Guild Wars 2

Devs and Karl in particular doesn’t read this forum, or even play his thief. Prepare to be underwhelmed and majorly disappointed with the thief elite.

More likely they haven’t even started on thief elite spec.

The point I was trying to get across, was that even if it’s TC that goes to T2, SoS and FA will have as much a tough time, if not more, from a T1 battle hardened server (that will likely be stirred up a bit from being punted to T2).

As to those saying that JQ needs to be opened, anyone that is or has played in T1 knows the truth. JQ has won 85% of the matches dating back to at least Oct. of 2014 (and by a decent margin). They outnumber both servers in the majority of time zones, and will do and say anything to stay #1, including tag watching and spying/listening in on TS (it’s not merely accusations, it’s truth).

I honestly don’t get why anyone (aside from wanting to be with friends/family) would want to go there. Eventually, you’re going to push your competition away, leaving you with a stale piece of moldy cheese.

Chaba.5410:

Dhemize.8649:

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

All I gotta say about the people discussing YB/SOS/FA and the transfers… You got what you deserved, FA (: Glad you’re suffering now because I’ll never forget when IoJ was against you and you all spawn camped us every day for the entire week, fortified everything we had and when I tried to solo hold a camp (which I managed to do for 4 hours thanks to your roamers who can’t accomplish anything without a zerg) you eventually pulled the champion to wipe the NPC’s, capped the camp, then sat there upgrading it for the rest of the day so I couldn’t take it back. Literally the worst server I have ever faced. And when I was on YB it wasn’t any different. Roamers that can’t do squat without a group of 5 – 10 and would chase you ten miles if you managed to escape their initial dogpile. Feels really good to see FA finally getting the daylights punched out of them and I hope it continues until they completely deflate.

LMAO

You were probably dealing with the “core” before they bought out other guilds and servers. If you were to see FA for yourself today you would definitely agree that they are indeed deflated and broken. After a few narrow YB victories the momentum shifted. Then golem week happened and it has been implosion city.

There’s no FA implosion. FA and SoS are letting the “alliance” that YB purchased get rid of YB from T2. LOL.

Bear in mind, that when/if YB moves up, one of the T1 servers will move down, and even if it’s TC, both servers will have their hands full.

As i’ve said before, Anet could give us a Phased plasma rifle in the 40-watt range and it would still suck. The same goes for any staff/other weapon.

All the nifty toys and abilities other professions are getting is due to the fact that the devs doing the balance enjoy that profession and actually spend time with it (and are familiar with the mechanics/traits).

We get a dev who goes two weeks without touching his thief.

In the past 2 months, I’ve logged in at various times, as time allowed. That includes SEA, OCX and EU (no NA log ins). Every time, I’ve seen JQ running rampant, and up until 2 weeks ago, a limp-wristed presence by BG.

I’ve heard rumors that BG is out in force the last two weeks because a large chunk of theirs left for Yak’s Bend, in attempt to bring it up. Accordingly, if the rumors are accurate, BG has stepped it up to stay in T1.

It didn’t surprise me to read that JQ feels it needs even more numbers to swell their already overwhelming numbers in most time zones, especially SEA, where they hold a superior advantage.

What I don’t understand is, when there’s no one left to fight, because everyone is on one server, where is the fun? Does a large majority of the server enjoy the Ktrains more than the fights?

No shock that it’s JQ abusing exploits.

At least for T1 NA, TC and BG need to be opened up, and JQ needs to be locked for at least 6 months.

penelopehannibal.8947:

uglydan.1638:

Whatever thief will get, it’s going to suck.

Please tell me where you purchased your crystal ball!

On Twitch, where the dev for thieves mentioned he hadn’t touched his thief for two weeks and couldn’t remember what the traits did.

Whatever thief will get, it’s going to suck.

I would like to get rifle on one hand, but the logical part of me hopes we don’t.

Reason why? Because that would be the lazy way out (and let’s face it, the dev in charge has shown little or no innovation or interest in his balancing of the thief) and we’d see old things like ricochet and range extensions as part of our elite, not new, interesting mechanics like the other professions are getting.

It’s a little irritating that Revenant elite spec is coming out before Thief’s. It would really not surprise me if they have done nothing in regards to designing ours at all. The dev(s) responsible really don’t know a thing about balancing thieves whatsoever.

Still waiting on whether I’ll even bother spending money to upgrade to the xpac at this point.

<—— Just patiently waiting for Camelot Unchained to come out.

Anet has dropped the ball with thieves, especially when the Dev responsible doesn’t spend time with the profession.

You have more faith than most then.

Everyone is going to be surprised when Thief gets main hand and offhand torch.

Might be possible to get staff AND ranged. The staff might have a spell-like use, shooting bolts of shadow, kind of a shadowy spell thief. If that’s the case, then it remains to be seen if the staff elite is power or condi.

I never really used ricochet. I wanted the range increase though but it wasn’t worth traiting for.

When the dev that is the face of the profession you play is admitting he doesn’t play it nor remembers much about, that right there is demoralizing. Look at the dev who is the face of the engineers. He’s interested in it, likes playing it, and they received a lot of nice new things. Not really so for the thief and it’s accompanying dev.

Whether it’s a team or a single person, when a representative of the company is so blase about something like profession balance, it’s near-insulting and really sends a message that he doesn’t care enough to be bothered.

Maybe I’m wrong, but appearances count for a lot in most circumstances.

Ghotistyx.6942:

uglydan.1638:

Because the Dev in charge of thieves doesn’t even play his. He goes upwards to 2 weeks or more without even logging his in, and can’t even remember what some traits do.

This isn’t WoW where there are devs that play and are in charge of professions (not that WoW even did that anyway)

Don’t make that Bollywood dub an excuse for your ignorance

Your ignorance is showing. There are devs in charge of balance for the various professions, but fanboys wanna fanboy.

Karl Mclain is in charge of Thieves and Elementalists. There’s one other profession he is in charge of, but i cannot remember which.

Don’t make accusations when you have no clue.

I run a condi thief with 3.1K armor and ~21K health before WvW bonuses. Post patch, I have never been burst from 100% to 0% (by any class)before I could react. I typically have 30-50% health left the majority of the time.

Timiok.1048:

uglydan.1638:

Timiok.1048:

I’m surprised Anet has actually let this thread go through 7 pages of the same things without saying anything on the matter further. I didn’t know how they thought they could just dismiss countless builds with such a weird statement. Heck, who was even complaining about ricochet? Why are the devs so inconsistent in trying to fix problems?

Because the Dev in charge of thieves doesn’t even play his. He goes upwards to 2 weeks or more without even logging his in, and can’t even remember what some traits do.

Are you serious? Because if you are that would explain a whole lot of things…

It’s true. In one of the videos they did, he came out and said that he hadn’t touched his thief in 2 weeks and couldn’t remember what the traits were.

Timiok.1048:

I’m surprised Anet has actually let this thread go through 7 pages of the same things without saying anything on the matter further. I didn’t know how they thought they could just dismiss countless builds with such a weird statement. Heck, who was even complaining about ricochet? Why are the devs so inconsistent in trying to fix problems?

Because the Dev in charge of thieves doesn’t even play his. He goes upwards to 2 weeks or more without even logging his in, and can’t even remember what some traits do.

The dev in charge of thieves doesn’t really care about the profession. Are you really surprised how things are? Don’t expect a decent elite spec either.

I run with Trapper runes:

Heal: Withdraw

The 3 Utilities:

Needle Trap
Spider Venom
Skale Venom

Elite: Basilisk Venom

No longer reliant upon Shadow Refuge, and hence, no longer as vulnerable to the new Engineer reveal. Withdraw is a superior heal coupled with Trapper runes, and needle trap provides a low CD (24 seconds vs. SR and Blinding powder CDs), on demand stealth without having to CnD if things get bad.

The super speed from the Trapper runes is invaluable.

What do you expect when the dev responsible for thief balancing doesn’t even log on his thief for 2 weeks or more and can’t even remember what some skills/traits do?

Way back when, when Rift (another MMO) came out, there was a quest line that took place in a zone called Gloamwood. (think Duskwood, for those familiar with WoW)

Near the end of the quest chain, you became infected with Lycanthropy, and any town you went to, the guards would kill you on sight. You had to finish the quest chain that eventually cured you of your lycanthropy.

This was the first time I had ever encountered a questline that really did something different like that. It was pretty involved and interesting, something that I just don’t really see in GW2. I felt like part of the story. I cannot really think of any time in the living stories where I felt like that.

If they could somehow pull it off that you, as a Sylvari that turns against the Pact, I would really be impressed.

Official new Thief weapon:

The bottom line is, that Anet is concerned with the bottom line. WvW doesn’t bring in any income. They focus on things that encourage people to spend cash in the gem shop.

Don’t spend any real cash in the gem shop. If enough people do so (unlikely but hey) they may take notice. Remember how quickly they changed their tune about the pre-purchase expansion pack?

Don’t bandwagon to JQ, unless you want to karma train. It’s a bandwagon server these days for those that want to win. BG has the strength to match JQ if their numbers had incentive to log on (like a wvw tourney), but muster a similar strength at best, to TC.

Anet won’t admit they made a mistake, and they’ll let this crap run for the entire week. Again, to them, if you don’t see things their way, there’s always WoW.

Time to get caught up on Witcher 3.

Seriously, don’t for a minute think Anet will like this sort of feedback. Anything that doesn’t jive with their “vision” on things gets swept under the rug and forgotten. So if you aren’t on board with Anet’s vision, you aren’t on board.

Mesmers are over the top. Don’t fool yourself.

Anet couldn’t even wait for the current match to end.

Guess I’ll find something else to do for the next week.

Thanks Anet.

I swapped over to Withdraw as my heal, and found it’s superior to HiS for that very reason.

Haven’t pre-ordered HoT yet. Just waiting to be disappointed even more when they reveal the Thief elite spec.

What do you expect when the Dev in charge of thieves cannot even remember what half the traits do because he hasn’t touched his thief for two weeks?

If you want to balance stealth and have it remain fair, then introduce the following limit(s):

- When leaving stealth by doing damage (e.g. backstab), that stealther gets revealed for the same amount of time they were in stealth up until that attack. Example: Thief uses Shadow Refuge and moves in and backstabs after being in stealth for 7 seconds. Upon back stabbing the enemy, they now have 7 seconds of revealed.

If they did no damage on leaving stealth, then it remains as it is now, no revealed.

As for it affecting Mesmers, they should get revealed (in the same manner) if they summon a clone or whatnot from stealth that does damage (existing clones etc. do not cause the revealed).

So if a thief cloak and daggers you and backstabs you within 1 second, he isn’t going far if he tries again in another second. Pretty easy to find him and damage him in stealth.

A 3 second minimum revealed timer (which is what it is currently in WvW) may have to be put in place to prevent backstab spamming.

In this manner, a stealther can utilize stealth to escape for longer durations, but cannot abuse it like Mesmers are currently.

Potent poisons would have to have more than 20% damage to get me to drop Improvisation for it.

I’m not defending anyone or anything like that. I posted that pic to show that solo or in a group setting, a P/D thief is viable.

I spent several days following the patch trying different things, and came up with a build/gear loadout that allows for a 3-5 second burst of 4-6K condi damage.

With the way specs are now, It’s been my experience that 60-75% of those in WvW run a Zerker build. This means they have 13-17K health. A 4 second burst of 4-6K will put them under 5K easily, with Confusion riding along. When they panic and start using cleanses an or heals, that’s another 900-1000 damage per skill usage.

It can easily be a fire and forget setup on pure glass professions that aren’t quick on the cleanses.

I will say I ran into a medi-guard yesterday, and it was a nightmare.

Edit: I didn’t take Venomous Aura for the sharing persay. It’s for the 20% cd reduction. It just happens to be useful with others around on top of that.

2nd edit: It’s not all that hard to get poison ticking for upwards of 3K solo in that initial burst if you run shortbow in addition to P/D.

Condi thief is good against those that don’t carry a ton of cleanses, like nasty medi-guards.

Attached: Solo kill of Sentry near Klovan. I’ll dig through my screens and see if I can find any on players solo.

They can either fix it so it heals for the amount promised, or revert the CD so after Trickster, the CD is 12 seconds like it was.

The problem is, the dev responsible for Thief is also responsible for 1 or 2 other professions as well, and doesn’t really care much about the Thief. He even admitted on a Twitch presentation that he hadn’t touched the Thief or it’s skills for 2 weeks and couldn’t remember much about the new changes.

Whereas the dev that was overlooking the Engineer was hands on and had working knowledge of Engys and genuinely seemed to have a love for the class.

Take that as you will, but don’t have any real expectations for the Thief. You’ll only be disappointed. When the one responsible doesn’t have any love or interest in the class, you will see the results in the finished product.

Edit: The only way you can really make a difference is vote with your wallet. If you buy gems, stop for a month. Yeah, it really won’t make much of a difference, but if you’re unhappy, why give them more money? That’s why I will never spend one dollar of real money in the gem store.

glehmann.9586:

There is clearly only one way to resolve this.

Thief spec will be melee rifle.

Why not both? The Mohican people used a rifle stock as a weapon, called a Gunstock War Club. It wouldn’t be a stretch to combine the two :P

I have to agree with Luclinraider. My main is a P/D condi thief (have been since original beta, before it was considered a cheese build).

I’m seeing insane damage now, far more than pre-patch. I’m also feeling a lot more useful in group situations.

Potent poison is ok but not worth dropping Improv for.
It should work like this:

-Increased poison duration. Increased condition damage.
-Damage Increase: All damaging conditions +10% while poison is active from Thief.
-Duration Increase: Poison length +33%, +10% duration to non-damaging conditions while poison is active from Thief.

That may be OP if it affects others condition damage. Having it affect only your personal condition damage would still be good. Alternatively, instead of a flat 10%, it could be 1% per stack of poison.

If you’re trying to use these runes as a primary source of damage, you’re going to be disappointed.

-Using them as CC/opening stealth without having to c/d is a huge plus. People will chase you into a laid trap. They cannot help it.
-Using Withdraw with this runeset = win.

Thieves could get rifle, yet it may act like a Shotgun, better the closer you are, and damage falloff as distance between you and your target widens.

Put a chance to proc a cut down version of Flanking strikes on vital shot, like a 10% chance for 1 or 2 seconds, with a 5 second CD.

P/D generally doesn’t benefit from crits so it won’t really imbalance anything on that side. The haste will add a couple bleeds at most for P/D.

Perhaps have it affected by Trickster, so it removes a condition. This would help address the weakness to condis with pistols.

Flanking strike, even on a 60 second (48 second traited) CD, is a very good trait, at least for my build. It allows me to put down a nice burst in no time.

At least for my current build, it has earned a permanent place.

You’ll probably catch hell for running a P/D build. Some people hate the build with a passion.

Anyone know if Basilisk venom stacks , as in 2 seconds of stun, or is it the same as it was?