Guild Wars 2

eleshazar.6902:

No one here can say if it was an “exploit” or a design decision besides an Anet employee. So I would refrain from tossing around the word exploit as if it is matter of fact.

In short that means assuming it worked as it was intended to work.
Afaik originally karma items could be salvages, but that made ecto’s too easy to obtain.

Check out the videos on youtube

Basically you enter stealth with Cloak & Dagger (then reposition ) and fire the #1 – Sneak Attack for damage and to apply bleeds on the target. You then move around, firing pistol #1 at your leisure, avoiding damage and using using #2 (immobilze), #3 (to avoid melee), #4 (cripple) as the situation requires it. You then enter Stealth again (make sure Revealed has ended) with Cloak & Dagger and Sneak Attack the target again. Repeat until the target is downed. Then C&D and stomp them. Naturally C&D/Steal when appropriate, and use stunbreakers, heal and/or other utilities as needed.

That’s it, in a nutshell. Devil is in the details though, after 20+ months people will expect your C&D and they just love to CC you, but it’s a very solid and forgiving weaponset (when build for it)

Build is primarily 6 in Shadow Arts with traits as desired, Shadow’s Embrace, Cloaked in Shadow and Shadow’s Rejuvenation are frequent choices, or Leeching Venoms and Venomos Aura when going venom share. Rest is kinda free, common choices are 2 in Deadly Arts for Mug or Poison duration (might want sigil of doom for poison), 3 in Acrobatics (for the endurance trait) and 2 in Trickery with the caltrops on dodge.

It is usually put on a Condition Damage setup, with Dire for maximum resilience, or any mix of Dire, Carrion and Rabid for more (faster) damage, also look to increase condition duration and additional conditions sources to cover the bleeds. Sometimes p/d is used with a power build, for various reasons, for example if you want to try the build without switching your power gear to condition. We also have very few choices for secondary weapon-set when building for condition.

Savoy.6824:

Since the 15th patch the price of the tequatl mini has actually fallen by about a gold. He is being completed successfully more often now than ever before and it is now at an all time low. Your arguments are invalid. Thanks for playing.

http://www.gw2tp.com/item/47846-mini-tequatl-the-sunless

Or the demand has dropped because everyone who wanted one already has one by now.

Nah, I think he’s talking about SB #4, maybe it killed him ….

Anhomedog.7968:

You should see me on my thief… Torment is quite fun when you have enough torment on to do 1k+ a tick on top of the poison, multiple bleeds, and Confusion that does 2k a tick…It’s quite fun when I can down a person in like 2 seconds with a condi build. Even though condi is fun for me I really would like busting out the Daggers again for some more backstab fun

I doubt you can get 10-12 stacks of Confusion and Torment on a player in the first couple of seconds of the fight. I doubt you can even get that many stack on them at all, with a Thief.

That’s a nice boon to give to your allies.

You would have needed transmutation crystals, from the gemshop, with the old mechanic …

And what if you carried some Carrion / Rabid stuff around for when you run into one of these? Get away, swap gear, return and hit them with a more hybrid setup.

Interceptor.2653:

frans.8092:

Or you could abandon the quest for perma vigor and settle for the food. Keep in mind that while perma-vigor can increase the might stacks from Inertia, having to go deep into Acrobatics and Trickery would deprive you of Hidden Assassin – which requires 5 (25) in Shadow Arts.

What the Christ is an S/P + SB spec going to do with 5 points in SA? I can’t stealth without utilities. Context, please.

Even if I dropped down to 3 Acrobatics (which is as low as you can reasonably go in an evade build) and ignored Vigorous Recovery completely, that’s still only ~50% Vigor downtime. The food’s endurance regen is still roughly only half of its effectiveness as long as you’re using Bountiful/SoH and pushing F1.

True, I should have added the weapon preference. I don’t think that with a good source of vigor the 2 might stacks alone would be worth it compared to other food. And without Hidden Assassin you’re down to Inertia and Thrill of the Crime, Runes of Strength become less obvious. Is the duration bonus applies to might stacks that you steal/rip?

oZii.2864:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/24tzjz/a_look_at_runes_of_the_pack/ this was a post I did on reddit just comparing Pack and Strength for WvW/sPvP use it’s only a few days old. It’s why Pack started to rise in price.

You ignore the +45% might duration on the Strength runes. But don’t tell anyone, I like it better when the price of Strength runes drops since I will need to buy new ones for new (ascended) gear as I put mine on Temple armor (the runes were like 75 s before the patch).

Interceptor.2653:

You can easily overlook the endurance recharge boost once you realize that it doesn’t stack with Vigor.

Or you could abandon the quest for perma vigor and settle for the food. Keep in mind that while perma-vigor can increase the might stacks from Inertia, having to go deep into Acrobatics and Trickery would deprive you of Hidden Assassin – which requires 5 (25) in Shadow Arts.

Well, it should do a better job of matching on guilds but I always can get ‘into’ guild missions by hopping to character select and back, or using the Eye of the North portal stone. Party taxiing seems to work as well. All these workarounds shouldn’t be needed though, people join guilds – and servers – for a reason and the megaserver concept destroys those reasons.

Evalia.7103:

do you even play a thief? You just wrote complete Bullkitten. It’s 15 seconds, not 5;

Hey, keep it friendly pal, the wiki page Bowl of Orrian Truffle and Meat Stew on the food says the food gives 5 seconds might on dodge and I take their word over yours any day.

On swap sigils don’t work well, unless you’re happy to let the cooldown decide which weapon you use and if you go that route you might be better of with Sigil of Battle (there’s a limit to how much endurance you really need) for the might stacking. Permanent Vigor doesn’t exist, for thieves, and for the best vigor uptime in combination with you loose either the crit chance (for Sigil of Strength) or Hidden Assassin. Vigor is also completely redundant with the food we were talking about.

Without the food and relying on Hidden Assasin, Power of Inertia (with Feline Grace) and Sigils of Strength, the Runes of Strength net me about 12-16 stacks of might in practical use (might be some allied stcks in there btw). The food could get it to, I estimate, 18-20.

Just make it salvage only the runes from Karma gear. Please? Pretty please? With sugar on top?

Mystogan.4157:

With might on dodge and 25% boon duration from trait line + the 25% might duration from runes and constant switching you can get 25 stacks easy i got 15 alone just using sigils on dummies

You’re probably not going to see those 15 stacks a lot under normal usage. But anyway, it seems about right for optimal circumstances, 9-12 is quite common with Runes and Sigil of Strength, Inertia and the grandmaster SA trait and without the food.

The might on dodge might (from the food) is only 5 seconds base, according to the wiki, so about 8 seconds on Runes of Strength + Acro (assuming you’d want to abuse this). You’d have to do some math with the +40% regen and +15 return on dodge (about 4 dodges in 10 seconds?), but I estimate it will not cover 10 might stacks, more 4 -5 (3 from food might and 2 from the additional triggers of Inertia).

Btw, I seriously don’t see you getting even 15 stacks of Might without Hidden Assassin, in practical situations. I get around 15 stacks, without the food, with Hidden Assassin, Inertia and Sigils and Runes of Strength. Using P/D about half of those come from Hidden Assassin.

(edit: added note on food for clarity)

Sir Vincent III.1286:

frans.8092:

Ah, but there is a big problem, you are forced to stay in stealth to match the cooldown, a 6 seconds cooldown = 3 seconds Revealed + 3 seconds stealth. Cooldowns now determine which skills you can use. Plus, without your cooldown I could Sneak Attack, move around or do whatever through revealed (3 seconds) C&D and Sneak Attack, possible with a Sneak Attack every 3 seconds. Your cooldown has just cut the effectiveness of Sneak Attack in half.

No matter what way you look at it, it does affect Sneak Attack. Does that make sense? Or is offering a reasonable critique on your suggestion simply dismissed as ‘derailing’ a thread?

You’re argument is senseless because you’re arguing about the timer duration even though …

The only right timer value is ZERO seconds.

But I am pretty certain you set it to the amount of initiative spend (in seconds) and twice that amount as penalty.

Setting it to 1 second base and init-cost penalty would be reason for more QQ – as currently the regeneration is about 1 init per second and people will find ways to abuse it.

In short, your proposal in original form goes against the entire concept behind initiative of having a non-timer based restriction, it would wreck yet another weapon-set, while the softened form would get nerfed back to the original form rather fast.

And it violates the KISS principle in a most brutal way.

Asacledhae.2650:

Well, cross guild RP is definitely a nightmare to set up. ..

Just a thought, would creating a guild specifically for the event be an option to work around the limitations? It only costs a few silvers, make everyone member and let them represent Then afterwards you go back to normal.

Sartharina.3542:

…No, there is no guarantee that you can be pretty sure you have it before you do it 100 times. In fact, I’m pretty sure the actual chance is less than 50%.

About 63% chance actually.

Every attempt has a 99% (0,99) chance that you do not get it. So the chance that you never get it in 100 attempts is 0,99 ^ 100 = 0,366. Therefore the chance to get at least one is 1 – 0,366 = 0,634

Arcade Fire.4895:

DiogoSilva.7089:

Shindar the Reaver.2518:

If you’re going to put in stat advantage grinds, go all the way and make the grind feel rewarding as other successful games have. This kitten long grind for minor upgrades stuff is terrible.

That’s the irony.

Ascended gear is vertical progression gated by a huge grind, yet when you finally get it, the upgrades are so minor and subtle, that it’s pretty unsatisfying.

This is a great example of how, when a company wants to appeal to as many types of players as possible, it ends up not appealing anyone. Ascended gear is unsatisfying for those who enjoy long-term vertical progression, and undesirable for those who don’t.

You don’t know what you’re talking about nor do you have any experience with MMO’s apparently. I don’t think you realize what grinding in a game can actually be. This game keeps making strides towards casuals like you that whine incessantly who demand instant gratification and it’s ruining it.

There’s a reason it’s a legendary weapon.

He said Ascended, not Legendary. Ascended is best-in-slot and getting it is grindy. Also, your guesses about his experiences can not possible be an argument, or refute his statements. Why you would imply it could is … puzzling.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Let’s see if you’re making any sense.

Let’s say Exhaustion exists, then I used CnD -> Sneak attack, what happens next?

- CnD gets an Exhaustion timer (X-timer) of 6s while I am in stealth
- If I stay in stealth the whole time, that will make CnD’s X-timer down to 3s — 2s if traited with Meld with Shadows
- If I used a Sneak Attack, it will grant me Revealed debuff for 3s — 4s in PvP
- By the time the Revealed debuff wears off, CnD is off the X-timer, thus it won’t go into cooldown

So please, I urge you to stop your senseless posts. You’re only derailing the thread.

Ah, but there is a big problem, you are forced to stay in stealth to match the cooldown, a 6 seconds cooldown = 3 seconds Revealed + 3 seconds stealth. Cooldowns now determine which skills you can use. Plus, without your cooldown I could Sneak Attack, move around or do whatever through revealed (3 seconds) C&D and Sneak Attack, possible with a Sneak Attack every 3 seconds. Your cooldown has just cut the effectiveness of Sneak Attack in half.

No matter what way you look at it, it does affect Sneak Attack. Does that make sense? Or is offering a reasonable critique on your suggestion simply dismissed as ‘derailing’ a thread?

Mystogan.4157:

Imo they need to nerf str runes, as of now they are at the top of the food chain, running full str runs grants perm might with about 15-25 stacks. …

They don’t give might (the #4 isn’t that powerful), they amplify what is already available, thus they might look at that first. You won’t get 25 stack btw, not from thief, but 15 should be not problem.

Johje Holan.4607:

frans.8092:

Johje Holan.4607:

I’m criticizing the design of the profession by Anet, not individual players so I hope no one takes offense (except Anet).

Then you have to take it up with ANet’s support or in Profession Balance but do not come moaning in the Thief forum. We don’t go moaning in other profession forums either.

Sorry I wasn’t aware this was a no moan zone . I was just responding to a posts from others. I’ll take my criticism to the Profession Balance forum.

I have a thief. Just got to level 76. Hope to get to 80 this week. All I do is WvW and my thief is great fun to play. I just wish there were more options than stealth. I feel like I’m almost forced to use it – definitely pushed toward it.

Thank you. It would be nice if balance issues were discussed in that forum so thieves can discuss thievy things in this forum. Other profession forums wouldn’t welcome constant QQ either.

Some people report success with Sword based builds, usually S/D and while not without the use of stealth, it uses stealth a lot less then D/D, D/P and P/D. Various recent WvW video’s are available.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

frans.8092:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Sneak attack and Auto-attack will be unaffected since they don’t have Initiative cost.

Not true, no Sneak Attack without Cloak & Dagger. You should know better then to post this crap.

Let’s not drag this down in the gutter using senseless posts.

The senseless post is yours, albeit a concealed. Everyone playing a thief for more then 2 days knows you need stealth for Sneak Attack and in practical applications that means Cloak & Dagger precedes it. So, yes, saying Sneak Attack is unaffected because it doesn’t use initiative is misleading crap, and, in a way, insulting and it degrades your opinions and post in general.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Sneak attack and Auto-attack will be unaffected since they don’t have Initiative cost.

Not true, no Sneak Attack without Cloak & Dagger. You should know better then to post this crap.

Mystogan.4157:

I have sustain need more deeps and im at 220% crit dmg? Jst power is 1.8k

Your dps will like more power, less Ferocity. Runes of Strength would be better then Wurm. The +45% basically turns every 2 stacks into 3.

Meh, Ferocity has a low payback. Hoelbrak is an alternative to Strength, but it trades dps for sustain (against condition damage).

MithranArkanere.8957:

They must also unlock their stats.
Why making a berserker and a soldier set when you can only equip one at a time?
And the more you make, the more storage you need to keep what you’ve done.

But what if equipping an ascended unlocked its stats, so you could change to those stats with that type of item with any character?

I’d like that, good suggestion!
+1
/signed

Mhh, you did have non-human Dervishes in Guildwars, I think. Some of the Djinn at least where dervishes and some Elonian desert critters (forgot their name, they could be quite devastating against minions).

Can’t remember Charr dervishes, but Pyre never protested when I made him a R/D

Treat guild missions like dungeons, instance the zone for the guild and when anyone in the guild (or party-members of parties with guild members) enters the zone they can choose if they want to join the guild instance or one of the mega-servers.

Taygus.4571:

Firstly, there are no “home servers”.

There are, or were rather.

Secondly, my guild organises for it about 20-30min early, so it’s not that long a camp either.

Yeah it is, actually.

People shouldn’t be on overflow with this Megaserver thing, not ever, if there is overflow, a new server instance can, and should be created.

Maybe I’d rather have a trait to make pistol shot piercing. But that’s another topic.

It got a cast time a year ago, many skills have some cast time but most also allow you to keep moving. When they don’t you tend to notice the delay more.

In 3 party matches, parties forming alliances is an obvious and intended aspect of the format. Forming an alliance, or 2v1 or whatever you want to call it, is as much match manipulation as capturing camps is.

They are?
Maybe sarcasm doesn’t work so well on a forum?

Johje Holan.4607:

I’m criticizing the design of the profession by Anet, not individual players so I hope no one takes offense (except Anet).

Then you have to take it up with ANet’s support or in Profession Balance but do not come moaning in the Thief forum. We don’t go moaning in other profession forums either.

Silly idea.

They’ve given Thief the initiative mechanic specifically to enable them to use a skill multiple times – and the skills are balanced around this. The drawback of using any skills is that, through the shared initiative pool, the other skills can not be used as frequently, the shared initiative pool functions as a shared cool-down, the thief pays for his ability to choose to use a skill at will with the responsibility to manage this resource carefully.

Now, you propose to take away the advantage without any compensation.

You want to replace the current system so thieves are forced to rotate their weapon-skills based on their cooldowns? Why? And why would you want to change it in the first place? Poor initiative management and unfounded repeated use of a skill is already punished by reducing the availability of other skills.

Sarrs.4831:

I’m fairly sure Sneak Attack is already higher DPS than Unload.

Carrion Sneak Attack is close to Berserker Unload, add in additional condition duration and it might well out-damage Unload.

No, if you remove cooldowns from on-crit sigils you’ll introduce an imbalance favoring skills and weapons with multiple hits or high hit rates.

There’s really no problem with higher crit chance and a lower on-crit bonus damage compared to lower crit chance and higher on-crit bonus. The latter does increase the RNG factor and it would give a huge boost to 100% crit buffs.

chibbi.3706:

Yes, except it regens 3 times less, and Terkov here was talking about warrior regening more.

You were claiming they had to sacrifice their healing slot for it. Truth is, they do have a trait similar to Shadow’s Rejuvenation, which is a major Grandmaster trait (6 points) where Adrenal Health is a minor in Master tier (3 points).

chibbi.3706:

.. I’m thinking mostly about S/D here, this is probably the strongest thief build right now, and yet you barely see anyone playing it (beside sPvP). …

S/D doesn’t just have a steep learning curve, it has a learning plateau. It is the experienced players that can learn to play it, a novice will fail trying this build and, most likely, not be able to learn from the failure.

chibbi.3706:

But for some reason, close to noone cares for this build in WvW (and it’s not about lacking escape, mobility + refuge is more than enough to get out of almost any sticky situation)

Try it in Wvw yourself then? Maybe it doesn’t work so well with all the extra +stats, large groups and frequent lag.

You don’t have enough condition damage to make the stat worthwhile. Even P/D, which has a lot more condition damage then S/D+SB needs condition duration and several cover conditions to make it work.

Looking at the buff I don’t think they’d ever intend it to add anything to combat abilities, but not removing stacks and food buffs when defeated while under this effect doesn’t sound OP and quite in line with the no-armor-damage effect.

Skeletor.9360:

BTW: I am a professional software engineer, if your folks can’t do the above I can.

No, you can’t, you can not defer such analysis and the decision on the consequences to software. Rather help them improving server software to limit these kinds of hacks with server side check and review the code with a ‘never trust the client’ attitude.

Seigfried.5938:

If only roamers HP/attack/armor scaled like PVE bosses when facing a zerg

The way the the zerg train runs down PvE bosses I suspect it would not make much difference, it would only take a bit longer before you can waypoint and relocate to a new objective.

As roamer / small group you can only avoid The Zerg, as if it were a force of nature, consider it a challenge to stay out of it’s wake, like the lynx has to avoid the wolf pack.

Lightsbane.9012:

vincecontix.1264:

Trueshots.9456:

I apologize. 100% WvW.

in that case p/d is fine while not having the highest condition pressure its currently pretty good in addition its survivablity is among the highest of any condition build.

funny joke. this applies bleed stacks comparable to necromancer’s scepter. not to mention the most access to torment in the game.

Pistol can keep up 6-7 bleed stacks by itself, hardly high pressure and the occasional 2 torment stacks are hardly threatening.

Now as to the ‘access to torment’, Shadow Strike give 2 stacks of 5 seconds, comparable to 1 stack of 10 seconds, Impale nets 5 stacks of 12 seconds, which is like 1 stack of 60 seconds and Illusionary counter 5 stacks of 8 seconds, or 1 stack of 40 seconds. Even if all initiative is used for Shadow Strike, Impale still yields about twice as much torment and in practice P/D uses most of it’s available initiative for Cloak & Dagger.

Nerelith.7360:

Chess is amazing because of complexity, when is the last time you heard about who won the world’s tic-tac-toe championship?

So is Go but when is the last time you heard about who won the world’s Go championship?

More on topic, something akin to Prestige Classes might fit more, it could be an option to add levels to one or more trait lines, with nice sounding names like Gladiator, Shadowdancer, etc …

chibbi.3706:

Terkov.4138:

Regen in stealth too big? Don’t be funny. Warr regens more all the time while thief has to use his resources to get this regen and also doesn’t fight at this time but only waits for hp.

Except warriors have to give up on having an actual heal to get that regen. Not saying thief regen is op but don’t compare what is not comparable.

They do have a trait similar to Shadow’s Rejuvenation in Adrenal Health

Forst.5863:

Someone explain the Yak Parade to a Pikeneer, RP in WvW has always interested me.

We have Quaggan runs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAB1GBUDBh8

Yeah, Charr should look more like armored bear.

I think it varies, some heals scale with healing power, some don’t. Some have damage that scales with power, some don’t.

You can check with the Wiki page on Life Stealing

eth.4619:

frans.8092:

You’d look twice and pich your own arm if you saw someone at the busstop or in the supermarket (other then the camping variety) wearing wearing a swimsuit.

You must live somewhere cold all year round or something. I see people in swimwear all the time.

It’s warm enough in summer, usually. I see people in swimming gear on the beach, or at the swimming pool and sometimes a bikinitop near a music festival, but I don’t see people wearing swimsuits in the supermarket, or waiting for the bus or when going to school (200 mtr from my house) or otherwise generally on the street.

I wouldn’t mind if people did, I just don’t see it happening.