Fleet shadow, SoS)? (As a side-note – the spec I run should also have an additional second of stealth thanks to MwS, but according to testing by another player on the boards, MwS is currently bugged and does not affect stealth gained by BP->HS)

I’m currently running D/P (25/15/30/0/0) with Devourers,SoS,Shadowstep and Basilisk. Good players tend to keep moving and dodging whenever I enter stealth; even with SoS, there are times where I have to decide quickly if I want to just let stealth drop or try for a front stab. Basically, what are you doing against players who know what to expect when you enter stealth?

For the backstab, patience and deception are your friends. Be patient with your burst and pressure them to use their defensive CDs (stun breaks, dodge rolls, etc). Once they’re gone burst them.

Positioning is something you’ll learn as time goes on. Think more vertically than horizontally. Get high ground and be patient, only go in for a kill when you can secure it.

P.S. I will not quit this game. And I’m always willing to answer questions – Through this post preferably.

I get all that. My point is, alot of builds are based around high endurance regen, or high mobility… Some people even use their 25% Movement signets. Mobility and endurance are very important in this game, and most classes that have access to high mobility/endurance regen tend to take it, and they’re generally not based on CD’s (and when they are, they’re generally very short CD’s). I Don’t see how a spec without some sort of movement speed buff (SoS, Fleet shadow) can reliably position backstabs against players running those types of specs who understand how a thief works.

Brassnautilus.2941:

I typed a lengthy reply but it got deleted by accident, so let me give you a TL:DL version.

You are using the setup (P/D) wrong Taril. This setup was based on the stealth producing concept, which you don’t take advantage of.

" times when you either need the stealth now and not after BP>HS or times when you don’t have enough initiative for BP>HS."
Why are you using init if you weren’t stealthing? HS spam?
You get the init return from producing stealth dude.

and WvW is hardly a good evaluation for a build or setup. Go play tourney against teams with titles (meaning everyone of their players had 150 win class title), they will stun you and you will need to stealth. You can get away with bad playing and bad builds in WvW because majority of the players in there are bads or new. A lot of them weren’t even 80…

D/P draws strength from stealth. If you don’t like the concept, then play a different build or weapons setup. Stop spamming them HS with D/P then complaining you aint got enough initiatives. HS does not return ini.

The new shadowshot is actually pretty boss – much better for closing a big gap than say BP→HS and approach. Its also good for targets over 50%, and those occasions where making your target miss a big attack is worth more than doing superior damage with HS. And of course there’s headshot. Not necessarily agreeing or disagreeing with anyone, just pointing out that D/P has a ton of stuff to spend init on other than BP→HS for stealth.

Noctis Assassin.4035:

evilapprentice.6379:

@Narcarsis.5739

With the D/P Backstab build, how are you consistently getting into position without any sort of speed boost (Fleet shadow, SoS)? (As a side-note – the spec I run should also have an additional second of stealth thanks to MwS, but according to testing by another player on the boards, MwS is currently bugged and does not affect stealth gained by BP->HS)

I’m currently running D/P (25/15/30/0/0) with Devourers,SoS,Shadowstep and Basilisk. Good players tend to keep moving and dodging whenever I enter stealth; even with SoS, there are times where I have to decide quickly if I want to just let stealth drop or try for a front stab. Basically, what are you doing against players who know what to expect when you enter stealth?

You can try running into the other character’s model and do a backstab, it counts for the sake of determining front and back damage. Or hit them in the temples, same as backstab.

There’s a lot of situations where that just gets you smacked around by AA – if the player is quick, they’ll hit you with some form of CC after confirming that you’re running directly toward them.

I’m still having trouble following how he positions in his spec with 3s of stealth and no speed boosts.

@Narcarsis.5739

With the D/P Backstab build, how are you consistently getting into position without any sort of speed boost (Fleet shadow, SoS)? (As a side-note – the spec I run should also have an additional second of stealth thanks to MwS, but according to testing by another player on the boards, MwS is currently bugged and does not affect stealth gained by BP→HS)

I’m currently running D/P (25/15/30/0/0) with Devourers,SoS,Shadowstep and Basilisk. Good players tend to keep moving and dodging whenever I enter stealth; even with SoS, there are times where I have to decide quickly if I want to just let stealth drop or try for a front stab. Basically, what are you doing against players who know what to expect when you enter stealth?

Taril.8619:

evilapprentice.6379:

Is it possible that Leap Finisher->Smoke field stealth is only 2s base?
I’ve never run D/P without at least 15 points in SA, so I’m not sure.

According to http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Combo it’s 3 second base.

I’ve learned not to trust the Wiki (See my post about “Why doesn’t black powder block ranged attacks like smoke fields are supposed to?”)

So, either MwS doesn’t work correctly with BP→HS, or the wiki is incorrect.

Taril.8619:

evilapprentice.6379:

you’ll see you get 4 ticks of healing from Shadow Rejuv (meaning 4s of stealth)

4 ticks would imply a 3 second stealth as you get a tick upon entering stealth.

Also looking at the stealth buff, the BP>HS gives me only 3 seconds with MwS (So it’s not my timing being thrown off by the immediate stealthing rather than the stealth upon hitting with CnD)

Hmmm, I recall CnD also only giving 4 ticks, though perhaps I am mistaken.
Is it possible that Leap Finisher→Smoke field stealth is only 2s base?
I’ve never run D/P without at least 15 points in SA, so I’m not sure.

Taril.8619:

Brassnautilus.2941:

^^ you missing half the heals, that for mug and bit of fury isn’t necessarily a good bargain.

Where abouts am I missing heals?

Shadow Rejuvination? I’m not in stealth enough for it to tick very much (Especially since the main stealth I use is BP > HS so it doesn’t last very long (Doesn’t seem to benefit from Meld with Shadows) and I typically use Backstab shortly after)

Assassin’s Reward? Whilst it could be effective (BP > HS is very initiative heavy and with all the initiative regen I can spam off a lot of initiative nigh constantly) I’d lose out on something important (Quick Recovery if staying 20 into it, Mug/Opportunist + Practiced Tolerance if going 30 into Acro)

Pain Response? Very low uptime and situational clense… Not something that’d be hugely important.

Instead I roll with Sigil of Blood and use Dodges and Blind (Maybe even Rune of Vampirism procs if I decide that way) to negate and heal damage. I can also do a combination of Backstab + Mug to burst into people (Full zerker gear) to either outright kill them (GC’s and upleveled players) or put them on the defensive (Thus reducing damage inflicted on me)

Just a side note; BP→HS stealth is just as long as CnD stealth, and indeed gets the Meld with shadows bonus. It feels shorter because the stealth starts the moment you hit HS (if doing so from inside BP), but if you check, you’ll see you get 4 ticks of healing from Shadow Rejuv (meaning 4s of stealth) – in fact, you’ll generally get more Shadow Rejuv ticks from BP→HS, since there’s more maneuvering to be done (again, generally) to get behind your target than if you had used CnD.

I’ve found that opportunist and Infusion of shadow are generally enough to keep my init at an acceptable level (running 25/15/30/0/0)

To everyone who keeps advocating the removal of hotjoin -

People need a place to test their specs – nobody is going to want to experiment with new specs and playstyles if they have to be done in tourney ques.

I assume the same goes for new classes (I don’t have a ton of time for tourneys lately, so I’m just assuming rank is account wide, not character specific). If I decide I want to run a Warrior after cranking my matchmaking rank up on my main class, it’ll be discouraging – not much of a chance to learn when experienced players are roflstomping you.

Hotjoin exists for people to kitten around, and for people to test specs. Its unfortunate that you actually have to learn the game to beat certain classes (Burst Thief,Shatter Mes, Bunker Ele, Bunker guard, trap ranger), but you’ll have to learn the game anyway – better sooner than later.

Adaneshade.2409:

evilapprentice.6379:

I still don’t see the point of S/D tbh. It has all the positional requirements of a Dagger spec with none of the burst, subpar damage overall, and not enough survivability to make up for it.

As for new things, venom triggers no longer deplete on missed swings (but still do on block/evade/blind/etc..) which is kind of nice, and Shadowshot finally doesn’t root on hit (which is awesome) – it’s helped to make D/P the defacto choice more or less atm.

That’s because you take a simple minded approach to pvp (MOAR DPS OR IT SUCKS)….S/D is about CC and does extremely well at it’s job. A good S/D thief is a D/D thief’s worst nightmare with the immobilizes and snares.

A D/D thief is his own worst nightmare, because he took D/D over D/P for some unbeknownst reason. Of course S/D wrecks a kittentier setup, just the same way D/P (in general) wrecks S/D. The only thing D/D excels at is 30/30/x instagib builds – with those losing favor as more and more players learn how to avoid it, you’re seeing alot less D/D thieves.

Generally, when I’m playing a mid armor/low HP class with no access to an “Oh kitten” button like every other class in the game has, no protection, no stability, kittenty access to regen, and mid-value heals, yes, I focus on damage – it’s what thief was designed to do. S/D’s CC can be kind of good in a highly coordinated team, I suppose, but D/P is just more generally useful across the board – those rare situations where S/D outshines it don’t compare to all the other times D/P is just generally better.

You’re trading great burst, lots of blind, a gap closer with better range,damage and a blind attached, and on demand stealth for…. a 1.5s daze (That does less than a front stab), a broken AND poorly designed dual skill, and the awesomeness that is IS. That’s a very big tradeoff for IS.

If we had no way to speed up intitiative recovery, I would agree with you.

But we already have traits that grant 2 init on stealth, 2 init every 10s, increased init regen in stealth, 3 init on weapon swap, 4 init on heal, 20% chance for 1 init on crit, 7% chance for 1 init on autoattack, and 3 init on steal. Also, a signet that grants 1 init every 10s, and a stunbreaker that restores 6 init.

Just look at what you can cram into 0/0/10/30/30 – 2i on stealth, 3i on swap, 2i every 10s, 4i on heal, 7% chance to regain 1i on auto attack, 3i on steal AND a base pool of 15i. It’d just be silly.

I would however (maybe) support quick pockets being changed to 6 init on swap – its a grand master trait, 3 ini feels a bit cheap (especially considering all the other ways we can gain initiative – its only slightly better than Quick recovery if you switch weapons every 9s, and that’s not a likely scenario outside double weaponset builds who are designed to take advantage of Quick pockets and Weapon swap runes), though I might be biased on the subject – playtesting might be required.

ensoriki.5789:

You can still use it if you’re willing to actually do so.
30 SA and 30 Trickery specs still work fine for S/D.
Oh and if you weren’t aware tripwire and needle trap no longer have broken hitboxes (if it matters at all to ya). So essentially all our skills except for scorpion wire work at this moment now.

If you want to burst someone with a sword you can do so, it’s like people never heard of Haste and mug. You’re just generally less upfront than a dagger, but tbh you can sit in Sword longer imo. Less immediate dependence on the bow. When you can manage close and mid-range positions with Inf strike.

Sword has crappy burst in and of itself – mug and haste are independent and can be used with any weaponset to bring “more” or “better” burst(assuming you go 10 DA for mug).

You can sit in sword longer, generally, because sword takes longer to actually down a target. It still doesn’t hold a candle to D/P IMO.

I still don’t see the point of S/D tbh. It has all the positional requirements of a Dagger spec with none of the burst, subpar damage overall, and not enough survivability to make up for it.

As for new things, venom triggers no longer deplete on missed swings (but still do on block/evade/blind/etc..) which is kind of nice, and Shadowshot finally doesn’t root on hit (which is awesome) – it’s helped to make D/P the defacto choice more or less atm.

Incurafy.6329:

I use D/P with 25/15/30/0/0 with Mug, Dagger Training, Side Strikes, Infusion of Shadow, Shadow’s Embrace and Shadow Rejuvenation.

My second set is either SB, S/P or S/D depending on my mood, although I like S/D the most.

I run the same setup (with Quick venoms over Dagger training, since I run Devourers and Basilisks). What bonuses do you see from running S/D (or S/P) over shortbow? Even if you don’t take into account the mobility loss from no IA, Shbow is the key to remaining useful in big AoE fest group fights – especially with your ability to spread poison and weakness.

What does S/D (or S/P) bring to the table that you’re not getting from D/P? I mean, Inf Strike is good, but IMO, not good enough to sack Shbow entirely for.

It can be underwhelming to be honest. It could probably use a very slight tweak – remove Immobilize from the possible conditions list (maybe, to keep it from being too powerful), and make it inflict a random Damaging condition (burning/bleeding/confusion/poison) AND one other random condition per tick (cripple/weakness/chill/blind/etc). This way it will benefit condition builds AND power/crit builds.

The current problem is, without Immobilizing your target, the area is so small AND the travel/activation time so long, by the time the ability lands players are usually already at the outer edge or completely out of it. It’s basically ONLY an ethereal combo field which maybe ticks on a target a single time before they move out of it, which isn’t bad by any means, but a bit weak when compared to other steals.

Tempest Darqmane.4862:

Sword/pistol is still amazing for pve content when there are critters to cleave and you need that extra stunbreak/cleanse on Infiltrators Strike. For single enemy, dagger/pistol without a doubt. Bring the right tools for the right job….

Thief already has the narrowest weaponset choices of any class in the game (Due to Engi kits and Ele attunements). All of our weapons should have both PvP and PvE applications.

timecookie.8570:

I’m not aware of why Shadow Shot prevented people from playing Dagger/Pistol Thief, can anyone tell me (I don’t play Thief)?

After the shot hit, you were teleported to your target and rooted for .5-.75seconds during and after the stab animation. It was a gap closer that rooted the user…meaning you generally had to HS Afterwards just to keep in melee with your target. It no longer does this.

This is a very silly thread.

This game was very clearly designed with teamplay in mind. Ignoring most of the standard arguments I could make about most MMO’s, no other game I’ve ever played has the concept of combo fields and combo finishers.

Xynn.2748:

So you are talking about something totally different than stealth, don’t die, try to backstab, repeat. You are saying that using the various blinds together with weaken, the Thief can actually melee and complete a Dagger 1 chain. I’ve never tried that, everything I read seems to be bp/hs and then hit for a ton, which I just can’t pull off in pvp so far, the fights get too hectic and too much aoe.

Is there a blind rotation or priority system? is it basically dagger 3? I know these are very beginner questions, I’ve been 100% pve until recently. Some guildies are starting to play a little pvp and I always like to play in groups. If you need any fractal/dungeons/pve help I can pay you back haha

Basically, yeah – you don’t spam stealth, you use it on occasion. Typical opener is shadow shot; now that its been fixed, it’s amazing. You complete a Dagger AA chain while they swing off the blind (hitting you once, maybe twice), and follow up with a Black powder – now they’ve got weakness and need to make a choice – try to bail out of the smoke ring (either slowly by just walking, or with a dodge, eating precious endurance). While they’re doing this, you’re (probably) completing another AA chain, hitting them with another stack of weakness. Then you HS for stealth (and if you’re lucky, a little damage), sit in stealth a bit to regen health and Init (in 25/15/30/0/0), then go for the backstab. From there it’s a judgement call based on their HP, what class they are, etc etc… But the focus of the spec is most certainly not entering stealth as much as possible – you simply can’t afford it when BP-> HS costs 7 init (You need 9 total to access stealth, then have 2 returned for Infusion of shadow)

It’s alot about judgement calls. You’ll find that the new shadow shot can be superior to HS in alot of situations, even when HS would do more damage for less Init – the attached blind can be life saving, and the damage occurs faster the closer you are to your target – in melee range, a shadowshot will hit before an HS completes. You need to learn when to use BP, or when shadowshot will get the job done. When HS is appropriate, or when the init would be better saved for headshot. There’s also judging when its worth it to interrupt your dagger AA chain – You want that weakness and poison from lotus strike going off as much as possible, but you need to weight it against whats coming towards you – sometimes its worth it to interrupt with a needed interupt/blind/whatever, other times its worth it to eat the strike and finish your chain.

It’s a lot more interactive then D/D IMO.

PopeUrban.2578:

So, stealing is fun, and stealing itself is greatly customizable via traits. The stolen items, however powerful they are, lack situational versatility and re-usability that really plays up the opportunist mechanic of this core thief ability.

Currently, you steal, and you get a random thing, usable once, and you’re done. You wait until steal recharges, or if you’ve held on to it for a while you steal something else, then use that once.

Stuff I like about stolen items:

• Pseudorandom but generally predictable in effect. It encourages learning the mechanic and what the stolen items do.
• Allows the thief a diverse amount of opportunistic attacks which change relative to what he’s fighting.

Stuff i dislike about stolen items:

• Oneshot abilities with inconsistant utility to various specs or combat situations. Some steals are amazing for some specs but not others (axe whirl, goop, etc.) and some just don’t feel worth the cooldown (Coral shard, ice shard, etc.)
• Low usability. We don’t get the option to use them much due to the cooldown on steal. While some of the effects are certainly worthy of that cooldown (mace stun, fear, etc.) many are not, which leads to an inconsistant usability of a mechanic with a uniform cooldown. It’s like saying all warrior weapon skills have 20 second cooldowns despite some being clearly more powerful than others. it wouldn’t work in that context, and it especially doesn’t work when the selection is not in the control of the user.

So here’s an idea: What if stolen items worked more like ele conjures or Engineer kits?

For instance, you steal a rifle. Currently, that rifle is good for a single high-power shot with knockback.

What if, in stead, that rifle rested in your f2 button, and you could swap to it cooldown free like an engineer kit, and swap back to your weapons with weapon swap? In addition, simply make F3 an “instantly use all avaliable charges” button that is analagous to the way the skill works now. Now, mind you this is a limited use ability, and nothing nearly as powerful as a kit or conjure, but keep in mind the “ammunition” counter on ele conjures. This use-limiting mechanic allows the conjures to be pretty powerful but still fairly strategic.

Obviously, we don’t want to time limit stolen items. We stole them, they’re ours until we use them up. At the same time we don’t want them being a disproportionally large amount of the thief’s combat abilities. They’re opportunistic items we keep for a while until we find a good use for them.

Now, imagine every stolen item had five charges, which replace initiative when you’re holding it. The 1-5 skills cost a corresponding amount of charges, with the current powerful stolen item option as #5. So, in the rifle example, 5 is the knockback shot. using it costs five charges, and thus consumes the rifle. Now imagine you had a less powerful shot with no knockback availiable on #1, a short cripple on #2, a decent bleed on #3, and a self-knockback with light initiative gain on number 4.

Now, you’ve got options!

Maybe you’d like to use the big positioning shot and eat the whole thing to create distance… or maybe you’d like a mildly inconvenient knockback to gain a little initiative, and to have one charge left for a 1200 range shot for pulling or finishing later.

Maybe you’d like to combine 2 and 3 for some cripple and bleed support.

Maybe you’d like to just use 1 five times because you don’t have 1200 range weapons and it’s extra dps while closing on or fleeing from a target.

Maybe you have other combinations that you’d choose based on the opportunities stealing and your current combat situation afforded you.

Axe whirl not good in your condition spec? What if in stead you could chose twice for two bleeds?

Don’t need the extra stealth? What if you could use feathers five times for a single target blind in stead… or just use one and save the other four?

What if in stead of eating all the boons from that ectoplasm at once, you could in stead eat a little… then a little more later for less duration and number of boons?

The possibilities are exciting and I think it would add a lot of depth and utility to steal, perhaps even so much you’re not really annoyed by the cooldown of stealing because your stolen items can have a longer shelf life if you want to use them that way.

I like the basic idea, but it feels like its on the opposite end of the spectrum – instead of stolen items being a bit constricting based on spec, you’re giving the thief access to at minimum 8 different kits – that’s a huge swing in comparison – 40 abilities where there were previously 8, 32 of them new.

I think a good compromise is to give each stolen item 2 (or maybe 3?) one shot abilities. One that favors a Power/crit build, one that favors a condition build (and if you opt for 3, a utility skill)

Xynn.2748:

I’m new to the thief class, sorry if these are dumb questions. With 15 in DA and d/p, all I see is the ability to poison on steal and then that poisoning results in an additional 3 seconds of weakness. I don’t see how 3s of Weakness every 45s mitigates a significant amount of damage. Most builds are crit builds anyway, and weakness only affects non-crits, so it’s surprising weak in pvp in many cases. Is this presuming a Venom build (Spider Venom) with the Venom cd reduction? That would make more sense, but that seems to narrow the options, and it’s still only affecting 5 strikes, so, functionally, say 7-8s total of weakness?

What am I missing?

Last strike in dagger auto attack chain (lotus strike) poisons for 2 seconds, which activates the lotus poison trait.

Weakness also reduces endurance regen, which means less dodging. Combined with all your blinds, you can keep someone missing more than half their attacks, and any of those that aren’t crits have a chance to do 50% damage.

Blackhat.4016:

@evilapprentice.6379

Thanks for your answer.

I mainly play an elementalist (currently “non bunker” O.O) so I don’t have any chain attacks. I know what you mean though.

@Hugo.9743

Also thanks for your answer.

Like I said to evilapprentice.6379 I am currently playing a non bunker ele which means I only have low health/low heals. The only stun break, invulnerability, etc. eles have are Cantrips. Cantrips have a really high CD (90 secs for Armor of Earth, 75 secs for Mist Form) which means it feels like a waste if I have to use them for a single stealth ability. The only CC for D/D I can think about being useful in this situation is " Earthquake" which also has a 45 sec CD. Dodging sometimes works but I can’t dodge for the whole stealth duration.

If I play an bunker elementalist however stealth is no problem. Switch to earth -> protection -> switch to water -> heal -> full HP. For me it’s not about a bunker being able to fight against stealthed enemies because you can turn a stealth attack into your advantage AFTER being hit. It’s about other builds having better chances because they can react to it before being hit.

The last sentence was no excuse. I really don’t want stealth to be nerfed really hard. Why should I?

Like I said, thanks for your answer though. I will try to improve the build and my playstyle. Maybe it helps a little bit.

Burning speed and static shield are your best friends – save them for stealth. It’ll take some time to get used to judging it, but notice where a thief is when he’s stealthed – move away for 1-2 seconds, then burning speed. Worst case scenario, all you did was cost him a backstab. Best case, he ate the burning speed AND you ruined his backstab chance.

Static shield won’t prevent a backstab all the time, but it does prevent the follow up and give the chance to wreck said thief – Thieves are squishy by design, and a burst Ele can do some serious harm in 2-3 seconds if the thief is not careful.

Blackhat.4016:

It is still luck. You don’t know if you hit your enemy or not. The counterplay you mentioned is the way I try to play against thiefs most of the time but it simply doesn’t work against good players. A good thief will know about it. How would you counter his playstyle then? AoE everything around you for very little damage (remember single target damage > AoE damage when it comes to a single enemy)? Besides that how would you try to defend/cap a point? I can’t just run straight for 3 secs without leaving the cap area. How is this well balanced if I have to run every single time a thief/mesmer uses stealth?

I am not asking for a complete stealth nerf, I just want feedback so I can think about the next step to beat the enemy.

Any chain attack AA will move to the next hit in the chain when you hit a stealth thief. If I double strike and hit a stealthed thief, my auto attack moves on to wild strike – that’s how you know.

You dont need to counter his “I’m not going to try and get to your back arc” playstyle – if you are preventing his burst, you’re already at a huge advantage. A skilled player might outplay you (that’s not a personal attack, there’s always someone better), but he’ll do that with any class he’s good with – it’s not a product of stealth.

Blackhat.4016:

@evilapprentice.6379

I do understand what you mean BUT what I was trying to say is stealth still is the easiest way to engage and escape without giving your opponent a way to properly react to it. The burst is so fast you can engage and disengage the whole time and that’s why stealth is really strong. If there is any profession/build out there which is a glass canon and still can go all in that easy without dying feel free to post it here.

Your auto attack hit your enemy without you knowing about it? Great! Your AoE hit your enemy any feedback? Congrats! As you most likely know all those hits are pure luck and even if you manage to hit the stealthed enemy you won’t see it. Luck is the worst thing in PvP. If luck decides whether you can kill someone or not is really frustrating. I would much rather see a feature implemented which makes the match up skill based and not luck based. That’s why is think some kind of feedback would be nice (nothing which makes stealth useless though).

About the passively part:

Well that’s how glass canons work. You don’t have all these defensive abilities because you traded them for offensive ones. Besides that like you said you still have stealth and shadowsteps which are REALLY strong. Imo they are stronger than protection and so on. Why? Because you can evade ALL the damage instead of just reducing it. Like I said before if you find a profession/build which offers that much burst while still being able to survive short and long fights feel free to post it here.

A GC warrior can still run endure pain and a shield OH on his second set.
GC Mes’s still have distortion and (in a pinch) Blurred frenzy if they’re running Sword, and a block on their scepter (Just one tho) MH. GC Rangers can still slot Protect me (or whatever its called). Engi’s have shield OH as an option or their immunity elixir (S I believe). And so on and so on. Not a single one of those options is affected by spec or gear – Endure pain does the same exact thing for a toughness/vit warrior as it does for a power/crit warrior. Thieves don’t get that option. Nothing is as strong as “there is absolutely nothing you can do to kill me for X seconds”.

Stealth and Shadowstep are strong – Protection and stability are too. I won’t make a claim about how much stronger apples are than oranges, but there’s a reason your ability to bunker in this game is directly tied to your access to protection.

As far as Luck goes, my point about thief playstyle is that its not luck. You’re not getting lucky when you run in a direction for 2 seconds, do a 180, start AAing and hit a thief. That’s called counterplaying…because if that thief isn’t trying to get behind you, he isn’t trying to burst you. Of course there are ranged options, but P/P P/D and SHbow aren’t bursty specs – they use stealth as a defensive utility more than anything else. If a thief is using stealth as an offensive tool, he’s trying to do 1 thing – knowing that lets you counter it to a fair degree. Of course you aren’t countering it completely, but did you really expect a complete counter to a class’s core mechanic?

PopeUrban.2578:

evilapprentice.6379:

What do you think of Body shot being an AoE, blast finisher, and granting x seconds of swiftness per target hit? Per target hit would be an advantage to using it in big fights, it would be the limiting factor in one on ones, would be unique from Dancing Dagger for P/D, swiftness is still advantageous to P/D as well as P/P, and the blast finisher would still give P/P Stealth.

I still like the idea of boon stripping (again, sorely needed, and thief seems thematically and mechanically inclined to do so), but I think my suggestion fixes some big issues across both P/P and P/D.

I just can’t see body shot as an AoE attack. It’s thematically defined as a single target attack with a high degree of accuracy used for increasing your own damage or that of allies. It’s one to the chest that knocks a bit of wind out of your foe so to speak.

It’s important to be mindful of current abilities, as Anet’s entire balance history has shown that while they may make core changes to skill functionality, they always attempt to keep the same role on the skill in question.

Take for example the update to Shadow Trap, the core function of the skill remained intact (a way to shadowstep to a foe that triggered a trap) or the GW1 change to Hundred blades (it went from an attack that hit foes near your target to a buff that made sword attacks do AoE damage.)

Also, it’d be redundant and stepping on the toes of shortbow, which has the already well defined role as the thief AoE ranged weapon, and already has an amazingly good spammable blast finisher on 2 where as pistols are expressedly single target with a trait to occasionally bounce.

I agree on the point about the theme, but at this point, I think that may need to be ignored a bit to finally fix body shot – people have done the math, body shot is a waste of initiative. Trying not too change its core design too much is just a waste of time – Condi builds have no use for vuln, and power/crit builds get more from spamming Unload (even in most PvE scenarios where 5 players are attacking 1 mob).

P/P desperately needs an escape tool that can’t be abused, and access to stealth. The only other option besides for access to stealth is some kind of damage absorbing/reducing ability – thief is too kitten squishy to have zero defensive capabilities.

My suggestion isn’t necessarily the best, but the core idea needs to be implemented – escape and defensive tools for P/P that aren’t completely useless in P/D. Whats the point of a Ranged Direct damage build that can’t reliably escape melee, and is consistently outranged by other ranged players? Yes, they could use their utilities, but that’s universal to every class. If you look at ranged weapon options on every other class, you’ll see they have at minimum 1 (and usually more) tools to temporarily snare/root/stun/kb/whatever melee that closes with them or ranged that attempt to out-range their weapon. Currently, P/P has nothing of the sort.

Blackhat.4016:

I still see all the professions in PvP but you are right, there are more thiefs and mesmers compared to a few weeks ago.

The main reason I think players like to play these professions in PvP (and the only reason why I don’t like playing against them) is stealth. It simply has no counters. That’s why these 2 professions are the ones which can be played as a glass canon without being easy to kill.

=> high kill potential, “big numbers”, easy escape = a lot of players play these 2 professions

Thief stealth has in fact 2 counters – one active, one passive.

Actively – stealth isn’t “you can’t hit me”. Its “you can’t see me”. With stealth generally capped at 3s (4 with 15 points in the stealth traitline), thats 3-4 seconds to get behind you. Your autoattacks will still hit. Your AoEs will still hit. If any of those AoE’s have a CC effect, stealth basically didn’t matter. Stealthed thieves tend to do the same exact thing, every time (try to get behind you) because they have to to do damage, as opposed to other classes that can just charge in and go nuts because that’s how they were built. This isn’t a complaint, just pointing out a fact.

Passively – No protection, no stability, no immune skill, no aegis, no blocks, lowest base HP in the game, extremely poor access to regen – I know, its a big list, take it all in. Shadowstep is the closest thing a thief gets to an “Oh kitten!” button – We cant go immune, we can’t block, we can’t pop stability or protection or chain regens together for 30s… stealth is the only thing keeping us alive, because if you could always see us, we would just instantly be focused and melted down every time.

ensoriki.5789:

Body shot can’t become a blast finisher that is silly.
Same as those suggestions that want to make Inf strike a leap finisher.
Trying to throw stealth on everything wtf, it’s not healthy.

Why not, exactly?

Inf strike is already an amazing ability, it certainly doesn’t need leap finisher attached as well (you’ll see my opinion on the matter in that thread too).

Body shot is currently utter garbage – it needs some way to be fixed. As far as stealth goes, P/P needs it – it currently has utter crap for defensive options. 9 initiative to stealth isn’t exactly a bargain either – it’d just be a nice option for P/P to have. Condi builds could use it to gain stealth for Sneak attack, power/crit builds could use it to open up gaps. I don’t see how a low-ish damage blast finisher would “break” P/P or P/D – both specs are 1 trick ponies. Why not throw them a bone?

PopeUrban.2578:

evilapprentice.6379:

PopeUrban.2578:

evilapprentice.6379:

- Body shot needs to be completely redesigned – how about a 3 init ground target AoE with lowish damage that applies a low length cripple and is a blast finisher – boom, just fixed P/P. Blast finisher and cripple fix both problems P/P has – access to stealth and the ability to prevent melee from always being on top of you, and also prevent players with superior range (Ie, almost all of them) from constantly keeping you out of range.

While I agree body shot needs something other than vulnerability (because the vuln’s utility to any spec does not outweigh its initiative cost) Giving it a cripple is a bad move. This would make it useful in P/P, but still wasted space in P/D

Honestly, how about making it conditional so it’s analagous to the conditional #2 on the dagger mainhand?

Body Shot:
If target has at least one boon, remove a random boon from your target.
If target has no boons, you gain X might for Y seconds.

With a rip and might stack, it becomes worth the initiative use on pistol sets, makes sure that the offhand provides unique functionality, and sits well in a condition P/D or crit P/P setup while having the same basic intended functionality of body shot, as a heavy debuff that focuses on increasing your damage to your target (but now works with conditions!) and helping teammates more effectively kill them (by ripping their boons)

However, there’s an interesting tradeoff, as to completely strip a target you’ll have to dump all of your initiative on the strips, and won’t have any left for damage or defense. However, it DOES allow you increased support options on the fly, and choosing what abilities to use on the fly and where to dump initiative is the point of the initiative system.

Not only that, depending on the balance numbers for the might it may just made boon duration a worthwhile thing to stack on a thief build.

I agree, I wasn’t really thinking about P/D – though a blast finisher is something unique, and making the shot an AoE ground target has some advantages over dancing dagger. It also solves all of P/P’s problems (no escaping melee, no stealth) without feeling too OP.

I do like your suggestion better however, the game needs more ways to strip boons – on demand boon stripping without a CD at range seems pretty powerful though – you could claim FS does something similar but its more expensive, has to be used in melee, and will take much longer (especially if you wait for the second swing). Though this gives P/P an awesome tool, it still leaves it without access to a snare (while ankle shots is nice, its on crit rather than on demand, weakening its tactical use) or stealth.

I feel like pistol offhand isn’t going to ever get a snare simply for the fact that it has black powder and headshot. Not that kiting isn’t an issue with it, but that I feel like Anet is fairly set in the flavor of the abilities. if anything what P/P needs is some kind of initiative discount or mobility tool added directly to unload. TBH I think simply granting swiftness and increased backpedal while channeling would do the trick, nopt be too overpowered, and give the ability a very unique and thief-flavored mechanic.

The bodyshot strip might be too powerful at its current initiative cost, but honestly I’d be completely willing to see the cost or cast time raised to allow a dump of initiative to boon strip. I think the initiative mechanic makes thieves the perfect candidate for a semi-spammable strip as such as they can’t choose to strip and then deal a bunch of damage, their strips directly limit their immediate damage potential.

What do you think of Body shot being an AoE, blast finisher, and granting x seconds of swiftness per target hit? Per target hit would be an advantage to using it in big fights, it would be the limiting factor in one on ones, would be unique from Dancing Dagger for P/D, swiftness is still advantageous to P/D as well as P/P, and the blast finisher would still give P/P Stealth.

I still like the idea of boon stripping (again, sorely needed, and thief seems thematically and mechanically inclined to do so), but I think my suggestion fixes some big issues across both P/P and P/D.

How would all these additions affect melee/ranged? Wouldn’t some have a pretty inherit advantage?

PopeUrban.2578:

evilapprentice.6379:

- Body shot needs to be completely redesigned – how about a 3 init ground target AoE with lowish damage that applies a low length cripple and is a blast finisher – boom, just fixed P/P. Blast finisher and cripple fix both problems P/P has – access to stealth and the ability to prevent melee from always being on top of you, and also prevent players with superior range (Ie, almost all of them) from constantly keeping you out of range.

While I agree body shot needs something other than vulnerability (because the vuln’s utility to any spec does not outweigh its initiative cost) Giving it a cripple is a bad move. This would make it useful in P/P, but still wasted space in P/D

Honestly, how about making it conditional so it’s analagous to the conditional #2 on the dagger mainhand?

Body Shot:
If target has at least one boon, remove a random boon from your target.
If target has no boons, you gain X might for Y seconds.

With a rip and might stack, it becomes worth the initiative use on pistol sets, makes sure that the offhand provides unique functionality, and sits well in a condition P/D or crit P/P setup while having the same basic intended functionality of body shot, as a heavy debuff that focuses on increasing your damage to your target (but now works with conditions!) and helping teammates more effectively kill them (by ripping their boons)

However, there’s an interesting tradeoff, as to completely strip a target you’ll have to dump all of your initiative on the strips, and won’t have any left for damage or defense. However, it DOES allow you increased support options on the fly, and choosing what abilities to use on the fly and where to dump initiative is the point of the initiative system.

Not only that, depending on the balance numbers for the might it may just made boon duration a worthwhile thing to stack on a thief build.

I agree, I wasn’t really thinking about P/D – though a blast finisher is something unique, and making the shot an AoE ground target has some advantages over dancing dagger. It also solves all of P/P’s problems (no escaping melee, no stealth) without feeling too OP. Perhaps instead of a cripple, a very short duration chill (think 1s) or a microscopic immob (.5s), or even a 1.5s swiftness per target hit for the thief – those ideas might be OP though, haven’t given them alot of thought.

I do like your suggestion better however, the game needs more ways to strip boons – on demand boon stripping without a CD at range seems pretty powerful though – you could claim FS does something similar but its more expensive, has to be used in melee, and will take much longer (especially if you wait for the second swing). Though this gives P/P an awesome tool, it still leaves it without access to a snare (while ankle shots is nice, its on crit rather than on demand, weakening its tactical use) or stealth.

ensoriki.5789:

D/P was already the “King”.
It’s more efficient and fun to play now that all 5 skills are worthwhile.
Like the Shortbow it is “complete”.

Yes. The entire second half of the post was a plea to “complete” our other weaponsets. Its supremely satisfying to play a weaponset that works, with options, that doesn’t feel OP.

D/P is undoubtedly stronger with a functioning shadowshot as well – its not just more efficient and fun, its better – it’s sometimes the superior choice over HS, even when your target is at low health AND you’re in melee range. It brings alot of split second decisions and tactics into play, which is very nice.

Edited for expedience. If you’re asking PvE, ignore this post. I know nothing about PvE.

PvP wise, I’m going to paste a response from another thread I think might be helpful.

First and foremost, your role is burst – there is no way around that. I’ve spent months trying to find some sort of survivable/hybrid spec (think like a Ranger using S/D and doing moderate, consistent damage), and it just doesn’t exist for thief. We don’t get protection or stability, our access to regen is subpar, our evade move (flanking strike) is a joke compared to how the Rangers works, and no immunity skill – without those boons, a consistent way to ignore damage (evades, blocks) and no immune skill, its not worth trying.

That said, you can do good burst damage without being a 2 shot wonder – this is what I’m currently running, and I like it.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAoaVlUmaN3cS6E/5Ex+hey9gpGtp6MopNB;TsAg0CnoSykkIJbSukkJtsYYxECA
(might have to copy/paste into address bar to get the link to work).

Only 15 points into crit strikes might seem silly, but it works. Fluid strikes is kind a kittenty minor trait (how often are you over 6 init when you’re spending 6 or 9 init just to stealth), and while executioner is nice, you can offset it with other minor traits (Exposed weakness and hidden assassin). the loss of the major master trait kind of sucks, but it’s not spec breaking.

Shadowshot finally working correctly is pretty amazing – it’s 100% a superior gap closer to HS when your target is over 50%, and only does slightly less damage unless your target is under 25%, while also having double the range, not being affected by snare/root, and a blind attached. It also automatically does 10% more than the listed damage, as your stab arrives just as you blind them (with exposed weakness) if your target has no conditions.

Lotus poison and black powder give you a solid way to mitigate damage in melee while setting up your stealth combo (and increasing your damage 10% thanks to exposed weakness).

Devourers venom is awesome – now that poisons don’t vanish on missed swings (kind of old, I know, but I took a big break), venoms are a step closer to being useful. While a stunbreaker is Mandatory in competitive play, some classes don’t (or simply can’t) cram in a reliable way to break immob as well. 5 seconds of immob every 36 seconds will let you go nuts on a target if they can’t break it.

Also, if you’re not a fan of the venoms, you can switch em out, and replace Quick Venoms with Dagger training – thats 5% more damage all the time, and 10% more when your target has a condition (nearly all the time) – those 15 points moved from crit strikes to Deadly arts results in 15% more damage all the time, and all you lost was 20% more damage on targets under 50%, and 10% damage while over 6 init (again, not something you’ll see often in my experience).

Now for the spec’s shortcomings – without Fleet shadow, you have to run SoS, which eats up a utility slot. You’ll find it harder to get behind targets while stealthed with SoS than with fleet shadow, but all that lovely regen should help mitigate that.

I have a hard time finding a spot for shadow refuge in the spec, which hurts. Shadow refuge is a great tool in TPvP, and you will miss it at times.

You’ll find yourself a little initiative starved at, especially if you get Knocked out (or otherwise CC’d) of Black powder before you can stealth (you just spent 6 init to stealth and got nearly nothing for it).

All in all, I find it fairly effective – I still hit pretty hard, stealth on demand (IE you cant block/evade/immune my ability to go into stealth like you could with CnD), regen in stealth which allows you to absorb a bit of the random AoE you’ll be eating while positioning, and solid CC. It’s also worth noting that while the 300 toughness from shadow arts isn’t anything amazing, it’s alot better than running base toughness.

tl;dr – Try spec. Is good. Many reason.

Here’s another suggestion – add “only from stealth” abilities to things other than autoattack, in an attempt to make more thief weaponsets viable for both Condi and direct damage.

Here’s an example – change HS so that it also applies 3-5 of bleeding (or X stacks/seconds of other damaging condition Y) if used from stealth. Stop – don’t cry OP just yet, think about it a second. A power/crit build should never opt to HS over backstab – backstab is free and does more damage, adding a kittenty bleed to HS (kittenty since they’re power/crit focused, not condi focused) from stealth isn’t going to make it OP for those players. This change would allow condition D/D specs 2 things – More ways to stack conditions, and (in the case of D/D) something to do from stealth – it’ll simultaneously make CnD AND HS more useful for a D/D condi spec.

Maybe my example above doesn’t work 100% – it’s just a jumping off point. Anet could do something similiar to my suggestion and allow most weaponsets to be viable to both Condition and Power/crit focused thieves.

Silver.4798:

evilapprentice.6379:

- Get rid of DB already – CnD does poor damage (compared to its init cost) because it’s a utility, designed to get us into stealth. Dancing dagger is in the same boat. That leaves a D/D rogue with 1, and exactly 1 option to use for DPS when they can’t stealth, because you decided to put a conditions focused attack smack dab in the middle of a Power/crit direct damage set. Just change it already, its not good design. You might ask “But what about Condi thieves that like D/D?!”. My response would be “They need to learn how to play the game some time.” – that’s not meant to be rude, but taking an entire weaponset for 1 skill is very, very counterproductive. LDB rogues are 1 trick ponies – you always know exactly what they’re going to do, because they have exactly 1 option – there’s no skill or counterplay involved, and that’s the hallmark of a bad spec.

1. I respect your opinion but, have you played a condition thief? I run a condi thief and I disagree with your premise of how that build is played, and in fact I think that perhaps a condition d/d thief is an aspect of gameplay that you haven’t fully explored if all you think we do is DB spam.

2. That being said, I agree with your assessment that outside of CnD and DB a condition thief doesn’t have much use for the 1, 2 or 4 skill. Similarly, the burst back stab thief doesn’t have much use for the 3 and 4 skill. Neither builds are fully satisfied with this weapon set. Which brings me to…

3. There should be more than just one “viable” way to play a class. Burst dps thief is very popular, it is great at what it does. But for those players that prefer to do PvE more, in which there is a lot of value in AoE’s and crowd control, we don’t have a lot of options outside of the short bow and DB on d/d, esp if we are looking for condition damage. Anet didn’t give us much of a choice here. Which ultimately brings me to…

4. If a weapon set can be arranged where the AoE needs that apply condition damage outside of a short bow are met, I’d be more than pleased!

I’ve played nearly every spec of thief, even the ones that look dreadful on paper (and play equally dreadfully). In every MMO i’ve pvped in, I’ve been a spec junky – I tend to get bored easily, and try new specs constantly. I ran P/D D/D conditions (0/0/30/20/20) for a long time when it first became super popular.

If you’re condition D/D in SPvP, what weaponset abilities are you using outside DB to damage your opposition? Granted, with a carrion ammy, your HS and Backstab might hit for a non-trivial amount of damage (as opposed to if you were using a rabid ammy), but in that case you’re still not hitting anywhere close to “hard”, and you’ve got glass cannon defenses without glass cannon burst – every mistake will cost you 20%+ of your health against an experienced player. With the importance of condition cleansing in the current meta, your init expensive, long lasting bleed stacks will usually be cleansed WELL before they get a chance to do even half their listed damage.

I speak exclusively from a PvP perspective – I’d be happy with a PvP/PvE split on something like DB (Even an extreme one, where in PvE it was a conditions based attacked and in PvP it was a direct damage based attack). The problem is that since thief weaponsets tend to have 2 utility focused abilities out of 5, that leaves you with 2 abilities designed to do damage – when one of those runs completely counter to the rest of the weaponset…it gets really, really boring.

While I agree that DB is probably a great PvE Conditions ability (this is conjecture on my part, I don’t PvE), its silly that it is limiting PvP so much. Lets find a good middle ground – if that middle ground is an extreme split between PvP and PvE for DB, so be it.

I’ve always been a fan of D/P. Before the Feb 26th patch, it was a strong,reasonably well designed weaponset that rivaled D/D. The only thing holding it back was shadow shot – it was worthless in the same way DB was for a Power/Crit D/D thief.

Now that shadow shot is working as intended (and frankly, amazing), no other weaponset can compare IMO. D/P packs everything a thief could ever want in a weaponset without being overpowered – the initiative costs compared to the utility of the skills is all where it needs to be to allow skill and experience to be the primary factor of how well the spec works.

With BP and 15 points in DA, thieves actually have a reliable way to mitigate melee damage that doesn’t rely on stealth->BS->evade->repeat. With shadow shot finally working, they have a way to approach a Ranged player without having to absolutely rely on stealth or take a beating on the way in. It is also a nice way to close melee gaps that doesn’t rely on spamming HS and doing kitten damage because your target might not be below 50% yet.

I only bring all this up because I’d love it if Anet could fix the issues holding back our other weaponsets. They’ve done -wonders- for my interest in the game just by finally giving me a fully working, well designed weaponset to use, so I don’t feel like I’m always spamming 1 or 2 abilities.

So Anet, how about looking at some of the issues plaguing our other weaponsets this month?

- Body shot needs to be completely redesigned – how about a 3 init ground target AoE with lowish damage that applies a low length cripple and is a blast finisher – boom, just fixed P/P. Blast finisher and cripple fix both problems P/P has – access to stealth and the ability to prevent melee from always being on top of you, and also prevent players with superior range (Ie, almost all of them) from constantly keeping you out of range.

- Flanking strike needs a tweak – why not give us both swings during the evade and increase the activation time to .75 seconds – this’ll give S/D thieves a way to actually use their evade, and do decent damage (which won’t be too OP since the activation time for the swings is so long that a thief cant use them to “Burst”).

- Pistol whip needs a tweak – Lower the Init cost and the total number of swings/damage the ability does. People should not be able to just walk or dodge roll out of the last few swings. Make the ability more of a sustained DPS tool than a silly Haste fueled burst tool, or the kind of attack that never hits more than half its swings without immob or player inexperience being involved.

- Get rid of DB already – CnD does poor damage (compared to its init cost) because it’s a utility, designed to get us into stealth. Dancing dagger is in the same boat. That leaves a D/D rogue with 1, and exactly 1 option to use for DPS when they can’t stealth, because you decided to put a conditions focused attack smack dab in the middle of a Power/crit direct damage set. Just change it already, its not good design. You might ask “But what about Condi thieves that like D/D?!”. My response would be “They need to learn how to play the game some time.” – that’s not meant to be rude, but taking an entire weaponset for 1 skill is very, very counterproductive. LDB rogues are 1 trick ponies – you always know exactly what they’re going to do, because they have exactly 1 option – there’s no skill or counterplay involved, and that’s the hallmark of a bad spec.

I like the on-hit abilities with the CD.

The activated heal is probably a bit too powerful – Correct me if I’m wrong (haven’t seen a blood fiend in a while), but can’t they be DPS’d down to deny the necro his heal? (or force him to use it early). Assuming that is still true, SoM seems to be a bit much.

tl;dr – Good ideas, maybe some playtesting around the actual numbers.

Lokheit.7943:

You make some good points about the potential of my proposed change with all those traits, but really it wouldn’t take so much benefit from some of them . For example, being clearly limited to a tiny area you would like to use the stealth attack as soon as possible so you’re not nuked, which means you’re not getting the regen in stealth to proc (it could even be changed to a 0.5 seconds stealth instead of the border breaking it so it serves just for the Sneak Attack). You stil reduce the ini cost to 4 (like with CnD which allows for a lot of maneuvering and isn’t really so hard to land) and can get Power from it but you’re using trait points specifically for that and you’re getting zero “real stealth” for maneuvers.

The 1 vs. 5 videos of P/D wouldn’t be possible as with such a short stealth you’re burning initiative much faster (P/D gains some extra seconds between cycles and from the time the stay on it, which can be increased through patience). It’s unconditional Stealth, but while you get some of its benefits, you get zero of the actual stealth properties.

Probably this would need a lot of testing and tuning, but I would love to see something making me use every skill on P/P instead of 33333333. I love the looks of the set, but the playstyle gets boring and damaging for my #3 key

Aditionally, if Stealth Skills are one of our mechanics (one of those 4 mini-mechanics that try to sum to match other profession’s mechanics) it would make sense that every set would grant access to it (mesmers got phantasmas AND clones in every single weapon combination they have to access they’re profession mechanic). Maybe even make Infiltrator’s Arrow grant stealth if the “circle” touchs an opponent (instead of applying blind) so it really is an “infiltrator’s” skill, and change Infusion of Shadow to return 1 initiative instead of 2? P/D wouldn’t notice it as hard given how they can spend a lot of time stealthed to recover and P/P wouldn’t be able to use it as much.

I 100% agree that P/P needs stealth, thats why I like your suggestion. But P/D never relied on stealth for long – I would know, I was running 0/0/30/20/20 P/D when thieves universally thought Pistol mainhand was completely worthless. The only way to maximize damage with that spec is to sneak attack as close to every 3s as you can. CnD can be hard to dodge, but unconditional stealth is powerful. It’s powerful in D/P and you need 9 Init to pull it off (and generally do not have 15 points in trickery for the 15 init pool).

The regen i was talking about was 5s of regen on stealth, which with proper timing, you will get every time you BP – properly played, you’ll have perma regen. I don’t see how this would be more init intensive than P/D – they’ll be the same exact costs, in fact – skill 5 to stealth (at the same cost), 4 when needed, 2 and 3 gather dust. I’m talking from a PvP perspective, not WvW – those 1v5 situations died months ago in SPvP (but apparently still work in WvW for some reason).

Honestly, I’m not saying your idea would 100% be OP – I just see the potential for it. I Do believe P/P (and S/P additionally) either need some sort of access to stealth, or something that makes up for it – giving a class that is absolutely built around the ability to stealth 2 weaponsets out of 6 that have no access to stealth (i excluded Shbow since although it is a weapon without stealth, its designed well enough to not need it) and no abilities designed to compensate for it is just dumb.

Please stop advocating the removal of hotjoin. One day, far in the future, this game will have spec diversity. People will need a low pressure place to test and gain skill in new specs. That is what Hotjoin is for. Nobody wants to have to worry about their rating every game. Private servers will not fill the void eliminating hot join would create.

Otherwise, carry on.

Lokheit.7943:

An idea I’ve posted other times that would make this skill useful in a P/P setup, as currently it’s only good for melee builds and that’s sad to say for a 6 initiative skill on a ranged weapon:

- BP gives a very short Stealth on use (not pulsing, only on use, and just for you), but its limits act like Shadow Refuge Limits, which means you will lose stealth if you exit the VERY small area (which means you won’t move from the spot without losing it, I’ll explain why later).

The reason for this is to gain access to your sneak attack on a P/P setup, this way a P/P build becomes far more versatile than the current 33333333333333333333333333333 until the key breaks, and to be able to either go Direct or Condition Damage, and adapt to your opponent (High Vit? Direct Damage, High Tough? Condition Damage) the same way than D/D can be speced for Direct Damage (Backstabs and Heart Seekers) or Condition Damage (Death Blossom over the mob) and be effective.

Now this shouldn’t affect the melee sets, as both need you to reach your opponent’s back, and you CAN’T EXIT the smoke field without losing Stealth, so you’re not reaching his back (unless he is tremendously stupid, in which case he deserves it and was going to die anyway lol), so the initiative cost shouldn’t go up as the efficency is the same for them.

Aditionally, unlike CnD which allows you for a lot of maneuveur and reposition, this one would clearly mark where you are as the smoke field is very very small, so even if it’s an unconditional Stealh, you’re clearly spoted and anyone could throw attacks at you.

Basically this would be to justify a 6 initiative cost when using P/P, and to give that set versatility and the ability to go Condition Damage (which sinergizes with the auto-attack unlike Direct Damage builds) for more versatility and less boring 333333333333, and you could blind at least 2 targets with those 6 initiative by using Sneak Attack on the second one as it’s guaranteed to combo.

I like the idea on alot of points (giving P/P a way to access stealth, BP having a little more functionality for its extreme cost, almost non-existent damage, and .5 seconds cast time), but something tells me it will show itself to be a bit OP through playtesting.

You spec 0/0/30/20/20 – the current P/D setup, with this, would be powerful. It automatically reduces the cost of BP to 4 (because you absolutely will take Infusion of Shadow) as long as your only using it every 3 seconds. Automatic, no conditions attached stealth as long as you have 6 init to spend means automatic access to all the goodies in Shadow arts – condition removal and Regen IMO. You pop sneak attack immediately, each shot carrying a 20% chance to blind. Then you auto-attack until BP fades, dodge roll, and repeat. It’s not an unbeatable combo by any means, but your severely limiting melee (since you’re ranged, the small size of BP doesn’t limit you, just keep maneuvering so your enemy has to enter the radius to swing at you, and he’s being blinded once per second AND each of your shots carries a 20% chance to blind again). He probably also has to wade through your caltrops to get anywhere near you (since you’re running conditions, and it’d be stupid not to take caltrops in this build).

Against ranged you’re not quite as well equipped, but most of your shots are carrying a 20% chance to blind, and once you get the timing down, you’re accessing sneak every 3 seconds like clockwork.

Daecollo.9578:

evilapprentice.6379:

In short, I agree. Trading the ability to stealth for protection seems like a balanced trade in my opinion – combined with the fact that sword is incapable of the burst thieves are known for, it’d be a fun addition to the classes options.

I still insist there needs to be something else to tie the spec together however. Access to regen tops my list, but a “confusion on evade” (it’d have to be more than 1 stack tho, since A sword MH spec will rely on power and crit for damage) seems thematically relevant, fair, fun, and balanced imo.

I’m only afraid Confusion on evade would benefit stealth thieves a lot more then others…

D/P Thieves and D/D LDB thieves would get a huge increase in DPS…

D/D LDB maybe, but that spec could use a boost anyway. Its another 1 trick pony thats easily countered. It has 1 Weaponset DPS move that costs 5 Init, it’d honestly be nice if that spec proc’d confusion on evades – it’d add some real skill to the spec, and another way to do condition damage.

Not sure how D/P would benefit much – do missed attacks caused by blind count as evades? HS doesn’t generate evades, so it’d just be your dodges. Hurting a player who is trying to swing-detect stealthed thieves might be nice however. It has the same issue as your proposed Sword mainhand spec as well – confusion that does kitten damage because you have 0 condition damage. In addition, D/P would still be burst focused, there won’t be the time for confusion to do much damage. It works well with Sword mainhand with your proposed trait because its more of a survivable, sustainable DPS spec with built in evade moves (which will punish blindly swinging players, making the spec a nice skill check)

Adaneshade.2409:

Increase base duration and stack “intensity” so that a 2 stack would negate 2 hits…etc etc

Inconceivable.

They designed all the abilities that generate blind under the impression that blind stacks duration, not intensity. You can’t just have it suddenly stack intensity without breaking a ton of abilities.

style.6173:

evilapprentice.6379:

S/P needs work, but adding a leap finisher to Inf Strike is not the way. It’s already an amazing ability. Gap closing immob for 3 init that set up a stunbreaking, condition cleansing retreat move? Its the only thing I miss about Sword MH.

The Immob from Inf strike + stealth would = effortless back arc strikes with tactical strike.

I probably should have showed the initiative use to better clarify my point. I was hoping people would understand what I meant. Anyway, you cannot spam IS/SR. You’d have one chance at it. Once you go stealth, you will have used up most of your initiative. As I mentioned, D/P is a way better weapon set right now. Why not even it a bit?

Same thing with D/P, and I don’t have any problems using BP->HS for stealth most of the time. Once you get the playstyle down (and if you trait right), the ability to stealth on demand is powerful enough to overcome the extreme cost.

Its also worth noting that IS has no cast time – this seems silly, but better players will attempt to KD/KB/Launch me from outside my BP they second they see it – even I’ve started my HS, if I get CC’d before the animation finishes, I’m out 9 initiative, CC’d, and have no stealth. With IS, this won’t be an option. You can also choose to IS without a target (meaning you’ll stealth in place), which can be considered an advantage compared to HS.