Guild Wars 2

Bhawb.7408:

Our entire argument is that your perception that the class is underpowered is 100% related to the fact that necromancers have a much harsher learning curve, and one that many people have not scaled yet. If you are bad at a class, then you cannot reasonably expect to perform well at it, regardless of time spent. Other classes might be easier, or you might just understand their playstyle better, but if YOU are not as good with necros as YOU are with mesmers, guess what the common factor is?

Aka, the class is fine, its just difficult to learn. That isn’t underpowered, its just a learning curve.

I’ve just said what made me think the class is underpowered and I’ve also provided a deeper analysis showing WHY the Necromancer is underpowered. What you guys are saying here is that the class isn’t underpowered because you are getting good results with. This means ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.
Learning curve is strictly related to the overall balance level. The Thief is an extremely easy to play profession because you can just press two buttons and your enemy is down and you have no need to time your dodges because Stealth cover your kitten Has the Thief no learning curve? Of course, but because it is overpowered, not because it is different. Because you don’t need to put efforts into the profession to get better, that’s the point.
In a well balanced game, an unskilled Thief should have a tough time with an unskilled Necro, same sitation should be at higher skill level but it absolutely doesn’t happen in this game, as you also pointed out.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

How a necro performs is very much tied in to player skill. On paper, the necro looks to be well underpowered. We could use a couple of minor buffs, but we have all of the tools we need at the strength they need to be at (save a couple skills like spectral armor and Signet of Spite). People just need to figure out how to use them, I.E., player skill.

If you are a necro and having issues surviving, it is very much a “L2P” issue. Either you aren’t utilizing the tools you have, or you got in over your head.

OMG, not this again, please.
I’ve kittening said thousand times that I’m not here to get advices on how to play the Necro effective, neither I’ve said that I have issues to play my Necro. The Necro isn’t unplayable, nobody said that, it is just underpowered, that’s the point.

Do you all guys at least know what underpowered mean?

Bhawb.7408:

If you want to know how one of the hardest classes to build/play (because of our mechanics) compares to other classes, first you have to either assume equal skill levels, or each class at its skill cap. If you are comparing a bad necro (because necro is hard) to a good guardian (not as hard) then guess who wins out?

To be able to even start comparing classes, we need to compare them with equal skill levels. At equal skill, necro’s are totally competitive with other classes, ESPECIALLY in survivability, but people will never see that if they refuse to see that they are not playing well, and instead blaming it on the class.

As you say, if we assume equal skill levels, what do you think will win? A medium experienced Necro or a medium experienced Thief/Guardian/Mesmer?
I’d say the latter because I’ve spent 300 hours on my Necro, at the point that I press F1 to enter Death Shroud when I play other professions, and about 50 on my Thief, but still I play waaaay better on the Thief. I should assume that I don’t fit for Necro? Uh? Or probably there are some balance issues?

I can say the same on my Warrior or my Mesmer, which I’ve played way less than Thief, but still perform better compared to my Necro. The only profession I don’t feel as good as I am with my Necro is the Engineer.

Talentless.5708:

No offense, but you need to read better (I’ll leave it to you to find your own mistakes). Furthermore, you need to learn how to play the Necro if you dont think my responses make sense or work. They are proven every day

… by some random guys on a forum with no factual statements backing them up.

I like how you guys think that anyone who wants to highlight the class problems should l2p. Jump down from your “I’m better than you” throne and think about the game balancing, seeing the Necromancer among the other 7 professions and stop kittening about how you play the profession, how anyone else should play the profession and how to play effective like we don’t know.

This isn’t a thread started to discuss on how we should improve our skills, this is a thread about how Necromancer performs compared to other professions. If you want to say anyone how good you are at playing this game, go somewhere else.

Bhawb.7408:

CHIPS.6018:

DS replaces your whole skill bar. You are not yourself when you are in DS. And DS drains naturally. Of course LF gives you extra hp. But a 100% full LF bar would be worth maybe 50% of your regular hp bar at best.

Its up to you to utilize your DS skills properly. Any build you make has the potential to have strong use for DS. And lets say you have 0% offensive use for DS (impossible, but lets say), then you can just use it the second someone is about to burst you, and BAM, you’ve negated a full burst from someone, without losing any “real” HP. DS isn’t meant to be a long-term thing, you jump in, do your stuff, and jump out, usually within 1-2 skills at most.

Man, this is just what other professions are capable to do with invulnerability, blocks or evades. And they don’t need to build LF back up after they absorbed the damage, which can take a very long time you won’t be able to survive thanks to what we’ve said Necro lacks.

Bhawb.7408:

Sometimes I wonder if people that post in this forum have actually spent time playing around on necros and actually understand the class.

We have unique mechanics, so do other classes, you can’t simply say “necros have no boons, therefore they can’t live, gg necro sucks”.

Lets talk about necro survivability, because ours doesn’t come from “standard” sources like boons or high healing. Ours comes from using death shroud to mitigate damage, using our huge access to condition removal/transfer to render using conditions a liability, use our own access to debilitating conditions to reduce incoming damage, and finally our actual heals/life steal to heal up the damage we’ve taken.

I don’t know the exact amount of HP given by DS, but lets just assume for this example that a full, untraited DS pool (0% extra life force pool) has the same HP value as your current HP. Let’s also assume you have 20k HP (our base hp is 18k, so this is hardly any investment, and makes it easier to show with math). So for each 1% of life force you gain from an ability, that is 200hp “healed” to your secondary life bar. I’ll list just the weapon abilities below (post would be huge otherwise, and you should get the point by then), along with how much effective hp you are healed for by the life force gain.

Now, lets look at what skills give life force, and how much from weapon skills + the one DS skill:
DS 4: gives 3% LF per tick per person – 600hp per tick per person (note: I’m not 100% sure if it is per tick or overall, however more people hit does stack LF gains)
Staff 1: 3% LF per hit, up to 3 hit – 600hp per person up to 1800
Axe 2: 4% LF if all hit, up to 800hp
Scepter 2: reads to give 2% LF per condition, not sure if this works as intended – 400hp, up to 22% LF gain (only in completely ideal situations: ie never going to happen) if this works as it reads.
Dagger 1, part 3 of chain: 4% LF, 800hp
Focus 4, 3% LF per enemy bounce (not sure if it applies for allies too), 600hp per bounce

So just looking at weapon skills, many of our auto attacks, 2nd abilities, or offhand abilities effectively give us upwards of 400hp per hit. This doesn’t include traits, or utility skills that can also give LF, also effectively giving you HP. And this doesn’t include the damage reduction/survivability reduction we afflict enemies with in battle.

Necros look bad on paper because of the unique mechanics that we use to live longer, but saying that necros can’t survive is only out of ignorance of our mechanics.

Seriously? How can you treat Life Force as normal health bar?
So it doesn’t matter that you can enter in Death Shroud on a 10s cooldown? It doesn’t matter that when you are in Death Shroud you have access to only 4 skills and none of them are stunbreaker/defensive skills? It doesn’t matter that Death Shroud drains 3% of LF per seconds, so it is like having 6 stacks of bleed constantly on? It doesn’t matter that LF is actually hard to build excluding some specs?
Looks like that the one who hasn’t played the Necro here is you, or you probably played it only in PvE, or you haven’t tried any other profession.
Oh, but yeah, LF = HP, sounds logic.

Talentless.5708:

cut

I did not wanted to point out what Necro should have access to or not. I wanted just to point out what are the factors which make a profession tougher and which factors does the Necro have full access to.
If you take any profession and give a point on a scale from 1 to 10 to each factor I’ve listed according its accessibility, you’ll see that Necros score the least.

Yuujin.1067:

Roll a thief. Play a thief in WvW and sPvP. Leave every encounter that goes south successfully. Show us how easy it is to play a thief. Make a video of the ‘effectiveness to effort ratio’, post it here, and then we can believe it’s not an issue of your ability to play but rather the state of the thief class.

Until then, I love when bad players blame their ‘game issues’ or ‘class balance’ for their lack of skill.

I’ve rolled a thief and I’m leveling it up right now, so can’t play WvW effectively.
If you want, I can make you a tape showing how easily is to leave fight and to hold more than 2 people on a point as a thief.
In the meantime, you can check on youtube. There are lots of those kind of videos.

But I think that you should roll a profession which isn’t on the OP side of the balancing to see how easy and cheap is the Thief to play.

First off, what makes a profession have good survivability?
I think that what gives survivability to someone is:

• Stability: being immune to control skills is a great thing consider that you are capable to cast skill if you’re not CCed. Necros lack of an easy access to stability.
• Protection: it is one of the best way to mitigate direct damage. It is important to be capable to mantain this boon for a considerable amount of time to be effective. Necro has access to 6s protection on a 90s cooldown and a quite unreliable protection from Spectral Wall.
• Vigor (and dodges): the ability to do more dodges via boon or trait is great to mitigate the damage. Thieves and Rangers have the best traits to increase the dodge amounts, Elementalists have easy access to vigor. Necromancers have none of them.
• Evades: it is easily one of the best way to avoid damages when we’re out of endurance. Most evades are also coupled with stunbreakers, giving great potential to them. Necros have none.
• Mobility: the ability to leave a fight when it turns unfavorable is great for survivability purposes, giving you the time to restore health and reengage the fight when the enemy does not expect you or run away for your life. With mobility I’m obviously not talking about Swiftness, anyone knows that it doesn’t help to leave a fight, but real mobility skills like RtL or Infiltrator’s Arrow. Necro has none.
• HP: obviously, if you have nothing to be hit at, you can’t survive that long. This is quite a controversial defensive method, because it doesn’t help that much to survive, because doesn’t mitigate the overall damage input, but only gives you the ability to take more hits, so if you have a large pool of HP without the ability to mitigate the incoming damage (and so being capable to overheal it), you are going down anyway and actually faster than someone can think. Necromancers have a lot of HP.
• Toughness: since toughness can be raised by any profession, I will consider only the innate toughness level, linked to armor. Obviously heavy armor professions are in a better position. Necromancers have light armor, the weakest one.
• Visual confusion: it is quite helpful in order to survive a fight, despite what someone can think. Tricking the enemy player to move its damage output to another entity or popping in and out of his screen is actually quite helpful against any enemy, extremely effective against the most inexperienced, but it is also quite helpful against the most experienced ones. Mesmers and Thieves are the masters of visual confusion, because of Stealth and the spammable clones/phantasms. Necromancers could have minion from their side, but everyone knows what minions are, so we can easily state that Necromancers have poor access to visual confusion.
• Constant Heals: excluding he standard heals, it is quite useful to have other skills which gives a good amount of heals, like Cleansing Wave or Cone of Cold, coupled maybe with nice traits. This will give another healing output in order to help the main heal to cover the damage output. Keep in mind that you need also good damage mitigation in order to make heals effective. Necro would have good healing option, that’s why blood magic is there, but the healing amount simply isn’t enough compared to his HP pool

Now, with this post, you can have a clear view of what “survivability” mean and probably take your conclusions.

kenshinakh.3672:

It’s actually just a L2P issue.

Have you guys noticed how there are less and less complaints about it? It is really just because people learned and adapted… I definitely find WvW more challenging for my thief compared to 3 months ago, so people are definitely learning how to counter thieves.

For those thinking thieves are too good, please have faith in your abilities and skills to improve! Don’t think “I lost because he was a thief.” Instead, think “What can I improve to beat that particular class?”

I’m not just saying “L2P!”. I’m telling those who have trouble with thieves to have confidence in your ability to learn and improve and you will be beating most thieves in no time!.

That way, there’s no more need for non-sense changes like stealth reveals or higher stealth reveal debuff, or some plainly strange suggestions I’ve read in this thread over the past months lol.

It’s not a matter of L2P, it’s the design philosophy of the Thief which puts it in a condition of opness.
Actually, a Thief with half a brain is capable to win every engagement simply because every fight which turns harder than expected can be easily left with stealth and the crap amount of mobility Thief has. This capability is given to not any profession, the Thief is the one in which it is more stressed, but also Elementalists and Mesmers are capable to.

If you combine the ability to leave any fight which is turning in a loss with the culling issues and the loads of damage the Thief deals, you can easily see why the Thief is OP.

Keep in mind that I’m not talking about how dealing with the Thief, there is always a counter to OP specs, that’s for sure, I’m talking about the overall balance of the game, considering effectiveness/efforts ratio, which in the Thief is way, way too high.

• Fixed a bug that caused some minions to be overly aggressive.

Looks like someone has tried steroids on his minions. Not today, guys, not today.

Kyskythyn.6471:

Some points I’d like to bring up:
Necro “glass cannon” from what I’ve seen is more based off of consistent DPS rather than burst. While this does not appeal to everyone, remember that even a full damage spec necro has more hp than, say, a glass cannon thief or ele. The difference is that the eles and thieves have more escape mechanisms that necros lack.

Spectral walk is not only used for teleport juking. 30+ seconds of swiftness is oftentimes enough in itself to outrun specs without perma-swiftness.

To those that question Necro’s survivability, have you tried running a tank build, or at least a build with more toughness or vit? While a guardian is more of a support tank with a lot of boons/heals-to-allies skills, a necro makes for a very good soloer that is extremely difficult to bring down with a lot of blinds and godly amounts of hp (my base is 33k). Think of Spectral Walk/Armor as heals for your DS. Right now I’m also using Runes of the Forge which, paired with the soul reaping master trait Last Gasp, gives me 21 secs of protection at 50% every 60 seconds in addition to healing my DS due to the spectral armor. Believe me, it adds up to a lot of survivability. Can I kill things as fast as a thief/warrior/ele? Of course not. Do I enjoy hitting 150s on mobs? Not really… But I don’t die to three hits like glass cannons and have many methods of very much prolonging a fight.

Is necro perfect? Far from. Does everyone that’s complaining just need to L2P? Not at all. But all the same, there are a lot of players out there that have found success running all kinds of builds. Whining about how your class/build is broken is not going to cause ANet to magically swoop in with a “Hello unhappy client, how can we change to game to suit you?” I mean, that would be awesome, but still…

You said good points but still, I think you miss something. Yes, the Necro can be tanky if specced properly but the point is that the damage output will be that low that you aren’t going to harm your enemy at all. Most fights will end with you dead, that’s the point. A guardian, an elementalist or a thief is capable to being really tough to kill while also dealing decent damage, or at least enough damage output to outlast your enemy in most cases. Also, they have access to pretty (actually very) decent burst build while retaining most of their survivability and damage mitigation (just look at stealth thieves, might and fury elementalists or GS guardians), something that Necro lacks due to its survivability directly linked to HP stacking.

So we are subpar damage dealers, subpar tanks and also subpar hybrids. We don’t actually have a real place in this game.

Of course you can dish out some tough times to your enemies if you play properly but, still, you need to put much more efforts to get what any other profession can reach with ease.

I just laught at people coming here and saying that Necros are fine and all the people complaining must L2P.

I bet that most people who come here to say that Necro is fine are most likely PvE players or people who played Necro ~40h and claim to be good enough to get the right to say other people L2P.

There is no rational way to consider the Necro fine. The way it is designed and also the way that design is implemented in the class is flat out wrong.

Just look at what Necro is supposed to be:

The necro boasts the highest natural health of all the caster classes, and also has death shroud to extend that life total even higher. While they don’t have some of the escape or damage reduction capabilities that other classes boast, they do have a lot of ways to win attrition fights. They have access to poison on multiple weapons, they are able to combine condition damage with raw damage, and they have multiple disables to interrupt enemy skills. Necomancers also have multiple movement disabling abilities, while allows them to chase down enemies who are low on health.

So, according to what JS said, do you think that it is a good class design and do you also think that Necro are good at what they are supposed to be good at?
Do you feel you have multiple way to win attrition fights? Do you feel that enemies can’t run away from you? Do you think that you are able to effectively combine condition and raw damage?
Do you think that the huge health pool is enough to compesante the complete lack of damage reductions and escapes? And do you think you are better than other professions into what we are supposed to be the best?

If all the answers at all the previous questions are “yes”, than you’d probably play the Necro more.

I see only an huge amount of insanely overpowered ability who gives the thief not only the ability to deal the highest amount of damage in the game, but also the capability to stack conditions, debuffs, strip boons and survive in most situations.

Like the thief isn’t too much overpowered as it is now.

I appreciate your efforts put into that list of skill and I also undestand the frustration because of playing a profession which is actually skill-free to play and the need to have more challange, but those skills… hell no.

Somoe.3621:

cut

This guy clearly doesn’t play Necro, or probably he hasn’t played it enough.
There is no point to argue with him.

What? A minion that it is actually useful? And also a weapon skill?
No way, too overpowered for Necro standards.
These things belong to Mesmers.

Boon? Do we have any boon?

dank.3680:

I guess you don’t understand sarcasm/satire very well.

I understand and like sarcasm.
I just hate meaningless and uncalled sarcasm, that’s all.

Oozo.7856:

Awesome gameplay! Amazingly tense fight full of moves and counter-moves. The jockeying for positioning and fakeouts were just incredible from both sides. You couldn’t really tell who was going to win until the very last second there.

Probably that wasn’t supposed to be a gameplay video, but it is just to show how that combo works?

It’s not that the thief is useless or it will ever be useless.

If you are worried that possible balance patch will hurt your effectiveness, than it is probably because you are a bad player who are refusing to get better, knowing you made a thief to abuse its opness and a proper balance is a cataclysm to your eyes.

I see no reason behind a team of guys with 10+ years of experience have a sort of bias toward a specific profession.

Considering the amount of time passed from the first time I press the button till the time the next autoattack/unload starts to channel, I’ve found those numbers:

Sword: ~3s (2.99, 3.02, 3.05)
Unload: ~2.80 (2.79, 2.81, 2.78)

So, yeah, the data I were using were wrong.
Anyway it still looks fair to me tbh.

reikken.4961:

No, 2.52 seconds is the number I added to the wiki from doing dozens of trials timing from the time the third hit makes contact until the next time the third hit makes contact.
I sat there autoattacking a target dummy and pressing the lap button on my stopwatch every time the last hit of the chain connected, and then I took the average of all the “laps”, got 2.52, and added it to the wiki.

I just took those numbers from the wiki and thought they were reliable data, matching my impressions on the skills.
That means I’m going to test the actual autoattack time and compare it to the pistol casting time from myself.

Tulisin.6945:

You can’t just apply math when, in practice, auto attack puts out more DPS and consequently puts down targets faster.

And, as someone else noted, “pistols have a 10 % damage trait” doesn’t mean anything if pistol skills have significantly less base DPS.

In fact? Which fact exactly? Those datas you are claiming to be true are just based on unreliable impressions, so they are completely insignificant, not facts. The only think that matters is math.

10% damage trait means alot. Basically means that pistol are capable to do 10% more damage compared to any sword skill. 808 can be actually considered 888 in fact, because of the higher damage capability cap, or even more, depending on where the 10% damage boost is applied and how damage scales with power.

Just a funny anectode.
What stronly resembles the actual GW2 PvP in GW1 was Hero Battles and they were removed due to the stupid meta they had and the impossibility to shift that meta properly.

Sasha.3295:

While I agree that thieves currently feel OP (at least in comparison to other primary melee classes), the point of this thread is to figure out why/how Warriors are UP in PvP, and how to fix it, rather than getting into a nerf/no-nerf discussion about Thieves.

I’m OK with Thieves having higher burst damage and mobility than warriors, but their numerous stealth options really do make them far more survivable in PvP. Survivability isn’t just about HP bars, it can also be a function of how hard you are to hit consistently, and how often you can even be targeted. As it stands, a reasonably-well-played thief is far more survivable than a reasonably well-played warrior, and because thieves have greater mobility, greater damage, greater breadth of utility, the idea that they ALSO have greater survivability than a warrior makes a warrior feel like they have no role in combat at all that can’t be better served by a thief.

Nerfing thieves won’t fix warrior underpoweredness. What we need is a buff to warrior’s toughness/survivability to allow them to survive for longer not only against thief bursts, but all those high-damage situations that the developers seem to want us to be able to last in, but that we currently cannot.

To me, no.
We’ll end to a Guardian clone, which is another plague into the GW2 PvP.
The point is that there is no real downside to pick a thief instead of a warrior in tPvP. All pros, no cons.
If they really had worse survivability, than a warrior probably had his place like a sturdier and a bit slower roamer, but it isn’t the case.

Or probably it is the whole class design combined with a single game mode that makes warriors worthless and there is no real fix for this.

alcopaul.2156:

but old GW is not capture points, amirite?

Some modes were about capturing the points, like Forgotten Shrines in HA.
Anyway that’s another point about GW2 PvP. Just one gamemode is ridiculous.

Mrbig.8019:

alcopaul.2156:

how do you even define “balanced”? i hear people all the time saying “balanced” but they don’t even describe what is this kitten called “balanced”.

and how do you craft this “balanced” build in a capture point pvp?

It’s rather easy.

Nerf bunkering capabilities, nerf burst capabilities.

The meta will shift to balanced/heavy dps pressure builds ( like the old GW) where burst will simply have a niche role as counter comps .

More build diversity, more entertaining to watch, since you don’t die in a fart/never die, but it’s always in a cycle where you don’t know who’s going to win the fight.

Easy.

+1 to this.
Fight should be longer, just like Guild Wars was. A nerf to the overall bursting/bunking capability will surely move the meta to a more balanced one.

bettadenu.5483:

Yes because a huge AoE cone of 2h kitten is totally justified, it’s kids like you that get my profession nerfed because YOU can’t counter them.

Every patch has been a nerf for Thieves and every patch has been a buff to Warriors, saying you are UP in comparison to Thieves means YOU are unable to play your class correctly.

Do you really believe that you are a good player playing your thief and it’s not because the profession is completely OP?

So, that’s because there are bunch of thieves around. Because all Thieves are good players and everyone else should learn his class to counter thief, while thieves can just dodgeroll while in stealth or mash 3 buttons to melt hp bars.

Get real, dude.

KansasFF.9410:

So sorrow I’m not sure if you have played thief or not, but not many people use that trait when going glassy… and that AOE stealth is better as something to stop a stomp or stomp someone, than it is in a heal (basically kitten healing).

None uses Shadow’s Embrace? I hope you are joking. Anyway, we are noway talking about glass cannon thieves, we are talking about what a thief is really capable of and that trait alone in a build with 20 shadow arts point is capable to constantly remove conditions on a thief.

Shadow Refuge is also another incredibly op skill. Using it to revive or stomp someone is a waste. It gives you, when correctly traited, huge heals (when coupled with this on a Stealth thief), complete condition cleansing and 11-12 seconds of stealth to completely reset a fight every 60 seconds or less when traited.

And I’m not considering the stealth-condition P/D thieves who are around these days. They are capable to survive an huge amount of time while having constant healing due to the signet and stealth traits and apply constant bleeding while in stealth due to Caltrops and Uncatchable.

Hearing that thieves are fragile and vulnerable to conditions sounds like a joke to me.

That isn’t the Warrior who is UP, it is the thief who is still OP.
Just look at what the thief is supposed to be:

Thieves are the masters of mobility, stealth and high single target damage. They can be very fragile if you counter their stealth with area of effects or large stacks of conditions, but they trade this fragility in order to have some of the highest burst damage in the game. They are able to help allies through traps, venoms and the mobility to flank most encounters.

Fragile? Stealth, this and this
Vulnerable to conditions? this and this

So, they trade nothing to have the highest burst damage in the game. Balanced, uh?

reikken.4961:

The channel time for sword’s chain is two half seconds. Total of 1.0 seconds. The 2.52 seconds for sword’s full chain already includes the after delays. Unload’s dps at base stats is around 808/2.35 = 344. Sword’s is 975/2.52 = 387.

The channel time of the sword autoattack takes into account only the timeframe needed to land the full damage. This, obviously, doesn’t take into account the aftercast delay of the last sword hit.

Anyway the aftercast delay is nowhere near more than half a second and, also if it was, you have to apply the same aftercast delay to the last sword attack.

Tulisin.6945:

Actually go and test it in-game, you’ll quickly see that sword auto is superior to Unload in DPS while being more granular, initiative free, hitting 3 targets, and applying conditions. What Unload has on sword auto attack is range, no reliance on landing the chain, and single-target hit volume.

Actually, it isn’t.
Plus, Sword has no specific damage booster compared to pistol, that means that at best, you are doing 10% more damage compared to sword.
The sword autoattack is much slower compared to unload, while the damage is only just a bit less. Also, Unload is much more reliable compared to sword autoattack due to long range. While you can easily get a miss with sword autoattack due to its melee range, you are going to get a miss to Unload only due to LoS or out of range, which are way less frequent compared to autoattack misses (kiting is enough to avoid damage).

Again: there is nothing to argue about. The DPS is in fact higher on Unload, you can’t argue about math.

reikken.4961:

unload actually takes around 2.35 sec from one attack to the next. The channel time isn’t the only time.

There is an aftercast delay to every skill in the game.
The aftercast is something like 1/4s, but anyway every skill is affected from this aftercast, the autoattack chain also. This doesn’t change anything.

Unload does less DPS than sword autoattack? Seriously?
Have you at least tried to do some math before coming to this conclusion?

Unload: 808 base damage on 1.75s channeling time. 808/1.75 = ~461
Sword autoattack chain: 975 damage on 2.52s channeling. 975/2.52 = ~386

There is nothing to argue about a clearly false statement.

Mammoth.1975:

https://dviw3bl0enbyw.cloudfront.net/uploads/forum_attachment/file/29193/tourney_wins.jpg

So… You haven’t played enough other professions but you say that Necros are fine compared to the others.
It’s not about Necro being unplayable, it is about that he underperforms compared to other professions and that screenshot proved that you have no clue of how the global balance situation is but you still say that Necros are fine.
The funny things is that someone take this as a proof of your reliability.

Runcore.5107:

Its not only legends. From older server i know many cases when party leaders prefered better other classes than thief. Its not legend its sad reality. If thief has no guild he has very low chance to find party to dungeons or fractals.

And only reason why nobody want thieves on dungeons is constant nerfing of thief because some kids club still cry here every day on thousands of topics and only poison forum with bad mood and strifes. Is Anet really blind that dont see that they are ruining one good class? Are moderators so blind and dont see that crying kids only poison forum? You are only dancing how children cry.

Now thief is weak and weaker and weaker with every new patch. I want ask Anet something too. Do you want still nering thieves or directly delete it?

Blaming the nerfs for the fact that people don’t want thieves in dungeon don’t make any sense at all.

ArenaNet doesn’t nerf skills according to what the forum says. They take feedback from the forum, of course, but the final decision is theirs. Also, I think that you are really arrogant calling everyone who says that thieves are OP kid, it’s like you are crying because your mother took away your ball, making you look like the kid.

Thieves have a place in dungeon, they are effective as support and burst out good DPS, which is very important in dungeons.
Probably people don’t want thieves in dungeon (according to what you say, because I’ve never felt that) because they had bad experience with bad thieves who build glass cannon and have no clue at all on how to avoid damage (almost 80%), passing more time on the ground downed than helping the team.

1) Fixed Minions AI to correctly do nothing while having more rage against inanimate objects, as originally intended.
2) Changed description of Gluttony to match its effect: “This trait does nothing”
3) Now Lich Form correctly shows a big red arrow over the Necromancer’s head.

If thieves get nerfed is because they are OP, deal with that.
They were buffed in BWEs and also in some areas in the last patches.

“How can you actually estimate the route of an invisible entity”
-We’re not invisible all the time, we have to come out of Stealth eventually and we have 3 skills total that don’t require we hit you to Stealth us. Most Thieves rely too heavily on Stealth because of people who give up trying to hit us just because you can’t see us.
Tip: The direction the Thief is heading before he/she stealths is, get this, the same direction they’re heading after Stealthing.

That is untrue. Once a thief use CnD (which is the main source of stealth thieves) and vanished in stealth, you have no way to know where he is now.
He could have dodged away heading to every direction, he could have moved to every direction, he could even have disengaged the fight and running meters away from you and he could even be behind you.
If you say that you know exactly where the thief is for sure, you are lying. There is no way to know where the thief is, you can guess if the thief is that bad to have a predictable behavior, but if not, there is no counter at all.

Thieves can’t be stealthed all the time, but a x/D thief can stealth for a considerable amount of time and reduce the amount of unstealther time at minimum. CnD, when traited, costs 4 initiative, giving 4s of stealth. 4 initiative are regenerated in 5.32s, so every CnD, you lose ~1 initiative if you are in stealth for the whole duration. That means that you are going to get out of initiative after 5-6 CnD (20-24s of stealth). All this, assuming that you are not running with Hide in Shadows, Shadow Refuge and Blinding Powder. Using just one of those skills give you 4s of stealth (12 shadow refuge) plus 2 initiative (10 shadow refuge) when traited, that means 2 extra CnD (or 10).

So yes, a thief, when playing defensively, can nearly perma-stealth.

“How can you know if he want to disengage the fight or land a backstab behind you?”
Simple, Pistol Dagger will typically put distance (i.e. dodge roll backwards) after Stealthing.
Dagger Dagger (Sword Dagger, too) will typically close the distance or position (refer to answer one for assessing their specific heading, i.e. to your left or right) themselves to your 90-degree rear arc for the backstab damage (for the Daze if Sword Dagger).
Deductive Logic does wonders against Thieves.

Dodge roll in which direction? What if he is running away because he is on low health?
How can you know that D/D thief is using Stealth offensively to get behind you and not defensively?
Those you are proposing are only speculation, not actual counters.

“How can you know the average movement speed of the thief?”
Do you see a Swiftness icon when they dodge-roll? Yes? Anticipate. No? Average movement speed for ANY CHARACTER IN THE GAME IN COMBAT.

Swiftness isn’t the only source of IMS. There is the passive signet plus some traits. Also, swiftness can be applied while in stealth (just a dodge) and, you know, you can’t see boons of a stealthed entity. Again, yours is only pure speculation.

“How can you know if he is using the Fleet Shadow trait?”
If it’s direct damage, and Steal doesn’t hurt, they have Fleet Shadow. If they don’t hurt with Steal (i.e. Mug isn’t slotted), yet gain Might on a dodge, or Vigor after popping their heal- they don’t have it slotted.
If it’s conditions, Power of Inertia is a much better trait to slot in the Adept bracket, anyway- so if they gain Might and Swiftness for simply dodge-rolling, you know what they are using.
Pay. Attention.

Again, I see only speculations here. They can slot both traits, they aren’t mutually exclusive.

“Your suggestions seems lacking in foundations and are based on hypothetical 1vs1 situation where you can give all your attention to your enemy, which is less than 10% of the actual encounters.”
And I think we found your problem.
Go back to a game where you can mentally check out in PvP and just faceroll your macro’d rotation for the win. GW2 actually requires that you pay attention to the fight, ‘anticipate and counter’.
If you aren’t doing that, you’re dead.
It’s actually not very dissimilar to actual combat in this regard.

You don’t get the point.
Look at the suggestions you gave. Those need an huge amount of attention to be put on just one entity to counter a broken mechanic in order to have just an unsure chance to counter it.
You can’t afford to put all this attention to one enemy without ignoring the others, that’s the point.

Rayya.2591:

sorrow.2364:

For instance, once you hit a thief with any of your skills or the thief is close to you for a not-too-short period of time, you should be able to see its silhouette for an istant. Obviously, this should be counterbalanced giving more stealth duration.

In this way, bad thieves don’t get a real advantage from stealth while good players have a chance to counter stealth and good thieves get advantages due to increased stealth duration, giving more gap to skill floor and ceiling.

sure , so players who use minimum details in options should had an disadvantage compared to the rest.
That would be called skill ? In fact in some players opinion they are skilled when they fight in wvw with an 3000 euro pc and kill an enemy with 5 fps . Just for your information, bad player is not an player who don’t react in time when you attack him, is an player who use wrong skill when he fight you, he refuse to help downed ally and he start resurect after he is dead, is an player who spam all his skills and then run away, is an player wich only use dodge to move from 1 location to another… etc

I don’t know what you are talking about to be honest.

Aervius.2016:

Exactly.

1.) Thief is raising it’s right hand into the air.
2.) Note direction and average movement speed of Thief.
3.) Estimate projected travel route.
4.) Spam auto-attack, watch to see if your AA Chain progresses to the next attacks.
5.) Profit.

It’s like people forgot how to play ‘Battleship’. I know I get a certain smug satisfaction when I land a Backstab on another Thief who ran into their Shadow Refuge.
Stealth really isn’t crap when you know how to counter it.

So, let’s get straight.
How can you actually estimate the route of an invisible entity? How can you know if he want to disengage the fight or land a backstab behind you? How can you know, if he want to leave, in which direction did he lead to? How can you know the average movement speed of the thief? How can you know if he is using the Fleet Shadow trait?
Your suggestions seems lacking in foundations and are based on hypothetical 1vs1 situation where you can give all your attention to your enemy, which is less than 10% of the actual encounters.

So, no. Stealth hasn’t a real counter without considering luck.

To me, we’ll see just 10% more damage on unload.

Stealth, like it is now, in my opinion, is completely broken.

Actually, once a Thief go into stealth, there is no way to know for sure where he is or where he’s heading to, giving an huge advantage.
You can swing your melee weapon (assuming you are running one) in the air hoping to get the thief, but there is absolutely no real way to know for sure where he is and that’s is a real balance issue in my opinion.

To me, stealth should be more counterable. I mean, once a Thief go in stealth, there should be a way to realize where the thief is.
For instance, once you hit a thief with any of your skills or the thief is close to you for a not-too-short period of time, you should be able to see its silhouette for an istant. Obviously, this should be counterbalanced giving more stealth duration.

In this way, bad thieves don’t get a real advantage from stealth while good players have a chance to counter stealth and good thieves get advantages due to increased stealth duration, giving more gap to skill floor and ceiling.

The fact that people don’t want thieves in dungeon is a legend.

People don’t want bad players in dungeon, players who build completely glass cannon as a thief and have no clue on how avoid damage and keep dying over and over.
Most thieves are like that.

Thieves are extremely useful in dungeon thanks to stealth, there is no reason to not wanting a good thief in a party.

D/D is far from common.
I think that the best combo with MH Dagger is Warhorn, thanks to CC and PBAoE, which is helpful considering that you should stay all time in close range.

Focus fits better with Axe imho because they are both ranged but, of course, it can play well also with dagger MH.

Gilgamesh.2561:

It’s GotY because of cost/value and no subscription.

Far Cry 3 is fun, but like Skyrim, I’ll be done and bored after a month.

I don’t evaluate games when considering the amount of time it entertains you, neither the value/price ratio, I just consider the quality of this entertainment.

Far Cry 3 gave me a really good time, probably the same good time Guild Wars 2 had the chance to give me if it had a proper PvP.

To be honest, this game would have been the game of the year if it had a more wide and better competitive PvP mode as Guild Wars had.
The sad thing is that PvP is still under construction, so the game of 2012 is Far Cry 3 to me.

Someone said that thieves are squishy.
lol

I’ve already said this in another topic.
S/D with boon removals is the best counter to boon reliant bunkers. D/D eles are heavy boon reliant bunkers, so…
You have also many tools to don’t let Ele escape, such Infiltrator’s Strike, Dancing Dagger and the stolen chill.

Build 0/30/30/10/0 (0/30/20/0/20 or 0/20/30/0/20 if you want extra boon removal with Bountiful Theft) with berserker amulet (if in PvP) or a mixture of Ruby, Emerald and Beryl if in PvE.

Of course, you are not going to insta-kill your enemy, the fight will last for a quite long time but, if you are good enough, the bunker ele will sure go down. Just make sure to strip the right boons at the right time with Flanking Strike (like might stacks, protection and long-duration fury).

MrQuizzles.6823:

sorrow.2364:

The fact that thieves have an huge amount of stunbreakers, doesn’t mean that every profession has. Maybe taking thief as example was a sad choice.

Don’t all professions have 4 stunbreakers?

At least.
But there is no standard about stunbreakers cooldown and their other effects.

Stin.9781:

I as thief carry as much stunbreaks survivals as no other class bothers to take tbh, and if he had fear ready, he did his preparations, Making it instant cast would ruin it. Right now it can be used steal from necro. Wait 45 seconds> start casting fear>steal again and fear all tagets around yours. You can do it each 90 seconds but thats guaranteed fear around my target.

Anyways as a thief i got 4 skills ussable while under cc/fear to save my kitten

1.Shadowstep
2.Swords infiltrators strike comeback move
3.Steal(im still cced but i changed my location giving some enemies a headache).
4.Blinding powder(invisibility which can be used when cc’ed)

If he cought me off withouth having at least 2/4 ready ill die accepting i was not prepared for a fight. And yes that fear is realy decent skill.

I could whine how necro kitten’s thieves elite skill dagger storm

Dagger storm>gain stability 8 seconds>corrupt boon>8 second stability>fear>elite ruined you run in fear. You know what thieves said when in our forum? Deal with it, we all got some counters like Lich form or others are countered by moa of mesmer.

I see that you tried to avoid the point.
Obviously, the point of this topic isn’t Dagger Storm or Corrupt Boon.

The point of this topic is that a Thief can fear someone for 4s with a peak of 8s of fear consecutively, as you pointed out, which is clearly unbalanced (yes, also Fear Me is, as you surely will point out, but at least it hasn’t that huge AoE).
The fact that thieves have an huge amount of stunbreakers, doesn’t mean that every profession has. Maybe taking thief as example was a sad choice.

Archaon.6245:

Talkin’ about S/D and don’t even consider BS HS or glass crap like that because during the stolen fear cast time you’ll be already dead vs any decent necro with a glass cannon..

That is absolutely untrue. Just test it in actual game.
Cast 4s fear while stealthed -> mash buttons in a random order while under quickness -> win.

Probably you need some extra heartseeker, but it doesn’t matters.

Just imagine stolen fear being used on another thief. Balanced, uh?