Guild Wars 2

I play a bunker warrior with over 3500 armor, 32k+ hp, and I can reach a 80-90% crit rate with 2800 power.

I think that counts as bunker and damage.

Without stealth, certain classes take way too much damage due to scaling differences.

Stealth is mainly powerful for the target breaking. However, if you understand the class and can use the tab key the problem isn’t as big as you might imagine. The hardest to deal with is probably mesmers who have lots of clones, so even a little popping in and out of stealth will provide a lot of single target mitigation. That said, if it didn’t provide this defensive advantage, the classes built around it have a tough time surviving. So, I don’t think messing with the target break is a good idea.

The issue with single target only can technically be fixed with action camera….but I agree it isn’t that great of a work around. The only real option against opponents in stealth is cleave…and that assumes you brought/could bring a weapon with cleave on it. AoE is king of countering stealth because generally there isn’t a huge duration on stealth. Those thieves taking Shadow Refuge can have longer uptime, but that is generally use for escape rather than camping stealth.

And I will echo the point made by FatDisgrace, that vigor is the primary reason, and not Daredevil itself. And as I pointed out above, a thief can have very low HP relative to other classes. When you get hit by a druid/ranger or by a DH, or by a rifle Warrior/zerker without stealth you generally lose between 50-100% of your hp in about 6 seconds. Dodges don’t last very long, and a well timed hit can be very deadly if combined with a stun, etc.

The reward tracks in WvW increased the number of clovers being generated…so that might have been a factor if this was stealth changed.

I like Pistol 3 as it is. You know, as someone who actually uses and plays P/D.

:p

Noting that a full dire thief has around 21k hp, so….

I actually do play more than one class/build. P/D is a rarer weaponset that I play on my main, so I do advertise that as something I know particularly well.

Like I said, I have a warrior with tankier stats that I’m building at the moment. Gains crit chance from other sources than armor, so it lets me play around with the gear. I’m not running soldiers, rather it is a sentinel based warrior. It might not be “meta” but I never build with the meta in mind anyways.

I have, it’s called a warrior.

Resistance is only one of many options. Durability Runes exist, incidentally, as well.

And yeah, you need to live long enough to kill the other player. If you are built more glassy then you have a good shot at it. Even “tanky” stats will take a lot of damage from glass. And if you are bunker and they are bunker, but you didn’t bring condition clears and they are condi…good luck because that is the counter to your tank build.

Condition players can take Sinister stats to do tons of extra damage through crit/power. Also glassy and gets the full damage of the conditions. Bonus damage too if their opponent doesn’t run any clears. Condition players build tanky because they are usually going to be jumped by several people, and that gives them time to react. Reaction time is the more valuable asset than increased damage.

It doesn’t bypass invulnerable or block. If you block or are invulnerable when the person used the skill that applied the conditions then it won’t apply conditions. Exceptions are unblockable attacks, of which there are a few.

Resistance is a defensive buff for for conditions…so your argument is clearly misleading on that point.

And finally, condi cleanse won’t make you invincible—your goal is to equip enough clears, resistance, and other defensive moves that you live long enough to apply the damage to kill the other player. You might be surprised if you dodged the right attacks at how few condi’s are applied.

If a build is giving you trouble, ask about how to counter that build in either your class’s forum or in the forum for the class you are having issues with.

I think the maxim about playing the class to learn how to beat it is quite true. That and the old advice just to practice, practice, practice.

I like resistance uptime Warriors. I have a decent amount of boon steal that negates that. Over reliance on boons will do that. That’s why I would suggest doing a combination of resistance, traditional condi cleanse, and a trait like Cleansing Ire. Gives your build a diversity of options and builds synergy with other things you might be doing anyways. I’m currently working on a warrior build that uses signets and CI to provide those three. Still in “testing” and working on knowing how to play it better.

Yeah, with Core you do more damage but lose the sustain from dodging and EA—which is the strongest condition clear imo (until their opponent stops attacking). That is mainly why I run Daredevil on my build because the power creep under HoT forces thief to be more sustain anti-condi than before.

I haven’t, but I will say that it doesn’t matter that much if you are consistently attacking.

I’ve stripped off resistance consistently with Rending Shade, which if they are running a 100% resistance build to avoid CC effects is devastating. At that point in a group fight just using Body Shot is bad news, and of course them taking condi from my pistol.

Thief has become more about engage-withdraw. Not like out of combat withdraw but hit disengage, regain stealth, strike again. Or strike, evade, evade, strike.

Are you using custom keybinds? That is one recommendation that every thief should take.

Your misunderstanding here come from the idea that power damage and condition damage max out at the same level.

A soldier build and a dire build will do similar levels of damage. What dire lacks is the ability to do more damage than that. That is the ceiling for condition damage. Critical damage, using precision to gain access and ferocity to increase the total multiplier, is a bonus on top of power damage. The “I need three stats” argument is based on a misunderstanding of the total damage that is available, on average, to both types.

A solider build will do more damage than dire if the target is heavy condition clear. If the target has low condition clear the dire will do more damage because the conditions will tick for full effect. Note that an individual class will do or take more or less damage based on class balance issues which always will need work. I’m all for reasonable class balance discussions about specific abilities/traits.

Beyond explaining this I do want to be helpful. You mentioned blind. Assuming the patch does not nerf resistance specing for it will allow you access to a window where blind won’t work on you. I would also emphasize the need to learn when to dodge various class’s mechanics. A mesmer needs to have clones up to shatter so AoE cleave on greatsword can go a long way to cutting down on the shatter spam condition application.

And some personal advice for fighting condition builds. Don’t stop attacking and cleaving. Condition builds need time to kill so you just need to kill them first. Play aggressive. The difference between a warrior that I kill easily and a warrior that is tough to beat is often decided only by the aggressiveness of the warrior.

First, condition clears are not designed to clear all conditions. In a pvp setting the idea is that a condition player needs to do some damage in order to kill people. So complaining you can’t clear ALL the conditions and be immune to condition damage with one button press isn’t a convincing argument.

Second, many people either do not carry adequate condition clears or cannot carry adequate clears because the class cannot carry enough clears vs the class/build they are fighting.

Third, condition builds often build for survivability because longer sustain is necessary to apply and reapply enough conditions to win. For this reason a lot of “zerker” type builds that fare poorly against this kind of spec in general do not do well against condition builds.

My response can be summarized as 1) individual class balance is always something to improve on, 2) carry more condition clears, 3) understand how the class you are fighting achieves sustain. I’ll use warrior as an example: resistance signet and condition clear signet is pretty strong, and fighting warriors the key is not letting them hit with their burst in order to avoid adrenal health.

Getting good at GW2 involves knowing the finisher combinations. Thief is just so reliant on finisher type combinations that the initial skill floor is higher. Also because the hp/armor is highly unforgiving the class relies more on well timed dodges and positioning—which you need anyways to land CnD if you are using offhand dagger.

Being good at thief relies on being good at the fundamentals. In a pvp setting it also involves knowing your enemy to exploit their weaknesses. Thief is, more so than other classes, a good way to learn about the game overall. The stolen skills for instance give an opportunity to learn combo fields and to learn some skill interactions—like the warrior whirl projectile reflect.

If you want to have some practice and are in NA I can duel you.

And I disagree on thieves having low cleanse for condi, at least Daredevil’s. EA is strong and requires timing a burst and then not attacking while the damage ticks, otherwise the condi will be cleared and you will do almost none of your damage.

Alright, well I’ll see you around then

I think I’ve fought you before :P

Although I think I wasn’t having a good day when I was fighting you in the video. I remember thinking, “omfg why is this druid doing so much damage” and the like.

If you would like to duel sometime pm me. I’m the Os thief.

Depends on the role.

Zerg I would recommend around exotic armor and mostly exotic trinkets.

Solo roam I would recommend full exotic minimum, and at least some ascended preferred.

As a P/D player I have no issues with the performance of CnD.

I wish I could be more helpful though as far as solutions to your issues with the skill :/

It reminds me of my build, not that I play in sPvP. If you want to see how it generally works you can watch the link in my signature.

Oh I should mention I play it in concert with bountiful theft. That way I steal boons every 20 seconds in addition to gaining stealth on steal. So I can steal, remove those boons, then attack for an additional boon steal on stealth attack.

It can be a toss up for DH, but for druid I think it is very effective to feed off their boons to both decrease their performance and increase your own.

I’ve had the opportunity to play around with Rending Shade more since this trait was released. I love it, and here are the reasons why.

Boon spam is real. Not only do people run high boon duration builds that increase their own classes boon duration, they also run durability runes that grant protection and resistance as well. A well constructed boon build will dominate simply by virtue of taking much less damage, 100% uptime regeneration, and might stacking producing higher damage while still being able to take more tanky stats.

Rending Shade is a solution, at least for thieves, to this shift in the meta. Until boon duration is toned down—if ever—this is thieve’s number one trait for managing the boon happy “meta.”

I have fought Druids, Dragonhunters, Scrappers, and others using Rending Shade. The results have been much more favorable. Consistently, if you apply frequent stealth attacks, they do far less damage and take more damage. More importantly, because thieves do not have access to many boons naturally, Rending Shade gives access to the boons being stolen. Having protection stolen from Scrapper, or Dragonhunter, or Druid makes a world of difference.

Shadowshot might be a “better” skill in some instances. With Rending Shade, backstab becomes a viable option for those looking to cut down the bunker meta. If you backstab every 4-6 seconds or so there is far less bunker available. And if you don’t like resistance protecting from everything from bleed to immobilize this is how long duration resistance builds lose their invulnerability.

I think the better choice is not having the cooldown be so long. 1 second is a long chunk of time to take out of your total time in stealth. I think a better length of time is 1/2 second. I would decrease the cooldown down in combination with an increase in damage of some stealth attacks to make them more viable.

Another option would be to change the “penalty” for failure to a reduction in the time left on stealth buff. So I’m in stealth and spam bs I quickly leave stealth. Make it maybe a 0.25 second reduction per cast. This rewards accurate strikes and punishes flailing around.

Warrior is pretty forgiving, as is necromancer. I’ve seen people playing those “vanilla” class builds without the HoT elites. Elementalist as well I think and Mesmer, although Chronomancer (elite) is pretty strong.

Druid, Dragonhunter, Scrapper are all solidly elite only. Thief is debatable for a few builds but mostly is Daredevil (elite) only as well. Not that familiar with Rev, but most I see are running Herald (elite) so it must be pretty strong.

HoT builds tend to add sustain to classes which is the source of “HoT OP” comments in many cases.

You can look in my signature for a current P/D build.

This is a tip for those using SA and stealth on steal. If you dodge and steal it will interrupt your auto attack and prevent yourself from accidentally revealing yourself and wasting the stealth.

Not technically a bug:

There is a design flaw where you can fall into pits you can’t get out of inside the puzzle. This area also lacks any means of killing yourself so you must teleport out. This, naturally, resets the progress. This area is about 4 or 5 checkpoints in so this obviously produces a lot of frustration by essentially forcing a full reset.

Another, possible bug, is that when you leave the map and come back, by going into WvW to repair your gear for example, even if you return next to a checkpoint it won’t register. I think this is because the checkpoints must be completed in order and therefore subsequent checkpoints do not activate unless the previous one is done.

And you forgot one

5. P/D condition build

Use either SA or Acro and vanilla thief should be viable. Carry at least two sources of condi clear.

Biggest thing is learning mechanics of your opponents more than anything else.

I wouldn’t pair D/D and P/D for the redundancy, lack of combo field, and loss of mobility.

Sitting on point is an option but makes D/D tied to a vulnerable target —stand off point and shoot them.

P/D is superior to D/D for condi.

Kite.

The evade frames aren’t 100% so if you kite away you can avoid a lot of damage while dealing some. Also you can land stuns and immobilize in the gap between evades.

You need mobility and range to to fight it. Either that or a precision stun lockdown at the right time.

SA and Trickery will mean taking a DPS cut due to lackluster backstab. I personally think backstab should be buffed but that is another thing entirely.

But the meta is overrated. People often use what others tell them is good without trying other things.

Can ghost work? Anything can work. But some things will be superior and I encourage others to try out the alternatives.

How can you deny the other player the point while invisible?

Griefers will find a new build. A more effective build. What I’m trying to say—for all those would be ghosts—is they can be more effective and have more fun without using this fairly useless build. You are probably right about it discouraging new players. But I’m trying to convince the ghosts. Telling them about the tears and rage is not, imo, going to change their minds.

I take concealed defeat for the cool down reduction. I frankly don’t care what it does when I’m downed. 95% of the time if I’m down I’m dead anyways if I’m alone.

As long as I can keep the cool down reduction, replacing the smoke field is something that I wouldn’t mind…although I’d never ask for it as a priority.

It can be useful if you think of it as an extra backstab. If you try to force it to be something it isn’t then of course it won’t be effective for you.

Hidden thief works very well for P/D using it for an extra sneak attack. With cool down reductions in Trickery it is an extra stealth attack every 20 seconds. Well worth it if you know how to dodge + steal to prevent auto attack from breaking stealth. It can work if you aren’t trying to one shot your enemy and plan your attacks accordingly.

I’ll repeat what I said in the other thread in the thief subforum.

I fought one of these the day before yesterday. He was paired with an engi who was skilled enough to pose an issue along with a full camp of enemy NPCs. The engi eventually left because he couldn’t kill me even with the help of this “OP” build.

The ghost thief left soon after because he was invisible and couldn’t contest the point. Nor could he actually do enough damage. Half the time I saw him lay down his traps and dodged over the point to trigger the traps without taking damage. A little knowledge neutered an already weak build.

Honestly, I don’t understand these threads. Sure, this build can win if two or three get together and gank people. But two or more thieves of any of the other builds out there will be even more deadly ganking people. Like, being outnumbered unfairly will get you killed in WvW. Any time I see people complaining it is always “I was jumped by three people and I died, so OP, please nerf.”

The main viability reduction imo is in the radius.

For me, the reduction in radius was annoying, but not critical. The baselining of the share aspect was far more important, because I was never going to take venomshare normally when I had such a better option in the form of blind on stealth. Rending Shade, by comparison, is far more competitive and the venomshare baseline increases group combat viability.

So while it was a “nerf” it also buffed the baseline. Overall the change was a buff to viability for those who wouldn’t normally take venomshare (i.e. most thieves) and a nerf to the few venomshare based thieves out there.

This is my thief at loading screen and a couple in game shots to show the back/weapons.

I fought one of these yesterday. I was trying to take Umber, and it was being defended by a decently good engi and this thief.

My overall impression was that the thief wasn’t able to do anything by himself. He couldn’t kill me, he couldn’t contest the point, and all he was able to do was put out just enough pressure to help the engi stay alive. Playing a bit better I might have been able to kill the engi even with him doing his thing.

Quite honestly, there are much stronger condition builds available. My greatest disappointment is that I can’t see these poor players and offer them advice on a stronger build.

As a piece of advice for fighting thief traps in general: watch for a little poof/graphical effect and the sound of the trap being laid. I saw multiple times where the traps were and I dodged through them to negate them while taking no damage.

And if you can, save an interrupt for when they come out of stealth for half a moment. If you can stop them from using their HS after they BP you can shut them out of most of their stealth stacking. This assumes they are not being careful and end up visible for brief moments.

And yeah, no condi thief can afford to not take condi food when they are running food. Too much anti-condi food, etc, out there to not use it.

Resistance as a boon is overtuned because it is immunity. Boons are designed to be shared, etc., and that shouldn’t change. The effectiveness of those boons is the only thing that needs to be changed to balance the effectiveness of boon sharing and stacking.

People should run boon corruption and steal to compensate for boonshare itself. Quickness and Protection and Resistance probably need to be looked at to prevent the boonsharing/stacking from making those effects too OP.

Lol, I love that so much.

Duels and roaming are often mixed up. Roaming is fun but eventually having some 1v1 as opposed to 1v3 is a nice change of pace. Duels are also where you find more skilled players who know how to max themselves out for what they are running.

I’ve run into exceptional players dueling that I would have had a smaller chance fighting if I was just out roaming (and less likely to fight 1v1).

Also duelers code of conduct. Those who interfere will be killed and the spectators won’t help. If you think the duel shouldn’t be allowed and interfere, be prepared to face the consequences. On the other hand if you can get the stomp good for you.

Jumping in and out of stealth is more terrifying. It also lets you attack from multiple directions, giving them less sense of where you are.

Sure perma stealth is possible. But it is hardly terror inducing.

And besides, GW2 fashion wouldn’t be important if they can’t see you ever.

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQNAqYVlsMhSnYRTwpJw/ELDFmXOIIcE4CALgGwc+7/dAB-TRSAABKqJon9H+XPAAPBgxU+J9JAQhDBAqq/MpSwAAIAzsMLzZG4oH9oH9oHtfOzjOzjOzSBsoYL-e

Here is mine. Less damage but more survivable.

I love when people say “this trait line doesn’t work for any build I run now, so it’s completely useless.”

Take for example Cloaked in Shadow. I’ve heard so many thieves asking for this to be made baseline by integrating it with Cloak and Dagger. This is a mixed defense-offense trait that improves survivability and helps guarantee stomps because the blind is AoE.

Rending Shade is good. If you don’t feel you need the extra defense then take this instead because it turns stealth attacks into a force for increasing your damage. Do you know how many perma protection, perma swiftness, perma regeneration builds there are right now? You do soooo much more damage with this trait. Any boon reliant build is going to really feel this trait.

A free stealth on steal is nothing to laugh at. Many thieves run with the reduced cooldowns for steal so this is a free stealth every 20 seconds. Again, when thieves ask for new baseline abilities they want an on demand low cooldown stealth. To me this fits the bill quite well. But lets continue to pretend that SA is a useless specialization line.

Concealed Defeat isn’t terrible either. People just don’t know how to use it because no one knows how it works. First, the cooldown reduction is gold hands down. Shadowstep needs the cooldown reduction of 10 seconds it gets from this trait. The smoke screen can be comboed with blast finishers to stealth everyone around and help get a res off. It also blocks projectiles so it limits the kind of damage that a downed and ally will be taking while resing.

You can either take a defensive trait line or none at all. Your choices are Acrobatics or SA. Just because Acro (combo with daredevil) is overtuned does not justify power creeping SA.

Daredevil should be the “endurance regen and extra dodges line.” Acro should be the “gain benefits from dodging and evading line.” This is the only way to balance 100% uptime vigor with 75% effectiveness increase. Anet buffed Acro because it was useless and then gave us another Acro style line. The lines got blurred and now we have two strong and synergetic trait lines. Rebalance those trait lines, as part of a game wide rebalance of elites, and SA will be back to being “desirable.”