Guild Wars 2

DarnDevil IV.2143:

there are some custom arenas that run 1v1 matches

Those arenas are a pain in the kitten .
Only the ones with the fastest load times play.

Numot.3965:

Melandru runes were heavily nerfed going into open release. They used to grant a significant reduction of 50% condition duration, which made them a meta balancing choice against condition heavy builds. Making things like 5s bleeds only last 2.5 is far better than the now worthless reduction that only shaves off 1.5 of the same duration today. The only way those runes become viable is if you have another condition duration reduction effect on you.

Still 35% condition time reduction is, in fact, 35% reduction to overall condition damage.
I still fail to see any rune with 35% direct damage reduction.

Numot.3965:

You forgot the bleed on critical trait that would be present in the same build.

Condition damage is really good due to how safe it is. With the exception of a handful of builds that are build to keep themselves clean all the time you overwhelm people. The drawback is obviously you have no actual damage compression to ‘race’ with in a fight and you don’t score bonus damage against squishy targets. But your damage is consistent, generally unavoidable, and constant. This means you can focus more on avoiding attacks rather than landing them.

Warriors have a hard time largely due to condition spam that’s common now. They simply do not have the removal, or the raw healing to mitigate being bogged down with conditions.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Sharpened_Edges

Do you really want to add into the calculation the 1s bleeding on a 66% chance?
Still you don’t reach the 11 stacks claimed by the OP.

Actually, Condition Damage isn’t safe. You have to constantly apply your conditions to have a considerable amount of pressure, that means that you are more exposed to your enemy attacks because you NEED to keep attacking your target if you want to overwhelm their condition cleansing and be an actual threat, while burst damage can be easily done at intervals, giving much more space to focusing on defenses rather than damage, without hamper your DPS that much.

To be on par with any burst build’s DPS (just the Thief dagger autoattack, for instance), you need to mantain at least 15 stacks of bleed and burning.
15 stacks of bleed aren’t easy to mantain. You need to constantly unload all of your bleed skills.

Jack of Tears.9458:

If you want to run away every time you take a booboo, sure – but if yer dedicated to sticking to a fight until you know you can’t win it’s a different story. (And I’d rather die against long odds than run away like a punk; only time I’m going to ditch a fight is when I realize right away that I picked one I couldn’t win.)

That pretty much means “run away when you’re almost dead”.
Not every profession can do this.

Ezrael.6859:

No, this is the sPvP discussion forum.
We don’t need WvW mechanics clouding the issues here.

WvW is unbalanced by design.

Melandru runes are in PvP too.
So, where is the 35% less burst damage rune?

Geff.1930:

On my Ranger I can autoattack to get 11 stacks in 3 seconds. Force that high cooldown cleanse and 3 seconds later they have 11 stacks again.

This is a flat out lie.

Let’s say we don’t want to consider the aftercast delay.
Crossfire has 1/2 casting time, so you can hit your target only 6 times in 3 seconds.

So, assuming you succed to trigger the Sigil of Earth two times in 3 seconds and you manage to hit your target all the times on the side or on the back, you still can’t stack 11 bleeds only with autoattack, but only 8, plus you can’t stack more due to the bleed duration.

Also if you have quickness on (25% less casting time), you still can’t stack more than 10 bleeds in 3 seconds.

Terrahero.9358:

Then also add in that Conditions dont scale with flat %-dmg modifiers. Such as, but not limited to, Vulnerability.

Also, add that Direct Damage can’t be almost cancelled with lemongrass and Melandru runes in WvWvW.

The reasoning behind the OP isn’t really true.

1. In the video you dealt 110*10 stack*2s=2200 bleed damage + ~700*2s = 1400 burning damage + ~300*2s = 600 poison damage for a total amount of 4200, which is still less than a single eviscerate which applies all the damage in a fraction of a second. Axe autoattack will pretty much deal the same damage of an eviscerate in the same time. The main advantage of eviscerate is that the damage is bursty, which is HUGE compared to sustained/DoT.
2. To build that amount of condition, you took at least 4+ seconds. The conditions can be cleansed it said time, completely removing all of its potential.
3. As direct damage can be avoided, so the condition applicating skills can be avoided. Dodging the torch will reduce the damage of 1400, so will swapping on water attunement for an elementalist. The main difference is that you can avoid the condition application skills, but once you fail to avoid them, you’re still able to cleanse the condition. Condition damage is, in fact, more forgiving to your enemies compared to direct damage.
4. It isn’t true that most profession can build 10+ stacks of bleeding only thanks to autoattack and “almost instantly”. Only rangers can, but still not “almost instantly”.

Everything else has been said by Gaidax.

Actually, a Thief is way more forgiving when running full berserker compared to most other professions (probably just Mesmer is on the same level).

Obviously, running berserker won’t be that easy, but it is for sure easier then running berserker on, let’s say, a ranger.

This is because his defensive mechanics are solely based on evasion and damage avoiding more than damage mitigation, which makes stacking toughness and vitality not as much effective as on other professions.
Having 15 points into acrobatics with S/D or shortbow as weapon set, makes you a dodge bunny.
Also, you can play in-n-out style by just popping in, dealing as much damage as you can before the enemy realize you came (and to wait the revealed buff to end), then vanish in stealth to disengage and repositioning.
You can also combine both of those styles making yourself very hard to hit, so the few hits you’ll take doesn’t require that much HP or toughness to be tollerated.

Also, pick carefully the posts in the thief forum. Most people here have an extremely aggressive behavior and are extremely biased toward their profession.

You did not beat the thief.
Just sayin’.

Xsorus.2507:

It doesn’t take that long to build LS once you get it a fight, and I realize that DS has some of your best abilities…but in a 1v1, Don’t use it primarily for damage..Use it to negate burst… Group Fights when you’re not focused, yea..Its a good idea to use it like you want..1v1 when someone is on top of you, Don’t..You’ll just remove the one form of Damage reduction you have..

It does take a load of time to build life force.
Conditionmancers, in particular, take a lot of time to build life force.
Just consider that when you have the soul marks trait (20 points into Soul Reaping renouncing Master of Terror) , every mark or weapon skill used grants you one second of Death Shroud without taking any damage at all.
Considering that Life Force is approximately 41% of you HP pool (source: discussion tab into Life Force wiki page), a 20k HP necro will have ~8k base Life Force pool +20% due to Soul Reaping, which is about 10k life force.

To absorb only a backstab with Death Shroud, which is about 5k damage, you have to build 50% of your Life Force bar, which is about 16 skill casts.

16 skill casts to tank a backstab with Death Shroud with one of the fastest way to generate Life Force.

I’ve said it all.

Stardrift.7360:

@sorrow: *heavy breathing: i find your lack of keeping quiet disturbing. It`s obvious u hate the thief. It`s obvious to all thieves that this profession is the most underpowered. Line drawn, things added up = you must be a horrible player if u feel the need to constantly QQ about every thing that sounds good on paper but in reality is just god awful. Oh yeah and about the thief`s uncanny abilities to cleanse CCs, sure lemme equip ONLY stun breakers and i`ll be za best. All in favor of sorrow changing his screen name to besttheorycrafterEU? Here here!

I main a thief, just saying.
The main difference between people who said thief is UP and me is that I’ve mained Necro at the launch. I’m no more playing that.

I guess that all of you guys think that Thieves is the most susceptible profession to CC?
Yeah, sure.
It doesn’t only sounds good on paper, it sounds goods also in facts. I’ve never considered CC as a problem while playing thief. In fact, it seems that I’m kinda invulnerable to them.

Fact is that while there is a reasoning in my posts, I see nothing in yours.
The only moment when I’ve seen something which resembles to brain cells working in this topic is on Azraeel’s posts.

The rest of the posts are just sarcasm, aggressions and flame. Pretty much the average topic in the Thief forum.

It must sounds awful if someone in the thief forum isn’t horribly biased toward his profession.

Xsorus.2507:

Yea, its not like I have videos of me playing a Necromancer or anything.

I also never stated it’d give you the same survivability of a thief or ranger, I said its your equiv of Dodge…Its what you’re suppose to use to mitigate damage.

If you go into Deathshroud to spam nukes in a 1v1 you deserve to die…

Use it to negate burst, then pop out of it.

The point is it isn’t even half as effective as endurance regen and dodge spams.
Pretty much because DS doesn’t make you invulnerable to CCs, doesn’t last of a fixed amount of time regardless the amount of damage taken and doesn’t helps you to disengage nor it gives you positional advantage. Also, DS can’t be used on demand because it is locked to a 10s cooldown (5s if you spend 30 points on a traitline) and it lasts (if you do the math) way less than the amount of evading time of any thief or ranger.

Also, you start with 0 LF at the start of the match, you have horrible stunbreakers and no way to defend yourself while building LF to mitigate the bursts.

Also, DS have the best Necro’s skills. Using in solely to mitigate damage is a waste of potential, especially for power Necros.

Xsorus.2507:

Mesmer’s stay up not because of invul, but because they can go invisible multiple times over and over again.

If Mesmer’s didn’t have invis, they’d die very very quickly.

Also you think Dodging on a Ranger will save you past 2 people? If the players are remotely competent, they’ll kill you very quickly.

Actually, Mesmers stay alive because of visual confusion, easy access teleports (which really hurts with all those clones around) and invulnerability on demand.

Invisibility is the last of the reasons of their amazing survivability.

Zacchary.6183:

Since when? This is a video game that has video game stuff. Universal CC is part of that video game stuff regardless of what the devs say. Would I be correct if I made my own game and described DPS as “the number of times you hit your target in a minute”? No because DPS means Damage Per Second, the average amount of damage dealt per second over a length of time.

Dev CC =/= CC.

Just no.
Games are different, so terms are different
CC is a generic term which represents a specific concept.
While DPS is just a mathematical ratio, control is an idea.

While I would say that snare can be considered as CC in other games because they really hamper the ability to deal damage of melee classes, in Guild Wars 2 is different, because snares are more of an annoyance then a real control effect, especially when you consider the fact that there isn’t a real melee class.
There is a reason behind the fact that devs call CC only disables and not snares also.

Shemsu.8721:

Wow, splitting hairs much? Well if you want to continue down this course fine. Then to your list of specific cc, the best counter would be stability, which thief has the LEAST access to of all classes.

Its so dark in the forums these days, we need dawn to come and turn all these trolls to stone

It’s not splitting the hairs. I’m just saying that you criticized one of my posts just because you did not understood what I meant.

Stability isn’t the best counter to CC. It is only useful to stomp people because in most cases it is on a very short duration and on a long cooldown.
Having easy access to stunbreaker is far superior then having stability. That’s why people usually carry two stunbreakers instead of a stability skill.
Thief has the best stunbreakers in this game.

Shemsu.8721:

What do i mean with control? lets look at the gw2 wiki shall we
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Control

The first three condi’s listed under control are cripple, chilled immobilize, which oddly enough is exactly what the traits i linked effect. Crazy huh?

Yeah, but if you look futher you’ll see that also blind, weakness, retaliation, confusion, blocks, reflection and poison are listed as control. Pretty much everything which isn’t damage is control.

But since we are talking about Crowd Control, which, according to the wiki, are only the hard CC skills (read disables), what you’re saying makes no sense.

I wonder if you really played this game, because you’d know that everyone refer to disables as CC while movement impairments skill are just called “conditions” or, inherited from GW1, snares.

Zacchary.6183:

Yeah but universal gaming terms trump individual gaming terms. Using status effects that limit the abilities of those effected is called Crowd Control no matter what anyone says.

This is absolutely untrue.
Specific definitions always triumph over general definitions.
It has always been like that.
It usually works that when the term isn’t redefined in the specific environment, it inherits the general definition, but while it is redefined, the specific definition wins over the general.
Since developers themselves used the word “CC” referring to disables, there is nothing to argue about here.

Zacchary.6183:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crowd_control_

You know that every game is different and that there is a reason of why cripple and chill are not considered CC in GW2, right?
Because if we fall into the wide meaning of the term, pretty much every condition and boon is a control in this game.

Shemsu.8721:

warrior
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Dogged_March
33% added cc reduction

Elementalist
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Geomancer%27s_Freedom
33% added cc reduction

Both of these traits combine with melandru and lemongrass, no other classes can achieve this total cc reduction. Knowledge is power, pay attention more before you whine

What do you exactly mean with CC?
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Control_effect
I think you don’t even know what the acronym stands for.

BTW I’m still waiting for someone making a screenshot of him dealing 6k damage with any of the Necro skills with any build in the same time window.

Shemsu.8721:

Warrior or ele traited for cc reduction, plus melandru runes and lemongrass. -96% cc reduction, no need for anti cc when immune

Which trait exactly gives CC reduction?
As far I remember, thieves are able to run Melandru runes and lemongrass too.

Zumy.6318:

How much Time does it take a warrior, Glass Guardian, shatter Mesmer or an actually good necro to deal it. Wanting to deal that damage in your condinecro shows your knowlegde about your build and its role.

Skillless random casual that comes here to rant in every thread.

Yeah, roll a Necro and try to deal 6k damage with a single hit in PvP on a 2.6k armor character. Please, do that and make a screenshot.

@azraeel:
1. Steal and IR works as half cc breaker with any cc which doesn’t put your skills on recharge. If you ran out of initiative and you have your shadowstep on recharge, then it’s your fault. Most profession in this game have half the cc hate the thief has. Only mesmer has about the same anti-cc capability, but we all know how mesmers need to be seriously looked at.

2. Aren’t all thieves running the build I’m talking about?

3. You dont necessarely need to dodge. You just have to move away after you stealthed. You might want to dodge away if your enemy is that to insantly use his AoE cc after unstealthed or you are being focused hard. In both cases, it is a well spent dodge, because you succeded to disengage an unfavourable situation.

4. The only things I’ve said to be too strong lately are the ridiculous amounts of dodges some builds have and the spammability of FS. I love how you change the subject of the argument.
This kitten started because I’ve said that thieves aren’t susceptible to cc as much as any other profession is. In fact they have one of the best, if not the best, anti-cc capability in the game.
Do you disagree about what I’ve said? No? Then we have nothng to argue about.

Azraeel.1238:

I said you won’t be attacking IF YOU SPAM IT, and not you won’t be attacking if you used it once. Meaning, the more you use it, the more you use up your initiative, the less you are actually doing any damage, the less you are capable of defeating your opponent. This is totally disregarding the fact that it is preceded by a skill, and the fact that it doesn’t last long before you have to use the main skill again.

Who talked about spamming?
We are saying that Infiltrator’s Strike and Shadow Return are, in fact, stunbreakers on demand. If you need to spam it to break the stuns, you’re probably being focused by 2+ players and you might want to disengage. IS helps you to do so too.

Azraeel.1238:

Mesmers got Blink, Phase Retreat, Portal Entre. So I guess that counts as “Same Access”? Didn’t know I had to list all the skills for you to acknowledge it…. Moreover, you said tell me another profession, and I told you one. The only silly thing is people complaining against thieves more than they do against Mesmers.

I’ve not complained about thieves a single time in this topic.
I’ve just said that saying that thieves are susceptible by CC is an huge lie.
They are by design the profession which is less affected by CC.

Azraeel.1238:

This is way more situational than how simple you made it sound. If the thief is in stealth, he is either on the run, or going for a backstab. Each and every class got access to cheap AOE, whether it was from Utility or weapon skill. Some are even coupled with cripple, Daze, and other. Of course if you waited too long before applying the field you wont know where the thief is, but the doesn’t magically teleports on stealth unless he uses one of his skills/utilities, and guess what? That’s one less escape route after he appears.

I’m not even a pro and I can keep going on and on, so pro’s will just laugh at your over-confident thief.

Just a dodge is enough to get out of the hot area in which your enemy think you are. Considering the reaction time plus some internet latency, if you are smart enough to get out of that area, you have all the time to do so and you won’t be susceptible by any AoE or CC.

Cheap AoE aren’t coupled with CC btw.

Azraeel.1238:

I’m not even a pro and I can keep going on and on, so pro’s will just laugh at your over-confident thief.

Actually, it is you who are denying a Thief feature (provided by design) in order to say how weak thieves are and how easy is to kill them. If there is something here who understand the game, it is probably laughing at you, not me.

Azraeel.1238:

I will assume you mean shadow return from sword skill, the one from utility shadowstep HAS a cooldown. Other than the fact that this wastes an attack skill for more mobility, it uses initiative which means if you spam it, you are actually not attacking.

What kind of reasoning is it?
Of course you’re not attacking if you’re breaking stun.

Azraeel.1238:

Tell me another profession which has the same access to no-casting-time teleports which save your kitten when you are under CC

mesmers: Phase Retreat.

Same access. Did you read what I’ve wrote?
Thieves have: Infiltrator’s Strike (Shadow Return), Shadowstep (Shadow Return), Steal and Infiltrator’s Signet. I count more save-your-kitten teleports on thieves then on Mesmers.
But anyway, it’s kinda silly you bring into topic a ridiculously OP profession to say thieves have poor anti-CC management.

Azraeel.1238:

Tell me another profession with the same access to stealth (you cannot be CCed when in stealth unless the CC is AoE and nobody wastes an AoE CC if they aren’t entirely sure they will hit the target)

Mesmers and Engineers have Stealth, and you CAN be CCed while in stealth, thieves only cure one condition every 3 seconds while in stealth, and most probably it will be wasted as soon as they enter stealth, unless you failed to actually attack them.

Nope, you can’t. Only AoE CCs affects people in stealth because, while you’re in stealth, you don’t have a target.
People usually don’t use their long-cooldown AoE CCs on stealthed people guessing where they are and, unless the thief is that stupid to stand still after he stealthed, enemy won’t know for sure where you are.

Azraeel.1238:

I have 4 80s, and you need to learn to play your other professions.

Jeez, you’re a pro. I’m sorry, my lord.

How stupid thief forum frequenters are?

Please, tell me another profession which has a stunbreaker on no cooldown (Shadow Return). Tell me another profession which has the same access to no-casting-time teleports which save your kitten when you are under CC. Tell me another profession with the same access to stealth (you cannot be CCed when in stealth unless the CC is AoE and nobody wastes an AoE CC if they aren’t entirely sure they will hit the target).

Seriously guys, you need to play other professions or you need to learn to play your profession. When I’m on my thief, I feel like it’s easy mode against CC.

Xsorus.2507:

Yea..if only necros had access to some form of a mechanic that acted as damage mitigation…Like… for example.. a second health bar that they could pop in and out of to absorb damage..

Man…If only

grin

By the way, for the people in this thread that keep talking about Dodge/evade..

You realize Dodge is the equiv of Blocking right?

Warriors have access to Blocking last i checked..

Yeah, amazing defensive mechanic.
A “second life bar” with no defensive abilities, constantly degenerating over time at approximately 10 bleed stacks, with no stunbreaker, that has to be slowly built up before it can be used. I wonder how can I save my kitten while I’m hardly building up Life Force.

But yeah, everybody knows that the best defensive mechanic is eating all the damage and all the CCs.

Warriors have access to blocking. But there are some skills that are unblockable (see Flanking Strike), while I see no skill which is “undodgeable”.
Also, last time I checked, Warriors weren’t able to block 1/3 of the time.

Let’s look at an average S/D Thief with only 15 points in Acrobatics, Withdraw and Vigor on heal.
Each dodge is 3/4 seconds of effective invulnerability.
With Feline Grace (3 dodge per endurance bar) + Vigor any Thief can squeze 3 dodges out of a full endurance bar, which recharges at 10% per seconds.

That means 2.25/10 s of evade time. If you add Withdraw, which is 3/4s of evade every 15s. Considering the fact that for 5s thief won’t have vigor anymore, in 15s the thief will mitigate damage for 2.25 + 0.75 (extra dodge) + 0.75 (withdraw) which is 3.75 invulnerability per 15s.

So 1/4 of the time the thief is evading, which means taking no damage at all.

Now, let’s add Flanking Strike. Flanking Strike can be used approximately 4 times in 15s (2 times at the start, then waiting the initiative to regen before using it again, while retaining some initiative as reserve). 4 Flanking Strikes are 2s of evade.

Adding those seconds to what we’ve calculated before, it’s 5.75 evade time per 15s.

tl:dr: More than 1/3 of the time an S/D Thief can evade, that means that 1/3 of the time it is completely invulnerable. This without considering any blindness, stealth, positioning advantages or any of the boon the thief is capable to steal.
This is only with 15 points in Acrobatics.

Zacchary.6183:

Did you know that the moment the Thief gets CCed its game over?

This is the biggest lie I’ve ever read in the Thief forum.
Since when CC do something to thieves?

Every profession except Warrior and Necromancer have pretty much permanent access to vigor.

- Engineers: vigor on swiftness, random from elixirs, 50% endurance regen via trait
- Elementalist: Renewing Stamina (perma vigor almost), vigorous scepter, plus multiple evades via weapon skills
- Mesmer: Critical Infusion (just like Renewing Stamina) plus multiple invulnerabilities via skills
- Ranger: faster endurance regen, primal reflexes and Vigorous Renewal, plus multiple evades via weapon skills
- Thief: everybody knows
- Guardian: Vigorous Precision (just like Critical Infusion adn Renewing Stamina)

Only Necromancers have no access to any form of active damage mitigation mechanics and ArenaNet doesn’t want to give them some tools because they don’t want them to become OP.
Well, yeah…

Do you know what a prestige item is?
If event weapon skins were sold in BL directly, probably those weapon skins aren’t that much “prestige” skins.

Just look at Flame & Frost weapon skins. I’ve actually seen pretty much none running with those skins, while I saw many people with fused weapons.

The fact is simple. The more rare something is, the more value it has.

It is supposed to be as rare for people who spends real money on it as for people who don’t. You just need to be lucky to get those weapon skins, regardless on how much money you have in your wallet.

It’s a gamble, guys.
When you play at lottery, you just buy one ticket and hope for luck, you don’t buy 100 tickets and then complain if you don’t win.
Simple and easy.

Aleth.9630:

Not everyone wants to play the same kitten cookie-cutter build. That’s like telling a power necro that condi necro is fine, go and play that. This game is about diversity.

All Thief weapon sets are viable, with the only exception of Pistol MH.
The fact that there is an OP build that overshadow the others doesn’t mean that every build is bad.

Oh, come on guys… Buffs? Just enjoy your ridiculous S/D perma evade build and stop crying about how weak thieves are…

swinsk.6410:

Forgot about shortbow nerf. That one hurt a lot in spvp. I still use shortbow tho because its still out best aoe weapon.

You mean the fact that SB arrows are no longer heat seeking? Seriously, how can a nerf like that impact the thief in some way?

To the OP:

1. 4s revealed is just fine. It is just extremely effective that a Thief can perform an almost instant 6-7k combo every 4 seconds, why on this world do you want revealed to be reverted to 3s? It will hurt WvWvW a lot and it would bring nothing to tPvP.
2. Dagger OH is actually a fair trade for Pistol OH. While Pistol OH doesn’t require you to have a target to have Stealth and costs more initiative, Dagger OH offers longer stealth at lower initiative cost AND a snare, which is something extremely useful against running targets.
3. Death Blossom is actually the only reliable source of bleed to condition thieves. Are you saying that 10s of 3stacks of bleeds on initiative is laughable? Probably compared to Granade Kit, yes, but it is the only exception in this game.
4. I actually use D/D in tPvP. You don’t see any other spec for the main reason that everyone is running S/D in tPvP.
5. I agree on Pisol. The autoattack is not that good, but Unload is useful in some situations.
6. Actually, traps are really useful. Shadow Trap is great to fastly move among nodes and quickly burst down targets. Ambush is pretty much half of Thieves Guild and everybody know how useful that elite is. Needle and Tripwire offerst the snares and the CC the Thief needs. Not to say they are all unblockable and on a low cooldown. I think people need to use traps more before complaining about them.

IMHO, Sylvari cultural are the best looking armor for thieves.

Punkins.2087:

GW1 was a niche game.. one can only assume that anet and publisher want to enter the mainstream..

How can a game that has sold 6.5 million copies being niche?

Why don’t they just look at what they have done in GW1 and how it was that fun to play and bring that in GW2?

dandamanno.4136:

Just to intercede again.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PD1S_sP90Ao

12.5k fire grab at the 7:40 mark.

Also, scepter attack 2 hits regularly in that video for close to 5000. It is traited for a 4 second cooldown.

That’s a WvWvW footage.
WvWvW.

Rok.5260:

We can level from 1-80 naked just by using minions I hear.

Only if minions want to.
They usually prefer watch you being beaten hard with a pop-corn bucket and tortillas.

Afya.5842:

Jumping down cliffs.

And epidemic.

That’s true.
We are the best profession at jumping down from cliffs.
We can jump from any height without dying!

Luimes.4281:

Necros are amazing already.

Yeah, right!
They complete master death. Theirs.

If you are talking hypothetically, I’ll pick Vigorous Recovery.

Rok.5260:

I’m just wondering which is better

Both :P

Rok.5260:

Oh whoops sorry I made a mistake lol.

Feline Grave: Dodging returns some of the endurance used

vs.

Vigorous Recovery: Gain vigor when using a healing skill.

Sorry about the mistake

Why can’t you have them both?
Feline Grace is a minor trait. If you’re going to have Feline Grace, you’re going to have Vigorous Recovery too.

If you mean Fleet Shadow, then Vigorous Recovery with Withdraw all day long.
It’s 10s vigor every 15s which adds evades to any already evasive build.

spoj.9672:

Really? I see 105k+ damage when i auto attack a rabbit with no might or anything…

That was an hyperbole.

Did your enemies wear a full armor?
I mean, I haven’t seen those numbers even on ambient creatures…

Mrbig.8019:

He was a 10-30-30 thief, which basically hard counters any condi build ( shadow’s embrace remove 2 condi in 3 secs while stealthed, and 1 every 3 secs).

They need high stealth uptime and are overall kinda useless in serious tPvP, altough very annoying to fight against.

With your build i would use rabid amulet ( since carrion gives power you rarely use, since you have no points in spite and no wells) and OH dagger, for more condi power.

With these kind of thieves you need to rely on your fear more than your condi damage.

Use Death shroud only when you’re sure you can pull a fear.

And , moreover, apply pressure to its Shadow return location, so that he needs to close the gap before using it again, and you’ll easily control the fight: as long as its SR point is far, he’s in control of the fight.

Some points:

1. If he leaves the node to look for the Shadow Return location, he has done what the Thief wants: he left the node unguarded.
2. Condition Damage doesn’t really matters. Each CnD cleanse the thief for 2 conditions and each Shadow Return remove one condition. Probably he was running Shadowstep also.
3. Fear is useless. It is a condition (so it can be cleansed with any stealth skill with the trait) and also a stun, so it can be stunbreaked. I think that build has enough tools to counter fear.
4. I don’t think they are useless in tPvP. Look at the video. It was a typical tPvP situation. Someone holding a node while someone else is trying to cap it. The thief succeded. Now, imagine if that Necro was a Guardian (a more tPvP-like situation). Even worse. FS all the day long. Without counting the amazing mobility this build has.

There is nothing you can do as a Necro.
I think none human would be capable to do better as you done in that video.

- CC doesn’t work because he will just teleport away, stunbreak and teleport back in.
- Running to its safe spot won’t work either, because in that case you are leaving the point to be capped and he won’t come back anyway.
- Snare doesn’t work because he relies on teleports, which aren’t affected by snares
- Well would not have worked because he could have just teleport away for the duration of the well (5 seconds) then port back in again.
- Marks aren’t an option because they can be easily dodged and negated
- Dodging CnD is pretty much a placebo. It will prevents the thief to stealth for a couple of seconds, but since he’s using initiative only for IS and Shadow Return, he can afford to miss a CnD while you can’t afford to waste a dodge.

That’s the balance of this game.
Either reroll a Thief, or wait and hope for the next patch or just accept those situations.

I’m asking myself why people ask nerfs for only 2 professions.
As someone else said, it surely means that all Mesmers and Thieves are all incredibly good players.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

You could just walk away from the thief?

The #3 S/D skill is slower then the run animation. Literally just run in a straight line and the thief will never be able to hit you with it. He’ll be so busy spinning in 180 degree arcs and swinging at the air that he will be out of ini and completely incapacitated before you even get hit.

Also just stand near a ledge. The pathing is always the same, just stand with your back to a cliff and the thief will throw themselves off of it trying to steal a boon from you. No more thief.

It is probably the easiest skill in the game to avoid, I can’t really believe people are having problems with it, I think you are just trolling for the sake of it.

That is one of the best FS justification I’ve ever heard.
After the patch, FS works pretty much like a leap. Don’t fool yourself.

TRoopEr.5364:

i am saying : why not to use brain instead of whining about OP classes.

You see enemy team have bunker ranger? Log on Power-pet master necro and shut-down this ranger.

I don’t like the way A-Net choose. There are so many not working-useless traits and weapon skills that nerfing working and good designed is ruining gameplay and build diversity at all. In beta we had good ranger’s GS. Now it is completly useless(unless bunker bm but 4-1-nders is still better). We had great axe on ranger – again nerf. We had good pistol on thief(but got nerfed projectile speed). But what you get when some1 got nerfed – nothing.

There was a good trait of warrior for while increased hammer dmg by 50% at cc’d targets. Hammer did so many dmg,but only if he had frenzy. Then they nerfed trait to 20%. It became ok, but after that they nerfed quickness to 50%. and the whole dmg combination felt don’t to 5% instead of 20%. Because you couldn’t execute combo.

Please give more love to weapon skills first > then utilites + traits.

And after that starts balancing what you’ve done.

It is what’s happening now. That’s why we see so many Mesmers, Elementalist and BM rangers, because they are pretty much effective against everything.

What you’re doing is looking at GW2 as it is GW1. In GW1 every profession felt the same, so jumping from a profession to another changed almost nothing. All you had to learn was playing as melee, as support/pressure and healer, then you’ve lernt everything you need profession-wise in GW1 and you are able to play every profession as effective as another. The rest is only team coordination.
In GW2 every profession is different. Learning the Warrior doesn’t make you a good Guardian as well.
So, people puts efforts into learning one profession as good as they can and then try to use that profession in every circumstance. But what if the profession is completely useless and below average? Then the time you’ve spent learning that profession is wasted.

Yeah, they need to give some use to some traits, but balancing is as important as giving more alternatives.

So you are suggesting to reroll mesmer at the start of every match?
Fair enough.

According to Wiki, the formula of confusion is:
65 + (0.075 * Condition Damage)

A mesmer with 1000 condition damage (lower extimate) will deal 140 damage per stack.
6 stacks of confusion deals 840 damage per cast.

Just to clarify.