True, but if they are pets/summons then that would have shown up on screen and in the combat log.
Groups of 25–40 never needed resistance. They could AoE cleanse and ignore condi application anyway. Resistance is a problem BOTH because of boonshare stacking and because of the 100% immunity.
Nothing should be 100% immune from damage. It is why they nerfed Diamond Skin. It used to be that an ele running Diamond Skin was effectively immortal against conditions if they kept up their healing. But resistance wasn’t that common until boonshare changed the meta. 100% uptime quickness, 100% uptime fury, 100% uptime protection, 100% uptime resistance. Now everyone can hit like a truck and take absurd damage.
The complete solution is (1) reduce AoE cleanses (single button ones) to make conditions more viable in group fights, (2) nerf resistance down to a 33% damage reduction, (3) make changes to boonshare to take it out of the meta.
There is always the possibility of hacking. People often can only report hackers because they can see them. This kind of hacking would be harder from the player side to detect without being able to see them.
The below reflects the balance changes made in the July 26th patch, with my comments on the changes and suggestions for improvements. Although other threads commented on specific changes, such as the stealth attack internal cooldown, I felt a holistic approach would be easier for a dev to read through looking for feedback on the patch.
Balance Changes1. Stealth Attacks: All stealth attack skills will now have a 1-second recharge between uses.
2. Venomous Aura: The area-of-effect aspect of this trait has been merged into venoms as baseline. The radius has been reduced from 360 to 240. The recharge reduction has moved to Leeching Venoms.
3. This trait has been renamed Rending Shade and now causes all sneak-attack abilities to steal up to 2 boons when striking an enemy, while receiving less damage from foes without boons.
4. Leeching Venoms: This trait no longer grants might to allies it is applied to. This trait now reduces the recharge of venom abilities.
5. Devourer Venom: The number of stacks that this skill applies has been reduced from 3 to 2.
6. Basilisk Venom: The number of stacks that this skill applies has been reduced from 2 to 1. Stun duration has been increased from 1 second to 1.5 seconds.
7. Haste: The recharge of this skill has been reduced from 60 seconds to 50 seconds.
8. Dagger Storm: This skill can no longer be affected by quickness or slow.
1. I think the idea of an internal cooldown is interesting. It rewards players who are accurate in using their attacks and it also prevents the constant “rapidfire” spam on Sneak Attack if the attack was initiated after the target moved out of range. It also opens up the possibility of buffing stealth attacks for the first time in a while. However, the full one seconds feels “clunky” on thief. The cooldown of the animations means that 1 second, especially for thieves with only 3 seconds of stealth, will in some cases mean no stealth attack is able to land at all.
My feedback is that a 0.5 second cooldown is more appropriate to the pacing. Otherwise, with the cooldown as significant as it is, stealth attacks themselves need to be buffed to reflect the cost of failure. I think a reduction in the cooldown is a better solution than buffing any attack, generally.
2. Venomous Aura is a powerful ability that in the right circumstances represents a significant boost in damage or utility for the thief sharing the venoms. Making this baseline was a huge boost to those running venoms and to many thieves using the elite venom already. Splitting up the venom recharge reduction was smart by bringing new and additional value to a lesser used trait that provided its own enhancement to venoms.
My feedback is that the radius is too small. The venoms are already limited in how many people may receive the venoms. I would even take few people being able to receive the venoms in exchange for a viable radius. Say a 400 radius and a maximum of three people receiving the venoms. 240 is far too small for sharing venoms, one with a significant cast time, in the middle of a battle.
3. Rending Shade is a useful grandmaster trait in the new meta where boons are shared and generated at an almost absurd rate. The three options in Shadow Arts are now all valuable and useful for a mix of offensive and defensive reasons—something which the line is characterized by.
4. See 2.
5. With more people being able to receive this under a baseline venomous aura I can see a reason “why” this was reduced. However, I don’t think many people took this ability before the change and I don’t see a reason for them to take it or not based on one more or less stacks. This is an ambivalent change that neither breaks the class nor addresses a serious balance issue. Time will tell if the change was warranted.
6. Likewise as with 5. People took this before the charges were increased to 2. People also took this without the ability to share it to a group. Given its unique ability to freeze people in place, time will tell if this change was warranted. I suspect, given the group PvP implications that it will prove to be more warranted than the change discussed in #5.
7. This is one of the better changes in the patch notes. Haste has always been an under utilized ability because of the long recast. Now, a thief could trait for the cooldown reduction in tricks and have access to this on a 40 second cooldown, which reflects the faster pace of combat in the current gw2 meta.
8. Hopefully, this is not the last balance to DS that will be done. Now that there are no worries about quickness increasing its damage unreasonably, maybe the core ability can be buffed or the cooldown can be reduced. It is rare to see anyone run this trait as it currently stands, so all I can say at this juncture is that more continuing effort is needed to bring this elite into actual use.
Overall thoughts: This was, with the exception of the length of the stealth attack cooldown, a decent patch for the thief. It opened up some new play styles and gave thief more tools to deal with a meta that became very boon focused—while leaving thieves mostly without a way to gain those boons. Incorporating more boon steal, stealing being the essence of thief, was the right choice to balance thieves into that aspect of the meta. Previous patches boosted thief damage. In this patch, at last, thief is being given more tools that promote smart gameplay and don’t simply rely on “hit harder” to balance the game.
Venoms shine now where you have one or two partners to share with. Ideally, if you pair yourself with a frontline fighter like a Warrior/Zerker the venoms synergize well with a thief jumping in to provide a killing blow.
Overall, venoms are a strong offense enhancement that is now worth taking without specifically taking a trait to enhance them. Of course, people always took Basi Venom, but now the other venoms are quite viable.
How many stacks of bleed did you have on you? Around 10 and it probably was one thief, although I doubt that would eat through 30k hp without you seeing it.
If it was around 20 stacks, probably 2. And again if it was around 30 then most likely 3. Given you saying you died in a matter of seconds that is the most likely in my opinion.
You should show something in your combat log though. That nothing appears is strange.
Two Needle Traps, one from trait and one from utility, plus caltrops activated skill is 8 stacks of bleed. Maybe you get up to 10 if you stand still…but that is again only one condition type so a single cleanse will probably get rid of all of that.
On what you suggested: you would also get 4 stacks of poison (two from steal, and two from the double needle trap). Now, since you are using caltrops, needle trap, and your heal, you have one more slot available.
I’m not sure, honestly, if poison utilities are applied on traps. I don’t think so, because my poisons don’t apply on the caltrops on dodge, so I think you need to do physical damage for them to work.
So without being revealed, assuming strong stealth stacking, is 5 stacks confusion, 8-10 stacks of bleed, and 4 stacks of poison. Assuming the person carries two cleanses that means they are left with one of the three conditions on them. The bleeds are short duration, so within 10 seconds most of them will be gone without a cleanse. The poison isn’t enough stacks to matter. The confusion won’t do much if you don’t use your skills for 8 seconds.
Now, if you see them because they aren’t perma stealth, then they can apply far more conditions and possibly kill you. Such is the nature of PvP.
Escapists Absolution and traited Withdraw will cleanse all conditions on a thief in about a half second without them losing any damage.
As a condi Pistol Dagger Thief, thieves are among the slowest for me to kill. I need to stop attacking so the cleanse on successful dodge doesn’t kick in. And that assumes they aren’t running secondary cleanses that can extend a fight almost indefinitely.
Proper group compositions will have significant amount of AoE condition clears. There is no way a condition group will win in a large scale fight because of the number of AoE condition clears that are available.
I’ll make a point about game design. GW2 is a game with (1) power damage, (2) cc conditions, and (3) damage conditions. Anet designed the game with condition clears because armor wasn’t designed to reduce condition damage and because they had a system for removing cc conditions and extended that design to damage conditions.
For this reason damage conditions were balanced around the assumption that a player would equip some cleanses. This, of course, was not designed to reduce condition damage to zero. A condition class in PvP has to be able to do some damage, otherwise it isn’t a fair fight.
People, however, have either less condition clears relative to the application potential of the class they are facing 1 v 1 OR do not equip any condition clears. The first issue can only be addressed by class balance. The second problem is commonly referred to as “learn to play.” The game is not designed to eliminate all damage from conditions (because some players damage can come exclusively from conditions) and so players who fail to equip sufficient condition clears—or who are unable to do so—will take both the “intended amount of damage” and the additional damage beyond that due to not cleansing.
Ideally, Anet should (1) balance the availability of self-condition cleanses, (2) limit the total conditions that may be cleansed by AoE cleanse abilities. The first suggestion would make individuals able to fairly reduce condition damage they take in solo fights. The second would increase the amount of condition damage that a group will take, in order to allow condition builds a better fighting in larger fights.
A final note: sometimes a person gets ganked. They are alone or in a group, but they get focused. By two or three condition damage players at once. And they die horribly. And then they complain that condition damage is OP. If you lost 3 on 1 there is nothing inherently unbalanced about that.
Traps, Caltrops, runes, sigils, clones, pets, on and on. The Perma Stealth Trapper Thief build can torch a player with a ridiculous amount of condi. Now that Plex has changed to an on heal, that build is now effective. It can drop 8 stacks of confusion, dozen stacks of bleed, poison and torment on a player in a couple seconds without them ever seeing the thief.
More to the point it can all be applied to a motionless player. Condi Stealth Mesmers aren’t much better either. Passive damage application is bad enough but when it prevents counter play from most classes it is just a broke mechanic.
I guess condi isn’t unbalanced in small scale. I also guess it is completely fair that entire sets of builds can basically out condi a players cleanses and hardly be seen or not seen at all.
Why should a player be able to damage another player with nearly no options for counter play?
Umm, perplexity is 5 stacks, not eight.
Also, it can ONLY be applied to a motionless player. Caltrops on dodge is 90 radius, pulses three times, each pulse is one stack of bleed. You literally have to be afk to get hit with the maximum stacks of bleed here.
If you literally just cleanse twice and dodge once this build does basically no damage.
Tanky and thief? We have people left and right feeling outclasses by high evade uptime thieves. Evade is the thief version of block. We can evade for ages. The only thing that front line thief needs is some respect and perma-fury uptime.
Stow weapons might already work for this. But in any case a 1 second cooldown might not be as bad as people think. I’m waiting to test it out, but I won’t be online for the rest of the week so…let me know how it is.
Oh please, even if you say it 95% of thieves will run D/P anyways. That is what being a P/D thief for years has taught me. Sometimes people don’t listen.
A lot of thief lines are now designed to be both pro-condi and pro-power.
A note: I consider a weapon set to be condi or power focused based on its primary stealth attack and “3” attack.
P/D benefits greatly from SA because the stealth attack on that set deals the bulk of the damage. This is unlike D/D where the power creep of auto-attack and nerfs to backstab rendered D/D stealth less prominent.
I’d argue P/P benefits as well because Stealth on Steal increases the overall number of attacks a person can use, in combination with regular Unloads.
I’d argue that, if you rely on stealth attacks to do damage, you should use the Shadow Arts line.
Yeah, the “nerf” to stealth attacks is slight really. Especially with basi-venom making attacks unblockable. I agree it came out of nowhere…but I’m tempted by the extra boon strip on power builds. I’m tempted by the combo reason to now take shadow arts and reduce the cost of venoms.
People often lose fights because they take a lot of damage after being stunned, or stopped in place. Lots of new opportunities to slow down, impair, and otherwise stop opponents in the new SA line. Maybe some more people will start running it?
Shadow Arts is highly effective for one simple reason. Most thieves run one or two long cooldown deception utilities. A 20% reduction on Shadowstep matters. A 20% reduction on Hide in Shadows matters. A 20% reduction on Shadow Refuge matters.
That single trait alone is a reason to run Shadow Arts. Blind on stealth is an exceptional trait. Damage reduction in stealth helps mitigate after you jump in for an attack and then go into stealth as part of your partial disengage. Stealth on steal is an exceptional utility to have.
Given the complaints that have, rightfully, been raised about boons making it hard to manage fighting certain classes…you would think more people would be enthusiastic about making more builds able to steal boons.
Individual builds should be balanced individually.
Yes, it is easier to balance if you make everyone have the same stats, give everyone the same kind of damage output, and remove any kind of control effects from the game. But that makes the game less interesting to play.
No. You just want to turn all condition damage users into power users. You might as well have titled your post “remove conditions from the game” because what you suggest would make conditions completely ineffective.
Armor choice generally focuses on reducing power damage. Utility and trait choices focus on reducing condition damage. It is not the fault of the condition users that other players do not slot utilities or traits designed to reduce condition damage.
Also, in general, this game has FAR too much immunity. Now you want even more immunity introduced and PASSIVE immunity on top of that. Getting stun locked by 10 players focusing on you is not imbalanced because it is 10 v 1. It would be unbalanced if you could run a single clear for poison, bleed, confusion and become immune to those conditions for a period of time, not even counting a time reduction from toughness.
If we are talking 1v1, with particular classes, then we can talk about needing more condition clears (active ones at least) and the relative imbalances therein.
WvW is actually fairly good, depending mainly on where you are. Obviously, some server pairings (they have created a temporary merger system to deal with population issues) are more successful than others.
The “power creep” of HoT is that many classes gained access to additional sustain while still putting out fair damage. For thief this has meant “endless dodge” through access to vigor.
Daredevil is highly recommended because it is a hybrid of defense/offense in both power and condition formats. It will synergize well with most builds. That isn’t to say it is required, but you will need to work harder to find the synergy you are looking for in other trait combinations. Trickery is still, due to initiative pool increase, highly synergistic with most builds as well.
Right now, the meta spec seems to be X, Trickery, Daredevil, with Deadly Arts often in the place of X. I don’t think you need Daredevil, but Unhindered Combatant is addicting due to being essentially immune to cripple/immobilize and have easy perma swiftness.
I won’t give a rating because depending on the play style thief can be the best or the worst class in the game—with a heavy reliance on player skill to make some builds more reliable than they appear “out of the box.”
An alternative build w/ explanation. For WvW and PvE as opposed to sPvP, in general.
To OP:
It depends on the variant of the condition thief. This goes to both the weapon-set and the build they are using, so I’ll focus just on the weapon set and ignore specific trait builds for now.
D/D condition build generally requires that the player be close/on top of their target. Thus ranged classes and those that can maintain range are ideal. Note that, given the thief teleport skills, the thief will likely have some options for closing the distance—which is why both the ability to maintain range as well as do damage at range are important.
D/P condition build uses both default dagger attacks, as well as interrupts and steal to apply conditions. This is a more rare build to encounter, but the key is that all it’s primary attacks are all out of stealth. Blocks, at the right time, and also getting off some knockdowns/stuns/ranged damage will frustrate this kind of build. More often this build is a hybrid build that is both power and condi damage. As such, to achieve high degrees of either damage type it will need to hit often. As with D/P generally, listening for the sound of Shadowshot is helpful for avoiding the teleport-strike attack.
P/D is reliant on good positioning, so disrupting that is probably your best choice. P/D needs it’s sneak attack in order to do the most damage, so either positioning to avoid CnD and/or using anti stealth abilities will cut down on the DPS that can be done to you. P/D excels at kiting, but does worse with chasing, so remember that pistols only have 900 range.
All that said: GW2 is a game where you can expect to die to thieves, just as you might to other classes.
On the “who is an easy kill, hard kill subject,” I’d rather do a “fun to fight list.”
Top three favorite fights have been against (1) druid, (2) thief (pre-HoT), (3) scrapper (pre-nerf).
Against this druid, positioning was on point, dodges were on point, mobility was insane. There was no progress after fight for several minutes and both of us nearly winning the fight. It was the elegance of fighting both playing skill and theory crafting. You could tell they knew every ability of their class perfectly.
Against this thief, this was a long time ago but it was brilliant back and force, jumping around, teleporting, it was one of those rare fights where both parties could have the thrill of executing their attacks only to jump away like a fleeting shadow and have their opponent do the same.
Against this scrapper, it was absurd sustain. Almost to the point of being broken (and it was nerfed) but I loved the challenge of fighting it. His attacks didn’t hurt enough to kill, but he was tanking three or four at once and still dealing respectable damage. It was beautiful theory crafting and excellent execution.
Soldiers as I recall.
I would say that solo Maguuma in generally requires…some ability to do damage from range, or stay at range and jump in briefly to do damage.
I would chose either D/P or Staff for jumping in to do damage and P/P or P/D for ranged damage. You can do power or condi on D/P and P/D and P/P, so it depends on your personal playstyle which to choose.
Are you not doing enough damage? Or are you dying before you can kill things? Are you using Daredevil yet or just vanilla thief?
For vanilla: Try something like this: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQRAqa4al0MhSnYhTw3Jw/EH/ElPIminofWrQMsHzAoMB-T1BFABA8EAE4kAclSQDV/pk9HQS5Xa6H6MIAMCA+//byzjUAsqyC-w
(edited by saerni.2584)
It should take a while to capture, but it should be an option for any class to sneak around and help their forces come inside.
I would make it a multiple tiered event. It would take 1 minute of uncontested capture to change the portal on the gate to neutral. Both sides would be able to use it during that time. Second tier would be 5 minutes and fully switch the gate’s control. NPC’s would respawn and contest the point during the second interval.
Note: for the original team, if they can contest the fully captured point for 1 minute, then the portal goes back to neutral. If they contest for an additional five minutes, they can fully recapture the gate.
Note also: if the third team comes to contest the point, it should replace the first contesting team. I.e. if red owns the keep, green contests it for 1 minute and gains neutral portals, and then blue comes along and does the same: the result is that red and blue have access and green is shut out.
No need to chase anyone around. They need to stay on the capture point to actually capture it. For a long time. This opens up more opportunities for tactics.
“Preferred zerg spec”
LOL.
I think that objectives should have multiple “capture points” that let the capturing team prevent certain things within an area.
An example possibility would be placing a capture point on the wall above the gate. NPC’s in that immediate area would no longer spawn and the gate section would switch sides. Capturing the main point would reset all such nodes to the capturing team.
This proposed change increases the value of emergency waypoints (bypassing the now enemy gate) and gives an advantage to enemies that can breach the outer walls. It also means that classes other than mesmers can help their team by hiding and capturing a gate to let their forces back in.
If this build only becomes powerful in numbers, then maybe the issue is the numbers.
If three thieves jump you, you are probably going to die without some serious intervention. And thieves are good at getting stomps quickly and efficiently. So even with friends you are going to die.
Now, there are plenty of builds with significant condition clear (almost to an OP degree) that could take 3 trapper-perma stealth thieves on 1v3. But its hard to say the build is broken or OP when it only can pose a significant threat if you are outnumbered and focused. I’m sorry, but in WvW playing outnumbered is rule 1 of roaming.
Thief, no question.
If you can’t appreciate condition damage thief as a viable alternative to power then there really isn’t anything I can say.
Babaz is right though, simply ranking the balance issues for me:
(1) Utilities, (2) Weapon Skills, (3) Specializations.
I like stolen skills that create combo fields the best. Combo fields should be part of your play anyways, but this lets you access effects you otherwise would not.
Ranger for example creates a water field. This is nice because it gives regeneration, healing, and a condition clear mechanic.
Throw gunk is actually pretty useful if you use it as a combination field. Of course, Chaos Armor isn’t the best effect so that is what makes it more marginal compared to say the ranger stolen ability.
I wouldn’t make all stolen skills into combo fields, but I would change a few of the current stolen skills to enhance the potential for combinations and smart play.
I’d make the engineer stolen ability a lightning field or increase the size of the throw gunk field. I’d change the elementalist stolen ability to an ice field. I’d make the guardian stolen ability a fire field.
I would say that the biggest problem is with utility diversity. This is a fairly big topic, so as a general rule I would say that utilities that do not work because they (1) grant too small an effect, (2) have an excessive cooldown, and (3) are generally broken/inconsistent need to be fixed by (a) increasing their effects, (b) lowering their cooldown, and © addressing the bugs/inconsistencies in the mechanics. My list of skills below.
Category 1 Skills (Effect is not sufficient to justify use in most cases):
Ice Drake Venom (add bleed), Devourer Venom (add confusion), Ambush Trap (summon two), Thieves Guild (summon four), Dagger Storm (suggestion for changing skill below)
Dagger Storm—now a cone AoE that throws daggers in a stream for 5 seconds. Provides directional (front facing) reflect of projectiles. Can be used while moving.
Category 2 Skills (Cooldown too long to justify selecting it):
Blinding Powder (30 seconds), Thieves Guild (90 seconds), Dagger Storm (60 seconds)
Category 3 Skills (issues with mechanics):
Scorpion Wire (this needs to actually pull people consistently). There are other pulls that do work and this should act like them.
Shadowstep (change to clear 3 conditions when it teleports). This is a minor tweak, but necessary because—if I just got hit with a ton of conditions/damage, why on earth would I want to teleport BACK to where I was just smacked around in order to clear them?
Currently, any thief with either Daredevil or Acro can be “immune” to traps by dodging through the outer edge of the trap. This sets off the trap and avoids the damage component. Mainly it relies on the thief knowing where the trap is set and then making an educated guess as to when/where to dodge to.
You are burning dodges so you generally need to have some kind of high evade uptime to make that plan work.
What you describe is actually more risky because anyone coming to help could instantly wreck the thief. “Ooops, my friend set off the trap and now I’m downed.”
An alternative is that a thief with a trait like this would have an extended radius for triggering the trap like a minesweeper. So the thief, as long as it didn’t continue running forward into the trap, could set off traps before being in them. Less “immunity” and more “detection and sweeping.”
This is my P/D build with an explanation of why it works.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNnvVZ6hcx0
As an aside, it is easier to solo camps if you use shortbow. The bleeds from cluster bomb work better to hit all targets if you can just gather up the camp into a corner.
I might consider Superior Runes of Tormenting. You would get torment on heal, every 20 seconds, so just 4 seconds longer than your heal’s cooldown. It would also enhance the duration of torment from your dodges, which is a shorter duration so it might benefit more from the longer duration as opposed to Krait.
When I use P/D I run Krait because Sneak Attack’s bleed duration is relatively low. If you are using a long duration attack, however, cleanse makes adding to that duration less effective imo.
Not a bad build, lots of synergy using the decrease in physical cooldowns, and plenty of synergy going full endurance acro/daredevil.
My only negative comment is that you linked a WvW video and a PvP buildset. Obviously, a minor criticism. I’ve run into a few variants of these recently from the JQ/SBI and Maguuma/SBI matchups. Fun to fight, for me at least, because I can kill them fairly easily.
For those interested in counter tactics to this “most optimized build” here are some suggestions. The problem with this build is mobility. If this build takes pressure (from someone who times the evade frames or uses range/kiting tactics preferably) then it can’t really escape too well. I recommend running at least one ranged weapon in WvW anyways, otherwise you will be kited to death at some point.
FYI, this isn’t necessarily the most optimized build, because it can’t take advantage of the other weapons skills besides death blossom, and maybe dancing dagger. The utilities are well utilized, however, so I wouldn’t say it is an unoptimized build. I think a stealth build that uses D/D power is more optimized for the whole set. BUT, I do think that condition builds are marginally more effective given the limitations on a D/D power build.
I know that size of squads can be deceptive for all sides. Both only see a sea of red and there are mesmers to confuse the issue even more. “Blobbing” is just a derogatory word for “I think you heavily outnumbered us” after all. Good fights are generally in the 20-30 person range for each side. Anything more, even the perception that you have more, and people start to feel overwhelmed even doing things “right,” i.e. applying damage and getting downs only to get run over by a fresh wave of enemies.
Scoring reform may do a lot to address secondary dissatisfaction with the state of affairs. Personally the more important change would be, more than a Glicko wipe, a complete reformation of Glicko. Population coverage should be the primary determining factor for creating links and match-ups.
Example — Each 1 hour period you take an average of the population of accounts logged into WvW for each server. That average is converted to an equal number of points. Say during a particular hour there are between 20 and 40 NSP players logged into WvW maps (not EotM). So NSP receives 30 points for that hour. Etc. You end up with an accurate picture of the activity level in WvW.
Because performance per player will be, on average, similar over time, the activity level rather than score should determine what matches will be most competitive looking at previous weeks.
As an addition I forgot to retype. Basilisk’s Venom could either not give a signet type buff OR it could be a smaller chance to interrupt on hit. 10% or 5%, not sure, but it would be a 0.1 second daze that rewards hitting a greater number of times in a short period.
I wrote a long post and forum failed me…sigh.
TLNR of it was: venoms should be like signets for conditions. The active should remain as is, with addition of bleed to Drake Venom and confusion to Devourer. The passive should be a 33% chance on hit to apply the major damage condition of each particular venom. I had a suggested arbitrary length of 2 seconds for the condition duration. Unlike signets, however, the passive should remain active and not go inactive for the duration of the cooldown.
I would also remove the Dagger Training trait as redundant with these changes. The cooldown adjustment discussed above would also be a reasonable way to improve the “pace” of fighting while using venoms.
I’d like to open a discussion on the elite utilities we have available and the various reasons certain utilities are taken almost exclusively and others are taken almost never.
Basilisk’s Venom provides the thief with a powerful control device to land damage and stop a target cold. Because the class relies on mobility, having the chance to stay in one spot for even a few extra seconds is a huge benefit towards extra damage. As such it remains fairly universal for a thief to take this option.
Thieves Guild, by contrast, is an option that is almost never taken. The damage on the summons is weak and easily ignored. The cooldown of 180 seconds baseline is absurd in a PvE setting and a PvP setting. This is the elite skill that is most in need of changes and balancing in general.
Dagger Storm falls in the middle. It’s 90 second baseline cooldown is not absurdly long, although it still is quite long for what it does. Sending out daggers and reflecting projectiles sounds good in theory, but the practical application is not as effective as the cooldown might justify it being.
Proposed changes:
Overall, I suggest changing the elites to follow a 30, 60, 120 baseline cooldown structure. This would be paired with a cooldown reduction on venoms in general to 30 seconds to make them more user friendly. Basilisk’s Venom would take the 30 second slot.
Thieves Guild would take the 120 second slot. The summons would be reworked to use more diverse skills, including stealth, and deal better damage than before.
Dagger Storm should be on 60 second base cooldown. Duration should be reduced to 6 seconds. Should also gain retaliation in addition to reflecting projectiles.
I’m curious about your perspective, is it that you feel that venoms don’t do enough damage to justify taking them, or is it that you feel the venoms don’t cover sufficient diversity of condition types?
For me I can use venoms as currently implemented quite effectively. That said, I could always use a lower cooldown because the reapplication of venoms only occurs in a very long fight, usually involving multiple enemies, so it can feel a little slow.
I’m also not sure about the damage on Basi venom. It is such a powerful utility that adding damage may require reducing it’s effectiveness in other areas. I would much rather see a buff to other elite skills that haven’t seen much love, or use, such as Thieve’s Guild and Dagger Storm.
Well, since you picked a couple of condition specific traits…
Increasing the damage rather than decreasing cooldowns is my preference. A 32 second cooldown (with venomous aura) is pretty good for utility skills imo.
As for builds that use venoms there are tons of viable builds that run this. It’s just that plenty of people use power builds with D/P and don’t explore their other options.
The damage you were doing against that golem (although it is the biggest HP one) is super low.
I’m saying it’s not “running away” to move 1000 distance. If you can’t do that it’s a build problem.
And you aren’t throwing skills randomly. There are red circles he needs to jump through repeatedly to get that stealth. Hit him with a stun and block him from staying invisible. Or hit his landing zone with an AoE. He is hardly immortal.
Trapper condi application is so weak that clearing a few of the damaging conditions and having a break immobilize/blink skill is all that is needed to avoid additional application. I’ve been attacked by this build before and barely noticed it.
Recently one tried to kill me and I saw him run back into the nearby Tower (Langor) after he failed. If he had stayed around I would have offered him a more effective build to try.
WvW is harsh, it is unfair, you are outnumbered, and you will die. If I die when developing a new build I think about what I could do differently. In this case, if a build is dying to trapper condi then it is either (1) the build’s fault or (2) the players fault.
Trapper-condi, from what I understand at least, is not a hard build to play and it’s not a hard build to counter. “Running away” doesn’t mean running very far. Run 1,000 maybe 1,200 distance from where you are hit. That is hardly an unreasonable request in WvW.
If you don’t have anti-stealth abilities, consider a stealth trap if they are bothering you. Or prepare a gravity well or lightning field or other AoE knockdown and watch for the red circles of the black powder he is using to remain in stealth. Hit him where you know he has to be.
Finally, it’s not a bug. Nor is it a partial bug. It’s just an extreme bunker build that can only kill zerker builds, on a limited number of classes for that matter, whose players don’t know what is going on.
Try this:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Shadow-Venom-Duelist-P-D-Build
It works in PvE, as well as in HoT where it can survive quite nicely.
Hi all. Here is a video explanation with sample gameplay of the “Shadow Venom Duelist” P/D thief build. This is one of many possible variants. It’s not my “best” gameplay, just some samples I recorded recently to make the video, and a partial explanation of how it can be effective.
Enjoy.
Stealth trap use comes in two forms. First, you can lay it as a true trap. In camps it is helpful, because a thief may try to gank you even with all the NPCs still there. In that case you lay the trap and hope he jumps into a hailstorm of NPC damage that he can’t use stealth to avoid or mitigate. That, and your own well timed damage and hard cc, can be deadly.
The second form is mid combat. In the case of druid use the stealth bow skill and drop the trap after the thief has burned several long cooldown utilities. One example is Shadow Refuge. That is a 50 second cooldown that he is using after running out of other escapes. As soon as he tosses it down, jump to it and lay a stealth trap. he will be revealed and he should be short on other utilities to run away.
He is running a vanilla P/D build. His main problem is that he is using Shadow Refuge, which isn’t helping his pressure on you at all.
I’ll be posting a video of my variant on this build, using Daredevil, in a while. I’m not that video editor friendly, so its been taking a while to gather the video/audio.
I’ll post a condition based P/D video in a bit. The hate that conditions get is unreasonable and both power and condition P/D variants rely on sneak attack for much of their damage.
It is an excellent counter to any class that relies solely on melee. It is also an excellent counter to ranged attacks because it has excellent access to stealth—with many ranged classes relying on a target.
It does medium DPS in exchange for lots of flexibility. Immobilize on demand. Cripple on demand. Stealth on demand. Evade teleport on demand. Basically, this set is the king of soft cc, evade, and stealth—if you play it right.