Jugglemonkey.8741

Something to bear in mind is that the willbender has teleports that almost exclusively port to a target. Thieves and rangers are problematic because their mobility can be used to chase or kite, Willbender seems to be mostly limited to chase options so unless they're trying to port onto a distant target you ought to be fatser over ground than they are still. Magebane tether ought to be your best friend based on that.

Why should OCX not be able to play because of where they live? It's a 24/7 game mode, and skirmish points largely fixed the large runaway scores that used to be problematic. If you're beating them from 8am til 10pm you ought to win regardless of what they do at night, so I don't really see the problem now.

Not the first time that this kind of thing has happened either. Same thing happened on the old thief forums, in a thread started by the dev to ask what thief players wanted to see in the elite spec. Most of the ideas ended up being part of revenant, meanwhile the three dodges from acro gets nerfed so they can resell it to us as daredevil. On topic: Warrior needs love. I wouldn't mind warrior being the only class that has high damage for CC's, it's kinda an integral part of how it was played. Would be a start at least.

Lol, pretty much. At this point it might be better to just accept that the elite specs are not just going to be new ways to play the class, but just new classes without having to level. Might temper the disappointment when things that are clearly thief toys keep getting handed put to other classes.

Which would be fine, but then they keep giving typically rogue mechanics to other classes. I could understand not wanting to work on it because they don't like the rogue class, but working on rogue mechanics for other classes just seems backwards if that's their motivation.

The devs definitely do read the forums for ideas, but you are right about keeping expectations low because you might not like the direction they decide to go either. I still remember that "what do you want to see in the new Elite Spec" thread the devs started on the old thief forums before HoT and how a bunch of the ideas from that ended up being part of revenant.

I can see why some might enjoy this kind of thing, but I'm more of an Errol Flynn rogue myself.

The fact that you consider using heartseeker or cluster bomb in a smoke field an abuse of a mechanic actually says everything one needs to know about your position regarding thief. The entire point of initiative is that it's possible to use skills several times in a row, if you don't like that then go play another class. As to the OP's suggestion, I don't think that changing preparedness will make much difference, because the combination of bountiful theft and slight of hand is enough to justify always picking the line for any power build, but especially so for daredevil. As things stand, you could move preparedness into acrobatics (which already has a grandmaster trait that rewards initiative on dodge) and people would still play trickery over acrobatics.

I fundamentally disagree with your opinion. A thief spamming the same skill over and over is usually a dead thief, as all you have to do is avoid the spam then attack when you know they have nothing left. The only skills that don't quite work out that way are unload (P/P 3) because it's literally the only DPS skill on the set, and shadow shot because that skill frankly does too much; remove the blind and that skill is a non issue too. Condi thieves may have more issues with spamminess but honestly if you're letting the thief sit there and spam 3 at you then you kinda deserve what's coming to you.

If this idea was ever realised, I would abuse the hell out of it with permastealth gank builds. Not a good idea OP. Edit: On a side note, if the OP is flamed for this idea then it's sweet potato fries.

Dagger storm used to have no evade, just a projectile reflect and a pulsing stability. So depending on how long since you last played, you might be remembering the old version. The new version is an evade with no stability which makes it vulnerable to interrupt by floor based CC skills as DeceiverX said. There's now quite a few skills that can do that, the more common ones you'll run into are guardian's line/ring of warding & dragon's maw, ele's shocking aura & air staff lighting field thingy, warrior's magebane tether and necro's fear ring. Less common is stuff like thief's seal area, does the same thing but you're way less likely to see that.

I usually fill all infusion slots if I can. Why not, I mean, it's free stats. Admittedly I only play thief seriously, so it's a bit easier for me to fill all infusion slots than it might be for others.

I knew you could do it with daredevil staff in some locations, and presumably other weapon skills like jump shot & warrior sword 2, but I wasn't aware you could do it with warclaw too. It's really dumb that that's not been fixed yet.

I had a friend who was mass reported by a commander & squad essentially because the commander disliked him, he got temporarily banned too. Automating decisions like this is a big no-no. Tbh I largely ignored the part about 50 thieves, as for a properly structured blob; 1) fighting 50 thieves ought to be a piece of cake 2) 50 thieves hiding in & flipping objectives objectives makes for a more efficient karma train ....so it's kind of a win win if you think about it. I wouldn't have a problem with evaded/missed attacks revealing the player though, provided it was done game wide and not just for thief. On Topic; Most of the stuff I would have said has already been said. More rewards, but not in a way that promotes AFK. Less automation of upgrades and scouting, to give players that don't want to be in the main zerg a useful job. You shouldn't be able to just karma train around and have your stuff upgrade and scout for you.

Personally I kinda like the extra crit chance, it's like having double fury on rev just more situational. That said there are several weak traits in critical strikes, and a balance pass wouldn't be a bad thing.

Double post, please ignore.

You ever hear the proverb, "When your only tool is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a nail"? Most people here are telling rangers to stop smacking the nuts and bolts with a hammer and go find a wrench, but some players in this thread are insisting on smacking away at it and telling people that the nuts and bolts should be more similar to nails to make the job easier. It's not the tool that people are making fun of here, it's the workman.

Actually, you're slightly wrong about that. The concept that you stated at the beginning, and the one that most people in this thread are aware of, is this; "Projectile weapons are not at all used in this format, not really liked in this other format, because of the abundance of projectile hate, including blocks, projectile destruction and reflects mainly." I refer you to these two statements you made; You said yourself that skills that lose reflect would likely be compensated by another form of projectile hate, and that the relative amounts of unblockable effects on ranger and thief would not need to be changed. Your own words. Most people here will understand that if you replace one form of projectile hate with another without decreasing the access to projectile hate in general or increasing access to unblockable ranged effects to counter said projectile hate, the net result is zero sum. The only possible effect your change will have, by your own admission, is so the ranged projectile attack user doesn't have to watch for their shots being reflected. You said it buddy. Okay, now lets look at the rest of your reply; No, this thread is not a comparison between the warrior and ranger signets, and what other classes have is actually totally irrelevant to the discussion considering you framed your argument around rangers specifically. This thread is about removing reflect. Stick to the topic, OP. The fact thief has no place in group WvW meta squads has nothing to do with projectile hate. If thief has no unblockable, and if thieves do not complain about projectile attacks being blocked in group metas, then why are you even bringing up thief's access to unblockable effects in the first place? You essentially come across as wanting to reward lazy play by not having to worry about how you react to a counter. People are telling you to use the available counterplay (unblockable attacks), and in response you're trying to make it sound like it's not just a ranger problem by referencing another profession's access to the very counterplay you're being told to use by others. The fact that you even reference another class's access to unblockable (half of which actually have worse access at range than yourself) is undermining your original argument and reinforcing the argument of other people who are telling you to simply use the counterplay that has been provided. I'm sorry, but people simply don't agree with your take on this.

Given the majority of thief unblockable effects are tied to melee attacks, I'm not sure how discussing that is in any way relevant to a conversation on whether we ought to remove reflects. Besides, discussing thief unblockable would basically be admitting that Lan was correct when he told you to use your own unblockable attacks, right?

Yeah, I remember it. There was also that other one that stunned on the next hit after a stolen skill or mark was used. I forget which. They were fun traits.

A vampiric life/boonsteal spec could be fun for thief then, thinking of it in that way.

Do you understand what the word "generally" means? The fact that you missed my point entirely only reinforces what I was saying.

Yeah, I remember your forum discussions on it actually. And yes, first in last out or last on first off, however you want to say it. I know Bountiful Theft is an exception to the general rule, but the existence of one exception doesn't preclude the possibility that more exceptions exist, hence the question. Edit: I remember in vanilla after the stability change to stacks, my guild would have me on engi running slick shoes and elixer S to run through the enemy group and strip an entire guild's worth of stability before our melee push. Thinking outside the box with exceptions to the rules can be pretty fun with these sort of things haha.

Definitely. I'm obviously approaching the problem from a thief point of view because that's what I main, so I'd be looking more at what actions can I take in a given scenario to guarantee a down on a key target. The analysis isn't a bad thing, it's fun to look at these sort of things, it's just important to remember that a mathematical model is only as good as the underlying assumptions it makes, so you always need to keep the limitations of the model in mind when applying it to a real life situation.

You know, the way you're reacting to what people say in this thread is the exact reason that people laugh at rangers. He's already said that it's not a personal attack, so maybe cool down a little and drop the attitude if you want to be taken seriously. On topic, reflect isn't a problem. I say this as a thief main who often plays rifle & P/D in the same deadeye build. Everything in the game has a counter, if I choose not to run S/D or D/P offhand to my rifle so I can pressure while the enemy is blocking/reflecting then I have to deal with my build being made useless in some scenarios. That's just part of the game. Regarding Ranger not having a place in WvW zergs, it doesn't necessarily need one. Ranger, thief and engineer are the best of the best small scale/roaming professions in the game, and that is probably intentional when you consider heavy armour professions are generally frontliners and light armor professions are generally backliners. Not every class has to be useful in every scenario just like not every weapon is useful everywhere, but with the build template system there is literally no reason nor excuse not to have a roaming template and a zerg build template if you want to be useful in large scale fights. I don't expect my celestial DE to be useful in a zerg, I swap to marauder staff daredevil and join a melee party, or I swap to full minstrel DE and sit inside the enemy zerg to screw up their stealth rotation for my commander's push. Regarding the OP's change, it will literally change nothing. You will still fail to do damage to a target unless you do what Lan suggests and bring a source of unblockable whether it's reflect or projectile destruction, it won't matter. The only difference it will make is that people spamming ranged won't have to watch the target as closely to watch for reflects, which imo is a bad thing because it rewards lazy play. Addressing this, ever since vanilla one of the distinguishing qualities of a good thief was whether they knew how and when to use shortbow. Mediocre thieves camp their DPS set and only uses shortbow 5 to run, a good thief knows how to use shortbow effectively mid fight depending on situation. So no, what you're saying about ranger being the only one forced to swap isn't correct at all, and the fact that you consider not needing to swap a good thing says more about your playstyle than you'd think.