Jugglemonkey.8741

People don't even comprehend that it is a different set to P/P, let alone a decent one. I once got reported for "having no cooldowns" while playing P/D power deadeye lol

Permastealth is still possible WITHOUT SA and even without dagger mainhand, just like it always was. This method relies on pistol offhand though, which is fine because using black powder in stealth essentially pings your position for anyone hunting you. The patch was good in that it nerfed permastealth on DE, as the combo of leaping through sniper's cover no longer lets you permastealth easily without resorting to utilities and other skills that give a large tell. That was essential since sniper's cover can be hidden in a wall, removing the tell from the stealth, and that was not healthy whichever way you look at it. I made a video to show my point: The problem with both your video and mine is that anyone with half a brain will stand in the black powder to force you to reveal yourself. The difference is that with 6s stealth (3s after stacking) you're essentially stationary, and with the amount of ports classes have now they will be able to catch you and reveal you even if you do move. With 12s stealth per rotation (9 after stacking), I can be much further away and thus have much less chance of being attacked. This all shows what I have said for a while tho. The problem with stealth isn't shadow arts, it's smoke fields. Put all stealth on a fixed duration with no blasts etc and the mechanic would be a lot easier to balance, meaning the game would be a lot healthier for it.

The only other thing they could do is change what the actual skills do, but that also seems unlikely. Why change superspeed to swiftness on SA when acro exists? I'm actually hoping that acro gets a rework as well, but not holding my breath. This patch also only really helps you out if you were running D/P, S/D or rifle, or S/P if you were running bound (actually plan on testing this later, S/P bound is an old fav build of mine). I was running shortbow on 2nd set for my cele specter build but I feel kinda forced to run D/P now just for the stealth access in WvW. PvP is probably less of a problem as you won't have 2-3 longbow rangers/shortbow renegades chasing you at any time xD

Tbh I can see where the devs were going with the superspeed. Daredevil already has the mobility to do it's job effectively, and specter can tank much better than any other thief spec. Deadeye without stealth and without mobility is just plain dead, so if the longer stealth durations were being nerfed (which they have been), it was gonna need something else to keep it able to do it's job. The better question to me is, if SA has superspeed, what is the actual point of acrobatics? You could put things like "Steal breaks stun. If you break a stun this way, steal has 10s longer cooldown" and "Swindler's equilibrium: Steal recharge is reduced on evade (25%, 10scd). Gain 120 power, 240 if wielding a sword" and people still wouldn't play it as it stands.

Yes, the free get out of jail card, because no other class in the game has 1200 range ports right now.

Depends on cooldown. Although it would be hilarious to make rangers kill themselves by dodging rapid fire.

*looks at willbender, DH and core guard bursting the kitten out of everything while solo roaming* Guardians are devoted fighters who protect their allies and smite their enemies by drawing from the power of their virtues. True guardians are brilliant tacticians and selfless defenders who know how to empower their allies to achieve victory. https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Guardian *looks at warrior being funnelled into playing support* Warriors are masters of weaponry who rely on speed, strength, toughness, and heavy armor to survive in battle. Adrenaline fuels their offensive power—the longer warriors stay in a fight, the more dangerous they become. https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Warrior Is it just me, or did the descriptions for these two classes get mixed up on a dev's desk or something?

Just an encouragement: reworking shadow arts on thief to give benefits when entering and leaving stealth is something that has been discussed on the forums for years. It will happen later today. The better question is, do you want to stick around long enough to find out if your suggestions ever see the light of day. Frankly I wouldn't blame you if you didn't after the last few years of warrior balance (speaking as a thief main, no less).

Tbh deadeye is the one spec that will be fine with these changes regardless. It has plenty of stealth sources, the thing I'm more concerned about is specter being reliant on blasting smoke fields in shroud for stealth. For an update that was supposed to be aimed at making SA better with specter they were very successful at making that combination much more awkward to run.

This. Never understood why we don't have that in a line somewhere, although personally I'd have given trickery the 25 percent move speed (instead of preparedness, making the extra 3 ini baseline) and acro the superspeed. Acro should be about sheer mobility, trickery should be utility/QoL and SA should be stealthy & tanky but slow, no movement buffs at all. I'd also take the swiftness off of daredevil's dash too so acro has that niche and there's less redundancy between the two lines, but that might be a bit much before the dust settles on this upcoming patch.

I used to play S/D rifle deadeye with deadly arts, trickery and DE. Wanderer armor, dura runes and mara rest. It was a boon build, focussed on maintaining protection from M7 and denying boons with sword. SA will now play similarly to that, more emphasis on boons for survival and more reliance on stolen skills/shadow meld for stealth. Honestly its a good thing, and it opens DE up for buffs (silent scope stealth back to 2-3s for example) without making the spec stupid because of chaining mark, mercy and heal for long stealth durations.

I had a S/D & rifle deadly arts trick DE build for a while, guess I'll be going back to that again.

I'm in two minds about this. On the one hand, the loss of stealth on steal and syphon is a hard nerf to my roaming build, which revolved around immobilising people in wells. On the the other hand, for every other thief spec these are really very positive changes that should have been introduced years ago. Will have to see how it pans out.

Nvm

The other problem is that outside of a support spec, there isn't much else they could have done with the class. I didn't really want support thief either, but I really didn't want just another DPS spec.

I have had a lot more success running S/D D/P with SA, trickery and critical strikes instead of acro. SA really does just outclass acro in every way now, even on weapon sets that don't historically make much sense.

I was just reading the most recent "Gandara no link why" post, that and your comment got me thinking. If ANet simply count the number of unique accounts logging to WvW over a two month period to determine population sizes for links etc, and there is now a buff in WvW that applies in PvE (making it essential for min max builds there too) did ANet just break/manipulate their own metric? How are you gonna know who's there to play WvW for a couple hours a week, and who's just there to get the buff for raids?

The funny thing is, even if you're right, people will still find something about SA to complain about.

Svarty has disliked thief for a long kitten time, I don't expect to persuade him or anyone else who dislikes thief at this point in the game's life. Hence why I didn't reply seriously and just made a thread necro joke. Evidently that was stealthed too ^^

Sorry, this is the thief forum. The necro forum is that way -------> https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/forum/17-necromancer/

I did say arguably, implying doubt. But thanks for the input ^^

Exotic gear is fine for entry level zerg builds and can be gotten from basically anywhere. Ascended is top level gear stat wise so it is great for min/maxing your build once you know what you're doing, although this arguably only makes a real difference to roaming builds. It is also easy to get in PvE from fractals or just gold farming, which is nice. I got my legendary gear by playing WvW using tickets, it's nice for people like me who love to experiment with builds but it really isn't essential to play WvW.

It's also just a needless power creep imo, not everything in the game needs to apply a boon or spam condis. The skill is already needlessly bloated because of the perma (!) slow it can apply to enemies on top of the barrier and healing to allies, if the quickness on allies was kept to make a thematic balance with the slow on enemies I'd actually be fine with both the slow AND the quickness being removed to make the skill 3 targets again.

Make the second part of Sc/p 3 on specter hit 3 targets again and remove the quickness proc entirely. Never understood why they didnt do that the first time around tbh.

If people don't see a problem with zergs stealth pushing single players or running over people as they try to duel then I don't see why I should care about them complaining about pin sniping, or when I sit in their group on permastealth minstrel deadeye so when they blast stealth they reveal all their supports. There's either unwritten rules that you respect or everything is fair game, your choice.