Eugenides.1274

I don't know how else you would describe back to back to back Black Powder -> Bound / Black Powder -> Heartseeker / Sniper's Cover -> Death's Advance / Cloak and Dagger (on walls) chaining other than degenerate gameplay. Just because other classes can do similar things doesn't make it a false statement (classes can have similar issues). We've all fought those thieves where all you have to do is sneeze on them in a fight and then they stealth chain for 30 seconds waiting for cooldowns. Sure, if they're just chaining stealth they're not damaging you but I personally don't think it's a healthy gameplay style. I agree that old SA was worse but I feel like the current SA only moved the bar. The old SA stealth on steal, stealth on healing skill use, ini regen/healing while in stealth were kind of insane design choices looking back on them. I don't think changing Shadow Rejuvenation to reward on attacking from stealth would kill the traitline. You could even make it give 4 or 5 initiative since you have to proc revealed to get initiative back. I'm also personally okay with seeing builds other than d/p or rifle SA.

In PvP and WvW even if you adjust the current values Shadow Rejuvenation rewards degenerate gameplay a bit too much in my opinion. Making it reward you for hitting with a stealth attack is a healthier approach they could take if they want to rework it. For example, "Gain X initiative when you strike an enemy with a stealth attack." or even "Gain X initiative when striking an enemy from stealth." You could potentially add secondary effects to the trait or make it give back higher amount of initiative if it feels too weak since the thief ends up being revealed when proccing it.

Where are you looking to play it? If it's just open world PvE then just go ahead and use what you enjoy. If you're talking about looking at endgame meta builds then they're always shifting. After the most recent patch there are power dps deadeye and power quickness deadeye builds that use dagger/dagger alongside other weapons. Do you prefer core thief/daredevil/deadeye/specter? That influences what kind of build you'll have access to and suggestions people can make.

Weapon swap CD is kind of a double edged sword. It's nice for classes with weapon cooldowns but it doesn't play well with weapon swap sigils. Thief utilizes them in pretty much every game mode and in some cases alongside Quick Pockets. I'd rather they bump up the initiative regained to 5/6 or maybe change it to something like "For X seconds after swapping weapons your next X initiative based attacks do not consume/cost X less initiative."

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Burst_of_Agility Yeah, it's a silly trait. It would be nice if thief had a reliable source of self quickness in our traits without DE. Burst of Agility doesn't really even need the stun break. If it was a low cooldown quickness on flanking attack it would be a competitive trait with Thrill of the Crime. Depending on the cooldown it could be best in slot. At the very least they should match the cooldown with the current Haste cooldown.

As much as it could help breath some life into thief I doubt we'll see any large change to the initiative system at this point. Most likely just continued tuning of the existing traits/initiative costs. They've created a balancing nightmare for themselves with all of the initiative related traits. They pretty much HAVE to assume that you will have Trickery (+3 base increase, +2 gained on successful steal) in PvP/WvW at this point. Throw in Shadow Rejuvenation (+2 gained entering stealth, +1 gained exiting) and the recently buffed Upper Hand (+1 gained on dodge w/ 4s cooldown, +1 gained on evade) and now you have even more initiative generation problems to try and balance around. Shadow Rejuvenation being the obvious biggest issue. Their solution to reduce the effectiveness of specific traits based on the other traits you're taking doesn't feel like the right way forward. If this is just a bandaid solution while they work an adjustments for a later patch, fine. If it's just a one-off change, fine. Either way they really should have added some notes about their mindset behind this change in the patch notes. Making 15 initiative baseline, removing initiative gain from some traits (mainly Shadow Rejuvenation), and rebalancing current initiative costs would probably be best but it would also require a lot of testing to make sure things remain viable.

It applies outside of WvW as well but using a few additional keybinds can help make specter support feel more fluid. None of them are set by default so you have to go into your settings and set them yourself. Set Personal Target & Take Personal Target: This lets you set a target that won't be overwritten by target calls in your subgroup. This is useful to put on high value damage dealers/frontliners that you want to focus with your sc/p barriers/prot/quickness. Nearest Ally / Next Ally / Previous Ally: I only personally use Nearest Ally because in a zerg the next/previous options get somewhat unwieldy. There are times where you just want to use your targeted skills regardless of the target and using these keybinds can help. Toggle Ally Targeting Mode: If you ONLY want to focus on healing and will never want to use your skills on an enemy. I don't personally use it but it's up to your personal taste. This will allow you to guarantee that you're clicking an ally and don't missclick an enemy in a close quarters fight. It's really up to personal preference if you feel like the keybinds help or not but they're worth playing around with a bit. I think everyone (especially thieves) should bind personal target since it allows you to plan escape routes/jukes (targets for s2/steal/infiltrator's signet/etc) while not interfering with party targets.

I agree but CMC doesn't want thieves to have unblockables. 🙃 RIP Swipe.

↑ Agree with this. PvE functionality won't really be affected by this change at all so it still has a use for skips/jumping puzzles/whatever. In WvW 99% of the time it just enables gremlin behavior. Making thieves work a little harder to troll around (we already have plenty of other tools available) doesn't seem like the end of the world.

+1. Even after they adjusted it from the beta it still needs some cast time reduction. It unfortunately feels like they designed this weapon with perma quickness in mind.

A/D still feels fine comparing before and after the patch. I haven't played A/P much because I don't like running Bounding Dodger with all the cripple/immo/chill spam in WvW. You need some sort of reliable stealth access if you're running axe. I've been having some success with A/D and S/D in small scale. Play it slow and try to set up 2 or 3 Cunning Salvo axes before using axe 3. Even though the A/D 3 doesn't have the damage buff that A/P 3 does it still pumps out damage. The burst can take people off guard. S/D mainly for more kiting potential and when melee is more appropriate. For zergs? I just don't run axe. You're going to kill yourself with reflects or by teleporting into a boonball. It's a projectile weapon at the end of the day so you have to treat it as such. A/P is somewhat similar but I just can't get into the playstyle (replace S/D with D/P) because of Bounding Dodger :/.

I'm assuming the line of sight change was the sloppy solution to prevent axe from being able to hit enemies inside of keeps/towers? It was kind of ridiculous and needed to be changed but their way of fixing it doesn't feel like it was tested very well. In other news, axe 3 on both dagger and pistol still can't hit any siege in WvW 🤣. Wonder how long it will take to get fixed.

Just tested in-game and can confirm that it isn't counted. This seems so odd that hopefully it's just an oversight. +1 to changing it to a shadowstep.

From your video it looks like the axe generated from Malicious Cunning Salvo consumes malice when recalled by using skill 3. I haven't been able to log in yet after the most recent patch to Malicious Cunning Salvo but I suppose whatever they changed made it behave that way? I can't recall if this was the same behavior we saw during the beta.

Now that we can preview them in game on our characters how are people feeling about the Obsidian armor skins? I was interested in crafting the medium set until I previewed the chest piece and saw the ridiculous collar. On top of looking silly it also has pretty bad clipping with most male human long hairs (I'm sure it has similar issues with other race/gender combos). I'm genuinely curious if anyone likes the look of these new sets? https://imgur.com/a/S0AFa4f

It may be the time of day or the map? Some armor gets oddly tinted at night or under certain environmental conditions. I noticed this happening with the metal parts of the Seven Reapers armor set. Maybe try looking at it in a different zone. You can also try adjusting the Environment Zone Intensity bar in your graphic settings to see if that changes anything.

I'm sure other specs can use it as well but you see it being abused by thieves a lot at the moment with https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Impact_Strike. It's kind of a meme but you can do something like... ・Stack stealth with d/p and https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Bounding_Dodger ・Hit https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Assassin's_Signet for extra damage ・Dodge again for the Bounding Dodger 15% damage buff and Steal to your target to proc https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Superior_Sigil_of_Celerity quickness ・Cast https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Impairing_Daggers into https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Impact_Strike to proc Relic of Ice It does a lot of damage on its own but the damage goes through the roof if there are multiple enemies behind your target due to the way Relic of Ice works. It spawns a set of icicles for up to 5 enemies but they spawn from your character. If you place yourself correctly you can hit a single target with all 15 projectiles. Usually it's overkill cause you can get the icicles to hit for like 3.5k each. If you're lucky with the relic projectiles you can often down a target and finish them with Impact Strike then Shadow Portal or stealth away and wait 30 seconds to do it all again.

It was sadly everything. 🥲

First balance patch of 2024 to be let down by. 🫡 Time to start sacrificing quaggans in the hopes of getting even a single QoL/forced movement/sword/acro/etc buff in the next patch. Will probably just be PvE axe nerfs.

Giving thieves an ally usable portal in WvW was pretty much a mistake from the day they changed traps to preparations. The easiest fix would just be making the WvW version of the skill the same as the PvP version. - Prepare Shadow Portal Duration: 60s -> 30s - Shadow Portal Number of Allied Targets: 5 -> 1 This would stop endless Shadow Portal chains (the current 60s duration lets you just recast it when it expires) and would also be a welcomed middle finger to exploiters.

Sounds like a fun idea! Cripple can definitely be useful in certain scenarios as draxynnic said, but the skill is showing its age. There are so many leaps/superspeed/teleports/etc in the game nowadays that a 3 second cripple doesn't really feel like it does as much as it used to. It can still be useful at times though. If they did do something like this they would probably have to adjust the initiative cost or add some conditional to it. It would be the cheapest non-conditional weapon skill access to stealth for thieves. Dancing Dagger (3) + Heartseeker (3) and also the cheapest access with bound at just 3 ini. Cloak and Dagger (5) is technically cheaper but has the requirement of you hitting a target. They could maybe add a conditional where it needs to hit a target in order to spawn the smoke field? Maybe it spawns the field at the first target hit instead of the thief? That would give the dagger a smoke field to combo off of when it ricochets to other targets. I play power D/D primarily so I could see myself loving a change like this but I also understand how easy stealth access and long range blind is super frustrating to play against.

I'm sad about the loss of reflect from the auto attack chain but I understand the reason for moving it to something on demand which opens up more usage scenarios. The new Dust Strike is growing on me the more I use it. Great for on demand reflects and AoE blind in WvW. I'd like the damage to be slightly higher since you're stuck in the cast animation longer than previously. Considering that you twirl the staff around it's also somewhat odd that it isn't a whirl finisher. I don't like Debilitating Arc and Helmet Breaker. I didn't like Debilitating Arc before the change so I might be biased here. The immobilize removal is nice but the initiative cost is too high for a half second evade that often leads you to getting hit after the actual dodge. I just don't find myself using these at all due to the initiative cost and low damage. If I need to close distance I will just use Vault. If I need the daze from Helmet Strike I'd rather just use Dust Strike to blind or reflect the attack. It feels like a niche skill that doesn't really have a niche not covered by other skills.

Thoughts on things after playing on the new patch... > Staff changes RIP reflect on Punishing Strikes. You will be missed. I also miss having the ranged damage/blind from old Dust Strike. The ranged blind/poke was actually pretty useful in competitive game modes. New Dust Strike reflect has potential but after using it in competitive for a bit it's unreliable. Maybe if they increased the reflect time or gave the caster a short lingering buff that reflected projectiles it would feel better? Helmet Breaker is fun but not really worth it. It requires using Debilitating Arc which wasn't changed at all so I don't see myself using it much. Using Debilitating Arc in a fight will often just put you in a scenario where you'll get punished if you use it (this might just be a l2p issue though since I don't use staff as much as other weapon sets). There's no sound effect for the Helmet Breaker leap which is kind of weird. There's only a sound effect on the actual hit. Tested on human male so not sure if it's any different on different race combinations. > Impact Strike This change doesn't really make me want to run Impact Strike over Dagger Storm or Basilisk Venom in competitive. After the patch preview I've been running this for a while to get a better idea of how it feels after the change. Overall, the biggest issue with this skill is that it's incredibly unreliable and feels super clunky to use in an actual fight. Slapping an evade on the skill doesn't address that in any way. For instance, it feels like quickness/slow make the animations bug out (your character's arms just kind of get stuck in the air) so it's easy to accidentally cancel a cast mid fight. If the enemy gets downed by an ally or by conditions when you're mid Finishing Blow (last flip skill that finishes an opponent) the hit will miss because of the invulnerability players get when they get downed in competitive modes. Using other skills that have a cast time after hitting Impact Strike put the skill on cooldown. This skill feels so good when it actually works though so I would love to see them try to address the issues it has.

I wouldn't say thief is OP but I think most are in agreement that GW2's implementation of stealth is kind of ridiculous, no? I would welcome a stealth rework if it comes alongside a thief overhaul.

kitten you beat me to it by like 5 seconds lol.