Guild Wars 2

Doesnt sound like too bad an idea, honestly. Exchange rate would probably be huge though. Do gems even buy you anything outside of PvE gear though? And dyes and boosters of course.

If I still even give a flying kitten about this downward spiral. GL to everyone who’s still slogging through.

1)Bug fixes – This is a big one – lets pretend this game worked perfectly. Instead of class based QQ, this board would be filled with “My team lost a paid tourney because of Bug x” and “I’m not paying tickets until bugs are fixed”…and rightly so. If you want an ultra-competitive environment, it needs to work nigh flawlessly, or people are going to feel cheated. Even in hotjoin, its frustrating to lose fights due to bugs.

2) Skill and Trait fixes – Take a look at underperforming/poorly designed weapon skills, utilities and traits across all classes. Every class has a list of these, and its stifling the game tremendously. There are currently a tiny pool of “best” specs for each and every class – it leads to an extremely boring game, soft/hard counters, and predictability. I think the community understands that this isn’t going to happen in 1 huge patch – you need to be making tweaks constantly, and adjusting from there. We can be patient, if you show some kitten initiative and actually start making some changes.

Once most of the bugs are gone, and players have more build choices, then we can actually talk about balance.

Lelouch.8452:

a thief doesn’t need to kill to be effective. it seems people don’t get the concept of stalling. If a thief can keep a player on the node (i.e mesmer/ranger) or more than one for that matters, it means that your team is fighting without that mesmer (timewarp lol) in a team fight, or that ur team is having a 3v5/3v4 somewhere else. plus, u know that u can’t leave that point, bc there is or there is not a thief in stealth somewhere.

plus, what the hell, u r saying d/p does not damage? have u tried doing the smoke combo field and heartseeker through it? u get next to infinite stealth and can re engage whenever u want. and regen/condi removal on stealth is not op at all u can even get might when u r in stealth. u can’t get burst, bc u hit and stealth, and if u have thief guild (elite), kitten it, if u r not a bunker, u r a certain death, there r few elites that can pale that one in 1v1

u find urself in a pinch, short-bow and infiltrator arrow away. or just cluster bomb the point for 2-3k crit hits 5 times >.&lt

and thief vs ranger? get real, a good thief should not loose to a ranger. he just need to shoot with a sb and when u get low (half health or less) just come at u and backstab. nub thief r the ones that rush at a ranger with vasilisk venom from the go, for that reason they die 70-80% of the time, they get immo by traps, burned/poisoned, and pet kd the kitten out of them.

did i mention heartseeker+haste before stealth runs out and the glitched stealth animation? or the times cluster bombs hits 2 times ? nvm

P/D. Pee/Dee. Pistol/Dagger. Attrition spec (its right in the title). 0/0/30/20/20. Condition damage, not direct damage.

Even if you’re keeping a target on point, both teams are down a player, and the enemy team is holding the point. Advantage, other team.

Yasha.5963:

evilapprentice.6379:

You’re 100% right Nerva. Who do these thief players think they are, expecting to sacrifice burst for a tanky attrition spec? Who care’s that the spec is useless in TPvP, useless for capping or guarding points, extremely slow to kill, and ineffective to run in general in the current condition-cleanse heavy meta. Why should they gain any survivability for all those sacrifices? I mean they’re thieves, right, and you’ve made it perfectly clear you hate the class with a logic blinding passion. The spec should do kitten front end damage, easily cleansed condition damage, be useless in TPvP, not be able to hold points, do no burst so it takes forever to kill a player, AND die really quickly and easily.

They are extremely hard for rangers in particular to take down, and they are not fun to fight against because you don’t see them for long enough to get off a burst combo; and many run with good healing and condition removal in stealth.

They do take skill to play-however, it is much harder to kill them than to play one (at least as a ranger). How do other classes/builds fare against them? I don’t think I’m good enough at any other class to judge how strong they are. I’m sure a good d/d ele would wipe the floor with them, but other than that?

Its alot like fighting a bunker, except the thief has no Knockback and can’t hold points.

For rangers, healing spring almost completely neutralizes P/D – Regen makes kittenty pistol autoattack damage nearly non-existent, combined with constantly stripping conditions means the thief will be doing almost 0 damage to you. 15 seconds out of every 30 seconds, you should be close to invincible. The fight should take, at absolute minimum, a full minute and a half, and honestly, it can go on much, much longer.
Every second you’re holding the point, you’re winning the fight. Even if you start to lose the fight, your team should have plenty of time to respond with help.

Any ele running Water (IE, all of them) can just ignore a P/D thief – they might as well not even be there.

Bunker guards are similar to D/D ele’s – any competently played one will completely neutralize it.

Its a strong spec against most warriors , but P/D thief is still squishy enough to get eaten alive if you get caught in a frenzy → HB, and a high hp hybrid with a rifle can be a good fight.

You destroy minion necro’s because mindless AI + caltrops = lol, but any other spec has the upper hand against P/D conditions. P/D can still win, but its an uphill battle.

Strong against mesmers, because caltrops hurts shatter, and mindless AI can’t dodge CnD, but a well played Mes can still win.

Didn’t fight enough Engi’s when I was running the spec to give my 2 cents on them.

Against another P/D spec, its just a toss up. Against other specs, its a dance that favors direct damage. All P/D has to do is kitten up once, and they might be downed. A D/D glass cannon can kitten up a couple times and still win the fight, because your damage is so slow. Equally played, P/D should win nearly every time though.

In any of the above scenario’s though, minimum fight time should never fall below 30 seconds, and it will often take longer than that. That’s a minimum of 30 seconds of you holding the point (if you lose the point to a P/D thief while still alive, its a L2P issue. That’s not me being rude, its just a fact – P/D is a joke unless they’re stealthing as often as possible, and often spending nearly the full duration stealthed for positioning and health regen, except against another stealth heavy thief of course) Thats a huge amount of time for any team to react.

You’re 100% right Nerva. Who do these thief players think they are, expecting to sacrifice burst for a tanky attrition spec? Who care’s that the spec is useless in TPvP, useless for capping or guarding points, extremely slow to kill, and ineffective to run in general in the current condition-cleanse heavy meta. Why should they gain any survivability for all those sacrifices? I mean they’re thieves, right, and you’ve made it perfectly clear you hate the class with a logic blinding passion. The spec should do kitten front end damage, easily cleansed condition damage, be useless in TPvP, not be able to hold points, do no burst so it takes forever to kill a player, AND die really quickly and easily.

Jacobin.8509:

The OP has hit the nail on the head. There is good pvp game here somewhere, unfortunately here we are 6 months later and nobody knows when its going to get here.

The plan seems to have been to just put in the bare amount necessary to sell the box to potential pvpers then just string us along forever until they get something together.

It seems to have worked based on the number of sales and GOTY awards.

It’s fairly obvious we paid to finish up their PvP beta tests. Honestly, that doesn’t bother me much – its SOP for MMO’s at this point. You’re always going to need to tweak once the meta gets established, some skills wont work out the way you anticipated, and so on. What’s killing me is the length of this beta. They’re not rolling out fixes and adjustments, they’re tweaking skills/traits/weapons that work while completely ignoring the list of skills/traits/weapons that don’t, and they’re completely ignoring the fact that nearly every class has only 1 or 2 functioning TPvP setups because of it. We’re just sitting in this stagnant pool of crap, getting copy/paste promises of how awesome this game will be at some unidentified point in the future.

Rieselle.5079:

maybe you should wait till they actually finish implementing the features they’ve already talked about before expecting them to announce even more features?

what’s the point in wanting more and more promises when they’re still working on the previous ones?

Part of the gripe is the unacceptable amount of time they’re taking to put out basic PvP necessities. 4 months in and there’s a long list of vital features that still need to be implemented, and an even longer list of bug fixes, balance tweaks, and skill adjustments that have yet to even be acknowledged because we’re still waiting for vital features.

They just keep talking about them like we weren’t aware they were coming. We know they’re coming. We need to know when, because we don’t trust you anymore.

Ragni.4698:

evilapprentice.6379:

Fastest speed applies, no stacking. Speed is capped at 33% out of combat movement speed (as far as I can tell).

so if I have the signet, the trait is useless?

Yup.

Fastest speed applies, no stacking. Speed is capped at 33% out of combat movement speed (as far as I can tell).

Yay More bullkitten.

- Re-iterating kitten we’ve been hearing about for months, but haven’t seen, still no timeline.
- No talk of fixing the currently broken (as in non-functioning) skills/traits/abilities, which there is a myriad of
- No talk of adjusting under-performing traits, skills, and abilities
- No talk of the current meta at all – whether or not you’re satisfied, and what adjustments you’re planning.

You’re writing this for current players (whats left of them on the PvP side anyway) as much as you’re writing this for prospective players – if you aren’t going to bother to get granular with us, why waste your time and ours? This is a bullkitten press release designed to look good, not information for information hungry players. I’d be less annoyed if you left the worthless PvP section out, rather than tack on this drivel. Spend less time talking about how awesome you are, and more time talking to players, addressing their concerns, and sharing your path (And most importantly, YOUR TIMELINE) for solutions.

NeedCoffee.1402:

@evilapprentice

I wanted to find fault in your post after reading the title alone, but could not.

your complaints are valid.

But I feel like your running your highlighter over only the bad things, and not the positive things arena net has created.
GW2 is the only mmo with a pvp system where you are instantly lv cap upon entering and can choose any gear you want free.

GW2 is the only mmo that thinks true balance starts with the separation of pvp and pve. balancing skills can come later.

GW2 is the only mmo with a server vs server vs server gametype that spans across 4 maps and uses fun things like siege weapons, supply camps, and towers.

Plus the way the game is set up (able to join multiple guilds, fun events that reward all who participate, token system for dungeons = no rolling on loots) they took the competition out of pve and made it socialized, which strengthens the community.

If you have to quit, then quit. but your not going to find another game with all this.

I agree – I tried to point out the positives. I acknowledge that there’s something great down there, under all the bugs, class design issues, and current meta. I fully expect when all my complaints are addressed, this will be a truly amazing game. The problem is, all the things you’ve pointed out only count when the issues I pointed out are fixed. As long as those issues remain, all the positives you listed count for nil. Being Lvl 80 for PvP is great, unless PvP is boring, stale, and riddled with bugs. Separated skills are great, when all the skills work and are well designed. The cross server design would be very robust, if sPvP wasn’t a ghost town due to all the issues.
It’ll hopefully be great one day – but all those great features just make the outstanding issues (which have been issues for months now) all the more heartrending – I can see how awesome this game could be, if only the developers had the resources/time/skill to fix it.

muscarine.5136:

evilapprentice.6379:

As for balance, I disagree – Bunkers are too strong in the current meta, and absolutely no fun to fight. Burst trivializes combat against any non bunker (its no fun to fight the"unload everything I can then try to escape if it didn’t work" spec that any class tries to run), but is necessary to counter the level of bunkering they’ve allowed – burst and bunkering need to be toned down to a moderate degree. Melee is mess thanks to the amount of AoE in group fights, and how much damage it does. Not being able to use stunbreakers immediately when “in the air” makes KB/KD/Pull/Launch more powerful than other stuns – classes with high access to these skills are more powerful and effective because they get “Stun+”, while the rest of the playerbase just gets “Stun”.

Seems pretty much a good summary of the current situation to me, and i’m really looking forward to the next balance patch, hoping this time it will bring something real to the table…

What kills me the most is the utter lack of communication. The Dev’s realize the community would be a lot calmer and more patient if someone was talking to us, right? Acknowledging our concerns, giving us some sort of timeline (even if its vague as hell). I’ve specifically bought some In game gems even though there was nothing I really “needed” because I thought Anet deserved an extra couple bucks – but its starting to look like they don’t even know the basics of MMO management.

Where’s our beta test server to test changes? It worked fantastically in RIFT – people played on the test servers to play-test design changes (essentially working for free) because they were excited to have more balanced content. They didn’t keep any of their rewards, they just had fun playing with more balanced, more fun content, and were eager to help the Dev’s with their suggestions and feedback. I know I’ve said this, but how is it possible that bugs and issues from head-start still exists 6 months in?

Void.4239:

evilapprentice.6379:

There is no “Fix” possible, or even needed. Thieves were designed with 1 or (if they’re really lucky 2) “Damage” abilities per weapon set. That is how thieves do damage – they don’t have other options besides auto-attack. ANet is not completely redesigning thieves. GET OVER IT.

i appreciate your meaning.
but plz only constructive posts in here , i dont want it to turn out into a flame topic.
and in my eye’s more or less most weapon sets have 3 or more high dps ability’s on thiefs , maybe 1 or so is weaker cause its a defensief weapon set.

Also, “Most weapon sets have 3 or more high DPS abilities”… that right there – thats how anyone who’s played thief for an hour knows how off base you are.

S/P – Auto attack is your best DPS, everything else is a utility, or a niche DPS move (PW).
S/D – Auto attack, everything else is a utility
D/D – Auto attack/BS and HS. CnD does alright damage, but its costs 6 init – its a stealth utility, not a DPS ability (you dont -ever- use CnD when going for the kill..no one does). If you’re condi, GL, ALL you get is Deathblossom.
D/P – Auto attack and HS – Shadow shot would actually be a good mix between DPS and utility if it didn’t root.
P/P – Unload, kind of. Auto attack/Sneak attack if your condi based.
Shortbow – Auto attack if you have 2 targets, cluster bomb.

I listed auto-attack just to be safe – No thief weaponset has 3 DPS skills. None.

Void.4239:

evilapprentice.6379:

There is no “Fix” possible, or even needed. Thieves were designed with 1 or (if they’re really lucky 2) “Damage” abilities per weapon set. That is how thieves do damage – they don’t have other options besides auto-attack. ANet is not completely redesigning thieves. GET OVER IT.

i appreciate your meaning.
but plz only constructive posts in here , i dont want it to turn out into a flame topic.
and in my eye’s more or less most weapon sets have 3 or more high dps ability’s on thiefs , maybe 1 or so is weaker cause its a defensief weapon set.

I am being as constructive as possible with the material you’ve provided. Your making a case for something that’s just plain silly and impossible. Its obvious you’ve never played a thief, or you would never have typed the nonsensical words you’ve posted here. As a point of comparison, I will provide some hypothetical Post topics for other classes I feel are on par with this one, so you can understand from the class you plays point of view.

Necro’s have access to too many conditions
Warriors should be in the lowest Health bracket
Rangers have access to too many ranged weapons and pets
Get rid of guardian bubbles and reduce their blocks
Increase Elementalist Attunement cooldown 500%
Mesmer’s have too many clones/phantasms
Please remove Grenade and Bomb Kits from engineer, also all their turrets

I’m not posting these to be rude – there’s just no other way to explain to you how impossible, ill informed, and biased your suggestion is. You are 100% wrong – thieves spam skills by design, because that’s all that’s available to them if they want to actually kill targets. You’d know this if you played thief for an hour.

There is no “Fix” possible, or even needed. Thieves were designed with 1 or (if they’re really lucky 2) “Damage” abilities per weapon set. That is how thieves do damage – they don’t have other options besides auto-attack. ANet is not completely redesigning thieves. GET OVER IT.

faeral.7120:

the gem is in 5v5, but i agree that currently you have to wade through some unnecessary steps to get there. i disagree on your balance issues. we have a beta-sized testing community for builds & most players follow trends rather than setting their own.

i think you have the right mentality for where you’re at wrt this game—take a break & come back in 6 months.

ppl quit gw1 for periods of time as well. the non-sub model works, because huge releases do bring players back.

All I did were 5v5’s once they came out, haven’t been in an 8v8 since – without them I would have been gone months ago. 8v8 is literally pointless, I have no idea why it still exists – classes and encounters aren’t based around it, so fights feel lopsidded and much too quickly paced very often. After playing 5v5 for a few days, I’m puzzled as to why I ever ran 8v8.

As for balance, I disagree – Bunkers are too strong in the current meta, and absolutely no fun to fight. Burst trivializes combat against any non bunker (its no fun to fight the"unload everything I can then try to escape if it didn’t work" spec that any class tries to run), but is necessary to counter the level of bunkering they’ve allowed – burst and bunkering need to be toned down to a moderate degree. Melee is mess thanks to the amount of AoE in group fights, and how much damage it does. Not being able to use stunbreakers immediately when “in the air” makes KB/KD/Pull/Launch more powerful than other stuns – classes with high access to these skills are more powerful and effective because they get “Stun+”, while the rest of the playerbase just gets “Stun”.

As for “setting trends rather than following”…man I’ve tried. Between traits, weapons, amulets and jewels, I’ve probably tried over 100 distinctly different setups on my thief; Even ones that look like they make absolutely no sense on paper, just to see if maybe I missed something. The result is all the same – none of them can hold a candle to the small handful of tPvP effective specs. It’s not as if I Don’t know what I’m doing -early in the game, when Pistol MH was considered completely useless by the entire playerbase, I screwed around and ended up rolling 0/0/30/20/20 P/D conditions spec. I’m not claiming to have “invented it”, but I got 5-10 PM’s daily, some players accusing me of cheating, other theives asking me how the hell I was doing what I was doing…I was definitely running it before alot of people had even thought of it. There is very, very little variety in this game currently, a sign of poor design. Even WoW PvP had an arena effective spec for each of the talent tree’s (at least when I played), and 3 effective specs per class is more than some classes in GW2 get.

But Yeah, I’ll pop in now and then, check out the patch notes (and shake my head, sighing, like the last 2 times), and wait. Hopefully they’ll fix this before the entire playerbase finds something better to play.

It truly saddens me to have to post this. I’ve tried to be a staunch defender in the past – I understand how MMO’s work, how difficult development is, and how tight money can get. I’m past caring at this point though, multiple poor decisions and and an utter lack of attention to PvP has me fed up.
I’m done. Poor balancing, skills that haven’t been fixed since head start, poorly planned and implemented updates, awful awful meta designed around a handful of boring “best” specs for each class which in themselves are based around burst and bunkers, “Fixes” that don’t fully fix an issue while also introducing new issues… the list goes on and on. I wasn’t expecting amateur hour, I was expecting a AAA release from a veteran developer.
Some of you will agree – others will not (I was that person a month ago, telling me to be patient and give the game a chance), some will outright flame. It doesn’t matter. I’m not posting this to sway your opinions, I’m just posting this so on the (extremely) off chance a Dev see’s this, they can see how they’ve turned my enthusiasm and devotion for their product into utter contempt. Every single class board has a list of bugs, poorly designed skills, and poorly functioning skills that just isn’t acceptable in a nigh 6 month old game. Your communication is extremely lacking, and your philosophy of “small, gradual changes” doesn’t work in a month by month format – any other competent MMO i’ve played delivers large changes on a month by month timeline, and consistent small fixes on a much more rapid schedule.
With all that said, I still have the ever present need to be fair – the lack of a subscription fee, and the purely cosmetic PvP upgrades give me hope. This game might suck for another 3-6 months, but when it is finally fully functional and solidly designed, I’ll be able to pick it back up for free, and there won’t be a gear gap between me and those of you who decide to keep playing.
There’s a gem here ANet – you made alot of risky choices that paid off – when this game is good, its great. Unfortunately, I’m sick of shifting through a ton of kitten to catch a glimpse at the facet of said gem. You clean up the kitten, and I’ll be back. Til then, good luck; you’re going to need it.

ensoriki.5789:

evilapprentice.6379:

ensoriki.5789:

Delete tactical strike.
Copy + paste Backstab.

That’s not the point of my post at all – Tactical strike is just as hard to pull off as backstab, why not make them different-but-equal?

If ANet feels the initial daze time was too long, there’s a ton of ways to buff the skill that makes it different than backstab but just as effective.
1.) Add some additional conditions – Have tactical strike also weaken, poison or cripple the target.
2.) Grant boons on successful use – If ANet wants to keep S/D damage as low as it is, we’ll need the actual tools to play an attrition style build. Have Tac strike give Protection/Regen to the thief when used from the back arc.
3) Strip boons – Have the ability remove 1 boon when used from the front arc, and 3 when used from the back.

Any of these abilities (in addition to the daze) would make Tac strike a more effective skill (probably – of course playtesting would be required)

Im not saying that is your point.
I’m pointing how ridiculous it is.
The reality isn’t that Backstab or Tactical are some skills that compliment their sets, they aren’t. You could literally copy + paste backstab onto S/D and it would take the same roll as D/D thieves. f1, cnd, Backstab. Only difference is you’d escape with shadow return in exchange for hs spam.

They should be putting less emphasis on Stealth attacks not more, their kitten linear by design. Putting the bread and butter of S/D into Tactical strike, just makes it just as mindless as everything else. Period.

Well, your overall point seems to be “Make thieves less stealth reliant”. That’s a point I wont agree or disagree with, but you’re basically asking “Re-design thieves from the ground up”, and as ANet has proven they can’t fix minor pre-existing bugs that have been around since launch, or change traits around correctly without kittening it up, I don’t expect you’ll see a thief redesign before 2020.

Rinzler.8072:

In WvW, I find S/D pretty decent. Ive run it 90% of the time for hte last 2 months.

Spec 10/30/30/0/0
Bersker armor + divinities (rubys worked too)
Sigil of paralyzation (3 second daze)
Sigil of Rage (haste) + traited for haste on crit.
Alt weaponset with 2 x sigil of perception, builds stacks very quick

Weakness i found with d/d is taking on multiple opponents and zergs, its very easy to down someone, but very difficult to actually stomp them. Its def more single target dmg than s/d.

But s/d is way more versatile. Use the on demand shadow step into a zerg, steal, cnd, dazed them. Now one of my 2 hastes or both are gonna go off with my 71% crit rate. Bam, AOE hasting sword, 3 dead guys. If they aint dead? On demand shadow step away. Rinse repeat.

See a thief tearing you friends up? Use the on demand shadow step + steal + cnd = dead thief from halfway accross the map.

Want to stomp the guy you jsut down but hes gona friends rezzing him? It can be difficult with single target Daggers. Sword? jump in the middle of the rez and kill them all.

Getting yer kitten handed to you and yer stunned? Shadowstep down? Teleport to a enemy/rabbit/etc with swords shadow step.

All S/D really needs is flanking strike to be tweaked and its far superior than D/D imho (In WVW).

In Spvp i am generally in the top scorer in pugs. But honestly i think D/D MIGHT be a little stronger (im only level 10 glory). Condition builds on teh other hand i think are stronger then both for pug matches.

Yeaaaaah, the stat differences are astounding. Then of course there’s the PvE/PvP Daze difference (WvW gets 2s, PvP gets 1.5) which I forgot about. That spec won’t perform at anywhere near the same level in tPvP.

rchu.8945:

evilapprentice.6379:

ensoriki.5789:

Delete tactical strike.
Copy + paste Backstab.

That’s not the point of my post at all – Tactical strike is just as hard to pull off as backstab, why not make them different-but-equal?

If ANet feels the initial daze time was too long, there’s a ton of ways to buff the skill that makes it different than backstab but just as effective.
1.) Add some additional conditions – Have tactical strike also weaken, poison or cripple the target.
2.) Grant boons on successful use – If ANet wants to keep S/D damage as low as it is, we’ll need the actual tools to play an attrition style build. Have Tac strike give Protection/Regen to the thief when used from the back arc.
3) Strip boons – Have the ability remove 1 boon when used from the front arc, and 3 when used from the back.

Any of these abilities (in addition to the daze) would make Tac strike a more effective skill (probably – of course playtesting would be required)

I like these suggestions, Sword skills really need some love. I started with D/D but switched over to S/D with a more dodgy/tanky build, but S/D is not nearly as useless as you think in WvW situations.

I dont WvW at all – what is it that S/D offers that’s so great?

I can only imagine that fights last longer, and that thieves can more effectively hybrid without sacrificing too much damage (seeing as they arent limited to sPvP stat allocations), but even if that were the case, wouldn’t D/D and D/P still be better specs?

Dagins.5163:

Tactical strike daze is deadly powerful. May interrupt healing, powerful channeling skill, stomping or reviving. However, it’s rather poor in PvE, but in PvE you don’t use stealth for offensive tactics anyway.

Headshot does the same thing, at 900 range, instantly, with no stealth requirement and only minor positional requirements (don’t let another player or NPC block your HS path, as compared to being behind said target. The only thing Tac strike has on headshot is daze duration, and the downsides of S/D do not make up for it.

ensoriki.5789:

Delete tactical strike.
Copy + paste Backstab.

That’s not the point of my post at all – Tactical strike is just as hard to pull off as backstab, why not make them different-but-equal?

If ANet feels the initial daze time was too long, there’s a ton of ways to buff the skill that makes it different than backstab but just as effective.
1.) Add some additional conditions – Have tactical strike also weaken, poison or cripple the target.
2.) Grant boons on successful use – If ANet wants to keep S/D damage as low as it is, we’ll need the actual tools to play an attrition style build. Have Tac strike give Protection/Regen to the thief when used from the back arc.
3) Strip boons – Have the ability remove 1 boon when used from the front arc, and 3 when used from the back.

Any of these abilities (in addition to the daze) would make Tac strike a more effective skill (probably – of course playtesting would be required)

Iohanna.4863:

evilapprentice.6379:

Tulisin.6945:

S/P and S/D aren’t bad, you just have to ignore their dual skills most of the time (at least in PvP).

A lot of bad S/P builds come from people trying to shoehorn pistol whip into PvP effectiveness by stacking all kinds of quickness and immobilize. You can make it work, but at that point you might as well just use a backstab build. What people fail to realize is that #1,2,4,5 are all solid skills and S/P can run quite well without using PW at all.

S/P is serviceable, I admit – it’s just boring. Autoattack is your primary DPS source, and like you’ve said, your only using PW on rare occasions (or when you try to shoehorn it in with gimmicks)

S/D is as bad as I’ve described it. You’re playing a spec that plays exactly like D/D (Superior position required, stealth required, constantly in melee, gap closers cant be used in stealth) without any of the burst. You’ve traded backstab and heartseeker for tactical strike and infiltrators strike – very, very poor tradeoff.

Not quite right. You’re playing a modified D/D.

You lose:

• Single-target back-stab
• Heartseeker (execution skill)

You gain:

• 2 second single-target daze
• Cleaving auto-attack (hit up to 3 enemies)
• Infiltrator’s Strike (unlimited stun-breakers)

Perhaps the situation is different in sPvP, where one cannot simply rely on equipment for burst damage. In WvW, S/D is vastly more powerful than D/D in a zerg; you’re unleashing your ridiculous burst DPS on 3 targets with simple auto-attacks, and your sneak attack is a 2 second Daze. It is perfect for denying revivals, or even downing the reviver if he underestimates your damage.

In WvW at least, it is a magnificent trade off.

I’m only talking from an sPvP standpoint. I’m not sure of the current state of PvE balance, but seeing as thats where ANet has decided to apply most of their resources, I can only assume its passable, and much stronger than PvP balance.

What it boils down to is, with sPvP gear choices, thieves can’t really straddle the “hybrid” line too much. We don’t have the HP, the access to defensive boons (especially protection and regen), or the access to Immune skills (“Oh kitten!” buttons) to take advantage of a setup with higher survivability and lower burst like other classes can. I’m not complaining about it, that’s just the way it is. Thieves tend to lose battles of attrition (excluding P/D condi setups, which are 100% designed for attrition) because we’re taking more damage, healing less, and have a lesser health pool.

S/D trades off a ton of damage for minor survivability boosts – Any way you look at it (in sPvP at least) it’s a losing proposition. That’s not to say every thief should go full GC – there’s merit to building a bit of survivability into any spec. If you take it too far though, you become ineffective.

Stin.9781:

Improving black powder would allow you to face tank on a point, standing and blinding basicly largest part of cap point. Its also possible to chain 3-4 of them since they last 4 seconds you only lose 3 innitiative per 1 field basicly.

Anyways my point is, its a combo field, not “you cant kill me perma blinded” skill

It could be improved though by giving some weapeons(sword etc. combo finisher)

240 is probably a bit too large – I’m assuming OP just picked that number because its the next “Size up” in ANets typically used AoE sizes. 180 however is just too small. It should probably be between 195-215 (some playtesting required)

Daecollo.9578:

evilapprentice.6379:

100% agree. It’s easy for anyone with a bit of experience to stand outside the field and still hit you.

As far as I can tell, it also doesn’t block projectiles like it should. I recall a number of instances where ranger arrows flew right through it and tagged me on the other side.

Probably because the areas so small.

But I don’t think it blocks projectiles.

From the Wiki under Smoke Fields – ’A smoke field is a type of field created by certain skills that triggers combo effects when a combo finisher interacts with it. Smoke effects apply stealth to allies or blindness to foes. Enemy projectiles passing through smoke fields will miss their target. ’

The latter part just doesn’t work, unfortunately.

Edit: I’m also led to believe that the wiki is correct. Look at Smoke Screen – the description claims it blocks projectiles, but under the skills active effects there’s no “Blocks projectiles” function, just “Smoke field” (which in itself has the block projectiles effect)

Tulisin.6945:

evilapprentice.6379:

Tulisin.6945:

Clovis.7386:

Since the passive healing was raised and the active healing was lowered, in most scenarios, it makes more sense to keep attacking and apply pressure than wait to activate the heal leaving the active part of the skill useless.

I don’t see anything wrong with this. SoM supports a more offensive play style where the best option to heal yourself is to continue being aggressive. The active is not useless because of its use in situations where you cannot be aggressive (running away, or no available targets), and because of its incredibly short traited cooldown allowing you to activate “on heal” synergies from traits/runes.

The three thief heals are very well balanced so that each is situationally amazing, the role you’re finding SoM weak at is well-filled by the other two heals.

Its a bit hard to judge SoM due to how broken/poorly designed some of our weapon sets are. Our 2 highest hit volume abilities (Unload, Pistol whip) have issues (P/P is underpowered and poorly designed, PW is a good way to spend 5 init, stand in place, and do less DPS than autoattack). If it weren’t for Caltrops and P/D “stealth at every opportunity for sneak attack” builds, SoM would be completely useless, and even in those builds its very easily countered (Don’t stand in caltrops).

I also have a feeling even with a well designed P/P or Pistol Whip, the ability would be subpar. 1.25 seconds for a heal that does less than either of our heals, doesn’t have a secondary component (Stealth, dodge) and doesn’t remove conditions is unadulterated crap. The heal on hit isn’t great either, and outside caltrops and choking gas, we don’t currently have effective skills with high hit volume.

You mentioned PW doing less DPS than auto attack and benefiting heavily from SoM in the same breath, but instances like the latter are exactly why the former isn’t broken. PW’s initiative cost is somewhat justified in the hit volume it grants and resulting synergy with on-hit effects, as well as its evasion/interrupt properties. It, like most thief skills, has great situational use, but since it has actual decent DPS instead of situational non-DPS abilities like Black Powder this somehow negatively reflects upon it.

Saying SoM “doesn’t have a secondary component” is misleading, the passive is easily a match for the secondary components of the other two, and SoM additionally has access to Signet synergy, and consequently on-heal Synergy thanks to signet traits pushing it to the lowest heal cooldown.

You need to maintain a >2/second hit volume to make SoM more powerful than the thief’s strongest active heal (Withdraw), but even in situations where this is not attainable SoM contributes substantial healing without any significant investment.

The main issue people seem to have with SoM is that it doesn’t mesh with the bursty PvP assassin play style that tries to land a few high-damage blows and then break contact. Both other heals support this play style very well, while SoM supports longer engagements and has better PvE applications.

I disagree, PW is 100% a skill in need of fixing. Opponents can walk out of the last swings (reducing its effectiveness as a high hit volume attack, which is why I said SoM theoretically works well with PW), the root begins before the evasion opening the thief up to stuns and high damage, and it does less DPS than just swinging your sword. Of course there are situations where it’s useful, but its supposed to be our burst classes Init → Damage dump. It isn’t.

SoM Has an active heal and a passive heal on hit. Once you use SoM, the passive is lost for 15 (or 12) seconds. Withdraw breaks all snares and roots, heals, AND dodges. HIS cures poison, burning and bleeding, grants stealth, AND grants regen. It has the longest activation time, and most importantly, does nothing to mitigate damage when used – Both Withdraw and HiS have secondary components that help you deal with being targeted – a dodge or stealth. If you SoM while being targeted (and manage to get it off with its long cast), you’re still getting beat down just the same once you’re done.

Leavers – get used to them.
-There’s no rank based matchmaking system (That works – “Join now” is a quick way to get into a 1 on 1,), I routinely leave games where everyone else is less than rank 10; its not fun to roflstomp new players, and its absolutely useless to try to test new specs against players who don’t know what they’re doing.
- There’s no way to test specs outside hotjoin. If a new spec doesn’t pan out the way I thought it would, I don’t want to spend 10 minutes being a free kill.
- Zerglings. I don’t enjoy fighting Zerg to lose glory farming teams. I like to win, but I’m not going to spend 10 minutes running cap point to cap point to “win” with 80 points so I can watch the “losing” team exit with 200-300.

100% agree. It’s easy for anyone with a bit of experience to stand outside the field and still hit you.

As far as I can tell, it also doesn’t block projectiles like it should. I recall a number of instances where ranger arrows flew right through it and tagged me on the other side.

Tulisin.6945:

S/P and S/D aren’t bad, you just have to ignore their dual skills most of the time (at least in PvP).

A lot of bad S/P builds come from people trying to shoehorn pistol whip into PvP effectiveness by stacking all kinds of quickness and immobilize. You can make it work, but at that point you might as well just use a backstab build. What people fail to realize is that #1,2,4,5 are all solid skills and S/P can run quite well without using PW at all.

S/P is serviceable, I admit – it’s just boring. Autoattack is your primary DPS source, and like you’ve said, your only using PW on rare occasions (or when you try to shoehorn it in with gimmicks)

S/D is as bad as I’ve described it. You’re playing a spec that plays exactly like D/D (Superior position required, stealth required, constantly in melee, gap closers cant be used in stealth) without any of the burst. You’ve traded backstab and heartseeker for tactical strike and infiltrators strike – very, very poor tradeoff.

Iohanna.4863:

What most Thieves fail to realize is that D/P + S/D are by far the most effective weapon sets in sustained PvP (D/D is superior if one intends to end the engagement in under 10 seconds).

Unparalleled access to stealth allows D/P to make you virtually unkillable; even with Berserker equipment. Granted, this requires massive sacrifices in the DPS department (you need a maxed out Stealth tree and at least 20 points in Acrobatics for +2 initiative per 10 seconds, leaving you 20 points for everything else). However, you should be ripping through most people with ease in full Berserker equipment.

S/D has the second highest auto-attack DPS (second only to Daggers by a very small margin) – and it cleaves. Tactical Strike is very good at interrupting heals and shutting down troublesome targets. More importantly however, the cleave on the auto-attack allows you to Daze a rezzer and hit both the rezzer and his downed ally. One downed player easily turns into two.

The two weapon sets may have useless no. 3 abilities, but they become irrelevant when considering the utilities of their other abilities.

I’m loving the everloving kitten out of D/P – I’ll actually use it when Fleet shadow works. The current problem is, when you face any smart player in tPvP, they -know- they can outrun you if they’re running 25% speed signet or perma/high duration swiftness or even high endurance builds spamming dodge. D/P rocks hotjoins, and anyone in tPvP which can’t move quickly – when you run into anyone with even an iota of experience and movement speed, you won’t catch up to them – which is why fleet shadow was changed (not that it was correctly implemented, mind you).

All that doesn’t excuse the fact that Shadow shot has been broken since day 1 – the spec would be more versatile if our gap closer worked correctly.

What you’ve described in S/D exists in S/P, only more easily accessed. Headshot lets you instantly interrupt a Res from range, and in one of the rare instances where Pistol whip is useful, you can stun the resser, hit them both, AND evade retaliation while swinging. And it doesn’t require stealth.

Eggshen.2671:

Change S/D to a more fun, dynamic and effective option? Please?

The Daze reduction (coupled with the unjustified CnD and DD nerfs) is just baffling. I’ve said contrary in the past (before I tried S/D in a more competitive environment), but after trying it out, I just have no idea what Anet is thinking. S/D currently has the absolute worst burst of any thief spec (Worse than the underpowered and poorly designed P/P, and if I recall we’re supposed to be the squishy burst class). Reducing the daze length removed all skill from the setup – you can no longer use the spec to outplay an opponent.

The daze does not last long enough to do anything useful; you can’t burst your opponent in that time (because you have no burst), and your other skills are all utility oriented. Your target is already dazed, most situations you’re not gaining much by immobilizing or crippling them (there’s some possible teamfight benefits to doing these, but you’d probably help your team out a lot more if you just ran D/D and Backstabbed instead)

You’re essentially trading the strong burst of D/D (Backstab, heartseeker), for a 1.5 second daze. It’s an extremely poor tradeoff.

Docherty.8372:

I renounced stealth skills and went into lab, came out with this:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAsaVlYmiOncS4E+5Ey2jKUn4J9D0UPDuyqA

Lots of teleporting (3600 range worth, in fact – over double longbow’s range), stun breakers and condition removal. Uses the excellent sword control skills to lock down, and uses evasive moves to survive/defend.

Withdraw is IMO the best Thief healing option: short C/D, excellent evasive move that scrubs some of the nastiest conditions (immobilize/chill/cripple) that can be applied to you in prolonged fights. With Vigor on-heal you can spend 66% of your combat time with Vigor up – add in Feline Grace and you’re very very dodgy indeed.

High initiative regen in order to be able to use Headshot every time your opponent channels his heal, and just to hang in prolonged fights in general (no stealth crutch – you need to use skill to live).

I use Knight’s/Valkyrie armor in WvW (all my characters have some combo of these on), using zerker weapons (sigils are personal preference – I like to have boon removal on-crit and 5% damage), aim for 40-50% crit chance, +50% crit damage, 17k HP, >2k armor.

I have Thief runes atm, but they are left-overs from previous build, not yet decided if I want to change it up.

Not glass, not bunker – still competitive/viable.

Pretty similar to a build I ran for a few weeks . The main issue here is Infiltrators strike – the quicker you play, the less reliable this skill is. I’ve had the teleport to target fail on multiple occasions, I’ve dropped a shadow return at my location when trying to use shadow return, and I’ve used shadow return only to teleport nowhere to name a few of my issues.

It gets infuriating when you get eaten alive by a Frenzied HB’s because Shadow return bugged. Or when you Inf Strike a ranged player to get out of a big group fight, only to drop a shadow return in the middle of that kittenstorm instead. Or you Inf strike to your target (who is in LoS and Range) only to drop a shadow return at your location and watch them escape.

The best way to use this build in a group fight is dart in and out of danger with Inf strike – you hop in, do as much damage as possible, and the second attention turns to you, you shadow return out – you make yourself a less enticing target than say, a warrior or guardian or someone else who has the HP and Skillset to survive in that situation. The second Inf strike or shadow return fails in any way, the spec fails.

D/D is the only weaponset without glaring issues, unfortunately.

S/P – Pistol whip has a number of minor known issues that keep it from being an effective use of initiative in most cases – Auto attack is your best DPS option, and its rather boring.
S/D – Flanking strike is pistol whips loser brother – it has glaring issues, and is generally fairly worthless. Serious lack of burst damage in a burst damage class. Daze doesn’t last long enough to control opponents through skilled play – you’re expected to maneuver like a D/D rogue with none of the damage.
P/P – Body shot is worthless, 1 and 3 are exclusive of each other (1 sucks in a Power/crit build, 3 is a waste of initiative in a condi build), no access to thief defensive tactics (Stealth, increased mobility, evades, etc), low overall damage potential outside of spamming 3 (an initiative intensive, long cast, easily avoided attack).
P/D – No issues directly with the set itself, but condition removal is very important in the current meta. Having access to 1 damaging condition limits the class in general. Poor access to other conditions (damaging or otherwise) combined with the short duration/quick application nature of our bleeds means that it’s almost always the last applied condition, and therefore cleansed by condition cleansing abilities. Extremely low Direct Damage makes stomping in any coordinated game a nightmare (since All your bleed stacks inexplicably vanish on down, your targets are usually ridiculously easy to revive, and you don’t pack the Direct Damage to stop it.
D/P – Shadow shot is a joke. It’s a gap closer that roots the user on hit- that’s like a bleed that cleanses, a stun that grants stability, or a direct damage attack that heals at the end – stupid. That leaves us using HS to close gaps (which wastes initiative and makes us look like idiots who don’t know how to play).

frans.8092:

You get +50% relative to combat speed, when you are in combat, which I expect you’d all be given the situation you want it to work in. You also have a 25% sig so you should be able to reach +75%, relative to combat speed.

Off course, out of combat movement speed is capped at normal + 33% (which is 2x combat)

You absolutely do not get the 50% bonus to speed, either in or out of combat – I’ve tested both situations using SoS and swiftness. You get 33% in stealth (which is what Fleet shadow did Pre-patch), which just doesn’t cut it anymore with the new 25% speed signets.

Tulisin.6945:

Clovis.7386:

Since the passive healing was raised and the active healing was lowered, in most scenarios, it makes more sense to keep attacking and apply pressure than wait to activate the heal leaving the active part of the skill useless.

I don’t see anything wrong with this. SoM supports a more offensive play style where the best option to heal yourself is to continue being aggressive. The active is not useless because of its use in situations where you cannot be aggressive (running away, or no available targets), and because of its incredibly short traited cooldown allowing you to activate “on heal” synergies from traits/runes.

The three thief heals are very well balanced so that each is situationally amazing, the role you’re finding SoM weak at is well-filled by the other two heals.

Its a bit hard to judge SoM due to how broken/poorly designed some of our weapon sets are. Our 2 highest hit volume abilities (Unload, Pistol whip) have issues (P/P is underpowered and poorly designed, PW is a good way to spend 5 init, stand in place, and do less DPS than autoattack). If it weren’t for Caltrops and P/D “stealth at every opportunity for sneak attack” builds, SoM would be completely useless, and even in those builds its very easily countered (Don’t stand in caltrops).

I also have a feeling even with a well designed P/P or Pistol Whip, the ability would be subpar. 1.25 seconds for a heal that does less than either of our heals, doesn’t have a secondary component (Stealth, dodge) and doesn’t remove conditions is unadulterated crap. The heal on hit isn’t great either, and outside caltrops and choking gas, we don’t currently have effective skills with high hit volume. I’d suggest upping the heal on hit, but that’s a playtesting issue (and since Anet can’t correctly implement trait changes at patch time, I don’t think they have time for playtesting).

The movement speed cap is supposed to be 33%. I can only assume that restriction should be ignored for thieves in stealth running Fleet Shadow (since, you know, its supposed to give 50%). Anet screwed something up, so while everyone else’s 25% movement speed signet works fine, we’re in the lurch until they decide to actually implement the changes from a patch over 2 weeks ago.

Edit: Just to clarify, you do get 33% movement speed while in stealth (which is what the pre-patch fleet shadow did), it just isn’t worth much with many players running around with 25% movement speed – a single dodge roll is enough to keep them out of melee range until stealth fades in the overwhelming majority of situations.

So as you might imagine, skilled players don’t tend to stand around when a thief stealths near them in PvP. They run around with their new 25% movement signets. The ones that work correctly. And I’m stuck chasing them at 33% speed instead of 50%, which doesn’t tend to work with my 3-4s stealth. Its fairly obvious fleet shadow was changed to take into account how many classes now have access to 25% movement speed (Which again, work). When are we going to get our proper 50% movement in stealth? It’s been over 2 weeks since patch.

Blacksarevok.8104:

evilapprentice.6379:

Blacksarevok.8104:

Pistol Whip – Remove the daze + evade, increase the damage by 20%.

We already have an interrupt ability (Head Shot), and we already have a survivability tool (Black Powder). Seems redundant for PW to have a daze and evade. S/P needs a damage dump, and that is what Pistol Whip needs to be.

We’d get eaten alive due to the root and channel- PW would be a clarion call to any burst setup to maul us, because we’d be sitting ducks without the evasion. There’s literally nothing worse a thief can do then broadcast to the enemy team “Ima just stand here for a second, totally visible”. Without the stun we also wouldn’t have any way to prevent an opponent from just walking out of the swings (like they already do when the stun wears off, but the stun at least forces them to take a few of the swings)

100b has the same issues, the difference being that 100b can actually deliver relevant damage when used tactically, PW cannot. Removing the stun is not an issue because you should not be using PW without Haste anyway, it does less/the same damage than auto-attack while rooting you in place. PW + Haste + SoM is the only possible use I can think of for PW in PVP, of which the stun + evade are irrelevant due to how fast the attack is performed (or at most, near-irrelevant). By buffing the damage and removing the stun/evade, you are actually opening it up to be used in more situations other than being coupled with haste + SoM.

Warriors have ~8k more health to soak up damage, stronger heal options (understandably for their larger base health pool), and options for immune skills and blocks. Buffing the damage (and delivering it faster by dropping the stun swing) will turn it into a HB’s copy – Scorpion wire, haste, PW spam til dead. I 100% agree that PW needs something to be effective, but I dont think this is it.

Klassic.8057:

Forgot to add that this is an awesome idea, but the major problem now is how can Anet attract more players into Structured PVP? Will a potential buyer look at GW2 and think “Oh em gee, it has a ranking system, I must buy” — Probably not.

To get anywhere near E-sports the game must have a big kitten population, some (not all) competitive players do not see the incentive to commit to a game when what it seems is to be a dying MMO. I THINK the only solution now is to go F2P, as horrible as that sounds (BRs inc), I don’t see any other way for the population to grow atm. Pardon my lack of hope for this game but don’t get me wrong I love gw2 and would love to see it become successful.

But it should be quick and easy to implement – there’s no need for new complicated measures, just have everyone progress to the next map, with matchups based on whether they won or lost. It should take less than a week to design, test, and implement this change, and it would do wonders as a holdover for bigger changes.

HappinessFactory.4910:

Okay I’ve been doing some more thinking about paid tournaments, and i need a few questions answered, and these questions will be directed towards sataar and anyone else who wants paids to pop more.

1. What is the goal behind these changes? If the plan is to make paids pop almost as often as frees through ticket refunds then what would be the difference?

2. I like your previous idea of an advanced option acting as a medium between paids and frees. But wouldn’t a well thought out matchmaking system that seperates people according to their skill levels do this better?

I think the ultimate goal for all of us who wants arena net to succeed is having Guild Wars 2 become popular, fun and hopefully an e-sport. While almost any change at this point would be beneficial, we have to look at cost and I’m not sure this sort of change would be in everyone’s best interests in light of other changes.

Allow me to elaborate, potentially the reason why paids are not popping very often is that there arn’t enough players willing or able enough to sustain paids. Now what seems to be most people’s solution to this problem is offering a ticket refund similar to what arena net already had in place before the latest reward change. But that system didn’t help queues…

The reason why I think it didn’t help queues is because it did nothing to support the overall population. This lead me to thinking that maybe the best way to get people into paids is have more people doing free tournaments. Free tournaments, are reasonably appealing to everyone except for those who get bored from stomping noobs, and noobs who get bored from getting stomped.

This train of thought has lead me to believe that a matchmaking system in frees which has a population to sustain it, might coerce newer players into sPvP. More players > more tickets > more paids.

This is based on a lot of assumptions and I’d like to hear everyone’s thoughts on it!

A rank based matchmaking system will take time and resources (Obviously, seeing as we still don’t have one). In the interim, matching the losing teams up against eachother is a psuedo-matchmaking system that will make everyone happier – In conjunction with more teams playing, its more opportunities to practice with your team, to see what work and what doesn’t, and you’re not always playing experienced teams that just stomp you – those guys are winning first second and third places, while your team gets to keep playing at least against teams hopefully more your skill level. It also gives the losing teams at least something to try for (I’d enjoy it more if I came in 7th place by virtue of winning a game, rather than the current system).

Free tournaments at the moment are a bit poor – you very rarely find an “average” team – it’s generally pugs who get stomped, or teams good enough to play paids stomping you. This obviously isn’t always the case, but Sataar’s suggestion goes a long way towards making tPvP fun IMO.

There’s also the issue of waiting – I’d like to be able to queue for a paid tourney, and be confident that its going to pop in 15 minutes or less (lets assume prime time here) – I’ve got a job,responsibilities and a wife, I can’t queue up for a paid tourney and wait 1-2 hours for it to pop. I’ve got over 100 tourney tickets sitting around – the last thing I want to do is spend 5 of them, wait an hour and 20 minutes, then play a 500-100 blowout game for 5 minutes against an experienced team so I can get out and do it all over again.

If we adopted Sataars suggestion, even if that team annihilated us the first round, there’s a chance that the second and third rounds could go differently (and at least I’m getting 3 games for my hour and 15 minute wait).

I too enjoy PvP.

I think the current barrier to fun is the tourney system – Free tourneys can be a crapshoot (you fight a pug and stomp them, which isn’t very fun, or you come up against a Paid team practicing/farming tickets and get stomped…also not fun). Paid tourneys revolve around getting stomped by teams who have been doing it for a while, which leaves a sour taste in players mouths after they’ve been waiting 45m – 2h for a 5 minute blowout game where they feel helpless and severely outplayed.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/would-you-play-paids-more-if/first#post1098041

Anyone who hasn’t read that post needs to do so, and comment on it until a Dev posts. It would almost entirely fix the current issues – more practice for teams (with the losing teams getting matched up against each other, allowing for a hopefully smoother learning curve for new teams), more games per queue, and shorter queues. There, tPvP has been fixed for the short term.

Blacksarevok.8104:

Pistol Whip – Remove the daze + evade, increase the damage by 20%.

We already have an interrupt ability (Head Shot), and we already have a survivability tool (Black Powder). Seems redundant for PW to have a daze and evade. S/P needs a damage dump, and that is what Pistol Whip needs to be.

We’d get eaten alive due to the root and channel- PW would be a clarion call to any burst setup to maul us, because we’d be sitting ducks without the evasion. There’s literally nothing worse a thief can do then broadcast to the enemy team “Ima just stand here for a second, totally visible”. Without the stun we also wouldn’t have any way to prevent an opponent from just walking out of the swings (like they already do when the stun wears off, but the stun at least forces them to take a few of the swings)

Bump. Keep this on the top of the forum until we get a response from a developer – I’d be much less hesitant to pay 5 tickets for a paid tourney if I knew my team was going to get 3 games to practice, and we didn’t have to wait 2 hours for 1 game. This would literally reinvigorate my interest in this game, and I imagine that it would do the same for many other players.

nerva.7940:

anyone arguing for this prof is maining a thief and will pretty much be dismissed. youre also missing the main point: most survivability, most burst, most mobility. period. no trade-offs. this is simply not allowed in any balanced pvp game. letting this crap go on for 4 months is absolutely nuts. my buddy stopped playing his thief because he was sick and tired of owning people in wvw with a few button spams.

Your bias has blinded you, and leads to hilarious inaccurate statements such as these.

Most survivability – ……..Do you play this game? Thief has the most survivability? There’s a character cap on posts, so I can’t detail exactly whats wrong with this statement (Everything), so let me sum it up – No protection, no stability, no aegis, poor access to regen, no immune skills, no block skills, No weaponset based heal skills, lowest base HP bracket, medium armor. But we’re the most survivable.

Most mobility – Most would argue that Ele’s are currently the king of mobility. Thief mobility is good no doubt (for reasons why, see above), but ele’s are better.

Most Burst – well, we have to be the best at something, and it certainly isn’t survivability, sustained DPS, Bunkering, mobility, CC, support, or healing, so I think this ones OK. Also helps that the Dev’s description of a thief is “best burst, but squishy”, which is a fairly accurate statement.

WvW != sPvP.
WvW != sPvP. Come to understand that – One is a competitive PvP environment, the other is a PvE environment where you can engage other players.

Sprawl.3891:

evilapprentice.6379:

Sprawl.3891:

evilapprentice.6379:

BlueprintLFE.2358:

Wizzy.7910:

@Fellknight.4820
Ever heard about using dodge/block? Thief can’t use CnD when he doesn’t land the hit which then leaves him stuck with usually 2 stealths depeding on build. Other one is area stealth where you can just go hitting the air, push him out of the area, w/e. Also while thief isn’t in stealth u can stun, immobilize and in general just try deal massive dmg. Thieves are very fragile and die easily when not in stealth. tho still enemies with zero/low condition removal will die during those 2 non CnD stealths when thiefs is using condition build but u just can’t always win

I a perfect vacuum, yes to can dodge every cloak and dagger, with 2 dodges, and a battle going on you are just not going to be able to dodge every c&d. I hate when people come with these responses like everything is in a vacuum.

Learn to use your dodges wisely. What else is a P/D thief throwing at you worth dodging? Eating the cripple from a Dancing Dagger might suck sometimes, but dodging CnD costs a thief 6 init, and denies them sneak attack, which accounts for most of their damage. There’s literally no other ability worth dodging (unless you eat the CnD and try to dodge Sneak attack, which is trickier and less effective)

Same goes for D/D thief – if you’re dodging anything that isn’t CnD or HS while you’re at less than 50% (really less than 25%, but that might be a little risky for some players), you’re just wasting dodges.

When it comes down to it, the basis of this game is resource management. Every time you dodge HS at more than 50% health, or dodge a dancing dagger in most situations, that’s you yielding ground to the thief – you’ve wasted a highly valued resource on a junk attack.

they have more stealth than just cnd

On longer CD utility skills, yes – you have utility skills too.

my point was simply dodging a cnd or 2 does not auto win. they have easy ways to regain init and the way cnd can be combod with gap closers makes it near impossible to dodge sometimes.

My point wasn’t that dodging = auto-win. My point was saving dodges for CnD very severely cripples A P/D thief, because they rely on stealth for nearly everything.
If a thief blew Steal or Inf Sig in addition to 6 Init for CnD, well, they deserve it don’t they. That’s a 30-45s CD AND 6 init for 1 stealth. A P/D thief is going to need alot more than 1 stealth to threaten any competent player.

If you’d like to claim that thieves have an easy way to regain init, I can counter that any class has options to increase their endurance regen. There’s also block, immune, evade, and blind as options. I’m not claiming you can avoid every single CnD, but if you avoid even half of them (which is not only doable, but should be easy) you severely neuter a P/D thief.

Sprawl.3891:

evilapprentice.6379:

BlueprintLFE.2358:

Wizzy.7910:

@Fellknight.4820
Ever heard about using dodge/block? Thief can’t use CnD when he doesn’t land the hit which then leaves him stuck with usually 2 stealths depeding on build. Other one is area stealth where you can just go hitting the air, push him out of the area, w/e. Also while thief isn’t in stealth u can stun, immobilize and in general just try deal massive dmg. Thieves are very fragile and die easily when not in stealth. tho still enemies with zero/low condition removal will die during those 2 non CnD stealths when thiefs is using condition build but u just can’t always win

I a perfect vacuum, yes to can dodge every cloak and dagger, with 2 dodges, and a battle going on you are just not going to be able to dodge every c&d. I hate when people come with these responses like everything is in a vacuum.

Learn to use your dodges wisely. What else is a P/D thief throwing at you worth dodging? Eating the cripple from a Dancing Dagger might suck sometimes, but dodging CnD costs a thief 6 init, and denies them sneak attack, which accounts for most of their damage. There’s literally no other ability worth dodging (unless you eat the CnD and try to dodge Sneak attack, which is trickier and less effective)

Same goes for D/D thief – if you’re dodging anything that isn’t CnD or HS while you’re at less than 50% (really less than 25%, but that might be a little risky for some players), you’re just wasting dodges.

When it comes down to it, the basis of this game is resource management. Every time you dodge HS at more than 50% health, or dodge a dancing dagger in most situations, that’s you yielding ground to the thief – you’ve wasted a highly valued resource on a junk attack.

they have more stealth than just cnd

On longer CD utility skills, yes – you have utility skills too.

BlueprintLFE.2358:

evilapprentice.6379:

BlueprintLFE.2358:

Wizzy.7910:

@Fellknight.4820
Ever heard about using dodge/block? Thief can’t use CnD when he doesn’t land the hit which then leaves him stuck with usually 2 stealths depeding on build. Other one is area stealth where you can just go hitting the air, push him out of the area, w/e. Also while thief isn’t in stealth u can stun, immobilize and in general just try deal massive dmg. Thieves are very fragile and die easily when not in stealth. tho still enemies with zero/low condition removal will die during those 2 non CnD stealths when thiefs is using condition build but u just can’t always win

I a perfect vacuum, yes to can dodge every cloak and dagger, with 2 dodges, and a battle going on you are just not going to be able to dodge every c&d. I hate when people come with these responses like everything is in a vacuum.

Learn to use your dodges wisely. What else is a P/D thief throwing at you worth dodging? Eating the cripple from a Dancing Dagger might suck sometimes, but dodging CnD costs a thief 6 init, and denies them sneak attack, which accounts for most of their damage. There’s literally no other ability worth dodging (unless you eat the CnD and try to dodge Sneak attack, which is trickier and less effective)

Same goes for D/D thief – if you’re dodging anything that isn’t CnD or HS while you’re at less than 50% (really less than 25%, but that might be a little risky for some players), you’re just wasting dodges.

When it comes down to it, the basis of this game is resource management. Every time you dodge HS at more than 50% health, or dodge a dancing dagger in most situations, that’s you yielding ground to the thief – you’ve wasted a highly valued resource on a junk attack.

Mate thank you for the advice, and I have no problem working on my game to always improve, but I play a thief, and if you don’t think it is a little ridiculous right now with the 2-3 restealth (2 because of culling) then I’m sorry, but it is. I play sword and dagger thief, and I played condition thief for a long time, but it wasn’t even fun, taking on teams (in spvp tpvp is different) just because no one couldn’t target me. You have to dodge at least once to get out of the middle of the loltrops, otherwise you are eating a huge cripple and some good quick stacks of bleed, coupled with a few quick DB (with 15 sec bleed) or a sneak attack, and you are in real trouble real quick.

Look at wild bills video, if you seriously think all of those opponents he has faced, all of them, that not 1 of them is better than him Or even a one of them being a decent player that would have a good 1v1 shot at him if he wasn’t stealthing so often?? Sure he plays well, but to think that not 1 player in All of he WVW vids he has made, is not of equal skill is a little crazy.

I know WvW is different than SPVP, but the same concept applies here with frequent stealthing. Like I said I play a thief, lengthen the reveal timer, and buff us somewhere else, in survivability, or utility, a 5 second reveal timer is not going to be the end of the world for thieves.

Culling isn’t really an issue in sPvP (WvW is PvE in my mind – yes culling needs to be fixed, but it doesn’t enter into a balance discussion about thieves). I can’t talk about what needs to be balanced in WvW because I don’t play it, this is a sPvP discussion.

I’ve spoken about the Wild Bill videos before, there are ALOT of problems with them. He’s generally facing inexperienced players and its WvW (which is NOT PvP). I rolled P/D conditions way back when thieves universally thought Pistol MH was useless (not trying to toot my own horn, but it gives me insight into the videos). I remember what it was like to CnD a target and watch them reflexively dodge roll even though I had been shooting them with a pistol for 15s, because Backstab was the only thing that ever followed up CnD. I fought people who literally had no idea what was going on – I’d sneak attack them, shoot them while they approached (not bother to keep the gap like any other ranged class would), CnD, then repeat. It was like harvesting wheat, people didn’t understand what I was doing, and I was acing 3-4 on 1’s CONSTANTLY. That’s exactly how Wild Bill’s video’s play out – destroying inexperienced players who have no idea what he’s going to do next because they don’t have the slightest clue how the spec works. He’s very obviously a good player, which compounds the issue because he knows exactly what to expect from his targets while they have little idea what he’ll be doing next. Those days are long, long gone in sPvP; players know how the spec works now, and what to watch out for. It’s still a playable spec, and can be strong, but it’s no longer the “LOL, watch me kill 2-3 people at a time and walk out unscathed” build it was when it first surfaced.

Nightarch.2943:

Tyr.6097:

Introducing a sword offhand.

/Signed

As for S/P, S/D: rework pistol whip to be exactly the same as Blurred Frenzy, instant and convenient, flanking strike should be exactly the same as serpent’s strike, just with an off hand poke and without the snake.

Pistol whip will never be Blurred Frenzy thanks to the initiative mechanic, and that’s fine; there’s no reason the evade shouldn’t start directly after the stun connects however. Flanking strikes pathing problems should have been fixed months ago, seeing as rangers have had a working version of it for at least that long. The other concerns with it (low damage, evasion gone well before second swing connects, etc) still need to be looked into.

BlueprintLFE.2358:

Wizzy.7910:

@Fellknight.4820
Ever heard about using dodge/block? Thief can’t use CnD when he doesn’t land the hit which then leaves him stuck with usually 2 stealths depeding on build. Other one is area stealth where you can just go hitting the air, push him out of the area, w/e. Also while thief isn’t in stealth u can stun, immobilize and in general just try deal massive dmg. Thieves are very fragile and die easily when not in stealth. tho still enemies with zero/low condition removal will die during those 2 non CnD stealths when thiefs is using condition build but u just can’t always win

I a perfect vacuum, yes to can dodge every cloak and dagger, with 2 dodges, and a battle going on you are just not going to be able to dodge every c&d. I hate when people come with these responses like everything is in a vacuum.

Learn to use your dodges wisely. What else is a P/D thief throwing at you worth dodging? Eating the cripple from a Dancing Dagger might suck sometimes, but dodging CnD costs a thief 6 init, and denies them sneak attack, which accounts for most of their damage. There’s literally no other ability worth dodging (unless you eat the CnD and try to dodge Sneak attack, which is trickier and less effective)

Same goes for D/D thief – if you’re dodging anything that isn’t CnD or HS while you’re at less than 50% (really less than 25%, but that might be a little risky for some players), you’re just wasting dodges.

When it comes down to it, the basis of this game is resource management. Every time you dodge HS at more than 50% health, or dodge a dancing dagger in most situations, that’s you yielding ground to the thief – you’ve wasted a highly valued resource on a junk attack.