Jugglemonkey.8741

This is what I was thinking too, it would add a reason to use venoms outside of venomshare in PvE without actually changing much. I mean, if you're burning two utilities to get a modified effect on a class like thief then whatever they slap on ought to be fine really.

If anything, I've noticed the opposite: thief forums have been dead since the cele nerf announcement. As for cele stats themselves: it doesn't need boon & condi duration (never did need it in the first place), and cele has a niche for anyone that wants a hybrid build with some sustain. Like seriously, try making a build focussed on power, condi damage, healing power and vitality on a low health pool class without using cele stats, it's an outright pain to get the right balance of stats without taking gear that wastes stats on things you don't need because the right stat combos simply don't exist. That in and of itself justifies the existence of cele gear, unless they want to start introducing more stat combos from PvP amulets to the rest of the game.

Okay, how about if you use scorpion wire with basi venom it means you're pulled to them instead lol. It's not like we're lacking gap closers, but visually I love the idea of sling-shotting myself at an enemy that refuses to be moved haha

Well yeah, I was assuming 100% crit chance in both cases. You're correct that if you can't get that then it's not so clear cut. I remember your posts from HoT, you're the one that started me messing with full valk on deadeye in the first place and all the hilariously overpowered stuff that went with it at the time. Good times, but I'm not surprised it got nerfed haha 🤣

Especially since hidden killer is getting buffed next patch. Will be hard to justify zerk regardless of game mode then.

That's pretty interesting. If the effective power gap is that low between the two sets then dragon's gear is a no brainer for the extra vitality. Might convert some of my other zerk builds to dragons if that holds true for them too.

I have a couple of builds for when I'm expressly playing inside a group (I still find sword dagger daredevil better for fighting around a group and picking off randos, I'm assuming you mean running with the tag itself). First build is my healing minstrel deadeye build, the links in my sig. The reason I play deadeye over daredevil is because of the stability issue you mentioned: if you can't rely on your team for boons and heals, you're straight up better off bringing deadeye than specter. Deadeye gives me extra target drops through stealth cantrips, a reliable gtfo set in rifle, and because deadeye isn't locked into taking trickery I can take acrobatics for the extra self sustain. That evade from instant reflexes on shadow meld has saved my butt more than once. I think I'm using relic of rivers at the moment but I change it a lot, using relic of the flock with SA 112 and skelk venom heal is a powerful group heal and barrier if you can afford not to run condi cleanse and withdraw. Edit: forgot to mention, you can use Sc/P 3 on allies without breaking stealth. That's the other reason I favour deadeye: if I'm getting focussed by a ranger or another thief I can stealth up and carry on healing. This is also the reason for taking shadow rejuvenation over the protection on stealth, it fuels more barrier spam as you avoid other stuff. Also it's great for setting up the sneak attack which can heal an ally for 8k easy, but revealing yourself at the wrong time can get you killed. The other build I use in groups is a double staff build, I got told it was the current GvG flavour of the month by the last guild I was running with. Marauder gear with scholar runes, quick pockets, bound, critical strikes, energy and hydromancy on both staves, you can probably work out the rest. I pretty much only run this when I'm either sure I can jump in, spike and gtfo or if I know I have a pocket healer.

ANet actually tried to bring in anti cheat software at one point, but they stealth patched it in and did it in basically the most invasive way possible which caused a massive backlash from the community. Tbh it would be nice for this exploit to be fixed. It won't help the people who whisper me saying I've been reported because they don't understand how I did something, or those that think I've exploited into a tower when I've just walked through an open wall and used a tree tonic, but it would be nice to not be automatically accused of cheating just because of the class I've played since launch. I just hope they don't break sword thief in the process, since that's my favourite weapon set.

See, the sentiment behind the bolded part of your post is the part I have issue with. You should have builds that are good at fighting thief and builds that aren't, just like every thief build has a counter (yes, they do). A good engineer with lock on will absolutely trash 95% of thieves, and a thief not running D/P is usually easy prey for a thief that is. If you are built to contribute to a zerg, you SHOULD have to go out of your way to change your build to counter a roamer. Most people in WvW accept that you need to bring a zerg build to a zerg, but many will then refuse to bring a small scale build to those situations where they're capping a camp themselves or running back to their zerg. Instead they refuse to use the options available to them and complain that they get ganked on their group build. What a lot of people on here seem to want, then, is for ALL classes on zerg builds to have a way of countering thief, ignoring the fact that if you want a balanced game then thief must be able to counter other professions as much as he is countered himself. Yes, you can discuss where the options offered by the game to counter stealth aren't good enough, that's a good discussion to have, but expecting all classes to be able to play zerg builds and also have counters for roaming classes just isn't cricket. I'm not saying that the guy I quoted thinks like this necessarily, but the sentiment I'm describing is annoyingly common. Most classes have a way of being obnoxiously hard to kill to the point that lone roamers will give up and do something else: the build I use to avoid ganks is in my sig. New characters come with two build and equipment slots, so set up a build like that on one template and switch to your zerg build when you get to the zerg. Simples. As for actually changing stealth, I've said may times: remove it for all I care. Rogue fantasy includes stuff like Errol Flynn playing Robin Hood (classic old movie), you can be a rogue entirely without stealth. Just be prepared to buff thief to have more damage and survivability to compensate for the mechanic they're currently designed around being removed.

I'd be happy with both options. That said I don't see the blast finisher on sceptre 2 happening, I have a pretty nasty condi burst build for WvW roaming using Sc/P and shortbow and basically the only thing that holds it back from being truly obnoxious is the lack of easy stealth access. While I'd be happy if shadow sap was a blast, I don't imagine anyone else would be lol. A simpler solution might be to give spectre a trait that procs a blast finisher on weapon swap, much like the traits that apply conditions on swap that rev and necro have. That way you would have nice synergy with relic of karakosa (heals on blasting a field) and you don't change the weapon or other specs themselves, meaning less potentially broken interactions when running scepter on other elite specs in WvW.

Yeah, stuff like that gets me killed more often than I'd like to admit lol

The question is whether this is intended or not really. Shroud needed a nerf as it was too strong on release (I used to get 27k ish shroud on an 18k health pool in WvW, which on full trailblazer was kinda silly) but as per usual the balance team went overboard on the nerf then never revisited the shroud gain, shroud amount or the damage reduction like they said they would. This is assuming that the balance team did actually forget to revisit specter, and while there's a lot of other examples of them doing something then never getting round to fixing it (tried marking the octovine on deadeye lately? yeah), there is the possibility that ANet didn't forget specter and they actually WANT specter to be limited in this way for balance reasons (ie, if it can only do one thing, it's less work for them to balance it which means they can spend more time on other things). Given that the balance team seems to be full of people that don't really know how thief works or how to balance it (for instance, changing revealed to 4s in WvW without a compensation in defensive ability isn't going to do anything except encourage more ganking followed by chicken s!%t running away than before), I wouldn't hold out much hope.

The initiative penalty not only locks you into specific weapons but also into specific traits. I personally don't see the spec seeing much play as it currently is unless they revert the -3 ini penalty to allow different kinds of builds.

In the first 10 mins he accused the thief that replied to him of hacking because the game sometimes lags in WvW and shows the base dodge roll instead of the dash animation. His entire argument is based the logic of "I can't do that so you must be hacking", and as a wise character from another game once said: "One sure mark of a fool is to dismiss anything that falls outside his experience as impossible." - Farengar Secret-Fire, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Guaranteed projectile finishers on the auto only might be a nice way to bring up the damage in phases where you have to kite without altering much. But yeah, they seem to have learned the lesson of why making stealth too easy to access through combo finishers is bad.