Guild Wars 2

You can pick what you want for weapons, D/P will have more on demand stealth access…but for mobility you will be on SB most of the time anyway. Primary weapon is whatever you feel comfortable killing people with.

Taking Shadowstep and reducing the cooldown to 40 seconds from 50 is essential to super mobility.

Use trickery to reduce the steal cooldown to 20 seconds and get the stealth on steal trait in SA.

You will then have a burst mobility on the order of 5k units, with stealth access.

Sample of mobility: see zerg, steal into center of it (gaining stealth at the same time), use shadowstep to port 1200 in opposite direction zerg is moving, using two SB 5 teleports to add another 1800 range. Basically you can flash teleport past a zerg a total of 4,000 units not counting dash from Daredevil. You will be able to add in another SB 5 as soon as a few ticks of initiative regenerate.

Yeah that seems like strange behavior. Unless they were running extreme condi duration minus food/gear it seems unlikely that the condi would never tick at all….

It’s hard to tell because some classes, if you build for it, can be completely immune to conditions.

It is always possible someone figured out how to hack the system…but I’d start with the assumption that they built themselves to counter conditions. Was this 1v1?

Sword needs some buffs to make it more fluid of a set to use.

Stealth attacks need some buffs to make them worth setting up and executing. Stealth stacking should be reduced in order to justify improving the power of stealth attacks.

Decrease the evade access on some weapon sets (D/D and Staff) to make perma-evade skills less possible.

Improve shortbow’s ability to do limited AoE damage. Buff the cluster bomb damage slightly and duration of the poison field.

Add in condition clear on successful Stealth Attack and decrease the condition clear on evade mechanic in Daredevil.

I have stolen multiple stacks of boons before. It was off a test NPC in HotM and I was able to grab all of the might that was on the NPC.

I think more testing is necessary to fully test this because often if there are enough covering boons the ones that stack like might don’t get touched as much as aegis/resistance/etc that only stack duration. I like stealing those boons though, so it isn’t really a problem.

Taking all the on hit heals it is viable in PvE contexts imo. I’ve soloed champions with a slightly more tanky set of armor and a similar setup.

I haven’t tested it extensively, however, and I prefer builds that work in multiple game modes.

So, the general consensus is that sPvP is the “hardest” mode for thieves to compete in. For that reason I decided to take some time to PvP. I’m normally a WvW player, so the hit to damage and survivability was an adjustment to be sure. My goal was to figure out how my damage and boonstrip worked out in the average match. After all, if we want to compare boonstrip ability, a match that ends with a stat screen is a pretty solid piece of evidence.

I’ve encountered some pretty good players and some bad ones in the course of playing some matches. I’ve only been playing my build from WvW with a Carrion amulet because that provides the HP and damage I expect. I’ve especially come to appreciate more the stacking kill bonus sigils I normally run with, because, with the adjusted stats, the stacking bonus is much more significant than in WvW where I run with much higher overall stats.

I ran between 200-300k condition damage applied in matchups. I removed between 100-150 boons per match. I tended to have credit on 10-15 kills and 10-15 cap/decaps overall.

Rending Shade pushed my performance against Warrior especially, and also druid. Dragonhunters are the toughest matchup just because the time to kill one is generally too long to justify a 1v1—the map is too small to have those stay 1v1 anyways. Necros are much harder than I’m used to in WvW but not unreasonably so. I had some excellent 1v1’s with engineers. Same with mesmers who have waaaaay too many blocks/invulns but I love fighting them for the challenge with targeting. I don’t run into too many revs, but the lack of cleanse really hurts them, and I’ve never noticed them using resistance—maybe because I’m stripping it? Warriors are the ones I noticed with resistance, and it still impeded me for at least a few seconds in those cases.

The difficulty with Rending Shade is that, if your stealth access is tied to CnD, you can’t simply CnD off a blocking DH and strip their boons that way. So much aegis. But, it still gives you a strong bonus in wearing them down. I’d say you might get better boonstrip consistently off offhand pistol, simply because you have more consistent stealth access. This comes with a higher initiative cost though so it might just be a wash.

Not sure how P/D is easy given that stealth access requires CnD to operate effectively.

I don’t give much credence to “skill” comparisons of weapon sets.

Any weapon set can be equally ineffective or effective depending on the match-up. A D/P new player will do ok against a new player. Against a more experienced player they will get destroyed. D/P has a high “skill ceiling” only in the sense that knowing your weapon set will produce better outcomes and let you fight against more experienced players.

P/P for example is considered a low skill set because of Unload. This doesn’t consider the prevalence of reflects that many classes can carry. Taken by itself a ranged damage skill can seem lower skill, to be sure, but actual fights will be harder if the opponent knows what they are doing. P/P is therefore easy to use against unprepared opponents and hard to use well against tougher opponents.

And you have to manage initiative with all thief builds. Miss a few critical abilities and you suffer for it.

I have been running it in both sPvP and WvW on my main build, it is extremely effective against the meta—which is boon reliant.

Some of the complaints you raise are more “this isn’t in a trait line I take” rather than “this trait is inherently bad.” I would argue that for people who are already taking SA for stealth focused builds the trait is a really strong bonus to the stealth attack. If stealth attacks are weak for most weapon sets this trait is a way to make stealth attacks more valuable. Further, by placing the trait in the SA line, which is designed to enhance stealth abilities of the thief the choice makes perfect sense.

In part, you seem to be overly focused on the meta—which does not use SA—because Shadowshot and auto attack are overpowered and backstab relatively weak comparatively at the moment. The main reason P/D makes sense with Rending Shade is precisely because the stealth attacks are essential to making the weapon set function. Sure, the extra shots in Sneak Attack help to land Rending Shade compared to D/D or D/P, but the real reason people wouldn’t take those abilities now is because Backstab isn’t worth using over Shadowshot.

Part of why I say RS is a “good” trait is precisely because the trait functions well when you use Stealth Attacks consistently. Whether or not using the stealth attack on a particular set makes sense is more a balance question for the weapon and not for the trait. It isn’t the trait’s fault that backstab is underpowered after all.

Of course in a 1v1, but in a team fight is often the situation involved.

Any warrior who over relies on resistance will be vulnerable to boon steal/corruption.

Also, thieves that build for extra mobility are the ones who will outrun this kind of build. A thief who doesn’t may have difficulty depending on how far the warrior has to run.

To provide a little context, a thief can take the Shadow Arts trait line. Few take this line because they think it will neuter their damage too much. Most take trickery, which can reduce the time on steal to 20 seconds—but this depends on a target for the teleport aspect.

Thief with daredevil has (1) a 900 range teleport on shortbow that can be spammed at full initiative slightly less than three times, (2) a steal that will travel 1200 distance, (3) a shadowstep utility that will also travel 1200 distance, (4) 3-5 dodges (depending on circumstances) that come with a 450 distance dash. I’m honestly not sure how far the dashes move you compared to having swiftness and just running in the same direction. Ignoring that, a thief can travel over the course of a few seconds (assuming initiative is full) 900×3 + 1200 x2 for a total of 5100 distance + dash/running distance.

Sustained distance gain from teleport over time isn’t something I’ve calculated.

It’s actually 2 boons. And the point is that it strips critical boons during an attack. Losing resistance is a huge loss for warriors for example, and protection isn’t a small loss either.

Well boonsteal is a counter to the bunker sustain that is so common. Personally, rending shade does a good job of that, even if the damage reduction is somewhat pointless given how commonly most classes just pop out new boons constantly.

I do think that Daredevil needs less condition removal on evade. It is a silly mechanic because in a team fight the Daredevil becomes practically immune to conditions by just evading. Changing it to “on dodge” makes it even more problematic because then the Daredevil doesn’t even need to be in a fight and evade and attack to be successful. Perma dodge thief becomes even more immune to conditions than it already is? Not a good idea for balance.

I would change the condition removal to a five second internal cooldown. Condition builds should not be forced to stop attacking to avoid having all their damage negated 100%. If you fix that then people will not stop attacking and you can clear conditions more. Against players who stop attacking, you should be taking other condition clears than just DD, so just use those. Daredevil is a lazy crutch as far as condition removal is concerned.

The advantage that venoms bring is a burst that can be loaded onto a thief. If they only run escapist’s then stop attacking and they will go down quickly.

My current build uses Rending Shade as the primary choice in many matchups. There are only a couple of targets I would not use BT and RS combo against.

Against necro and thief I would generally use Cloaked in Shadow because blind is very helpful (and against a necro avoiding getting hit avoids some of the condi transfer abilities they can have on them).

You could also make it clear 2 and 2 conditions. Maybe not as effective in some regards as in the past but certainly more effective in others.

Keep in mind that your engage use of Shadowstep is still more than possible. And all a person has to do is wait 10 seconds after you shadowstep to negate that condition clear you are talking about. I can see why you would have “less control” in some scenarios over condition clear, but only slightly because atm as soon as you use the ability you only have 10 seconds in which to be effected by conditions and then use the cleanse return.

In a team fight, say I have medium conditions on me, but I also want to engage with another person who is running in from the side. I use Shadowstep to engage, but I can’t do too much damage before I need to use the Shadowstep return in order to clear the condi on me. Further, maybe returning isn’t the best option in that scenario because there are a ton of marks down right where I was. So putting all the condition clear on the return limits my flexibility and makes me more vulnerable, not less, to conditions.

My position is basically “having conditions on me shouldn’t force me to return into the line of fire to cleanse some of them.”

What tanky amulets in sPvP are you talking about?

And conditions only outdo power builds when taking zero condition cleanse. And by outdo I don’t mean outburst. Bursting down 15-25k HP is something power builds can do in a fraction of the time of condition builds.

Also, I would disagree that SA is “redundant.” Redundant with what? It provides thief a solid bonus to stealth and shadowstep abilities. It also has our strongest “core” condition removal and damage reduction. People say that SA is too defensive, but that is what makes it a strong traitline that allows a thief to stay in the fight longer and apply more damage. Whether you take Cloaked in Shadows or Rending Shade the line is a solid choice for stealth oriented thieves—making the core class better.

JonnyForgotten.4276:

Did some playing around today and realized that having expertise or other condition duration increases does not apply to the poison stacks given by Choking Cloud. . . including any combos. Which is pretty kittening weak if you ask me. I understand the low field time, but the ticks themselves? Sheesh. . . .

That honestly seems like a bug. I wonder if the same is true for the duration of blind from Black Powder…also throw gunk has the confusion combo we should test.

Can you post your ideas in the balance thread and not make new threads? It is hard to get devs to pay attention if we have 20 threads with 10 posts in each. We need one thread with a lot of ideas and discussion for them to read.

Flow I’m curious what server you run on?

Stealth and re-stealthing is how the thief is designed. It is a core part of the class. High evade builds that don’t stealth are the exception not the rule.

And losing target is the challenge of fighting stealth’ed targets. Use tab.

I have spared a few “good fights.” This engineer I fought was so good I let him get back up. We got set against by multiple players of the third team, and destroyed them together. That was pretty fun

You never know, for sure, although the true low rank players need to know imo (1) they are in need of training to get better, and (2) that I won’t unfairly dominate them/I’m willing to let them practice against me if they want.

Ah I should note that if you are good (i.e. an alt account or come from sPvP) I will finish those low ranks as normal.

I’ve seen SA power thieves with high burst. Just saying…

Long stealth from SA and Shadow Refuge. Access to mobility via Shadowstep.

+1 is easy because you don’t need to be max DPS to effectively +1 if you know what you are doing.

And that is a problem, although I can say that if you are talking roaming stealth isn’t as important as:

SB + Shadowstep + UC + SA (cooldown reduction on SS to 40 seconds).

If thief is truly only good at roaming decap then thieves should actually spec for that role. And if they can’t do anything else that is a problem for theory crafters and balancing to fix.

As a roamer I come across a number of lower ranked players. A trend that I’ve seen recently is a lot of new players, many of them who are newer to the game in general, coming into WvW to fight. Both allies and enemies alike mind you. Allies it is harder to tell in part because unless you are in a group the rank won’t show up.

Many of the more experienced players have started sparing the lives of these players if they fight them in single combat. For me personally I don’t necessarily engage low rank players unless they engage me. When I down them I let them get back up and continue on their way. Sometimes, I’m defending/attacking an objective—like a camp—so I make clear through my posture that I intend to stop them if they insist on challenging me. Most of the time they don’t push the matter, and if they do I have about a two free shots attitude. I’ll down you a couple of times and if you insist on fighting further I’ll just finish you off.

So I wanted to ask the community, such as it is reflected on this forum, how they deal with low rank opponents in small scale situations.

If long stealth isn’t a problem in sPvP why are you arguing that a slight nerf to long stealth—and only the perma stealth at that—would damage sPvP. It is a contradiction, either you think long stealth adjustments won’t matter and therefore the nerf won’t actually be a problem or you think long stealth is required.

Stealth gyro has one main flaw in that the gyro is not itself stealthed. Counterplay includes aoe, killing the gyro, or otherwise immobilizing the gyro to expose the engineer. And they are part of the reason why reveals are being added. I think the stealth gyro should be fairly vulnerable to damage, but that is a separate balance discussion from this.

In light of the other thread where adjustments to high stealth uptime thieves were being discussed, having a top three priorities thread seemed appropriate.

What are your top three priorities for thief? It can be a buff to thief itself or a nerf to some other class/trait that makes thief more frustrating to play effectively.

Mine:

1. Sword seems like a fun set but the animation time for some of the attacks make it hard to properly use in a fight. The variable nature of the stealth based attack, and again its’ relatively low speed, make it hard to land with consistent results it in the post ICD world. In addition the slow animations make using IS and then following it up with another attack feel clunky. I think there is a lot of potential to be unlocked by trying to make the set more fluid.

2. The duration of the poison field on shortbow is absurdly low. It doesn’t do much condition damage on a full condi build even when a person sits in the field and just takes the damage. The low duration also has a side effect of making it difficult to set up combinations with finishers—which I think is the whole point of having a field in the first place (aoe weakness and poison projectile finishers). Five or six seconds would not be uncalled for given how weak the poison applied actually is.

3. Shadowstep has the most awkward condition clear mechanic. The only time it works “correctly” is when you using Shadowstep on engage and get loaded up on conditions in the first 10 seconds and can hit the return ability to cleanse those conditions. As a positional tool in combat, a more common usage, it pulls you back towards the thing loading you up with conditions in order to clear the first set. Yes you can overcome that by spamming dodge and shortbow 5, but returning to where I was just taking damage is a silly idea on a thief. I’d move two of the conditions cleared to the first shadowstep and leave 1 clear on the return ability. This lets you spread out the clears and lets you decide if the last cleanse is worth taking over returning into the line of fire for.

Because the stealth from CnD ends after 3-4 seconds. There is a moment where you come out of stealth and are visible. It lets a player know where you are and lets them start a channeled attack on you.

Also, I’m not a D/D anything. I run P/D in fact.

You still haven’t really addressed the basic argument that revealed skills are being put into the game in part because of long term stealth mechanics of D/P. Each patch has consistently moved more in that direction and thieves that can’t use those mechanics are rightfully wary of the direction that balance is going in.

My preferred method is actually to decrease the BP duration to three seconds and reduce the interval on blind to one second. This buffs the blind by one extra pulse and reduces the stacking potential. I don’t like ICD, and I’ve come to realize this idea is not a great one because of the impact it would have on blast finishers.

And we should have a “Top Three Buffs Thief Needs” thread.

So what we are talking about is a reduction in stealth capacity of D/P from that 12 seconds Jana mentioned to 9. Anyone using 9 seconds or less of stealth wouldn’t be affected. It brings D/P closer to the other sets and allows us to demand less broad nerfs to stealth in general (i.e. introducing new reveal abilities on other classes).

Why protest a change that only reduces the stealth potential of D/P slightly, which already has strong stealth potential—and which will remain strong after—as though it will make D/P unviable? It won’t, but I worry that without a change we will continue to face more and more unreasonably long reveal abilities being handed out like candy to other classes.

D/P has a lot more going for it than just pistol 5. Pistol 4 and Shadowshot alone make the set a potent and deadly weapon.

What other build will suffer if you don’t mind me asking?

I mean, I’m not very sympathetic to cries about ghost thieves. I think that even a small amount of condi clear will help things quite a bit and when you die to one there are usually two other people targeting you as well (three on one but lets blame the ghost thief?).

But I do think that it is strange to argue against a change based on “this isn’t even meta.” Not everything has to be about the meta. In fact many changes are made to so-called margins rather than directly to meta builds.

We can’t expect that thief will always and forever be buffed. Some classes and traits need specific nerfs, small and large, so the rest can be buffed without power creep. Power creep is bad and not something we should be encouraging.

Thief doesn’t only need nerfs in certain small ways. It also needs buffs in several other ways. The problem is that, because of the way weapon sets work, a buff helps the entire class—including the possibly already “just fine” builds.

Balance isn’t just about buffs and nerfs to your own class. Buffs and nerfs have to happen in concert with buffs and nerfs to other classes. Longer duration stealth abilities lead to longer duration “revealed” abilities. Revealed, like stealth, should be extremely short duration when applied by people. A slight adjustment to prevent permanent stealth is all that is being asked for. Those that don’t use perma stealth won’t be effected if a good solution is used.

And then, hopefully, we can start having a conversation about buffing thief without simply increasing auto-attack.

It comes down to playstyle differences I suppose. Traps bring a lot more poison into the build and that makes DA much more appealing.

The blind is on gaining stealth, so it gives a blind every time I CnD off an opponent. Not always useful but do it often enough and it really cuts down what an enemy can do to you.

I’ve taken to running RS more often because I think it helps relatively more often. 10% damage reduction if the opponent doesn’t really use boons or alternatively lots of boons for me if they do.

Anet purposely removed the damage from thief traps so they don’t take the thief out of stealth.

That would replace the current system is what I was suggesting.

How about a new Trick like the siege disabler that disables WP’s for a set period? Make it so you need to hit a gate after channeling. That way the person will have to clear the guards and then channel the item at the gate in order to disable the WP.

The Trick could disable the WP for 2 minutes with a timer showing up on the mini-map by mousing over the WP similar to the RI timer.

What class are you using?

I mean I’ve fought good and bad condi mes-chrono. I’ve won a number of fights and lost a number as well. Mesmers are usually at mid range so I think having a good ranged weapon is helpful in addition to having good condi clears obviously for fighting condi mes-chrono.

If you have stealth access that helps as well to confuse them and turn the momentum back on them. Better condi mesmers will use a lot of stealth to break targeting on them so being able to retarget them quickly will also help you win the fight.

Babazhook, as to Cloaked in Shadow, I find that it works going up against multiple enemies. It also tends to be helpful against other thieves because the blind disrupts their burst and lets me use mine more easily.

So situationally I see the advantage against most boon based builds and alternatives being more viable against non-boon builds.

I’d argue that Daredevil is better because it frees up taking Shadow’s Embrace in SA. Also, UC is good for positioning in combat to reach striking distance for CnD, and makes you even harder to locate in stealth. I also use the Daredevil traitline and Bountiful Theft to maintain high dodge uptime which allows me to pressure with Caltrops as well.

Daredevil is actually two extra dodges. The first is the extra bar. The second is the 50 endurance on steal. So a daredevil can dodge, then steal, and have three full dodges available immediately.

Stacks of boons are not stolen, but the important ones are duration only.

This is a boon friendly meta. Lots of duration, lots of application, lots of reapplication. Rending Shade shouldn’t be a “hard counter” to those classes using a lot of boons—i.e. most of them. If it stole 25 stacks of might…just a little out of balance in our favor.

I think Rending Shade as it stands is an undervalued option. I think that it shines with fast, ranged, attacks. I think slower attacks like on sword don’t work as well.

I thought of an alternative that might please some people: make Rending Shade as following. Effectively turn rending shade into an invisible venom.

“Rending Shade: upon entering stealth your next attack will steal two boons from your target. Take 10% less damage from enemies without boons.”

Loot in WvW isn’t that good unless you are wiping a lot of players. It is now 5 or more times better than before the reward tracks.

More importantly, BT + RS is a lot of boon steal.

If you are constantly re-stealthing and attacking you can boonsteal a lot of benefits for yourself. And the boons you want to steal, such as resistance, protection, aegis, quickness, are a huge loss to your opponent as well.

Really the only thing that is being asked for is a relatively minor adjustment to stealth stacking on Black Powder. All of you acting like this would destroy D/P…really?

The point is functionally limiting stealth stacking to ideally three stacks assuming you are just using weapon skills.

On reflection, an ICD would break the blast finisher of Blinding Powder (because the blast combo with black powder could not apply both the finisher stealth and the stealth from the utility itself).

The reasons I would support some change, in general, is that I feel more and more classes are getting reveal skills in response to a few builds that stack stealth for long durations. We need to be cognizant that in order to avoid buffs to other classes or reverse those reveal buffs we need to give up some of our stealth stacking potential.

Anet has applied a “buff damage” model to compensate us for losing some protection that stealth affords us. Unfortunately, simply buffing damage is a poor exchange for survivability in a meta where many classes have the ability to block or invuln bursts of damage. Stealth effects may eventually need a buff if more and more reveal gets added to the game. To avoid this reveal-buff damage-buff stealth cycle of powercreep we have to suggest an alternative mode of adjustment. Lowering stealth access only enough to prevent permanent stealth is not a huge change, but it might be enough to stave off a round of buffs for other classes, followed by buffs to us to “keep up.”

Regardless of the legal analysis, slapping on a fair use statement of any kind won’t be of much help.

Youtube lets copyright owners assert takedown claims automatically. This is done through the software that processes videos for Youtube. Youtube detects that xyz song, copyright held by A, is in your video. This lets A assert a claim to Youtube for infringement and they will mute the audio on behalf of A.

You are free at that time to assert fair use back to Youtube. This can get messy because the right holder can just send another takedown request to Youtube—which doesn’t have the time or manpower to check into it, so they will just reblock the video in that event.

At no time will a disclaimer in your video matter. It’s like those “I withdraw my consent for Facebook to do X” posts people were making on facebook a while back.

I’m hesitant to assume that this kind of change wouldn’t have unintended side effects. I would like it tested, however, to see if it improved the imbalance between D/P and the other weapons.

Rending Shade strips resistance easily in combo with bountiful theft.

I’m working on another video now to explain the benefits of Rending Shade for thieves. Basically though, if you watch the video in my signature, it works by stripping boons each time I sneak attack and each time I steal.

I can kill any warrior that over relies on resistance rather quickly.

You find a lot of bad players in any tier.

And I disagree with Deceiver about all the good thieves leaving. I run into a number of decent and skilled thieves on a regular basis.

I think the ghost thief is a problem for most players who lack condition cleanse or who want to blame the ghost thief in 2 or 3 v 1 situations where the ghost thief helped push their hp low or immobilized them with a trap.

That said I think that stealth stacking permanently isn’t healthy as far as creating counterplay when a lot of skills require some target. Stealth is a strong target breaking tool but shouldn’t be used to permanently avoid being targeted. Stealth stacking limitations as described above might do a lot of good without overdoing it.

Yeah, 3 without and 4 with. I think anyone who uses a lot of stealth attacks should use SA. More time to land hits, 50% movement speed in stealth, etc. That said, it is just 4 seconds as opposed to much longer on D/P stealth stacking.

I can pull marginally even if there are targets around for me to CnD off of. This includes the supply depot in camps in WvW, walls, gates, etc. Otherwise D/P stealth stacking puts me at a relative disadvantage.