Guild Wars 2

Any trait would be better than last refuge. But minor traits like that aren’t meant to be as powerful as Shadow’s Embrace or Infusion of Shadow. The problem of last refuge isn’t that it’s bad but that it’s borderline harmful.

Unless we replace it with something completely different, I’d suggest we keep it to an action that fits the name. IE, instead of using the skill “Blinding Powder” for free when bellow 25%, it could create a smoke screen the same as “Black Powder” ?

But then it would look too much like Concealed Defeat :/

Withdraw doesn’t break stuns.

Zephyric Reaper.3049:

As I see it.
People can pop up a stealth, backstab, put SR, dodge around and escape having a whole bunch of 10 secs of stealth even if they had reveal all through SR.
It’s one of the many abuses I see coming from this.

What sohlud be looked into is when you get revealed because of external sources of stealth. Sometimes you don’t expect it and someone pops a refuge while you’re walking and you’re just at the edge, that can actually murder a thief instead of saving it. IMHO there are more annoying things than 4 sec revealed but I do agree it’s a hassle.

That could be a problem but we aren’t at special rules anymore. If SR is the problem, then tweak SR. Make it not apply any stealth if you are Revealed as an exception for example.

Also, SR even when you are invisible inside is kind of dangerous, I can only imagine how worse it would be if we are visible for the full duration of it.

Not everyone uses this trait you know.

You say “Just stealth again” as if it was initiative free. At this point, I’m usually kind of low of that precious resource.

Well, I can’t say for sure that all traits on Stealth should work like that but yeah, why not?

It’d be a way to not nerf too much the SA traits while still keeping a “long” Revealed duration.

Tested in the mists with Steady weapons : when you got exactly 6 initiative left, First Strike doesn’t apply the bonus 10% damage. You need 7 initiative or more. Tooltip is correct in this case.

I don’t think Devourer stacks like that in duration. I really don’t see it as such. The wiki confirms it on the “Immobilize” page : "Opposite to what it says in condition’s description it does NOT stack duration. "

Pausing your attacks to maximize chaining Devourer charges would result in you basically doing nothing for a long amount of time.

Suralin.3947:

As a thief, we have so many ways to immobilize/stun, it’s not even funny.

So many ways. Like, 4 skills and including one stolen item you cannot get from real players!

We got, one 1s immobilize with sword 2, one 2s immobilize with that venom. As for stuns and the like, there’s a 1.5s stun with Basilisk Venom, our elite and the pull effect from Scorpion Wire.

Ah, I forgot : the shortbow sneak attack fires a slow arrow that immobilizes when it somehow doesn’t miss the moving target.

Most classes with a single skill can immobilize someone longer than we can chaining all our skills that do the same together :p

The only redeeming thing I see about our “CC” is that we can instant cast a 900 range (1200 if traited for but that’s uncommon) immobilize with Mug + Steal + Venom. It only takes us our F1 skill, one utility and one trait. But it’s powerful alright.

What would your change accomplish exactly. Well maybe I didn’t make myself clear what is the point of what I’m proposing.

It’s simply that I don’t like the “Immune” effect from Revealed. I know such change I propose would make stealth a little easier to use but timing the duration of Revealed isn’t fun and the recent change backlash proves how much it annoys people. I don’t want to look for a blinking icon that might or might not be visible in the split second I draw my eyes to the bottom of my screen to see if I can blow my Smoke Bomb right now or not.

Pros :
- mistiming of revealed would be far less punitive on the thief, especially when using C&D
- allows the Shadow Arts trait to still have some effect even while Revealed like the 2 initiative gotten back when using a stealth skill

Cons :
- removes some of the skill in timing our Stealths

Would you think it’d be a good idea if Revealed was applied those two changes :
- doesn’t make you immune to the Stealth buff
- makes you visible even while in Stealth, disabling the stealth attacks

At that point any offensive attack while stealth and revealed would still break the non functioning stealth and reset the Revealed duration.

quickthorn.4918:

A reviewer said it was influenced by Mario/Zelda/Metroid but I can’t see the Metroid influence at all. Can anyone else?

The red plants that grab you in W1Z3 remind me a lot of Metroid Prime but except from that, I didn’t see much.

You aren’t very honest with that rant. The level 50+ zones are :

• Blootide Coast. 45-55. Some odd risen presence but mostly march creatures
• Iron Marches. 50-60. Not a single risen in sight. Ghosts and branded creatures mostly with the local wildlife.
• Timberline Falls. 50-60. No risen. Dredge and mountain creatures
• Sparkfly Fen. 55-65. First map with strong risen presence. Still mostly concentrated in the bottom half and they don’t represent more than half the hostile creatures there
• Fireheart Rise. 60-70. No risen. Flame legion region.
• Mount Maelstrom. 60-70. Already explained.
• Straights of Devastation. 70-75. More than half the map is Orr itself.
• Frostgorge Sound. 70-80.
• Malchor’s Leap. 75-80. Orr.
• Cursed Shore. 80. Orr.

So, it gives us, non risen :

• Iron Marches. 50-60.
• Timberline Falls. 50-60.
• Fireheart Rise. 60-70.
• Mount Maelstrom. 60-70.
• Frostgorge Sound. 70-80.

vs risen :

• Sparkfly Fen. 55-65.
• Straights of Devastation. 70-75.
• Malchor’s Leap. 75-80.
• Cursed Shore. 80.

And a mixed case :

• Blootide Coast. 45-55.

There is a full leveling path from 50 to 80 avoiding risens altogether and less than half the maps are full of them.

Taril.8619:

If Mug hits before CnD – You’re at 12 initiative – It gets the effect of First Strikes

When CnD hits – I’m not 100% sure but I think that it get’s benefit from it (If not then going 15 into Trickery might give this 10% extra damage)

When Backstab hits, there’s a good chance that Opportunist procced, also depending on how long it takes to get around to behind the target an initiative could have regenerated (1 per 1.33 seconds)

Then of course, I haven’t done much testing with First Strikes, most things that say “When above X” usually mean “When above or at X”.

A prime example is all the 75% health regen procs, some state “When at 75% health” some say “When hit and below 75% health” and some say “When going below 75% health” whilst they all work in the same way – If hit while at 75% health or below it will proc.

This could mean that First Strikes may in fact be in effect when at or higher than 6 initiative (Causing every part of the combo to be affected by it at all times)

Opportunist isn’t a good trait to rely on to get more than 6 initiative when backstab lands. Because if it procs on Mug, it wastes 1 initiative again and the trait has an internal cooldown meaning it will never proc on C&D at that point. As a result, your assertion that Opportunist has a good chance to proc and restore First Strike effect before Backstab is wrong. It actually has a very good chance not to work at all.

Also, the trait that increases crit chance from back is nice, but since you have Hidden Killer it only works for Mug and C&D. And those two are unrealiably done on the back of your target contrary to BS since the user is stuned at that point and it gives you time to position yourself.

As for your remark about 75% health, I’d like to mention that it’s VERY hard to be exactly at 75% health cause 75% out of 12432 HP is a pretty small window of opportunity. As a result, there’s little reasons to even worry about that. On the other hand, the First Strike trait specifically says “when initiative is over 6”. Having exactly 6 initiative is a pretty common situation so it warrants careful implementation here. But then again, tooltips have been wrong in the past.

This is something that should be easy enough to test in the Mists with steady weapons. I’ll try that tonight.

The reason this is important in my eyes is that in the Mug/C&D/Backstab combo, only the last hit is guaranteed crit. As a result, on average the damage of that last hit is easily more than half of the damage of the first two hits. So in my eyes it’s more important to guarantee that First Strike works on Backstab that worry about it working on the first two attacks

Taril.8619:

Kleptomaniac – Stealing gives you 3 initiative – 5 point minor trait in Trickery giving 9 initiative total when the combo hits.

Also, Side Strike is to ensure higher critical chance on Mug and Cloak and Dagger, if either of those don’t crit then this combo’s damage is severely reduced.

Hmm, but if I remember well, C&D pays it’s initiative cost at the end of the cast only. I’m pretty sure we don’t lose initiative if we interrupt it’s cast. Since you steal before the end of it, the extra initiative is wasted on a full bar and then the price is paid.

Taril.8619:

When I’m trying to go for the ultimate insta-kill combo rather than a more balanced build with sustain, the additional 50 Power and 2 might stacks (70 power) are noticable.

But as I said, I’m pretty sure you are missing the bonus damage from First Strike that way and that 10% bonus is huge. More than 130 power because cause you already have a LOT of power.

I though that condition duration was capped at 100%. Was that changed ?

I don’t think you get the 10% bonus damage from “First Strike” C&D uses 6 initiative out of 12 and I don’t think you’ll often regen it before you backstab. Side Strike is also a huge waste I’d say.

A better option is either a 25/30/0/0/15 build to get the 3 extra initiative from Trickery. This allows you a guaranteed “First Strike” bonus after C&D. Drop Venomous Strength cause it’s not worth it for just 2 stacks of Might from your elite.

Or you can replace “Side Strike” with the IMHO much more useful trait “Signet Use” which lowers signet CD by 20% and regens initiative when you use them. Just don’t precast all your signets first and keep one to use between C&D landing and hitting with BS.

For general PvE, use S/P and perma blind the mobs while autoattacking with sword. Boring, but Practical

Come on, you got 0.25s of evade on Death Blossom, what more do you want? 14k HP base? :p

Yeah, Thief is the squishier profession in the game. A reason why in WvW I roll with both Withdraw and Roll for Initiative. Nothing like long distance roll back + full duration evade + healing + remove all cripple/chill/immobilize/stuns along with some free initiative to get ahead of a killer zerg that wants your death.

Keeping our distance is one of our best survival tool

Well I’ll have to solo that whole game one day then.

Warlander.1384:

Ok sure you win, im sure it can be explained however you want, at the end of the day, some people will love it, some will hate it, me I play fantasy mmo’s for the fantasy, If i want Scifi I will play a scifi mmo (defiance tomorrow woooo) (wild star hell yeah)
But looks like this game is losing the fantasy for cheap nonsensical garbage.

whats funny is im so annoyed now, Ive actually went and signed up for the new neverwinter game….i mean really cryptic theyve never made a good game.

But I like my fantasy fantasy.

Wait, you never visited Rata Sum before this event or what? GW2 never was pure medieval fantasy ever since Asuras were introduced in GW1.

Faereilos.5106:

stof.9341:

You need 5 players to play plain and simple. You cannot pass the checkpoints or even start with less.

Really? I soloed zones 1 and 2.

Really? The checkpoints seemed to want 5 players. Well if you did it, you are right :p

You need 5 players to play plain and simple. You cannot pass the checkpoints or even start with less.

Soulstar.7812:

APRIL FOOLS ENGINEERS

No skins for you

again.

Shield isn’t good enough for you? It’s the best one.

Simple, the AoE cap is in place to nerf AoE. Without it, WvW would be AoE vs AoE with 0 room for melee or single target ranged classes. You’d see zergs of elementalists blowing up any opposition, you’d see 20 invisible thieves all firing point blank their “cluster bomb” in the middle of a zerg and instantly killing everyone etc…

Not all AoE has a big delay with a warning circle.

Running condition clears =/= immunity to conditions.

For example, a lot of bleeds are applied as a kind of autoattack damage and are very short. Those are not meant to be cleared but to be the main DPS of some weapons.

If you face a player that puts all his damage in conditions, for sure if you die the end screen result will show all conditions on top. Nothing weird.

Maybe they prioritized that fix, because they broke it in the first place in the last patch! Such regression is ugly.

Also, the emergency patch fixed client crashes according to change log. If there was no such crashes to fix, it’s very possible thieves would have to wait one month to get ANet to fix what they broke in the last patch.

Invincible until they learn to just CC you when you land from DB.

Empiren.6401:

You see this is a huge mistake.

Its not normal, you should practice before queing up for tournies. This is usually done in hotjoin and refined for tournies. What pve people do(for laurels now) is just get into the mist and go straight to the tournie que.

Seriously, I’ve seen so many people who didn’t even bother to change runes or utilities just waltz right in like its just a matter of time before he was carried.

Are you seriously saying that hotjoin is training you to be a better tournament player? One is a clusterkitten zerg game were the biggest DPS and skill spaming wins and the other requires skill, team coordination and defensive specs to hold the points as much as possible.

Well, it’s possible yes. The first hit of Shadow Shot does no damage and it’s possible to interrupt the move in various ways. I tried it on a chicken, Shadow Shot => Stow weapon spam and I shadow step to the poor blind but alive chicken :p

No direct damage => no breaking stealth.

Honnestly, the definition of a “zerg” has always been a little subjective. But it’s the first time I heard someone say it means a group of 3 or more XD A Mesmer can be a zerg all by himself now.

Still, your solution is useless. 7% less damage for a 5v1 fight?

Also, what happens for a 50v50 fight? Everyone will be doing 50% less damage cause they got 49 friends nearby? Think also about that. Not everything is 1vX

Not only they fixed the bug they introduced, but they ALSO at last fixed the bug with HK only working for the first 3s you went into Stealth it seems.

B Rad.5416:

Healing is FAR too strong? Have you ever played another mmo where there is another player. The thief killed me with 2 skills .25 seconds. Does 100 take .25 seconds? It does not. 100 blades is channeling and you can escape it.

The high burst possible is a consequence of excess of healing. If healing was a lot more sporadic and nerfed, ANet wouldn’t have made that much of a burst possible at all and fights would have lasted much longer and be much more strategic.

And 1 damage dealing skill like Hundred Blades?

Anyway, healing is FAR too strong in this game, so the burst players can produce is in consequence.

Jathra.9327:

What’s funny is backstab doesn’t even one shot decent players. About the only people you can kill with a steal/cnd/backstab combo are A: Upscales in WvW, B: Noobs in 100% berserker gear, C: People at < 50% health.

If you use the 100% burst build where you blow all 5 of your CD’s to add to backstab damage you can kill more people with it, but then you are about worthless for the next 45+ seconds and have now 4 sec of revealed and no way to live.

Its just all the horribad people in 100% zerker gear going omg why am I getting one shot when I have no HP and Armor

Sorry but NOTHING can oneshot a player with less than 50% HP remaining

Also, I’m a full zerk thief and I don’t die to backstab combos. Probably cause I stunbreak/evade before backstab lands judging from combat log :p

Could still be he used skills to stack might and assassin signet which wouldn’t show on the combat log.

That or you are REALLY squishy.

In the 2012-12-14 update, Shattered Strength got it’s might duration increased from 5s to 10s (if I remember well) and number of might stacks increase from 1 per illusion shattered to 3 per illusion.

Then in the 2013-01-03 update they reverted the number of stacks of might down to 1 per illusion.

15 days to revert such a change which was said to be very OP. Which was technically as fast as they released normal updates.

Captainlasercannon.8914:

So what are the odds of Arenanet actually entering open conversation about this? Or even reverting the changes? Have there been any rollbacks in the history of GW2 at all?

The Mesmer shatter buff was half reverted after they quickly discovered how much of a mistake it was.

Saital.4819:

Completely agree. The original problem with PW builds was quickness. Now that quickness has been nerfed, I think it’s pretty reasonable for Pistol Whip’s numbers to be reverted to their original values.

Unload too. I’m pretty sure it was nerfed during betas because of Hasted Unloads too.

Volrath.1473:

ensoriki.5789:

SA is still useful in practical combat. You weren’t going to land your CND every 3s on people trying to stay afloat. Venoms are also useful.
I’d say more but I can’t even comprehend how people think its trashy now.

My immediate response after seeing PW die… Was to go to venom share since I didn’t need haste with that. However I solo que so it wasn’t as practical as it.could be. So…. I’m playing with 25/25/20 ATM while I brainstorm.
Really enjoying 4s immobilize on needle trap too.

Devourer Venom also gives 4sec immobilize and doesn’t require you to lure your enemy into the trap that he may even not stand in it or disable it by dodging.
not to mention that it is useless vs ranged professions wile Devourer Venom is allot more efficient.

2s immobilize. Unless you got 100% more condition duration.

SoM gets kind of insane with the signet CD reduce trait. It’s our best healing skill for raw healing done over time.

Well, was before the Withdraw buff. I didn’t check if the position was changed.

And Axe and Greatsword warrior still cleave 3 targets for the same damage as thief dagger single target …

Daze locks out stun breakers, Stun doesn’t. So it’s no clear cut.

Well Mending isn’t mentioned on the wiki but then the later isn’t always perfect. I tested it and I’m 99% sure if poison is among the two conditions removed, then the healing amount is unaffected.

I wouldn’t bet too much on Ether Renewal cause of the way it works is kind of different. And that mesmer trait same : many things that add effects on “healing” actually activate after your healing skill goes into cooldown.

Still, that makes it 3 out of 5 skills that for sure remove poison first (and 2 that we don’t know) which kind of goes against your assertion that all of them were affected by the poison debuff :p

jportell.2197:

Okay there is one example… none of the other heals mention curing before… So once again… My point stands.

You mean http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Consume_Conditions ?

Consume Conditions will remove poison before healing is calculated.

On a nice twist, it says nothing about Confusion. That’s because Confusion procs not when a skill is cast, but as soon as it starts activating, ie, before the skill is cast at all. And even if the skill is never cast.

BobbyT.7192:

Dps on a warrior’s axe is roughly the same on thieves daggers, if they are built similarly. They hit harder, but slow. taking 3.9s to complete a combo compared to a thieves which is about 2s. Misconception people make about it.

And Axes cleave up to 3 targets with their autoattack. Seems fair.

jportell.2197:

You could say the same about poison and heals that remove conditions… The poison still affects your healing power when you use the skill even tho the poison is getting removed with the heal…

Or not : http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Hide_in_Shadows

The conditions are removed before the healing is applied.

Jski.6180:

If your just going to use a guide to complete content then your doing away with all the lore. Part of lore is finding it your self if you just wanted it to be handed to you as “dead” lore then i suggested you just keep to reading books. In games and GW2 we have “living” lore the type that is just not simply handed to you you must look for it from the npc mobs and environment.

ANet fault for making the previous parts pure “search needle in haystack” quests that pushed people to use guides immediately.

Increase the power of all the thief weapon skills and give them a tiny cooldown while keeping initiative. Like, 5s cooldown on C&D. Remove revealed debuff in the process since it isn’t required anymore to prevent perma offensive C&D stealth.

Grimwolf.7163:

A maximum of 50% up-time on stealth is near-permanent?

Indeed. Imagine if we got a 5 minute Stealth on a 3 minute cooldown like in other games