Trapper runes don’t add that much to stealth time mainly due to the longer cooldowns on traps.
BP is expensive to cast. Reducing the effective number of times a thief can apply stealth means having to recast BP. This is inefficient and means the thief will be unable to maintain permanent stealth.
Thief core class is stealth based. Of course thieves are going to promote a change that doesn’t ignore this.
WvW is crashing randomly.
I would decrease the initiative cost by 1 as well to compensate. Otherwise you are right that the cost would be prohibitive.
If they could implement an internal cooldown for stealth application that might work. I wonder at the complexity of implementation over other solutions though.
I think perma stealth using D/P is an issue. They were hinting at trying to fix the camera trick, although it has been shown to be possible without using that to stack 4 times.
More than likely we will ultimately see a slight reduction in the duration of the smoke field on pistol 5 to prevent permanent stealth gameplay. Right now it has a duration of 4 and an interval of 2 on pulsing blind.
I’d suggest changing it to duration of 3 seconds and pulse blind on a 1 second interval.
For those interested in trying P/D:
Using Body Shot and Dancing Dagger can help land a CnD. So can making sure they are crippled as much as possible from Caltrops. Then just wait out blocks with Vital Shot and use CnD when those go down.
The advantage of mainhand pistol is that it can provide a lot of pressure from range. Each shot’s bleed will hit for about 1k over 8 seconds, which can add up if applied after they do a big cleanse.
My version runs Shadowstep at 40 seconds and Steal at 20 seconds.
So over a 40 second time period I can jump a total of 4800 distance just between those two abilities. Add in perma-swiftness and Unhindered Combatant along with shortbow 5.
That is thief mobility.
Well executed for what the build is. Of course any montage video is going to show wins rather than losses. That said I’m impressed by the use of the Silvari elite as it solves a potential problem with the build.
How to fight: disrupt the stealth stacking. Look for the red circles of black powder and use knockbacks and aoe cc abilities. Keep moving. Watch the ground for the trap’s being put down and dodge through them. Don’t clump up with other people. And finally, bring condition clear to the fight.
It doesn’t prevent druid from being a healing machine. Just a slightly less effective healing machine.
In WvW at least they didn’t increase the heal cooldown on WHAO, so it still does a lot on a relatively short time-frame.
The change on CA to 15 seconds from 10 is nice…although even an increase of 50% at those timers is fairly short (five seconds is still only five seconds after all). Unless players were using CA every 10 seconds before it won’t be much of a nerf if they ended up using it every 15 seconds on average and the cooldown now only matches their usage.
Like engineer the biggest issue I have with druid is probably the stealth access. High durability and high healing with the ability to break targeting is what gives druid and some scrapper builds their insane survivability. Until they address that in a meaningful way the druids healing focus combined with low cooldown heals like WHAO will make winning against a properly played druid difficult.
Thief has some of the best stomp finishing available. I’ll provide an example. I was in an SM fight recently, all three teams, with an opponent holding the castle. The enemy zerg came into lord with large numbers, but positioning not being perfect a number went down. I use SA with stealth on steal on a 20 second cooldown. The instant those players went down I was there stomping them. This helped a lot to whittle down their numbers consistently.
Thief can venom share basi-venom which helps get people down. Zergs often move around so getting people immobilized in some fashion will help yours win the fight. Another option is using a main hand pistol to Body Shot people and prevent them from keeping up with the group.
Thief can also use mobility to get past the enemy zerg and finish off or down an enemy that was using the zerg for cover while recovering their HP. Someone who retreats with all cooldowns running and 30% HP is a solid target even if they are 2400 distance away from you.
Thief with SA can stealth res very effectively in large fights in enclosed spaces where preventing downs from dying can turn the tide of the battle.
Naturally at a certain scale the guardian reflect walls and group stability will be “better” for large groups. But that doesn’t mean thief can’t perform unique roles within the zerg environment. You aren’t going to fill the guardian’s role, or the ele’s/necro. You shouldn’t measure your success by how well you copy other classes.
Gnot could also have combo’ed his pistol attack with a throw gunk for extra confusion stacks.
I’m also willing to set up some duels if you want some extra experience fighting this kind of build generally.
A solid build although it lacks some condition clear compared to, for example, a build running SA with a different heal.
It does more damage though, so that is good. I used to run deadly arts before Daredevil and Acro were buffed. Not a bad choice without giving up Daredevil for the extra dodges (and caltrops).
If you want to get better in the game play pure power, play hybrid, play condi. Figure out what works for each and doesn’t work and that will help you fight people when you know the kinds of tricks they can bring to a fight.
And don’t listen to people who say “x build is cheese.” Cheese is so over used it might as well mean “your build is a strong combination of damage and survivability.” It’s an insult used by people who either don’t understand a build—because they refuse to spend the time to figure it out—or who do understand a build and refuse to adjust their own build to counter it. For a brief list of power builds that fall into this category:
Druid can have a strong power combination of damage and survivability. Cheese. Warrior can have strong damage and survivability. Cheese. Dragonhunter’s with heals and blocks and tons of damage. Cheese. Tanky/stealthy chonomancers with massive power shatters. Cheese. Scrappers with high uptime of stealth, shield/reflect, and heals while dishing out damage. Cheese. Daredevil with high evade uptime staff dealing damage while taking almost none. Cheese.
And I like cheese. I like fighting it. It is a challenge. It means the other player has a good build and I need to understand the build as much as outplay the other person. It means that my own careful selection of traits will matter as we see which build is superior and whether we can overcome that difference with our personal abilities. Shaming people into not running builds that are effective is not the way to get challenging, or diverse, fights.
You can watch the video in my signature for some insight into one variation on this kind of build.
The advice to watch his bar isn’t always as helpful because I often load venoms in stealth. The better advice is: dodge cloak and dagger. A lot of damage can be avoided that way. Also, be ready to use your bubble-reflect shield.
I can’t give advice of what condition clears to take as engi/scrapper however.
To be fair to my server—such as it is with linking—there are a number of decent roamers, but being outnumbered by JQ/TC doesn’t lend itself to incentivizing people to log on. And there are the Halloween events keeping people busy as well.
I’d also like to question the poor taste of spawn camping in general. It doesn’t phase veterans, but there are a lot of newer players in WvW lately and I don’t think it makes them feel particularly good.
The other day I dropped by spawn in EB because Quickcry was there, he got run over by some salty people but we had a good 1v1 fight and some duels later.
And I’m not sure who was 25 strong and not able to beat five of you. I’m sorry but statistically that seems incredibly unlikely. So many people when asked how big a zerg is they say “map queue” when it is actually more like 30, or they said 25 when it is more like 12. Five organized people can do a lot against 12 unorganized and unskilled pugs. Building siege is also stupid tactically 9/10 times. There are bad players on every server…but bringing it up as a given says more about you than it does about NSP.
Venoms on 30 seconds are competitive with Impairing Daggers imo for a couple of reasons.
Venoms stack with existing attacks, so this lets me focus on my positioning and timing of my normal unenhanced attacks. ID, as a separate attack, can be independently dodged/blocked/reflected. A venom can also enhance auto-attack, meaning there is no telegraph that tells you to dodge “THAT” couple of attacks.
That said, ID does have slow on them…so that is a strong incentive to take it.
Venoms only proc on direct damage. Therefore a ghost thief does not benefit from venoms. Therefore you are wrong.
I think that roaming is more about what you do rather than how many you do it with.
Havoc groups are what happens when you get around 4 people together and start taking towers. Usually the players are all running roaming builds that allow them to hold their own in a fight.
Roaming is more solitary until it evolves into havoc because a few guildies/other roamers joined up.
So my answer is 1–3 players is roaming, 3–8 players is havoc, 8–20 is medium scale zerg, 20–50 is large scale zerg, and 35–70+ is map queue zerg. Those numbers vary a lot based on the typical build of the players running. As an example, 25 well organized and good players will be worth 50+ relatively unorganized players, or 35+ relatively well organized players.
Well they have buffed the auto attack damage on pistol so in theory a hybrid build may be more viable now.
Toughness matters less than vitality imo, so as far as sPvP I would use my build with a vitality/power/condition amulet for hybrid.
Fighting JQ this week it doesn’t feel that way. There are a few solo roamers that seem good, but “solo roaming” really doesn’t describe one or two people being chased down by a group of 5 or 6.
Honestly not blaming them, that’s the game. It’s just hard for me to personally judge their skill level when I’m downing them 3 or 4 times and each time them getting power resed by 5 teammates.
I think that Anet still hasn’t decided how to handle stealth attacks.
The internal cooldown was a concrete step towards potentially buffing the power of stealth attacks. Give it some “risk” by punishing missing the attack and then buff it to do more damage. This is related to another idea where missing attacks in stealth would reveal you.
That said the biggest difficulty from a technical standpoint is that when you miss a stealth attack the entire skill—auto-attack included—is disabled. This feels more clunky than it needed to be, given that auto-attack is significant DPS for a thief.
Stealth attacks are a core philosophy or mechanic of the class. That said, D/P doesn’t use it because it is weak and D/D is overly reliant on consistently landing it for damage. I feel like they are having trouble conceptually balancing D/P and D/D. They like the feel of D/P 3 but can’t buff backstab too much without making D/P even more overpowered. Ultimately, I think they will need to nerf Shadow Shot in order to make room for a stronger stealth attack on both D/P and D/D.
Venoms are an easy buff in a lot of ways. First, the 40 second timer was far too long in comparison to the elite venom skill. Second, the condition builds that thief has access to don’t do nearly as much as condi mesmer or condi necromancer, etc, etc, etc. Decreasing the recharge closes the gap and enhances the thieves benefit to the group as a whole.
Eventually Anet will need to address the perma evade environment—for all classes—that the current boon heavy meta has created. Some thief builds are extremely forgiving because of the high evade frames available to them. This results in frustration for enemies fighting them, especially those fighting the D/D condi builds, because they are dying and unable to hurt their opponent enough. Warriors that need to land burst skills to heal/sustain are going to be even more annoyed by this kind of evade build.
This patch brought other classes sustain down a notch. Further efforts will possibly reduce that even more. Eventually, thief may face a nerf in the evade-damage meta that both power and condi builds have benefited from.
Hey Blaq/Deceiver: what guild?
Conversely you can cleanse a condition away.
I like that build a lot.
My personal preference (core):
My personal preference (HoT):
If I hit some people on a power build, repeatedly, as many times as I do on my P/D thief to stack enough condition damage to kill them…
I’d have killed them several times over.
I run a P/D thief so that is what I base my posts on. To be fair I run a build that isn’t designed for maximum condition bomb. In exchange I get more survivability that I can use to actually stay in a 2 or 3 v 1 fight long enough to down someone.
I think my “burst” which hits over the course of 7-8 seconds with no cleanse is about 3100 DPS. There will be more damage if I combo with stolen skill from engineer (confusion stacking) or if I combo with a poison field (shortbow 4). This assumes that the person does not clear conditions, and moves a little but somehow stays inside the tiny red circles.
At full effect on average I can therefore do an theoretical 21.7k damage over 7 seconds or up to 24.8k over 8 seconds. The numbers are fuzzy so these are just rough estimates and actual mileage may vary.
By contrast a power build can do upwards of 15k in 1-2 seconds. The spike DPS is 7500+.
I love that stealth has been in the game since the beginning and most of these generic complaints—lacking a specific complaint about a particular ability—are basically “change the entire game that has been around for 4+ years because I don’t like how it does stealth.”
I’m sorry but…no. This game embraced stealth in designing an entire class around it. Thief special attacks are based entirely around stealth. No other class gets an additional ability when attacking in stealth.
In exchange thief was made extremely fragile. Extremely. Thieves normally run around 16-17k hp and between 2200 and 2600 armor—mostly trading off ferocity to get there. Defensively thieves had blind to prevent some hits from landing and dodging. If you play glass thief gets 11k hp. HoT is where power creep made every class a lot more defensive and changed the balance of power—suddenly that stealth was an additional advantage and not a necessity. (This goes hand in hand with other classes that traditionally were tankier getting regular access to stealth i.e. druid).
With HoT and related balance changes around that time thief was buffed to increase dodging/evade, granted a low cooldown block and stunbreak, and made more durable through gear that allowed better max-min in favor of survivability while putting out damage—including much better access to everyone’s favorite boon, Might. This meant that stealth was not as necessary. Anet contemporaneously reduced the effectiveness of the stealth based attacks and buffed, of all things, autoattack.
That is the problem with saying “get rid of stealth” or “change stealth.” If you do there will be massive power creep. Thief could conceivably get the ability to backstab outside of stealth if it was removed completely. Thief would also need more blinds and evades to compensate…already a huge annoyance to those fighting them. Be careful what you wish for is all I’m trying to convey.
GW2 runs more on CPU than GPU. Having the 1080 will give you perfect GPU related performance, but that won’t be enough to get more than the 30-45 frames in LA.
If GW2 is installed on an SSD hard drive that will speed things up. LA will still probably take a lot of time to load relative to other areas.
Chef is also required for Incinerator, if you are looking to craft a Legendary.
On further reflection I’d like to say that Rending Shade is the best choice for most 1v1 against power builds.
Stealing protection, regeneration, aegis, fury, quickness, and resistance is huge. Power builds that lose that will do much less damage and take more damage. And many classes run some combination of the above boons when they run solo, if they can. Rending Shade functions best as a counter to the power meta that relies on boons to compensate for a tankier set of armor.
Against condition based builds the power of Rending Shade is less relevant because conditions don’t benefit from boons in the same way. Quickness and resistance are useful to a condition build, but bountiful theft will probably take care of that already, and your unlikely to find a condition build that pumps out massively the other boons—unless it is a hybrid of course. In that context the Cloaked in Shadow blind on gaining stealth is probably better—if you are in the SA spec line—for avoiding condition application and mitigation generally.
Yeah, that video shows the potential of properly using venoms with a build designed to shut down the opponents attempts to respond using interrupts—which also apply additional damage as well.
Venom builds do suffer for cooldowns. And a well timed cleanse shuts down a lot of damage. Against some people they will melt, the access to interrupts is really what makes this build shine—more than the additional conditions even.
Hey Jana, I’m picking up a D/D-P/P build atm and enjoying the flexibility in combat (if not the mobility).
Basically the hope is to D/D someone down and then swap to P/P and range them down. This avoids some of the issues of localized knockdown and allows someone to build up a lot of might (using the boon duration swap sigil) before jumping back in to kill more people.
Condi builds can sacrifice tank for damage. It’s called Viper stats. Condi damage by itself isn’t that strong—as long proper cleanses are taken of course.
P/D gets stronger with every patch…
But no one plays it so…
Well, HoT balance is HoT balance. Expertise is also in exchange for some of the condition damage and other stats as far as TB stats are concerned. So there is a trade off, not sure if the trade off is “enough” to call it balanced but that is a question for testing.
As far as TB in practice, I use only TB stats for my weapons. I find that my overall damage is sufficient in most cases because cleanses are going to cut off the damage no longer how long the duration increase is. And I should note that because of the decrease in the base damage the duration increase may not significantly increase the damage done.
And HoT massively increased the cleanse for some classes. Druid has insane cleanse for one. And even something like Berserker with Adr. Cleansing will clear a lot more conditions than a traditional warrior build. Add in resistance and a few classes have very strong condition management.
What you are proposing would need to replace condition clears…which is part of build diversity.
If you introduce a new stat then suddenly there is no need for all the condition clearing abilities and traits.
And if all you are looking for is a reduction in condition damage, particularly from certain class abilities, without removing condition clears then “balance x ability” is a better and more simple choice to achieve that than “add an entirely new stat.”
Yeah, I even considered using an immobilize venom to compensate for the lack of panic strike.
I started out the build using the signet heal as well. Heal on hit, heal on initiative, and heal on crit can be a potent combination if you are consistently hitting a target. I dropped it because I wanted more condition clear and a cleanse for the immobilize, because it is a Core build and suffers relative to Daredevil in this regard. I think you are probably right that regeneration will probably help more in the long run.
I think you do have a point about Roll for Init. being better for keeping up the pressure with this build. The hard part I think will be dealing with reflects, etc.
I was fooling around and came up with this Core build. I’m sure it needs work, but here it is. Feedback welcome.
My warrior is still in rough draft format, so I’ll give you the link you want.
EDIT:
The stats I gave you are based on gaining the precision from the stacking bonus and assumes roughly 10 stacks of might.
I don’t use SE, so my HiS is 24 seconds, which is necessary to take it I think. HiS is both a heal and an extra Sneak Attack, so I feel it has greater synergy that way for P/D.
A zerker thief can still do incredible damage instantly, upwards of 15-20k depending on enemy armor/boons/etc.
To do even 10k damage, I need to land several attacks and hope they don’t have a cleanse saved up.
I’m also saying that full zerk power doesn’t have to hit me more than a few times to kill me. A thief hitting me with a few autoattacks and shadowshot can take out upwards of half my HP in 1.5 seconds.
If you build glassy you will do a lot of damage. A condi player can always go more glassy with power, precision, condition stats. Same condi bomb but now your enemy also loses 30% of their HP to your opening attack. But, condition players who are often not playing power because they want something different from glass, so they don’t spec it as often.
Escapist’s Absolution is incredibly useful for most thief specs. That combined with Unhindered Combatant makes Daredevil a winning combination in a lot of builds.
First, unhindered removed cripple, immobilize, chill and then EA removes an additional condition on top of that. This makes the thief more survivable.
I disagree that D/P is a better second set choice, in part because I use SB to chase and escape when large numbers are trying to kill me. SB is also faster at clearing camps by stacking poison fields and cluster bombs. That and caltrops will kill all of the camp guards really fast.
I’d say that D/P might be a reasonable second choice for some builds, but only in a 1v1 situation. These days it is hard to find 1v1. Often it is at least 2v1 or 3v1 for roamers. If 10+ people show up, a shadowstep and a few SB teleports will make you a lot safer than stealth from D/P imo.
Running P/D I use SA for extra stealth access and HiS.
I am actually at my strongest in an enemy camp or near to a enemy sentry because the npc is an easy target to CnD off of. Their ally becomes their worst asset as it were. Open field with no npcs around is much harder depending on the class. Druid/ranger pets are strong choices for CnD and so are necro pets (although minion masters are annoying to fight because they absorb projectiles really easily if you don’t hit them at point blank range).
When I think about a strong roaming build as far as condition clears are concerned, I tend to divide up condition management into several categories.
First, you have your active clears. These are usually things that you won’t use unless you have conditions on you that need an active cleanse. For me these are my heal and my shadowstep to a lesser extent. You NEED to have active clears on any build. Active clears are on demand, quick/instant skills that cleanse around 5-6 conditions total. This is your “oh kitten I got spiked” skill.
Second, you have regular clears. Regular clears are the kind of cleanse you get from normally playing your class. This covers a wide variety of cleanse options. Going into druid form, using your burst skill on warrior, dodge cleanse for Daredevil, etc. You are already doing it, but it cleanses some conditions as a bonus. This kind of clear is needed to consistently clear conditions to prevent the “build up” of conditions that alone aren’t worth your “oh kitten” cleanse, but will do a lot of damage if left alone to stack with other minor conditions. This is also a great way to get rid of cripple/immobilize which is always a frustrating condition that doesn’t do damage but makes it more likely you will take more damage overall.
Lastly, there is the “player/class advantage” cleanses. Sometimes knowing when to dodge, or block, and having a skill that does a block or evasion, or even just positioning yourself to avoid a ranged condition application is the best condition cleanse there is. Much like fighting power builds there are moments when it is best not to take the damage. Cleanse is not designed to clear all conditions, and conditions are designed to be able to kill you, so this last category is just as important as active and regular cleansing.
Buff the initiative based attacks and nerf auto-attack. Give autoattacks a chance to regain initiative. Rebalance the initiative costs around this new paradigm.
While I’m at it….remove blind from Shadowshot. Buff backstab. Buff CnD to give back some initiative on successful hit.
That is entirely true. I’ve noticed that even consistently attacking some people just reapply boons too quickly. Rending Shade does a good job of getting rid of “stacks duration” boons and a bad job of getting rid of “stacks intensity” boons. That means that if the person stacks even a little might the anti-boon protection won’t apply.
I’d suggest changing it to a buff like Escapist’s Absolution: i.e. for each boon you steal you get 2, 3, or 5 seconds of 10% damage reduction. Or you could change that to a damage buff for 2, 3, or 5 seconds depending on number of boons stolen. Either would be better than the current implementation.
See my signature for a viable P/D build using offhand SB for mobility.
EDIT:
Personally, P/D is the strongest condi set for thieves. D/D is just overly visible and screams “target me.” Very effective against some builds/classes but it lacks the ranged pressure that I think is necessary or at least extremely helpful in winning fights. P/D retains ranged pressure and has the ability using Pistol 3 to kite melee only opponents. That alone makes it a superior choice to D/D.
(edited by saerni.2584)
At most a thief can have around 22k hp with a soldiers/dire build. 22k is nothing compared to what many classes run around with. Faceroll, faceroll. It’s all I hear and yet it does take multiple abilities, positioning, timing, etc. to land the hits that apply conditions. Conditions aren’t ticking on you because they just facerolled the keyboard. They are ticking because you took a hit in the first place and don’t have any cleanse equipped. You didn’t block, dodge, or otherwise avoid the thing putting conditions on you.
And, for the record, “how do condition users deal with condi?” My evades clear conditions, my heal clears conditions, and I have a stun break that clears conditions. I actually do quite a bit to manage my conditions. My dodge clears cripple, chill and immobilize as well, so those don’t cover the conditions my other trait clears. I know how condition clears work for many classes because that is how I do damage. I also know how thief condition clears work in a number of builds so I have a better shot of killing them.
Pro-tip. Load a Daredevil up on conditions and stop attacking. No evade means every one of those will tick completely. Of course, if the thief runs other condition removal that won’t work nearly as well. EA is powerful, but I don’t trust it to save me on its own.
What babazhook said is correct.
The build is based around Sentinel armor, boon duration runes/food, and gains critical chance from signets, fury, and precision stacking bonus. It uses a sword which can be traited for an additional 20% crit against bleeding foes (which the autoattack adds).
You are right the ferocity is limited.
As someone who does not play “meta” builds in both WvW, PvE, etc I’m going to say I completely disagree.
Meta builds are generally good at what they are supposed to do. Meta means that someone made a build and at least one sub-community in game has said “this is a good build.” Newer players benefit from meta because they aren’t familiar enough with all the cost-benefit analysis that, maybe, went into the build. This doesn’t actually make the meta builds the “best” builds.
Best is subjective, and many people who make strong builds don’t like sharing them with others. Competitiveness and uniqueness are both reasons why they don’t. I like to win and I like it when my build is different from other players. This makes it harder for WvW enemies to understand what I’m doing and in turn that makes it easier to beat them.
If you think about your play style—I usually start with the weapons I want and then build from there—the likelihood that you can make a build at least as strong as the meta is high. Traits and utilities enhance the strengths and solve the weaknesses of the weapon set(s) you choose.
Contributing in a PvP context does mean winning fights and holding points. But there are many ways to hold points and many ways to kill players. Doing something unexpected may be more effective than running a meta build everyone is used to fighting against.