Guild Wars 2

Einlanzer.1627:

kitten .9460:

Einlanzer.1627:

No thank you.

Frankly, making DB a power skill wouldn’t make sense, since D/D is already fully functional as a power set and the only other melee option is power-only.

It doesn’t need to be changed, except for maybe tuning the evade a bit. It functions very effectively as a bleed stacker and allows D/D to have a little versatility. It’s also very flavorful. Anyone who thinks it’s weak or useless doesn’t know what they’re talking about and is just stuck in myopic perpetual backstab mode.

DB is a terrible skill I’ve mained thief since day 1… it is just bad, glad you can find some joy in 3 spamming on immobile AI though.

Try using it against another player in yolo or team queue or even a dungeon and watch as the group laughs at you and expect a swift kick.

Doesn’t make sense to have it condi based on an obvious power set.

Except it isn’t. Layering it on top of Caltrops is the most effective bleed stacking in the game, hands down.

For things too stupid to walk out of the caltrop AoE and incapable of cleanses, IE things that nearly any spec would work on. Just because something works on dumbkitten AI and kittenty players does not make it viable or well designed. If you still want to mindlessly spam 3 in PvE, you can always roll S/P.

And yes, it does. It’s called versatility. Stop being myopic.

No, it’s called poor design – the set is too disjointed. For any specific weapon skill, you’re only ever using one set of DPS stats – every time you DB, every point you have in power, precision and ferocity is wasted. Every time you use any other skill in the set, your condition damage is absolutely worthless. This is a great example of poor design.

Don’t forget to ditch the positional requirement as well!

Note: I don’t think rangers are OP. I do think it’s logicially inconsistent for ANet to nerf thieves damage/spike damage/survivability
over
and over
and over
and over
and over
and over
and over
and over
and over again for the sake of balance, then give similar damage capabilities and risk mitigation/survivability to other classes for some reason.

Frenk.5917:

• Thief – All venom abilities had their cooldown reduced from kitten to 40s. -> Anet trolling venom thieves since 2012

Man, this is hilarious.

Anet just does not care that their entire thought process on venom’s is flawed from the get-go. They’re just going to keep wasting time and resources on changes that don’t actually fix venoms while simultaneously ignoring other huge issues with the class. It’d be funny if it wasn’t so disappointing.

Einlanzer.1627:

evilapprentice.6379:

Gudy.3607:

Einlanzer.1627:

No thank you.
<snip>
It doesn’t need to be changed, except for maybe tuning the evade a bit.

Indeed. Make the evade more responsive (say, directly at the start of the animation) and/or slightly longer (1/2 second). Done.

Except it’s still a kittenty condition damage based move in a power/crit damage based set.

D/D is clearly not a hybrid set – it has exactly 1 skill that can do damage with conditions (no, poison on lotus strike is not a viable damage source for condition builds). That is not a hybrid set.

It doesn’t matter if you like using D/D as a condition set – your enjoyment does not negate the fact that it’s awful design. Spamming a single skill to do all your damage is indefensible as a well designed set.

D/D is inferior to D/P for 2 primary reasons. Sub-par gap closing, and sub-par defenses. A slightly better evade helps with the sub-par defenses, but it’s still inferior to D/P in gap-closing ability, and the skill still does kitten damage in any spec that makes use of the other 4 skills in D/D’s set.

Sorry, you’re wrong.

Death Blossom is one of the most effective bleed stackers in the game, and the most effective bleed stacker in the Thief’s kitten nal, period. This alone makes D/D a hybrid set (the Poison is just icing on the cake), which is how it should stay, especially considering D/D is already more than fine for Power AND the only other melee option Thieves have is Power-only.

No. Just…No. First of all, there’s absolutely no debate as to whether or not D/D is underpowered – you don’t see it in TPvP for a reason.

While “Hybrid set” isn’t strictly defined, you’d imagine it’d be a set where your abilities allow for both your Power AND your condition damage stats to contribute to your overall damage roughly equally.

D/D has 6 skills (out of eight) that gain absolutely nothing from condition damage. Your condition damage could be 100,000 – 6 of your 8 skills do not care. Another 1 of the 7 technically gains some damage, but nothing significant (Poison is a debuff, not a viable damaging condition for killing a target). So 7 our of 8 of your skills (87.5%) do not gain anything appreciable from condition damage. If you want to do condition damage, you can’t choose the skill that best fits the situation, because only 1 skill you have can do condition damage. This is not well designed or fun to play – D/D is not a functional Hybrid set. All this is of course ignoring the fact that all of your condition damage is based on 1 condition with a poor ability to generate cover conditions, meaning the damage is easily cleansed in anything other than PvE.

I don’t care if this set “works” as a “hybrid set” in PvE – you can make anything work in PvE, it’s all scripted content.

I Honestly don’t care if D/D is made a power set, a real hybrid set, or a condi set – I just want it do be well designed.

Want to see what D/D would look like if it was actually a hybrid set?

Double strike – reduce damage scaling, add a 2-3s Bleed to each swing.
Front stab (backstab from the front) – reduce damage scaling alot, add damaging conditions to compensate
DB – lower bleed duration some, buff direct damage some
Dancing Dagger – add torment, increase Init cost by 1.

There. That’s what a hybrid set looks like (at least compared to what we currently have in D/D). You have multiple options for dealing condition damage – you have multiple options for dealing direct damage – the skills that don’t have a way to deal both types of damage (wild strike, HS, CnD) at least have other generally useful side effects (endurance gain, gap closing, stealth which opens up BS).

You will never convince me that D/D in its current state is a functional or well designed hybrid set, because it isn’t, just looking at the set makes it apparent.

Gudy.3607:

Faeyd.5094:

I’m not really going to comment on these ‘change DB to power’ threads any more

I can see why.

evilapprentice.6379:

87.5% of the weaponsets skills do direct damage. The 12.5% (1 single skill) that does condition damage does so with a single, easily cleansed condition.

With top quality arguments like this…

you mean the kind Anet uses? It was the reasoning behind Warrior’s rifle AA Change – they thought it was silly to have a condition based AA in the middle of set that was overwhelmingly power/crit based.

These arguments make me feel as though you lack the experience and knowledge required to make comments on a thread like this.

… and bullying attempts to exclude people from a public discussion like that, I think I’ll follow Faeyd’s lead and continue to simply enjoy my D/D hybrid.

Everyone is welcome in the discussion, but if you say things that don’t make sense, don’t expect them to count. There’s no harm in actually learning the basic mechanics of the game before commenting on their value. I’m glad you enjoy your D/D “Hybrid”, but it’d be better for everyone (you included) if the weaponset was well designed. By all means, turn it into an actual functional hybrid set – that’d be great!

Gudy.3607:

evilapprentice.6379:

Except it’s still a kittenty condition damage based move in a power/crit damage based set.

D/D is clearly not a hybrid set – it has exactly 1 skill that can do damage with conditions (no, poison on lotus strike is not a viable damage source for condition builds). That is not a hybrid set.

sigh There we go again. Yes, most of the D/D skills are direct damage. Death Blossom, though, provides some of the strongest bleed stacks in the game and an easy way to stack them so they do significant damage. I don’t think that this is an accident like some other skills in this game which provide bleeding as something of an
afterthought. Which, yes, makes D/D a hybrid set, whether you want it to or not.

87.5% of the weaponsets skills do direct damage. The 12.5% (1 single skill) that does condition damage does so with a single, easily cleansed condition. The set has poor options for generating cover conditions. If this is a hybrid set, it’s an awful one.

With the poison to reduce healing, the Heart Seeker as a (admittedly somewhat short-ranged) gap closer, Dancing Dagger helping both with getting close and getting away, and Cloak and Dagger for stealth access, that makes it a decent hybrid set, as far as these things go.

How exactly do any of these things make it a better hybrid set? Not a single thing you listed gets any sort of benefit from condition damage – they have almost to do with how effective a hybrid set D/D makes – if D/D had multiple ways to access damaging conditions, then these things might matter, but as it stands they don’t. These arguments make me feel as though you lack the experience and knowledge required to make comments on a thread like this.

Gudy.3607:

Einlanzer.1627:

No thank you.
<snip>
It doesn’t need to be changed, except for maybe tuning the evade a bit.

Indeed. Make the evade more responsive (say, directly at the start of the animation) and/or slightly longer (1/2 second). Done.

Except it’s still a kittenty condition damage based move in a power/crit damage based set.

D/D is clearly not a hybrid set – it has exactly 1 skill that can do damage with conditions (no, poison on lotus strike is not a viable damage source for condition builds). That is not a hybrid set.

It doesn’t matter if you like using D/D as a condition set – your enjoyment does not negate the fact that it’s awful design. Spamming a single skill to do all your damage is indefensible as a well designed set.

D/D is inferior to D/P for 2 primary reasons. Sub-par gap closing, and sub-par defenses. A slightly better evade helps with the sub-par defenses, but it’s still inferior to D/P in gap-closing ability, and the skill still does kitten damage in any spec that makes use of the other 4 skills in D/D’s set.

Shadow Mark
.25s Activation time
4 init
130 unit range
Strike a target for X Damage (Scaling similar to Shadow Shot) and daze them for .5s. Applies “Shadow Pursue” debuff

On strike, the skill rolls over to a second skill for 10s

Shadow Pursue
instant activation
900 unit range
1 init
Shadow step behind the target with “shadow pursue” debuff and remove 1 condition.
If the target is out of range, the skill fails (rather than just bringing you 900 units closer to your target)

It’s similar to IS/IR and Shadow shot without being an exact copy, gives thief some much needed condition mitigation, and allows for some for some forethought in tactics.

Hahahahaha, No. It’s only defense actually got nerfed.
P/P is still a joke set that’s mere existence is enough to call into question the games design principles.

hihey.1075:

Rusc.4978:

hihey.1075:

I wrote a long post but the forums got dizzy and lost it.
Won’t type again, but Trotsky, just know this: S/D is now a BALANCED set. Before, it was not.
You want damage? Go CS. You want survivability and sustain? Go Acro. You want utility? Go Trickery.
Your choice. You can’t have all 3 together anymore.

You couldn’t have all 3 of those lines together to begin with, since we only have 14 trait points.

Yes, but your initial burst with Steal+Larcenous Strike+1-2 auto+Double sigil procs could easily oneshot an enemy zerker player (4-5k LS, 3k double sigils, 4k autos, 2k steal).
Without LS, the only way you can get those numbers again is if you go into CS

Those must be silly WvW numbers (Where you will never find balance, because the game is balanced around 5v5 capture point), because they’re absolutely impossible in SPvP with a 2/0/0/6/6 setup. Even if your numbers were accurate (let me reiterate, they are not), you’re talking all crits, where your typical 2/0/0/6/6 builds has 35-48% crit (depending on utilities and runes); even with fury that’s nowhere near 100% crit. And just one final thing, LS + 2 auto swings (because if you’re claiming 1 autoattack hit for 4k you’re out of your mind) is far from a “One shot”, and you’d need to be fairly lucky to get both sigils to proc on 3 swings.

I don’t WvW, but I don’t really believe S/D was considered “OP” in WvW, especially considering how powerful SA and stealth are there.

S/D is a laughably UP set at this point, and the changes were unwarranted. Thieves are currently low man on the totem pole because Anet has no idea what it is they want thieves to do. They keep pushing out ridiculous nerfs while simultaneously ignoring Under performing weapon sets (P/P, D/D), tweaking awfully designed and implemented traits (AE, CI), and downright ignoring their past abortions (Hard to catch).

Evilek.5690:

Xae Isareth.1364:

Einlanzer.1627:

D/D works fine as a hybrid set, at least in PvE. It sacrifices some DPS for versatility. That’s how it’s supposed to work. The problem with DB is that it’s mostly useless in a Power set due to the crappy evade. Improve the evade, it stops being useless.

I frankly don’t want D/D to be pure power. It doesn’t need to be. It already works fine as a Power set and S/x is also a power set.

Except at this point, hybrid sets are pretty much proven to not work. 2 years post release with no changes to fundamental mechanics, no one even uses a hybrid set in solos. If there was some way to make it work, we would’ve made it work by now.

The way I see it, the problem isnt in the evade itself. .25 is stupidly low but it is manageable.

What’s not managable is the forced movement with an aftercast (essentially a self-CC) and that the evade happens in the middle of the cast as opposed to the start like every other evade skill in the game. It’s impossible to use it as an evade seriously unless you see a very slow attack coming a mile away.

Maybe L2P D/D hybrit build https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=liTwueajvMU , i use condy/power D/D +- 1.5 years and work all time.

I only watched the first 4 minutes (sorry, watching WvW combat is painful for me), but occasionally using HS as something other than a gap closer and the even more occasional backstab does not a hybrid make. 80% of your initiative was dedicated to Death blossom, which you had to spam because it’s your only damaging condition move. This video is a perfect example of exactly how poor a “hybrid set” D/D makes. The fact that you believed it was a great example of the exact opposite is worrying.

TrOtskY.5927:

evilapprentice.6379:

TrOtskY.5927:

Since S/D is dead now, I think we can all agree that ANet totally dropped the ball on this one. I personally haven’t even bothered playing thief since my intial post-patch playtesting, which is really sad because I love the mechanics of the class.

I think FS>LS needs to reverted fast or we are going to see nobody playing this build whatsoever soon. I am even seeing many thiefs running P/X builds in pvp at the moment, which is just worse than useless. There is no point in having mobility in shortbow if it means you are going to a point and fighting an enemy whilst strafing around, kiting and eventually dying whilst doing nothing productive. In short, pistol builds are really weak in PvP, and the patch did nothing to fix that.

The reason S/D was really a little teeny bit too powerful was clearly the access to evade. It was too kitten high. Once a S/D thief learned the basic attack/dodging rotation, they were very very difficult to even land hits on as a melee class. I believe this comes down to arguably the single most powerful master trait in the game.

Feline Grace

What on earth is with this trait? I say this as a thief player remember…. It’s cheap, requiring minimal trait invesment whist feeling like a GM trait – and gives a HUGE buff to the amount of damage mitigation a thief is capable of, essentially giving a thief a permanent +30% endurance regeneration that STACKS on top of vigor. Really? How can this possibly have been overlooked with regards to balancing? Outside of S/D, acrobatics are not taken very often, so it does not really harm different builds to nerf this trait. Alongside this, I don’t believe the nerf would have to be that much to have enough of an impact on how much the thief evades.

Keep in mind I am saying this as if we were still playing pre-patch and S/D was still the best PvP build going.

A slight nerf to endurance regen, say 10% rather than 15%, would have been probably significant enough to ever so slightly rein the acrobatics line in. Does anybody feel else feel that this would have been FAR FAR preferable to the horrendous FS>LS nerf?

I really just hope that Anet will revert this sooner rather than later (it will happen at some point, S/D is dying, and dying fast) so that they can get back to fixing the problems with the class.

Oh and while they are at it can they fix our teleports plz :’)

How does a thief with almost no reason to stealth (IE, an S/D thief) stay alive without evading?

Beside that point, Anet apparently has no issue with the amount of evades S/D thieves get – this change made them more spammable. What it did was kill damage by allowing other players to avoid both FS and LS by just avoiding FS.

This is my entire point and the entire point of the thread, it just seems to have gone completely over your head. If you think the access to ridiculous numbers of evasion frames was in no way a bit OP, then I guess you probably didn’t learn the rotations properly that quite literally let u perma evade while dishing damage. Did I say remove Feline Grace? No.

Literally Perma evade, really? If you honestly think S/D prior to this patch could “perma evade”, you’re not qualified to be talking about it, because you’re spreading falsehoods.

You could evade a whole hell of a alot if you were intent on being nigh-useless, but there wasn’t much gain in that. Go try double S/D with Quick pockets and energy runes – you’ll be dancing all around the battlefield…and do the kind of damage that regen could negate.

I never had a problem facing other S/D evade heavy thieves when I was playing. Perhaps it’s because I played the class and knew when my target was vulnerable. I guess a little bit of effort goes along way. It’s the same reason I don’t kitten about classes I don’t understand – I could just go roll one, try the spec, and see it’s vulnerable points, and if I don’t that’s on me.

If you want thieves to have even slightly less dodges, they’re going to need some access to the sustain tools other classes get – protection, better regen uptime on practically designed skills (lawl Pain Response), stability that can actually be used (lawl Assassin’s Equilibrium), maybe a block or something like that, and while I’m at it maybe Anet could stop kittening with our blinds (though thats a different weaponset) because as it stands a thief needs to avoid the majority of another players attacks (including their AA) to survive long enough to win a fight as S/D.

TrOtskY.5927:

Woaden.9425:

evilapprentice.6379:

What it did was kill [S/D] damage

I agree. S/D damage was already iffy damage wise, not because the raw numbers aren’t there, but because of the slow attacks. That is fine for sustain and general pressure, though I land my third AA much less vs practiced players, but it doesnt allow for any spike, and without any spike, you can’t get over the top of many enemies HP before they react or have time to heal. This leads to long protracted fights.

We found ways to spike with different combos, like “preloading LS”, but otherwise, all our spike options (mug, sigs, i guess.. haste?) were also available to other weapon sets which did it better, so what was the point?

Sword makes a good control set, but since it’s not a damaging condi set, it really doesn’t work well (at least as S/D, maybe it does as S/P with poisons would) in a condi/power build – but again, dagger MH would do better, pistol MH even better.

So what is it’s place? Evasion troll? Clutch interrupts? I love both of those things, but occasionally I’d like to down someone.

To answer OP:

How would I have fixed S/D? I’d leave trait-ed evades alone. Messing with traits has collateral damage for other weaponsets/builds. To fix S/D, I would increase ini cost of FS, as they did, but also increase it’s damage. I would reduce the damage of LS significantly, and make it more of a utility skill, so restore it to 2 boonrips, for instance, or maybe apply a non-damaging condition, or maybe even gasp clear a condi so we don’t have to keep going in to SA!

Edit: Or, screw it — I’d increase Ini on FS, increase damage on FS, and I’d remove attack damage from LS, and rename it from LS to SP (Soul Parry). As is now the case, SP would need you to successfully land a FS, if FS is blocked it would not allow SP.

SP would life leach a small amount and transfer 1 condi from myself, to the opponent. Now with Infil Strike and SP, this would be our anti condi, non-stealth set.

Well it’s interesting, I can’t see how S/D would work without the LS damage spike tho.(which isn’t actually THAT high but oh well)

Pretty much all the kills on thief in 1v1 relies on applying so much consistent, unavoidable pressure that gets your oppoent in a tizz, making them auto attack whiff at nothing but air and getting them to waste weapon skills and utilities in a “panic” of sorts.

S/D functions largely as before with the exception of facing classes that have access to block, which is like half the classes in the game. Medi Guard? Forget it, you have to play absolutely flawlessly just for a VERY slim chance at winning.
Engi? It was bad before, now…..ermagerd.
Bunk Guard? Was nigh on impossible before, and now it’s even worse.
Warrior? Not so bad, the 4s block is pretty annoying. The problem was the sheer amount of time it took to kill a decent soldier warrior before, which was also made ridiculously difficult by their ability to camp in preloaded combustive shot fields. Of course with this nerf, they are not so dangerous, but with OUR nerf coming in conjunction, its just resulted in a real trade off that hasn’t particularly favoured either class.

I disagree on S/D playing “largely as it did before”. Against players who don’t know what they’re up against, maybe. Against anyone who knows how S/D works? FS is a big, flashing sign that says “make me miss and you win the fight”. It’s a great way to watch a thief waste 4 init while avoiding both FS and LS with 1 evade/block/blind/etc.

Sure, you could use IS to increase the likelihood that FS hits, but now we’re talking spending 7 init just to have the possibility of spending an Init on LS, and you’re using your reactive dodge manuever on a target that (usually) can’t fight back JUST to get access to LS. Let’s also note that you’d usually use IS to land some AA to keep the pressure up while preserving init, so now the entire set is just a Init hog (since both the 2 and 3 skills have seen an init increase over various patches).

So basically, a weaponset that had “too many evades” according to forum QQ (hint, evades are the only defensive tool S/D thieves have) had it’s pool of evades in the long run very slightly reduced in number while also allowing them to be spammed further (which was a big part of the “too many evades” complaint), and had it’s damage gutted. S/D is now a glassy spec that can’t do any damage against competent players – it’s akin to twirling around in a tutu and tickling people with a large feather.

TrOtskY.5927:

Since S/D is dead now, I think we can all agree that ANet totally dropped the ball on this one. I personally haven’t even bothered playing thief since my intial post-patch playtesting, which is really sad because I love the mechanics of the class.

I think FS>LS needs to reverted fast or we are going to see nobody playing this build whatsoever soon. I am even seeing many thiefs running P/X builds in pvp at the moment, which is just worse than useless. There is no point in having mobility in shortbow if it means you are going to a point and fighting an enemy whilst strafing around, kiting and eventually dying whilst doing nothing productive. In short, pistol builds are really weak in PvP, and the patch did nothing to fix that.

The reason S/D was really a little teeny bit too powerful was clearly the access to evade. It was too kitten high. Once a S/D thief learned the basic attack/dodging rotation, they were very very difficult to even land hits on as a melee class. I believe this comes down to arguably the single most powerful master trait in the game.

Feline Grace

What on earth is with this trait? I say this as a thief player remember…. It’s cheap, requiring minimal trait invesment whist feeling like a GM trait – and gives a HUGE buff to the amount of damage mitigation a thief is capable of, essentially giving a thief a permanent +30% endurance regeneration that STACKS on top of vigor. Really? How can this possibly have been overlooked with regards to balancing? Outside of S/D, acrobatics are not taken very often, so it does not really harm different builds to nerf this trait. Alongside this, I don’t believe the nerf would have to be that much to have enough of an impact on how much the thief evades.

Keep in mind I am saying this as if we were still playing pre-patch and S/D was still the best PvP build going.

A slight nerf to endurance regen, say 10% rather than 15%, would have been probably significant enough to ever so slightly rein the acrobatics line in. Does anybody feel else feel that this would have been FAR FAR preferable to the horrendous FS>LS nerf?

I really just hope that Anet will revert this sooner rather than later (it will happen at some point, S/D is dying, and dying fast) so that they can get back to fixing the problems with the class.

Oh and while they are at it can they fix our teleports plz :’)

How does a thief with almost no reason to stealth (IE, an S/D thief) stay alive without evading?

Beside that point, Anet apparently has no issue with the amount of evades S/D thieves get – this change made them more spammable. What it did was kill damage by allowing other players to avoid both FS and LS by just avoiding FS.

Simon.3794:

evilapprentice.6379:

tichorum.2415:

Harbinger.8637:

tichorum.2415:

All invulnerability classified skills do not capture points. An invluln is taking no physical or condition damage with one ability. Name one that captures a point.

inb4 endure pain and zerker stance!

they pop both are once then that is a good thing for the enemy.

Yes, I commonly rejoice when my target becomes completely immune to all types of damage.

you should, because he just wasted all his CD for nothing, and will die so easily facing any burst or focus fire, a warrior who manages use CDs and use each stances accordingly to situations last longer.

For nothing, you say?

What if he bought himself enough time for a roamer to get to the point? Or bought enough time for skills he needed to come off CD? Or stopped the point from flipping long enough to win the game? Or forced multiple players to wait out the invulnerability because he was tanky enough to take 2 players to down in a reasonable timeframe? Or waited out a buff/timed skill on another player? I could keep going if I couldn’t provide enough scenarios just off the top of my head.

You are aware this post in the SPvP forums, correct? We are talking about capture point scenarios. To just assume that being completely invulnerable for any period of time while still contesting points is worthless, and is in fact some sort of detriment to a player (“All that time he spent invincible was a bad thing!” lawl) is ludicrous.

This isn’t a game you win by killing other players alone. That is just a portion of it. Being invincible to any primary source of damage (Direct damage OR Conditions) and holding down a point is a silly, and should be fixed.

CobOfCorn.6352:

I think the problem with thieves after patch is now every other class can do what thief can do, but better. Elementalists have high mobility, and can spike just as fast as a thief can (faster most of the time) and have access to more defensive skills. Rangers, Engineers, Necros, DPS Guard and good Warriors hard counter us on any build we decide to play. Especially with the shift towards AI builds from Anet (buffing spirit weapons, leaving turrets (almost) and minion master as is, mesmer PU) excelling as a thief in pvp will only get harder from here on out. But aside from the qq, give it a month or so and someone will find a strong build again. (Personally, I am starting to use the old EU panic strike meta, 60206, which now seems to be coming back into play on NA)

Also: If Anet could realize that useless traits are useless and buffing them slightly won’t cause thieves to run them, that would be great.

I’ve tried 60206. I probably need some time to acclimate to it and get some experience, but I feel like even if the spec becomes second nature to me, a stiff breeze from anyone who isn’t full out bunker spec’d is enough to put me in serious danger, and I’m just not hitting hard enough in return.

Any advice?

Cam Ron.4170:

evilapprentice.6379:

vincecontix.1264:

On paper it looks like you might not have enough damage output. I know if I was playing my engi I would rather probably vs a thief running your build than other meta builds. Yes I could see you having decent survivability but I think you lose to much dps which will affect you ability to aid in team fights.

Maybe, Maybe. I’m just so sick of 2/6/0/0/6, and S/D is crap atm.

try 6/0/2/0/6 d/p. Panic strike OP

I’ve tried this and I’m not a huge fan, but maybe it’s time to try again.

vincecontix.1264:

On paper it looks like you might not have enough damage output. I know if I was playing my engi I would rather probably vs a thief running your build than other meta builds. Yes I could see you having decent survivability but I think you lose to much dps which will affect you ability to aid in team fights.

Maybe, Maybe. I’m just so sick of 2/6/0/0/6, and S/D is crap atm.

Dagins.5163:

@evilapprentice

It was easy to use IS under clock tower, down somebody upstairs, teleport downstairs with IF while casting stomp and come back with steal.

That’s an issue with Shadowstep skills not interacting with clocktower correctly. It’s a bug and should have been fixed, this interaction isn’t a valid reason for nerfing the entire skill. IIRC, this bug still exists.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Black Teagan.9215:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

On the bright side… you’re revealed.

On the dark side…Anet doesn’t seem to care about their design mistakes.

On the bright side… Colin acknowledge that they screwed up.

On the Dark side, I see a whole bunch of text referring to PvE flubs and oversights. Even the talk about bugs is related to PvE nonsense. Nothing related to the mess that was the PvP balance changes. Not trying to be adversarial, I just can’t find the same hope here that you’re seeing.

On the bright side, I’m finally just going to go SA and troll.

It never should have been changed. Jumper and other “top” players balked at the suggestion, and explained why it was an awful, awful idea.

Many countersuggestions were had, the best being “Leave it instant cast but unusable while stunned/using another skill”. This would have been fair and balanced.

But no, it was butchered. Jumper posted shortly after the patch to confirm that yes, every issue he foresaw with the skill change was included with the patch.

You know the best part? Dev’s claimed that the primary reason the change was put in place was because of how it facilitated stomps. Apparently, some thieves were using IS to get to a downed target, SSing back, then using steal/is to port back to their target for the stomp. Ignoring the fact that I’d never seen a thief do that ever, 5 init and a 30s CD (or 35s CD, since 2/6/0/6/0 was the meta at the time) was much too powerful to secure a stomp on the class most vulnerable while stomping. Lawl.

With the unnecessary nerfing of all the meta builds (all 1 1/2 of them), I’ve been messing around with some new builds for SPvP/TPvP.

What do people think of this?
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZAQNAoaVl0Mp6pVOx0J8PNBNhwdtUz8O83yaFA-TZBFwAEOBA12fYxRAoaZAAPCAA

I was initially running infusion over SRej, but even though it kept me flush with init, it was a losing proposition health wise against any of the many sustain heavy builds you see around today. I also switched out HiS for Withdraw because repositioning > stealth with the massive amount of AoE flying around every fight IMO.

Hidden thief allows for instant burst every 21 seconds (Mug+BS), and handy escapes when I need to bail. SRej isn’t so much for sitting in stealth as it is taking advantage of all the positioning time whenever your target is spamming dodges to avoid BS.

Smoke screen surprisingly isn’t a new addition for the patch – I’ve been using it for about a month for its versatility. Daze + blind with HS, a temporary middle finger to hambow/engis (and now rangers), and in this build a handy low cost way to enter stealth (I do miss my bouncing blind with S/D). I also find it good for covering me while decapping a point when a ranged class is charging toward me, though some might prefer blinding powder.

I don’t know if it’s strong enough to be a meta build, but here’s to hoping. Any advice/experience to share?

Ehecatl.9172:

evilapprentice.6379:

33-40% past max range seems a bit much. Is there any other weapon that goes this far past max range? (I’m assuming the person who tested the 2k range is legit, I haven’t verified his findings)

Sure, I was aware my thief’s Shbow went slightly past the max range due to the arc, but it doesn’t go out to 1200 no matter where I shoot it from.

If you’re talking about the same person I think you’re talking about I wouldn’t put too much stalk in his claims. He was using Sick ‘Em to measure 2,000 range and assuming it ALSO had an extended range, even though it’s not a projectile and thus wouldn’t have an extended range at all. So he came to the conclusion that Sick ’Em’s range was 2,200 while also using it as a measuring stick for other skills without first testing Sick ’Em’s range.

I’ll do some testing later tonight if I really have to. Every time someone posts about the longbow’s range they seem to make it even longer than the last. At first people were claiming 1,800, which is about reasonable, but now people are claiming 2,400? I dunno. It feels like an exaggeration being passed off as fact, like the people claiming you can hit 15K damage with Rapid Fire without blowing cooldowns on the Heavy Golem in Heart of the Mists. It’s not possible, but people state it as if it’s a proven fact.

Edit:

I did some testing. The longbow’s max range when traited on flat terrain is only a few steps back from 2,000 range, likely 2,100 or so. So roughly a 30% distance increase, but not the 2,400 that people are projecting.

600 unit extra range is a 40% range increase, not roughly 30% (10% of 1500 is 150, * 4 gives us 600)

Again, assuming your testing was accurate and you aren’t BSing (Which, why would you?), 40% past max range on flat terrain is very good – it clearly counters the idea that you can retreat out of the abilities range easily.

tichorum.2415:

evilapprentice.6379:

tichorum.2415:

Harbinger.8637:

tichorum.2415:

All invulnerability classified skills do not capture points. An invluln is taking no physical or condition damage with one ability. Name one that captures a point.

inb4 endure pain and zerker stance!

they pop both are once then that is a good thing for the enemy.

Yes, I commonly rejoice when my target becomes completely immune to all types of damage.

If you kite them for the remaining ticks, they are forced to sit on the node and do nothing or chase you around, ultimately not doing anything. Once they’re done with these two stances, they are extremely vulnerable.

Oh, all the player can do is continue to contest a node while practically invincible?

How is holding down a node “not doing anything” in a game based around capturing and holding nodes?

I’m glad to know that if I don’t let him get near me though, I can at least not get mauled while being almost completely helpless to stop them.

stof.9341:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

This is inaccurate.

If the wall is your target, then yes it’s a hit. It cannot block you because it is your target.

Blocking is putting something in between you and your target. So even if you didn’t hit your target, you still hit the blocker, thus it should trigger the on hit effects like Larcenous Strike.

However, sneak attacks doesn’t cause revealed on hit, it cause revealed on damage.

Blocking is a hit that deals no damage, thus it doesn’t trigger revealed.

Although you do get the chain FS into LS when you hit an Endure Pain warrior even if you do no damage no?

You did 0 damage. That is mechanically different than “the attack was blocked and did No damage.”

tichorum.2415:

Harbinger.8637:

tichorum.2415:

All invulnerability classified skills do not capture points. An invluln is taking no physical or condition damage with one ability. Name one that captures a point.

inb4 endure pain and zerker stance!

they pop both are once then that is a good thing for the enemy.

Yes, I commonly rejoice when my target becomes completely immune to all types of damage.

yLoon.5289:

evilapprentice.6379:

yLoon.5289:

“Dodge!! Evade!!! Invuln!! Reflect!! yadda yadda . "

Or just simply stand behind an object, or find cover in angled terrain.
An attack that completely useless and can be blocked by terrain is not strong.

Yes, let’s pretend that denying anything within 1500 range and LOS of a particular position is a completely worthless ability to have in this game based on capturing points.

Honestly, I know you’re probably having fun with your new Ranger, but don’t just spout whatever you think will keep it the way it is to stifle the conversation.

Oh yeah, you thought wrong, i’ve been using Ranger since launch. I kept it in the fridge because it has been discriminated and i main a guardian. Well, the OP was left out with one solution to avoid the arrows, I’m just pointing it out one more way to dodge it effortlessly. Typical newbies anyway, forever refuse to listen and rage on new changes.

And by the way, if you look hard enough, not ALL capturing points is a total flat surface with no obstruction. For example, waterfall, notice there is a tree there?
yeah, for others, go find out yourself.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_emotion

I understand you’re annoyed that everyone is kittening about your class on the forums, because it’s been UP so long and you just want a chance to enjoy it. That doesn’t make your argument any less fallacious however.

While most people are overreacting (asking Anet to nerf Rangers less than a week after patch), that doesn’t mean everyone’s concerns are entirely baseless. I’ve said multiple times “I Don’t want rangers nerfed or think they’re OP” (and you can check my message history if you’d like to verify that fact), but that doesn’t mean certain aspects don’t warrant monitoring. As it stands, RF is an amazingly easy to hit burst that leaves you in a relatively safe position if applied intelligently. Is it OP? ATM I don’t think so. Should Anet keep an eye on just how easy it is to use and be effective with? certainly.

It also doesn’t help that Rangers are turning to absolutely asinine arguments and non-sequiturs in an attempt to deflect the heat. You have some people painting these changes as if they were a nerf (“Look how easy it is to dodge/reflect now!”), some ignoring the balance discussion all together by just claiming “Rangers deserve it”, and random other silliness. “Just hide behind the terrain” is a silly thing to say – imagine I said “Don’t want to get backstabbed? Put your back to a wall/cliff!” You’d be incredulous, and rightly so.

moi.4398:

If you punch in a wall , it blocks you , but you hit the wall .
If flanking is blocked , it hits , so the skill must turn into larcenous .
But if this change happen , prepare you to " stealh skills put revealed on block " , and honeslty it will be not so bad

If you redefined “Hit” to include blocks, you would have to redefine revealed to “Does damage from stealth” (Which may be the actual trigger, I don’t know).

Before the forum denizens whip out their torches and pitchforks, that was how thief was designed. Revealed is there to prevent thieves from dealing damage while invisible, and to put an artificial CD on their most powerful attacks (Stealth attacks).

It doesn’t matter if that “makes sense”, it doesn’t matter if you don’t think its fair. Thief was designed to get revealed only if they did damage while in stealth – their damage, their utilities, their heals, everything a thief does was designed and balanced around that idea. Changing that to includes blocks would bury the class even further.

Having 1 condition based skill among 3 DPS based skills (and 1 utility) does not a hybrid make.

A true hybrid would have the potential to do respectable power/crit based damage and condition damage on most (if not all) of the DPS skills. You could balance around stats and base condition duration such that skills did appropriate damage no matter how you specced.

High power/crit builds with low condi damage would see DD slightly less than other weaponsets, made up for by the conditions. High condi builds would see the inverse. Hybrid stat setups would see a good mix of both.

As it stands, D/D is a power/crit setup with 1 weird kittenty condi ability smack dab in the middle of it. Try running celestial D/D and P/P or D/D and Shbow with Strength runes and might stacking and see how it goes (I’ll give you a hint, poorly).

No matter how badly you want it to be a hybrid set, it just isnt.

Ehecatl.9172:

loseridoit.2756:

and you still get hit….

There is a bug/exploit that allow ranger to exceed the 1500 range limit.

i heard the max is actually past 2000 because the way the channel works.

Not a bug. Working as intended. All bow weapons and most other projectiles will keep traveling beyond their maximum range and can travel further on elevated terrain. It’s this way on every profession with bows and it works that way with my elementalist’s staff and scepter projectile auto attacks as well.

It’s been this way since release. I’m honestly baffled at how no one noticed it until the most recent patch.

Kind of goes to show how little attention anyone paid to any ranged weapon in the melee-centric meta, I guess.

33-40% past max range seems a bit much. Is there any other weapon that goes this far past max range? (I’m assuming the person who tested the 2k range is legit, I haven’t verified his findings)

Sure, I was aware my thief’s Shbow went slightly past the max range due to the arc, but it doesn’t go out to 1200 no matter where I shoot it from.

RyuDragnier.9476:

evilapprentice.6379:

Sandrox.9524:

Amonatory.2453:

Congratulations Anet! I am officially done with this weapon set, I even tried to like it but it’s literally impossible with the steal bug and getting blocked doesnt proc larcenous. You guys have single handedly managed to kill an entire weapon set. To those who are still going to play it and say it’s good? More power to you bro haha, I for one am sick of the pointless nerfs. You guys turned a great weapon set into a complete evade spam no dps piece of kitten. I called it, but no one listened and what a surprise I was right.

I guess it was pointless to main that weapon set for over a year ahaha once again Anet. G kittening G.

Come join us on the dark dark d/p side.better now cause sooner or later they gonna nerf it too.

They um…they already did. Have you tried using BP as anything other than a 6init smoke field for stealth yet?

Wait, people used it for something other than for the BP->HS combo?

You could force someone to back out of your BP (because standing in it was stupid when it was 1 bps). Now at .5 bps, anyone can just stand in it and beat on you.

I love how Anet treats changes to every other class lightly, with slight tweaks and small changes, but when it comes to thieves they just chop off 33-50% of an abilities functionality(BP change, DD change, CnD change). Remember their initial vigor changes to BT and VR? they wanted to halve the vigor uptime – thanks to our complaints they only cut it 30-33%.

Sandrox.9524:

Amonatory.2453:

Congratulations Anet! I am officially done with this weapon set, I even tried to like it but it’s literally impossible with the steal bug and getting blocked doesnt proc larcenous. You guys have single handedly managed to kill an entire weapon set. To those who are still going to play it and say it’s good? More power to you bro haha, I for one am sick of the pointless nerfs. You guys turned a great weapon set into a complete evade spam no dps piece of kitten. I called it, but no one listened and what a surprise I was right.

I guess it was pointless to main that weapon set for over a year ahaha once again Anet. G kittening G.

Come join us on the dark dark d/p side.better now cause sooner or later they gonna nerf it too.

They um…they already did. Have you tried using BP as anything other than a 6init smoke field for stealth yet?

yLoon.5289:

“Dodge!! Evade!!! Invuln!! Reflect!! yadda yadda . "

Or just simply stand behind an object, or find cover in angled terrain.
An attack that completely useless and can be blocked by terrain is not strong.

Yes, let’s pretend that denying anything within 1500 range and LOS of a particular position is a completely worthless ability to have in this game based on capturing points.

Honestly, I know you’re probably having fun with your new Ranger, but don’t just spout whatever you think will keep it the way it is to stifle the conversation.

Ooh, ooh! I get to do hard to catch? Wee!

Ok, let’s start with a question – what do you call it when an enemy hits you with an ability that changes your position. If you said “crowd control”, congratulations! Oh and also for some unknown reason hard to catch.

Ok, so let’s run down the problems with hard to catch –
- changes your position at the whim of another player (like a knockback or pull might)
- doesn’t break the stun
- fires even If you have stability (which you almost certainly got from someone else because a thiefs only access to it is fairly new and laughably bad)
- the position change is random and only 600 range

Someone at Anet thought this was worth a master tier trait. Then a whole bunch of people play tested it and approved it! They Also ignored a 20 pages feedback thread where 95% of the comments about this trait were begging for it to not be implemented in this manner.

So glad I got to do this one!

Eurantien.4632:

Epidemix Revenge.4862:

Rampage as One>Quickening Zephyr>Point Blank>Rapid fire

High risk high reward.

With this set up you have burst. You do not have some of the following:

Sustain
Disengage
Condi clear
Invuln

Medium risk, high reward.

The setup here isn’t the only option, and as far as I can tell, isn’t typical. Most rangers are running at least 1 invuln (source: out of the 30 or so different rangers I’ve fought since patch, at least 25 had 0’s pop up over their head during the fight). Most are also running the new Entangle, which doubles as both a defensive and offensive skill.

Even without an invuln, the Range alone prevents “high” risk. Other glass classes have to be in the thick of it to do damage like a Ranger can currently, which is actually “High Risk”. 1500 range mitigates alot of risk.

This isn’t to claim Ranger’s are OP, but an eye should be kept on how easy this burst is to apply. No positional requirements, no pre-requisites, QZ’s risk is largely mitgated by the extreme range – it’s just a point and click BS level burst at 1500 range with great followup options.

And let’s not forget that the ranger itself was only designed to be a portion of the damage – they still have a pet with their own CC and DPS abilities to account for.

Solori.6025:

I am going to bring this to the attention of all the crying kids out there getting pew pewd by rapid fire and thinking it’s just rapid fire.

Rapid Fire didn’t get a damage buff..
Same damage. Faster Cast.

But then you have this signet.

That gives you 25% damage boost.
On top of giving you stability. So very few classes can now interrupt you during said burst period.

No other signet in game gives you this kind of damage boost + immunity to stop damage with CC (because of stability)

NO, IT GOT A DPS BUFF! WHICH IS EXACTLY WHAT EVERYONE MEANS WHEN THEY SAY “RAPID FIRE GOT A DAMAGE BUFF!” THAT STATEMENT IS STILL TRUE BECAUSE THEY’RE TALKING ABOUT THE DAMAGE THE ABILITY DOES OVER ITS DURATION, NOT EACH INDIVIDUAL HIT!

OF COURSE YOU WERE AWARE OF THAT! YOU’RE JUST CHOOSING TO ARGUE THE SEMANTICS OF THE STATEMENT RATHER THAN THE INTENT BECAUSE THAT’S EASIER!

Cam Ron.4170:

evilapprentice.6379:

Cam Ron.4170:

evilapprentice.6379:

Before you read – this is from a PvP perspective, and isn’t intended to knock any of the classes mentioned.

You’ve consistently nerfed thieves across the board.

You removed their instant burst because it was “too strong”, then eventually gave similar capabilities to ele’s.

You removed their sustain/burst by nerfing S/D, but had no issue giving rangers the equivalent of a ranged Backstab that can sustain pressure with their auto attack.

You’ve consistently nerfed access to our only defensive abilities (Stealth, blind, evade), with no practically useful buffs to take their place.

When the game was released, it was fine that thieves had awful sustain, no protection/stability/blocks/immune skills, the lowest HP pool, and a design which made any spec other than burst a losing gambit both in playstyle and mathematically.

That is no longer the case – you’ve nerfed thieves to the point where something needs to change. We can’t reliably use our skills for damage (lol, FS is so telegraphed anyone could dodge/block it) or for defense (literally any spec can no just stand in BP and still maul a thief now). Damage that was considered “Too good” for thieves to have (despite their lack of sustain skills) now exists on other classes (who have the option to go immune, block, and better healing options). Stealth is a joke (for defensive purposes) in SPvP and TPvP by your design, making 1 of our entire traitlines borderline useless in that game mode.

It’s time to sit down and figure out what you want thieves to do – it clearly isn’t burst damage. Why bring a D/P glass thief to an AoE fest point fight, who has to care about positioning and what to do after his BS lands when a ranger can safely deliver that damage from half a battlefield away? Why run D/D (A notably UP set which has a Condi based skill right in the middle of what is a clearly a power/crit set) for that instant burst when an Ele can do it with better options for sustain afterwards?

What is it you want thieves to do, besides generate misinformed forum QQ?

Buff or change dancing dagger
make revealed duration the same as WvW
speed up sword auto-chain by 10% or 10% damage.
Fix the ungodly amount of teleport bugs.

Thief fixed

Not to be rude, but none of these changes address the underlying issue with thief design. We don’t need minor buffs to specific skills, we need Anet to decide what exactly it is they want thief to do, then make changes to support that role.

that wasn’t rude, its a good discussion. I think we’re supposed to be high-single target damage dealers using dodges/teleports for defense. Our biggest advantages over other classes in PvP is our mobility. Perhaps they see us as the backcapping roamers that zip around the map and help when needed, and that is how I try to play it. I feel that in solo q, decision making is more important for a thief than any other class (we can act on it and get to where we think we need to be the quickest).

I think we need to wait a little longer before we call the thief underpowered (and im the guy that made a thread titles “thief is now worst class in pvp”, but that was before the steal bug fix ad before I played a lot on it)

as far as the new classes we’re seeing? zerk LB rangers are sooo easy for my thief to kill (teleports op), but they give my necro nightmares. More medi guards sucks tho. I only play theif and necro, and while necro is really strong, my thief feels in a better spot for the simple fact that there are like 3 zerker rangers per team every game. Thief got nerfed but the soloQ meta got buffed nicely for them.

It’s not as if thief is unplayable, it’s just obviously the inferior choice at the moment.

The absolute only thing thief does better than other classes at the moment is mobility. While they’re still the best, other classes can come close, and considering the current plethora of weaknesses in thief setups, the slightly better mobility isn’t that important anymore.

How useful is a class that can get to a fight quick and then struggle to contribute? How useful is a class that can teleport into combat quickly, but then can’t defend themselves in said combat? Here’s a hint Anet, not very much.

Einlanzer.1627:

My biggest complaint about the Thief class is and always has been that Stealth is not well implemented. In some situations it’s overpowered to the point that it makes Thieves seem like an overpowered class, but most of the time its defensive utility is very poor and completely fails to justify why Thieves have such horrible attrition.

The problem is with stealth is the WvW and PvP split.

Going 30 points into SA and just sitting in stealth in WvW can be very powerful. There’s no capture point you have to sit on to win, and 30 sa stealth can do so much for you that the game’s design gives you overwhelming incentive to sit in stealth until you’ve reaped all the benefits. This would never fly in PvP due to the capture point format.

I had assumed that Anet had taken all of this into account when they designed the game, but clearly they have not. For some mindboggling reason Revealed was increased to 4s in PvP, but left at 3s in WvW. None of the “Sit in stealth for more benefits” SA traits have been changed, even though fantastic options for doing so have been offered from the community multiple times.

When the finally fixed S/D (after about a year of the game existing, iirc), thieves rejoiced! A way to stay alive outside of stealth, how wonderful! Then anet spent the next 3-4 patches nerfing that kitten into oblivion, because timing skills is hard. It’s funny, I’ve never had a problem with an S/D thief, on any class I’ve played thanks to my experience as an S/D thief, but I guess you can’t expect your playerbase to try.

Regardless of my tangents, it all points to the fact that Anet does not have a clear vision of what they want thief to do. They might have had one when the game was first released, but forum QQ fueled nerf’s combined with the few needed changes (HS % scaling) they’ve made to thief has ruined it, and they don’t seem eager to figure out how to fix it.

Edit: When they proposed the changes to IS/IR, they ignored the input of every top player. When they redesigned Hard to catch, they ignored literally every thief telling them how awful that trait was going to be. Their AR changes proudly toted “35% more contribution from healing power” – sounds big, right? It worked out to 1 additional Health per init spent per 100 healing power. Anyone with a functioning brainstem can see how that claim was disingenuous. 35% sounds huge! 1% more contribution from healing power is a joke – this (combined with the init changes) is why AR was bumped up to GM tier, and it clearly wasnt worth it.

Cam Ron.4170:

evilapprentice.6379:

Before you read – this is from a PvP perspective, and isn’t intended to knock any of the classes mentioned.

You’ve consistently nerfed thieves across the board.

You removed their instant burst because it was “too strong”, then eventually gave similar capabilities to ele’s.

You removed their sustain/burst by nerfing S/D, but had no issue giving rangers the equivalent of a ranged Backstab that can sustain pressure with their auto attack.

You’ve consistently nerfed access to our only defensive abilities (Stealth, blind, evade), with no practically useful buffs to take their place.

When the game was released, it was fine that thieves had awful sustain, no protection/stability/blocks/immune skills, the lowest HP pool, and a design which made any spec other than burst a losing gambit both in playstyle and mathematically.

That is no longer the case – you’ve nerfed thieves to the point where something needs to change. We can’t reliably use our skills for damage (lol, FS is so telegraphed anyone could dodge/block it) or for defense (literally any spec can no just stand in BP and still maul a thief now). Damage that was considered “Too good” for thieves to have (despite their lack of sustain skills) now exists on other classes (who have the option to go immune, block, and better healing options). Stealth is a joke (for defensive purposes) in SPvP and TPvP by your design, making 1 of our entire traitlines borderline useless in that game mode.

It’s time to sit down and figure out what you want thieves to do – it clearly isn’t burst damage. Why bring a D/P glass thief to an AoE fest point fight, who has to care about positioning and what to do after his BS lands when a ranger can safely deliver that damage from half a battlefield away? Why run D/D (A notably UP set which has a Condi based skill right in the middle of what is a clearly a power/crit set) for that instant burst when an Ele can do it with better options for sustain afterwards?

What is it you want thieves to do, besides generate misinformed forum QQ?

Buff or change dancing dagger
make revealed duration the same as WvW
speed up sword auto-chain by 10% or 10% damage.
Fix the ungodly amount of teleport bugs.

Thief fixed

Not to be rude, but none of these changes address the underlying issue with thief design. We don’t need minor buffs to specific skills, we need Anet to decide what exactly it is they want thief to do, then make changes to support that role.

Before you read – this is from a PvP perspective, and isn’t intended to knock any of the classes mentioned.

You’ve consistently nerfed thieves across the board.

You removed their instant burst because it was “too strong”, then eventually gave similar capabilities to ele’s.

You removed their sustain/burst by nerfing S/D, but had no issue giving rangers the equivalent of a ranged Backstab that can sustain pressure with their auto attack.

You’ve consistently nerfed access to our only defensive abilities (Stealth, blind, evade), with no practically useful buffs to take their place.

When the game was released, it was fine that thieves had awful sustain, no protection/stability/blocks/immune skills, the lowest HP pool, and a design which made any spec other than burst a losing gambit both in playstyle and mathematically.

That is no longer the case – you’ve nerfed thieves to the point where something needs to change. We can’t reliably use our skills for damage (lol, FS is so telegraphed anyone could dodge/block it) or for defense (literally any spec can no just stand in BP and still maul a thief now). Damage that was considered “Too good” for thieves to have (despite their lack of sustain skills) now exists on other classes (who have the option to go immune, block, and better healing options). Stealth is a joke (for defensive purposes) in SPvP and TPvP by your design, making 1 of our entire traitlines borderline useless in that game mode.

It’s time to sit down and figure out what you want thieves to do – it clearly isn’t burst damage. Why bring a D/P glass thief to an AoE fest point fight, who has to care about positioning and what to do after his BS lands when a ranger can safely deliver that damage from half a battlefield away? Why run D/D (A notably UP set which has a Condi based skill right in the middle of what is a clearly a power/crit set) for that instant burst when an Ele can do it with better options for sustain afterwards?

What is it you want thieves to do, besides generate misinformed forum QQ?

The Thunderbolt downed skill hits regardless of blind – the daze portion misses, but the damage is done regardless. Please fix.

Yelloweyedemon.2860:

Mahkno.7593:

Yelloweyedemon.2860:

You DO have skills to survive that do not rely on stealth. You just don’t want to use them and raging because you lost the hit, stealth, heal, hit “tactic”

it’s not just the single “tactic”. it disables an entire trait line and therefore disables another one (at least) of our possible builds.

this would be like giving thieves the ability to shut down the entire wilderness survival trait line or inventions trait line. this would never fly.

this isn’t balance.

It does not “disable” it. It just counters it. It’s not like you have revealed 24/7 on you…

Ballance?! Being untargeted because of stealth spam is ballance? Yeah right…

Please stop posting. You have no idea what you’re talking about. You’re obviously annoyed by the stealth mechanic, and wearing said dislike on your sleeve as some sort of badge of honor rather than the biasing silliness it is.

Just to help you though – A skill which applied revealed on a thief absolutely DISABLES all points in SA – all of the minor’s are stealth related, and all the good Major’s (except venom share, which is garbage) rely on stealth. It’s a skill that says “kitten all your points in SA” – It’s exactly the same as if thief got an instant cast no animation ability that instantly despawned a Ranger’s pet for 6 seconds – it’d be ridiculously unfair to BM rangers. Note that there’s no other skill in the game that so specifically targets 1 or 2 classes and renders potentially ~45% of trait points worthless for the duration with no counter.

The very obvious and very fair solution to “apply revealed” skills has already been suggested – just have the skill cause stealth to not make the player invisible – the end result is the same (even if the thief/mesmer/etc is in stealth, you can see them) without potentially shutting down points in a trait line.

ulcimql.2516:

A thief has at least 4 options for defense: mobility, cc, evades and stealth. I have yet to see a build that does not cover at least 2 of them.That means you should always have an alternative defense even if your build is heavily reliant on stealth. In fact you should consider playing something with very low stealth access for a while. It will only make you a better player and help you deal with revealed more efficiently in the future.

I’m not interested in commenting on revealed skills, just your comment in particular.

You don’t play thief, don’t dole out advice on things you clearly don’t understand.

@RyuDragnier-9476

To begin, I’m not asking anyone to nerf RF. Like I said, the jury is still out, but it’s undeniable that the skill feels a bit off at the moment.

Concerning weaknesses, are you talking spec or skill? Assuming you are talking About the skill, I’m not sure what weaknesses you consider “counters” a 1500 range circle the skill can be safely used from, but I’m not convinced. It severely reduces the effectiveness of aegis and blind (at the cost of being weak to retal), it has no positional requirements, can be traited to pierce (though I will admit I have no idea how feasible taking that trait is in a power setup). Most importantly, before, during and after the skill you are (potentially) 1500 range Away – a range no other class can easily match, making you Almost completely safe from counterattack. This extreme range Also has the benefit of mitigating the costs of QZ, since by the time your target gets to you (assuming they survived), the effect will be over or nearly over. Possible reflected/destroyed shots is a tiny price to pay for this kind of on demand power – especially so when you consider missile reflect/destroy isn’t going to be available every 8 seconds.

Again, this isn’t me asking for it to be nerfed or claiming it’s OP, but it most certainly requires close monitoring for the next few weeks.

Steb.2571:

I’m glad S/D is dead. Personally, I wish signet of agility died too. It can still be used, just not in the same overpowered fashion. Given, it was never more overpowered than engi’s or necros after the infiltrators nerf, but it still shouldn’t have existed. Nor should Current engi’s or necros. People screamed “We can’t sustain!” and Anet decided to just make it so they have so much sustain and damage, they can just peel for themselves with no sacrifices needed, it’s ridiculous.

Because having laughable burst on a glass spec’d character who’s class has poor sustain, no protection, no stability, no immune skills or blocks, and has to dodge literally 80% of the attacks thrown at him just to survive the fight long enough to win isn’t a sacrifice.

mtpelion.4562:

PanH.1957:

mtpelion.4562:

Bear on the job.6273:

Hundred Blades at 1500 range while moving…seems legit.

So Hundred Blades can be countered with Reflect or Block now? Cool story.

Nah, you only need to move. That’s a special skill you can use with wasd.

Ways to mitigate Hundred Blades:
1. Move out of the way.
2. Dodge.

Ways to mitigate Rapid Fire:
1. Move out of the way (behind an object).
2. Dodge.
3. Reflection.
4. Missile Destruction.
5. Block while at range.

I think that the bigger list of mitigation possibilities certainly counters the fact that it can be used at range and while moving.

Ways to mitigate Hundred Blades:
1. Move out of the way.
2. Dodge.
3. Block (How you missed this one when it was in your RF list, I’m not sure)
4. Interrupt (which can theoretically do to RF as well, but you’re guaranteed in range to interrupt a warrior using HB if he can hit you, the same isn’t true of RF)

Note, I’m not weighing in on which is better, if either is broken, or anything like that, just fixing some glaring oversights.

ResJudicator.7916:

To clear up some basic misconceptions…

DPS = damage per second. That means if you do the same amount of damage in less time, your DPS increases. Rapid fire does the same damage as before, but now in almost half the time (44% faster). Therefore its DPS has increased.

As for whether power ranger overall is OP now or not, I think it’s still hard to tell. They generally lack stability and have limited condition removal unless they grab survival of the fittest (which means fewer points in skirmishing and therefore less damage).

Power rangers in tpvp right now feel like easier-to-play thieves. Both classes excel at joining a fight mid-battle and ending it quickly. But while the thief has to position himself well and port into melee for a quick burst (which takes time to set up and is places the thief at risk of getting 1-shot), the ranger can put out just as much damage from slightly over 1.5k range without any real positional or conditional requirements. The main issue with power longbow really just seems to be how easy it is to burst with, rather than how powerful the class is overall.

If we compare power rangers to fresh air ele, rapid fire does about the same damage as two air-attune + lightning strike combos, but the ele will take at least twice as long (5s CD on fresh air) to cycle through air twice and has less survivability/mobility. Then again, fresh air ele can chain multiple skills together to achieve a larger overall burst (e.g. triple-hit phoenix + lightning flash + air burst), but that comes at a much longer cooldown of 40s (32 if you trait cantrip reduction).

Fresh air ele and thief also arguably brings more utility to their teams than a power ranger. (Ele can bring aoe daze via comet, aoe healing via trident, blinds, and might stacking; Thief can bring shadow refuge, boon stealing, guaranteed interrupts via sleight of hand, and poison).

And yes, you can evade/block a rapid fire if you see it coming, but that’s true for every other class’s burst (including backstabs if you saw the thief enter stealth and you aren’t completely new to the game). On the other hand, rapid fire is basically immune to aegis and blind (which only block one arrow, so I guess a ~10% reduction), while blind/aegis completely negate single-hit burst skills.

Reflection is definitely a hard counter to rapid fire, but most reflection skills have much longer cooldowns so the ranger can always just use barrage while the reflection is up. That said, it’s really fun completely shutting down the crappier power rangers who don’t pay attention to reflect.

Basically this

It’s going a bit far to say it’s OP (especially this early in the patch), but something feels off about a skill that is essentially a backstab without positional requirements with the added safety of 1500 range separating you from your target.

Phaeton.9582:

evilapprentice.6379:

spec X having an advantage over Spec Y has no value (with some exceptions of course – if spec Y was designed to counter Spec X and it doesnt, well, then you have a problem)

Anonymouse.4760:

Meditations guardians, arguably one of thieves biggest counters with the great amount of blinds and blocks they receive from profession abilities.

I think you have your answer friend

Well then I do apologize – my bad.

Though I don’t necessarily agree that a spec with alot of blinds and blocks is necessarily strong against one with good single condition mitigation and a strong unblockable attack. I can see how a medi guard would be strong against D/P, but not S/D.

Phaeton.9582:

evilapprentice.6379:

Phaeton.9582:

S/D acro thief had an advantageous matchup with dps medi guard pre-patch.

Might be worth considering how absurd that is too.

Because as we all know, the key metric for measuring balance in a team-fight centered game is how one specific spec of one specific class matches up against another specific spec of another specific class.

That’s why Anet killed Bunkers completely a year ago – Can you imagine how broken a class that could survive a 2 v 1 for an extended time would be in this game balanced around 1 v 1 matchups?

Insane.

FYI the OP commented on its current matchup with medi guard specifically.

But thanks for your feedback. Team-fight centric or otherwise, particular matchups are very important in conquest. This is a stock forum response to say ‘the game isn’t balanced around 1v1s’. Of course it isn’t. But are you telling me 1v1s don’t happen in conquest? Or that the matchups don’t factor into the fielding of a comp?

Of course 1v1’s happen – they just can’t be the basis for balance considerations. Your original quote is just a lot of fluff because from a balance perspective, spec X having an advantage over Spec Y has no value (with some exceptions of course – if spec Y was designed to counter Spec X and it doesnt, well, then you have a problem) – that happens all the time. Asking us to “consider how absurd that is” is silly, because it’s not absurd, some specs are strong against other specs.

Just…put it on your bars.

I was actually running it prior to the patch because it offers alot to nearly any build.

When I was running S/D it turned DD into a multitarget blind, you could dance melee through it to force them to eat a blind, and was a good utility for securing a stomp if you couldn’t stealth stomp.

Now that I’m running D/P, it lets headshot interrupt AND blind, lets me stealth, and gives me some breathing room. It was great at shutting down Hambow for a few seconds and messing with turret engis, and now its hilarious to watch FOTM Ranger blow their entire wad into it while doing nothing.