Guild Wars 2

What if the stealth buffs were moved to the revealed debuff?

- regen health when revealed is up
– 100% crit in revealed (no backstab garantee crit, but 3-4 secs of crits?)
– gain 2 initiative when revealed
– remove a condition every 3 secs you have revealed.

This would force the thief to stay in combat more than in stealth to keep its benefits.
It would not hurt so much players that keep active in fights, but it would reduce the benefits of stealth for long times to fully recover.

Just an idea…
any constructive and polite criticism is welcome…

Jinks.2057:

I kill guardians all the time.

I kill bad guardians all the time.
The good ones are too hard to crack open, its a waste of time. He probably will just dance around block, invul, heal, keep you busy until his backup team arrives.

Just make traps turn X boons into conditions (traited)
and venons strip 1 boons on application (traited)

this could improve the usefulness of some underused thief specs and utilities…
a poison/trap P/P // S/D thief could be a nice boombunker buster…

needle trap – ambush trap – thiefs guild – spider venon + venon share… ultimate boom stripping…

Deamhan.9538:

So please explain the counter for this…

Two thieves vs 20+

The only times when they are visible are;

When they have the ability to evade,
When they are out of range, and
When they are behind someone bursting them down.

While they did take damage, they didn’t take enough damage to die before that stealth debuff wears off and poof. They’re gone. When they become visible again, they have most (or all) of their health back, most (or all) of any conditions are gone.

Two against 20 and it was basicaly a stalemate. They were able to down players, but couldn’t finish any of us off. Too many people reviving.

No amount of skill can stand up to the sheer numbers we had. It is a crutch mechanic pure and simple.

I call BS on this…

20 people focusing on a thief or 2 and dont get it killed?? With stealth not breaking channeled attacks?? with aoe?

20 people dont even need CC to get a thief down!
2 people need to CC a thief, not 5 or 10… 20?

You are just pulling stuff out of you bottom or you are walking around with the 19 worst players ever, when they all made new characters and are lvl 2 out of the tutorial using keyboard turn and mouse-clicking their 1 skill (into chat), while standing still and havent found out about the heal skill yet.

Miserymachine.7512:

The only way to make non-thief players happy would be to remove all stealth from the profession and make it so we could only wield a wet pancake as a weapon.

Have you ever costume-brawled someone using the cook outfit??
Wet pancake would be far too OP.

I usually run a mix of knights and zerker for a solid mix of dps and survivability. Gs//H

If I feel I can just go all out dps I change the knight pieces to zerks. Gs// S/T

If I feel I need more heals (self or group) and tankynes I change the zerks to clerics… H // M/F

Sc/Sh (with reflection and SotA) for ranged fights…

Traits I use the 0/0/30/30/10 and change the Majors from AH/Shouts to MF/Meditations from group to solo scenarios… The one in Virtues I change from more retaliation to bonus to consecrations depending on situations… sometimes even dmg bonus with aegis is used…

I know its not the optimum setup for dps or support, but I feel its a very flexible set that let me adapt on the run…

A lot… and it comes in all forms…

- hot-join sPvP complains thiefs are OP
- tPvP complains thiefs are crap
- WvW you get party invites from opponents on other servers to QQ about how you suck for killing them in a small fight with a OP build.
- PvE dungeons pugs tell you to get another alt(warrior or mes) because thiefs die too easy (even before the first run)…

Sarrow.2785:

http://www.twitch.tv/loljumper/c/1817891

If you think heartseeker kills, check this twitch vid.

That was great!

Without the combo the set will be useless.
If you cant get in stealth its better to use sword instead of dagger.

If you set to get revealed when leaving stealth, you can still stack stealth with it.
If you set to not stack stealth, you can still re-stealth after you come out.

It will be superior to d/d in terms of longer fights (more blinds and easier stealth)
It will be inferior to d/d in terms of burst dps (CnD still hits hard and gives vulnerability)

There are ways to counter the stealthing combo, easy ones…
thiefs have no stability, and HS will hit anything on its path, even without target.

I mean… I love the cheese… its no bacon, but its still really good…

Some cheese stinks… just saying…

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fIAQNBkYDbkzJ5t3R7hJOgYKUEnHURASeqHthdEHA-jkxAYLA0VkpCAJvioxqrxUuER1A-w
this is a simple warrior sniper build. It has NO defense. None.
It has the set-up to deliver massive KS in low CD.
If you include boom hate in it, you will have to give up the lower CD on KS (and lower cost with next patch).
As KS is the main source of dmg (with some from volley) Im not sure the 3% increase per boom (still not as good to bypass protection) is more dmg than lower CD and cost on burst skills.

Anyone that wants to try it, go ahead… its fun until you kill yourself on a reflection wall. (new signet will only make 3 attacks unblockable)

Folk.2093:

Quite honestly a solid counter to a boon should be boon removal. They should have worked on making those skills better/adding more of them.

They did…
Thiefs now can steal boons (IF they use S/D, and want to waste the initiative for it)
Necros get better boon corruption (no block with certain utilities)
Warriors get a GM trait on a underused line that gives them more dmg per boon.

Mesmers still have good boom stripping (sword aa and fields) and some stealing…

Some other classes, including guards, have some minor boom removals also. but, just like the sigils, they have long CD and are not very useful against the boom-spamming bunkers of the META atm.

Boom hate was already on the game in some sort, just not a viable (or well know/used) role. Maybe there will be some changes to that.

Guards will have to take care on how they spam thair boons. Dont just spam shouts all over and run around like nothing else is important.
Eles boons have really short duration and rellies more on constant application.

Protection is still great and only a really stupid person wouldn’t want it with a side of regeneration.

This adds more depth to the game and group mechanics…
Instead of running around with 4 other ele/guards spamming boons all over, bring a necro to corrupt stolen boons or send the conditions back to enemies…

Just be smart…

The best of gw2lfg.com is that I can leave my tablet with its app on autorefresh on my side while I run around doing other stuff… so I know of the groups lfm to do things without the need of alt-tab.

Svarty.8019:

The point is that the Guardian stuff that is being destroyed is inherent to the class itself, whereas warriors aren’t forced to spec burst. The very concept of Guardians is being gutted so that other classes can spec certain ways – there’s no way to counter them whatsoever and that’s not right.

Its one class!! Its 3 attacks after using one signet. Learn to see the animation and dodge/invul/LoS it.

And the boon hate? You still have protection… and I dont see it becoming a typical warrior playstyle as it demands 30 pts in discipline AND not taking burst mastery.

Thiefs stealing boons?? Have you seen the cost of it? Do you even know how thief works? If they steal 3 boons from a guardian they cant do anything anymore for the next 4-5 secs…

Stop overreacting!

Get 50% speed in stealth and go “perma stealthing” around… =P
All those poor critters are great CnD fodder…

I do PvE and WvW, sometimes s/tPvP, but waiting more on the improvements on the last one.

I have one of each class, but not all are lvl 80.

On PvE my guardian and warrior are just faceroll across the world and quite easy in dungeons. I usually get as many mobs on me as I can see and kill it all without problems.
Ele is quite easy to play also, when you get used to the rotations (d/d).
Ranger is easy if you have the right pets to tank for you or if you use a regen/evade build to tank while your pet does massive dmg.
Thief and mesmer I have to take care a bit more, the thief have perma blindness and it makes trash-cleaning very easy, but doesnt work agains boss/champions/vets.
All in All, open world pve is quite easy with all classes, massive events are easy but if you want to be effective you need good and constant AoE.

WvW
thief is hard. The playstyle demands constant awareness of your resources, the enemy buffs and strategies and the surroundings. Its a lot of fun to sneak behind the zerg and take a few people trying to return to the main fight, but you really need to drag them away or if some others show up you get roflstomped/CCed/AoEed. Great to solo camps fast and run away…
Warrior I love to play when the zerg is EVERYWHERE (EU T1, and sometimes you just want bags) I set him with a riffle and buffs/banner and just need to take care with reflection walls. Sometimes I change to double axe and jump into the enemy zerg with massive aoe for 4 secs (balanced+frenzy+endure pain) and try to run back inside… its fun!
Ele (d/d) is just roflstomp-buffs-immortal looong fights… Was my first 80 and I got a bit bored of it a long time ago…
Guardian is great. Its quite a balanced class… I can buff and give support in zergs, I can survive and get kills on small fights and need to take care with certain necros and things like that…

My main used to be the thief, and I still play it a lot on wvw, but have been playing the guardian more. The playstyle translates well from PvP-PvE-WvW and its a class always welcome to groups. Thief I need to do a lot of changes from one scenario to the other (traits, gear, and above all the playstyle) and that was annoying.

If you want it to be hard because you want a challenge, go do other dungeons and paths, or do it without running pass the bridge or using other common tactics.

If you want it to be hard because you don’t like people that farm it... Well whats the problem? I think its lame too, but let them do it, it doesnt change how you play.

BTW, I did CoF P3 a few days ago and had fun!

acid.8631:

I ve been playing since the release of the game. I recommended the game to alot of people and alot of people quit beacouse of same reason that is happening to me. I didnt get about of 10000 tokkens cause i dced at the last boss in dungeons and than everyone left the party.

10000 tokens for dc’s ?? You need:
– Better internet. I mean, I don’t know what you are using, but I play from KSA, Germany, Brasil, Spain, and NZ and NEVER had so many disconnects. Even when sharing internet with 3 other people. (Playing in US servers)
– Better group. I’ve had disconnect before, but even with PUGs I could go back and still get the final reward. Sometimes disconnecting more than one time in a run (sharing internet with 3 people who want to skype with their GF, and my GF on skype trying to talk to me)
– Say what is really going on… Seems you are over-exaggerating things…

The way people are blowing this out of proportion is insane…

If you think this is going to “KILL” guards and eles, you need to rethink both how you play your toon and how other play against you.

If you think thiefs will now steal all your 10 boons instantly… you have no idea how thiefs work.

People are not screwed. Unless “screwed” means they need to be more aware of their oponents tactics…

I mean, “EVERYONE IS GOING TO KILL US BECAUSE WE HAVE BOONS!”, really everyone is a warrior with 30pts in discipline and no burst mastery now??

I think everyone covered up the dodge aspect really well already, and the heals and protection with hammer.

One thing also important is to move around, even when not dodging.
Dont stand still in front of your opponent, circle around him more. A lot of mobs on lower lvls have very slow attacks, so only by moving around you can already mitigate the dmg.

One tactic I use a lot on harder encounters is to use the hammer to lock opponents out of reach while I regen. Bash them away, use the chain to immobilize, and use the circle around you to keep them a few extra seconds out of reach. This will give you time to recover a bit. Be it to recover hp or cd’s.

yes, they can…

Wethospu.6437:

One time I pinged my gathering tools and underwater gear. That seemed to make them happy.

Did you ping your molten pickaxe? that one is the next MUST HAVE on CoF speed runs

I think only the stats signets will be buffed…
I dont think they will buff SoR and SoJ, but that would probably make some room for signets among the shouts/meditation/consecration…

with perfect inscription what would that give you??
3-4 conditions removed every 10secs?
30-40% dmg reduction??

Not sure on a guide, but a few things to consider:

- thiefs are squishy and have low HP pool. Your defense is not get hit. For this you can use stealth, so opponents loose target (but things still can hit you) and/or mobility (dodges and teleports). In both areas we have a lot of tools.

- initiative is your resource pool. Learn to use it well and time your actions right. Wasting initiative on one attack is MUCH worse than wasting a normal CD skill, as it influences all your other (wep) skills, what can you do and when…

- dmg comes in burst dps or burst conditions. The burst dps is mostly achieved by the use of constant stealth to perform full dmg backstab (dagger stealth attack) or by use of dual pistols and unload. The condition burst is done by sneak attack (pistol stealth attack) or by LDB (dual dagger #skill). Both set-ups use other things (gear, traits and utilities) to maximize their burst potential, time between bursts and/or survival between burst. You can deliver a 20k CnD/Mug/BS/HS combo but then you will die or retreat for the next 40secs. Or you can do 3-4k backstabs every 5secs while constantly dodging/stealthing to keep yourself longer in the fight… But then again, no iniative and you are screwd. (numbers depend also on targets specs)

- You have poor access to boons. No stability. So take care with stuns/knickdowns/knockbacks. Make sure you have more than one stunbreak ready.

- You have just a few weapons, but they combine in different ways. As you can “spam” skills, most of the skills are utility and/or situational. Getting in a fight spamming HS is not a good idea.

I’m not sure everyone QQ’ing here have much of an idea of whats going on…

Warior gets unblockable attacks. They get 3 attacks. WHEN they pop a signet.
– Learn to see the signet animation (ITS A HUGE SIGNET ON TOP OF HIS HEAD) and dodge/invul (invul and block are different things) the next 3 attacks. You have vigor, you can time that… And by missing one attack (KS-Evis) it goes on a short CD, so you can probably take the next 2 attacks and make him waste the buff on lame auto-attacks that still wont dmg you much.

Warrior gets 3% dmg per buff.
– Thats IF he trait deep into discipline, and not taking the burst mastery trait. this will make the warrior loose some very important 30 pts. So, hes going to be a full burst glass canon or a tank with mostly no dmg/crits. Use protection and you mostly negates his dmg increase. And again, learn to dodge the burst.

Thiefs will steal our boons.
– Only S/D thiefs can get boom stealing, and its costly… very costly. They can maybe steal 3 boons and do nothing for about the next 5secs (not even stealth).

Necro will corrupt our boons
– They already did that… If you are using SY against necros and stepping in their wells you were already going to die before…

All in all, the changes will make guards having to pay more attention on their oponents and their surroundings instead of mindlesly spamming boons all over and not giving a skritts bottoms to whats going on…
A welcome change…

Thiefs can have other thiefs to help them, by a trap utility or elite. The thiefs “pets” do a good dps and some even AoE blind. If you trait for it you can even keep one thief with you permanently on a fight. Not sure why you would do that, but still…
Guards can have “pet spirit weapons” of sorts… They are actually very useful in some situations.

Some races (asura, norn, human) can summon some “pets” too for a short time.

You can also buy some items in game that gives you pets… Just make some research and you’ll find. Some even last until killed (or you leave the area)

Rangers and pet necros are “balanced” around having those pets out. If you like pets and want to depend so much on those, you can use those classes if you want a more permanent (out of combat) pet, or you can play a class/race that gives you some pets sometimes but its not fully set around that…

Before nerf one or two mesmers could take down a zerg…
Now you can take the zerg halfway down and leave the other half for a hammer warrior (boon hate + SoM) to have fun too…

There you go, everyone can help, everyone gets bags… much more fun…

Master of Timespace.2548:

andyMak.6985:

but still, in stealth = no dps

Bad argument: in mistform = no dps. Doesn’t mean ele should be able to mistform at will. Not to mention that you regen in stealth, gain might and lose conditions. d/p definitely needs a tune down.

Mistform is also a invulnerability. Stealth isnt…
Just saying…

I can see the dwarfs returning to the surface being chased by Primordus (sp?)

Just wanted to know if the 3 unblockable attacks on signet activation will work like a thiefs venon (reduce charges even on miss/dodged attacks) or like a guardian VoJ (dont get wasted on miss/dodged attacks).

I’m not sure why the different implementations on those (next attack does x) anyway…
IMO it should all work like the venons (missed attack = missed charge)

If you lvl a toon that is “crap at pve” from 1 to 80 and grind gear “for a long time” just to be able to use one condition spam on wvw, its a clear sign that things are overpowered.

Also, doing 2k-3k dmg to btn smashers per skill/dodge is still going to kill most of the “badies” and zerglins out there in wvw…

Seems thiefs will get their burst (mug) “nerfed”. But will get some more boon-removals (with one specific wep-set).
Warriors will get some buff dmg against boons also (if traited)…

Really…
No one should be looking to “grind” some profession because its OP in WvW. If you do, dont come to complain that you “wasted your time”…

alemfi.5107:

Or—— they could actually revise the norn forms.

Dont dare take away my norn stealth and ultra-mega-super-fast speed!
That thing is really useful in so many dungeons and WvW…

Also, a LOT of rangers seems to just link their skills on chat while standing still instead of actually using them…

;P

[Long Range Shot]
[Rapid fire]
[Rapid fire]
[Rapid fire]

I mean… If you have more people removing boons, you gonna need more people giving boons… so you expand the roles on both sides.
If you have more people doing more dmg to anyone with boons, you make buffers undesirable and remove a role/play-style…

Or am I seeing this wrong?

Most rangers are bad.
Something about a pet class with long ranged attacks seems to attract people that dont move in combat are slow to turn around/dodge and stay far from their support. And they usually are squishy and dont use the pet properly.

Its very rare and surprising to encounter a ranger that can control you using melee weps and the pet properly. Some of those regen monster builds are hard to get down also. The traps one are not much of a problem if you see where hes puting the traps. Some dont even stand on their traps!!

On my thief rangers are a good preference target…
On my guard I just put a wall of reflection and let them kill themselves… They never stop firing! Some even like to pop quickness while shooting themselves to death!! go figure…

Tosha Daydreamer.9251:

kokiman.2364:

IIRC colin said that they are not working on new fractals right now. But it’s been pretty quite around the dungeon team(no new dungeon, no changes to excisting dungeons for 2 months now), so who knows.

There’ll be a new dungeon with the april update, so I don’t think the dungeon team has been idle

They mentioned that the new dungeon was made by the team that did the wintersday content, not the dungeon team from the other ones.

A stealthing thief fighting against a heavy condition build needs to stay in stealth all the time to cleanse. This mostly shuts-down the thief if there is constant conditions being applied.
I dont think its OP…

As to boom hate. Not sure about this.
I think I would like to see more something like “venons remove boons on application” and “traps change x boons into conditions on trigger” to give this utilities more use…
Imagine a boom-removing-life-stealing-venon-sharring build… hummm

I lol’ed at the chat tab names….

Maybe the new dungeon will become a fractal after its time on the open world is done…
would be nice…

Retaliation dmg is based on power and not on dmg dealt to you.
Doing more dmg to a target that has retaliation doesnt mean you take more dmg from it.

The tooltip is misleading.

After watching some talk with devs in youtube I got thinking about boon hate.
The idea seems to give some professions the option (traits?) to deal more dmg against targets with boons.
It sounds interesting to deal with boon-spamming bunkers (ele/guard) but I’m not sure how this would effect the group-play of such classes…
Would a flat dmg increase against buffed opponents make buffing class undesirable in groups?

Would it be better to have more options of boon removal/corruption/stealing?

Thiefs can steal 2 boons with their steal (when traited). What if they could remove 1-2 boons with venon applications (making venons more useful against bunkers) or change up to 5 boons into conditions on trap activation?
Necro has some nice boon removal/corruption. But seems the well pulses cant compete with some classes ability to just stack boons… Maybe increase the ammount of boons that are removed/corrupted by each pulse?

The main question is:
– Is more dmg to opponents with boons a better idea than more boom stripping/stealing/corruption?

you’ll get a town clothing b-day hat.

Maybe the new dungeon is based on the fire and flame theme, and it will reward tokens for those weapon skins…

Casualist.1052:

Let’s consider the relative similarity and intelligence of the following statements:

“Mass Berserker Gear is the best call because the threat of death is minimized when your enemies are killed quicker!”

“You should always speed when you drive! If you’re on the road for less time, that’s less time for you to get into an accident!”

Thoughts?

As pointed already, on the game, death have no significant meaning or cost.
If you drive fast and hit something, you will destroy your car, someones car and maybe die or be permanently injured.
If death was permanent in the game I think no one would ever put a piece of zerker gear.
Also, the driving is more like a PvP scenario (the reaction of other drivers to your speed or their random actions around you are not set as a bad AI, but more related to what they are and what they drive themselves) and in PvP you see a bigger variation of gear set-ups.
As a final point. In trafic not everyone can get the top-end car after one week grind at work. It would be interesting if they could. I Wonder how many Military Tanks and Ferrari we would see running around smashing each other… Just think if you could get any vehicle out there to drive over/past others what would you choose?

Depends on how he is commanding and who.

Who do people on your server will follow?
The guardian that set a reflection wall and bubbles and scream “With me! NOW CHARGE” or
The thief that tell everyone to charge while he stays in the back stealthed checking for enemy moves and support?

Torch is more to dps builds so you can keep that burn going and increase your dmg.
Shield is a nice defensive weapon but it really shines more on ranged combat when you can avoid a hard hitting missile attack (for your whole group) and combined with some missile reflection/protection utilities gives you a HUGE time of missile defense.
Focus is more for melee defense. The block and the blind are great on melee fights. The fact that the blind/regen bean can apply multiple stacks of blind/regen (with good positioning) makes it a good combo with some traits. And the blast finisher on the block is also a great perk when used on top of fields.

To the OP:
A few things you should keep in mind:
– gear/Lvl makes a HUGE difference in WvW. If you say you didnt have the “full-build” then it will be easy for a lot of people to kill you. (Even if its easy for you to kill some other people)
– tPvP/sPvP taticts are very different from WvW and even from roaming WvW. With the gear variation you can get on WvW(PvE) there is a HUGE difference in how classes can play. What I’m saying here is that something you might think it works on sPvP might be nothing special on WvW (and vice versa). The way thief plays in this two scenarios is vastly different, so if you are good against thiefs in sPvP doesn’t make you good against them in WvW.
– If you didn’t know thiefs can stealth for that long, then you need to do more research on the class. Knowing what weapons the thief is using is very important to know how he is going to stealth and what is he going to do when he comes out.

– As a necro, its going to be hard for you to kill a (good?)thief in WvW. As any other class that lacks control+burst. The thief defense is to stealth to heal and remove conditions so it can stay on the fight. If you try to kill a thief with conditions or low dmg (outlasting it) he will just go away and find another target or try to get you on a better time.
– For a necro to not be killed by a thief he needs to force the thief in the fields (marks, wells, GTAoE, etc) to apply enough pressure so the thief has to retreat (not so hard, thief has very low health and will need to stealth and hold his attacks all the time to remove conditions and heal).
– If the thief is too greedy, it might die for not leaving the fight when he could. If you are too greedy, you might die for giving chase when you should have stayed in the center of that mine-field of wells and marks.

The thief (at least most of the stealth using builds) are good to get GC that are alone or on small uncoordinated groups. But it fails badly to take down most of bunker specs and will kill itself agains most Guards/Engi (retaliation). But against some bunkers the thief can survive (most of the times) their dmg long enough to decide to leave the fight and run off.
A D/D Ele can also decide to leave a fight, but when a thief does it, the opponents don’t know for sure if its gone and where, this leaves some people very angry.

To effectively kill a thief you need a good burst and control (and maybe some good active defense). Not letting it stealth or move around and beeing able to dmg it while its stealthed (as using AoE) is usually the best. This combination of defense, burst and control is mostly seen in mesmers. A mesmer can avoid a thiefs burst with his multitude of invuls, and then daze/stun/immo the thief and burst it quick. Most other classes lack such combination, but organized groups not so much.

Its a great set-up for pve (including soloing wvw camps).
the evade and stun on PW make it better than AA in many situations, even with low dmg.
It could use a buff, bit its not useless

I think the droped exotic named set for lvl 80 has just one glove. So you can see the other hand fully.

Anyway, check:

http://www.gw2armorgallery.com/
http://www.gw2armor.com/
http://dulfy.net/category/gw2/fashion-gw2/

Was running around skritsburg another day when some bandits attacked and the town was locked.
I was about to go on my way when I overheard the skrit guards having a conversation about how the king is dead and alive at the same time since they cant look inside the town. I had a good laugh at it.
Schrodinger’s cat principle by skrits!!

Anyone else found some funny details like that around?

Zerker is not better than everything else…
its just the meta. There are people that try different things and find really good combinations of class/gear/builds out there… But if there are not 100+ youtube videos explaining the whole thing, then its not very known…

Its amazing what you can do with combo fields in a organized group