I’ve met many Thiefs 1vs1, and they stack confusion like mad. I’m only killing myself if I try to do anything.
not sure about thieves, builds that i play for thief dont have confusion. are you sure thief brought confusions? i s’times bring down 1v1 guardian with my thief (d/p for instance), but that’s good old direct damage. only condi i know of thief is venom, but that’s torment.
After a Shortbow 1 Immob, its usually followed up by a clusterbomb, or a poison field (usually if the target blocks with a shield or something), or a steal item skill like mace crack, throw goop, ice shard, etc. With D/P trickery, sometimes they steal up to them with a point blank clusterbomb shot because they know they can get a free steal off (which landing your steal is critical for D/P trickery).
Thieves rarely use clusterbomb in blackpowder in combat unless they wish to stealth a downed ally to prevent a stomp.
I thought steal was one move that was nearly guaranteed for thief. its insta, isnt it? if you see target shielded, just wait it out. what other counter does steal has, other then some perfectly timed prescience, which might easily waste dodge/evade/etc?
Another critical component, outside of interruptions, is to land the immob from surprise shot. 2 seconds of immob is very powerful.
what would follow sb#1 immob? you cant backstab after that, can you? i mean you prob just did bp, which means you just swapped weapon. unless you have separate smoke field from skill slot. and even then it would be clunky. sb#2 & 4?
after giving a second thought to what @Rome was saying, if going by analogy with the rest of profs, it would indeed be fair to refund init upon interrupt and put skill on 5 sec cd. but true, that would be a buff (which under current circumstances is no-no). so in the end, i guess keep it as it is. but overall thief is a little too much.
Rome.3192 no-one said anything about no init cost, ofc it should cost init. i do have some experience with d/p thief (and other thief builds too), around 200 spvp thief games (mostly d/p, my fav thief) and lvl 40 pve questing. i feel while nothing particularly is op, a little bit of everything adds up to too much in the sum. especially i hate when you succeed in bringing thief down and then he vanishes in thin air.
@Slim.3024 interrupting chain is not that easy either. if you succeed, imo there should be no more chances for thief.
you fought, you brought him down, he didnt
thief gets 2nd chance with stealth-shadowstep, okay, i guess this much is fair
engi is good defensively against thief, but killing thief – not necessarily. and to a significant extent, exactly because stealth gives d/p exit when health gets bombed. is thief “high risk – high reward”? then take risk, disengage should have counter.
dunno why ppl are arguing about “VS d/p thief”. this topic is not really about d/p thief.
If you interrupt the thief HS once, then that thief required having 12 initiative to do a second HS anyway to stealth. That’s a far cry from “any init whatsoever”. That’s in fact a full initiative bar.
If the thief didn’t have a full initiative bar in the first place, which tends to happen very quickly if he’s trying to do any threatening action at all, then that interrupt you did would prevent him from doing the second HS in the first place.
Dec 10: Increased the base rate of initiative gain from .75 per second to 1 per second.
even if he has 1 init after interrupt (which is extreme), that blinding powder will be there for another 4-1 sec (from which melee enemy better stay away from anyway), and with buffed regen he still gets stealth. meanwhile he can safely melee you while blinding, or (if you are ranged) switch to sb, auto you and sb#2 in the end. and i’m talking about most unfavorable (to thief) situation, with base init pool only, and 0 init after interrupt. still can reset.
as i said its nothing to do with skill cd/interrupt
what makes d/p extremely hard to play against is perma blind not the hs/bp blind combo
i think u are just really bad. btw u cant prevent mesmer/engi’s stealth as well thats what it suppose to be? stealth is meant to be stealth and you are not suppose to prevent them but predict them to know where they are. which is possible. You got no brain or something? you obv got no idea how to interruprt bp/hs stealth combo. I can counter d/p thieves most of the time and its the perma-blind that it makes extremely picky to fight against not the stealth combo l2p dude.
still waiting for promised stealth combo interrupt, which i need l2p.
also, i’m not complaining about d/p thief. and not about d/p perma stealth. if it was d/p, i would (in fact i did) complain about stealth as guaranteed reset, not perma stealth as backstab annoy. but this is not about perma stealth. not even d/p. it’s about entire thief weapon set. should play by same rules. interrupted – cant spam. cant spam PW. cant spam SB#2.
What do you mean “normally thief would still have enough init to x2 HS” ? Are you talking about a 15 initiative Thief? Someone that did nothing at all so far? The first reaction the thief that did nothing yet had when he saw you was start his flee combo?
Can you prevent a “no CD at all so far” warrior from escaping by interrupting a single of their skill? No.
does this thief has any init whatsoever? if he can stealth, at least once, he most likely got reset.
also, not just HS should be subject to same interrupt rules. sb#2. PW. you name it. you say thief should not be spammy? then pay for skilled interrupts. and init cost doesnt cut it. pay means, when interrupted in backbone mechanics, game should really turn against you.
Ok, here are my arguments:
3) Reducing the ini pool of a thief is counterplay, even if you wish it was more penalizing than it is.
a very negligible counterplay (3/15 init gone) for interrupting a backbone mechanics. you come with a gun, i come with a spoon. you can call both weapons, but it’s not a level playing field.
Out of curiosity.. In regards to the D/P Blackpowder+Heartseeker combo, how debilitating to the thief is it if you interrupt the HS and cost them 9 initiative? Do they still have a lot of options afterwards? Gesho had asked if they could still combo stealth from Cluster Bomb but Im thinking now thats too much initative cost in too little time? … I really needa play thief more.
(Also, interrupting the thief heal is glorious. Not withdraw of course, the one that grants stealth.)
chaos, should we count 9 init as cost? for bp is still there, isnt it? only 3 init lost (from that single interrupted HS), and normally thief would still have enough init to x2 HS in the same old bp. that’s what needs to be prevented. if BP was gone and whole thing was to be started anew (after a while), that’s what i would call fair.
consider me any class. say engi, or mesmer, or necro. how would you prevent d/p thief from stealth reset of fight?
and it’s not about HS alone. entire weapon set. they need to be on the same playing field as the rest. may be i want to interrupt sb#2 spam? or PW? anything.
In case people are still completely ignorant of thief d/p: Back in the day, it USED to give long stealth and keep regenerating initiative with each jump (you could do up to 4 in one BP). Well, they nerfed that completely. Now thief doesn’t get initiative for each jump, only the first one. The result is, nobody using d/p can/does spam more than 1-2 HS for stealth because the init cost is too high.
i hs in same bp x3 no probs. with +2 init on stealth its perma stealth guaranteed. can be used for reset, hiding while foe leaves node, setting up opener. i dont mind any of these but reset. you can not have guaranteed reset, it has to be counter-able.
It’s absolutely AMAZING how ignorant so many people are about thief. It’s not an easy class.
i regularly sPVP with all sorts of thief builds, i leveled d/p thief to 40 questing alone. i love that build but stealth combo need to be counter-able.
l2p dude seems like you are the unskilled player and need to practice more
i’m not sure you understand what skilled play constitutes. ability to win engagement by disrupting enemy’s backbone gameplay is the definition of skilled play (on part of thief’s counter). thief weapon skills being beyond this principle is the definition of UNskilled play (on thief’s part).
So the only reliable way we have left to stop the black powder combo is to intentionally get hit by the heartseeker?
not really, first hs would still give stealth even if hit (isnt it nice? damage and also stealth). and normally thief would have you de-targeted and hs away for the rest of it. i always put auto-target off when playing d/p
not so much. it’s barely a dent. gameplay (stealth, reset) is essentially intact. interrupts are precious, they are supposed to be one-or-two-per-engagement game changing skills. not so much against thieves.
Why are you comparing it to healing abilities now?
Oh well, let me ask you how do you interupt a guardian shelter?
every prof has blocks, but no prof has interruption (cd) immunity over their entire weapon skill set. its not as if here is one (with 30 sec cd) thief skills, which is immune. it is a backbone gameplay (stealth), which can not be essentially countered.
and its not about hs alone. stimes i might want to interrupt even dagger autoattack. or can i interrupt sb #2 spam? anything?
it’s just too many goodies for one child. this is imba.
it is interrupt-able with negligible consequences. if you interrupt ele fire grub or engi healing combo, its game over. if you interrupt pw, there is another one coming 5 init down the road.
Interrupted HS still used all the initiative. Since Initiative is the thief CD, you can consider that when you interrupt it, it’s equivalent to placing the skill in the full normal CD for another class.
hs init costs doesnt disrupt the gameplay, without cd it essentially leaves gameplay un-counterable.
unskilled enemy: bp+three hs
skilled enemy: bp+2 hs, one got interrupted. into the stealth, out of trouble.
skilled counter or not, looks like thief is getting his game anyway.
Thief skills don’t have cooldown, that’s why chill doesn’t increase Thief CD skills and the interrupts don’t put thief skill on a CD.
Thief CD are based around having or not initiative.
So if a Thief only has initiative for 1 BP/HS combo, if you interrupt it, is like he as CD on all skills till he regen more initiative.
About the interrupt if you let the thief do the HS but interrupt before the HS ends,(while he is in the air), Thief will be out of the BP and he will not be in stealth.
dont you think expectation to catch thief in the air (literally) in order to deliver counter, puts theif vs the rest playing field over the top imba?
unskilled enemy: three hs
skilled enemy: 2 hs, one got interrupted.
skilled counter or not, looks like thief is getting his game anyway.
from different thread i just learned thief init skills are not subject to usual 5sec cd once interrupted. eg if you want to disrupt d/p thief’s stealth combo, you interrupt hs, no biggies, thief can still spam hs in the same powder, interrupted hs is not put on 3sec cd, like any other prof skill would.
imo thief skills should be subject to the same 3sec interruption cd as anyone else’s. otherwise thief gameplay is largely beyond informed counter.
chaos just investigated , when you interrupt d/p thieve’s stealth combo their HS isnt put on usual 5sec cd (like anyone else’s), it just costs them 3init. this largely leaves their gameplay out of counters.
i wonder if other init based skills are interruption cd immune.
and id appreciate red response whether this is a bug, or by design.
Not sure exactly, I’d guess 600ish. I might be wrong, but I think you can also chain it off mesmer illusions and onto a stealth mesmer too.
good to know about mesmer. in hotjoins, it was good. if at least in one place your team is putting up a good fight, you show up and enemy melts, really turns the tide. but got to run a lot. in soloQ probably will get focused more. cantrips give good survival, with some cc, often you can run away.
i didnt do conjure flame axe and blast combos (other then earth#2) from video. conjure seems unreliable to me. i wish there were more blust finishers (like engi), that would be really fun.
overall, most “mage” feeling i’ve had so far in gw2.
(Responding to a post a week later.. who does that!?)
You know, that’s a really good question. If I’m not mistaken (I don’t play thief, someone correct me if I’m wrong plz.) interrupting a thief still puts the skill on kitten cooldown like everyone else. Whatever the case, I’ve interrupted a thief’s heartseeker out of blackpowder, and he still had just enough time to HS in it again. But yeah, they can still use shortbow to blast the smoke field if they so choose.
after messing around with ele weapons like d/f and d/d (and getting nowhere), i discovered joys of the staff. in multi target it is devastating, with cantrips i can get away.
however, can staff ele engage 1v1? for instance (i’ve only played couple of hours in hotJ so far) there was this #1 power ranger. i tried earth#3 (and #4), i bought some time with air CC. i opened with meteor shower. i would go behind los and back. but in the end of the day, #111111111111111 would bring my 15k life down.
I’m guessing that if there are low ranked players vs high ranked players it’s a matter of not having sufficient people of the same MMR to be put against. Maybe if the system was more complex it could avoid going as far as picking up a Rank 1 to go against players who are on top of the leaderboards.
i see. you are saying mm is mmr based, not ranke based.
thieves like to refer to themselves high risk, high reward. reward is there all right, but i dont see much of a risk. especially in relative terms. when is thieve risking more then any other (glass-to-glass) class?
The population is super low, which is probably why this happens
pop is low, but why this should happen? these ppl queued, even after putting first couple of players on each side, it was obvious that one side was skewed. why now correct at third, fourth, fifth player. this is completely blue sided queue.
i dont see any explanation to this but flawed mm sys. i would very much appreciate red comment here.
i would like to hear what is anet mm algorithm that ends up in this comp. what could possibly be an explanation? each player on red team is outranked by player on blue team. timing? but that is though entire comp.
It was a bit different, I was trying to kill him on mid point. He had like half health. Got him to very low health, then he vanished in stealth, I switched to other foe, then when he came back, he was almost full health. Then I switched back on him, got him to low health again. He started running away from mid point, I chased him down a bit, then he came back on me and we fought 1v1, I got him again on very low health, he used shadow refugee then came back full health again and finished me. I didn’t have any evades or defensive skills left.
usually getting thief low health is no big deal, it usually takes couple of hits. its their last 10% that’s a real skill when against them. given all disengage that they have. i tell myself to keep whatever cc i have for that final bit.
While people always love to spout about “team-balance” etc. I think that by focusing on 1v1 balance, you can balance team-fights by extension. This is especially easy in a game without dedicated healers.
how is 1v1 = teamVSteam by extension? there is single target, there is aoe, bounce, support. now imagine 4 single target team vs 4 aoe team, each aoe strong enough killing each single target alone. wonder what happens when their aoe supersedes one on another in damage and healng.
by extension it wont happen. in fact a big question is if even with effort you can get both, single and team balance. answer most likely is no, you cant.
@Iason Evan.3806 this is a commendable soul-searching, but when removing warrior op and spirit bug takes 6 month (and still no sigh of fix), I’m not sure what measure of “good work” you mean.
anet has been flying low for pvp promotion. in number of interviews they said they want to renew the push after the feature build. there is some rationale in this, as under current infrastructure previous esports effort failed.
how do you rotate home: when someone on your side goes down in the mid, you move mid (if no incoming on home)? hoping downed player will respawn shortly and take your home def spot?
. dont mind this thread on my account.