Jugglemonkey.8741

I like that. Fits thematically too, that you just learned to steal more stuff from people haha Could be a bit silly with Improvisation and One in the Chamber for DE tho, so much stealth access

One of two things will happen if thief gets a support spec; 1) It will be strong enough to be meta, which would make it a better support than firebrand. 2) It won't be strong enough to be meta, but the extra support plus thief's offensive kit will spawn the mother of all 1v1 specs. Both of those things will lead to the spec being nerfed into the floor simply for existing. I'd rather go with a different way to DPS and not see the class be ripped apart to accommodate something it was never designed for. Don't get me wrong, I agree with this. I just don't see how it would work in a meta where firebrand, scrapper and rev as supports are so dominant.

So basically, the way to counter D/P thief is to bunnyhop like an idiot. At this point, this doesn't even surprise me xD Edit: but yeah, on topic, pretty sure it's not meant to do that.

You had me at hippo.

Didn't we kill them already?

Ignoring the argument from anecdote as it proves basically nothing, It's pretty funny that the only part of my post that you choose to address is the fact I main thief. Yes, I am biased because I main thief, and yes, I play all the different builds available to me on the class, but I've also said to you twice that I'm fine with thief's stealth access being reduced; The fact you keep ignoring this and keep accusing me of wilful blindness when it comes to stealth is only showing your own bias, I'm afraid.

If there's enough of you I'd love to see what 20 deadeyes using mark and stolen skills with mug, improv, slight of hand and basi venom would do to a commander. Pretty sure it would destroy something from 1500 range. That's single target tho, stealth staff jumpers is probably better for groups.

He said it hurts, nerfs tend to hurt so he's not wrong. He didn't exactly say it destroyed the spec and that he was asking for a refund on his account like you did, now did he? By the way, I took the viper build into the training area and messed around with it for a while, the initiative issue is actually really easy to fix. If you swap Malicious Intent for One in the Chamber and your heal for Malicious Restoration, then assuming quickness and alacrity you have more than enough stealth access through Shadow Meld and stolen items to pretty much not use Cloak and Dagger altogether, which means you can use all your ini for Shadow Strike and Repeater. It takes more brains to play than before because you now have to track your cooldowns and not use cantrips or mark while you have a stolen skill ready, but it's still more than doable and still pulls in good damage numbers.

I'm not missing the point, you're trying to move the goalposts though. You complained about a thief that "port, hit, stealth, steal, port, hit, stealth. steal, prancing like a ballerina"; that thief is in combat and is not in permanent stealth because he is attacking you. A thief that sits in permanent stealth cannot hurt you because they cannot attack, so no, your problem is clearly not just with permastealth but is actually with stealth in general. If you don't have the time to build to counter something, you can't be complaining if it kills you. Not sure what else to say to you about that really. And yes, counters to stealth are accessible to every class just like condi cleanse is, it's not the thief's fault if you choose not to use it. They have decided what they want their thief to do, that's not the problem. The problem is that you don't like how their thief works. You can assume all you like, it doesn't make your argument any better. As it happens, I've played thief for 8 years, everything from stealthless to full stealth on power, condi and hybrid. As i said before tho; Seems I was right about that.

You do realise that the changes were PvE only, right? No offense, but if that's your reaction to those points, you clearly don't know what you're talking about. Have fun in whatever game you end up playing, before some minor change makes you explode and leave all over again.

Revealed is accessible to necro, guardian, revenant, warrior, ranger and engineer, the last three of which have enough revealed to completely shut down a stealth thief. Of the classes remaining, ele can sustain most thieves' damage long enough to reach safety, and arguably mesmer and thief shouldn't have access to revealed anyways but they do have revealed access through target painters. Marked is situational, sure, but if you choose not to take advantage of it when there's a thief jumping you and you're in range of a sentry/tower then that's hardly the thief's fault is it? Target and painter traps have a cost, yes, but you'd not be complaining about the cost if there was a similar thing that disabled firebrand's tomes in WvW, now would you? Odds are you'd be saying that consumables that disable profession mechanics shouldn't be a thing, just like the thief playerbase has been saying for years, but let's leave that aside for now. Yes, a target painter isn't guaranteed to hit a thief, but neither is a reveal or a CC. That's why you wait for the thief to place a smoke field then you throw the target painter on the smoke field, it has a surprisingly high range and it can't be dodged. If you insist on refusing to acknowledge something is a counter to something else because it might fail, then literally everything in the game is uncounterable by your definition..

Yes, thief decides when to start/finish a fight because it has superior mobility and stealth, but if thief didn't exist it would be mesmers or engineers you'd be saying that about. As for the second part of the post, I'd have no problem with thief damage being upped and stealth access being reduced, but something tells me you and many others in this post would still be complaining even if that happened. Edit; As for your not wanting to change a million classes to counter thief, if I took that approach to conditions by refusing to change my build to have cleanses, what would be at fault? My approach, or conditions? Food for thought.

I don't really disagree with anything you or others below you have written, tbh I just found it entertaining to imagine what the rune might look like. Like Aki said this will never happen for many of the reasons you've listed, but it does serve to show that there is an elephant in the room called Preparedness in the build diversity discussion, and the devs seem really determined to not see it.

Very possibly haha

Well, look at how it would work on a standard build, let's take SA D/P daredevil. Trickery gives 2 ini on steal, thats 1 ini every 9ish seconds with slight of hand. You get 1 ini every 10s from infiltrator's signet, so add that to shadow rejuvenation giving 3 every 9 seconds, and you got 5 ini regen every 9-10 seconds. Now look at the rune. You can land two sneak attacks in 10 seconds pretty easily, so that's 4 ini regen in 10s, so with the bonuses as they are that's already 6 ini regen per 10s. If you took the rune with trickery and shadow arts, you'd get 11 ini regen per 10s, plus the baseline regen so 21 ini. Any more would be broken IMO, if anything it could probably do with a bit less, probably taking the sneak attack bonus to 1 ini would be better.

Probably all stats, like divinity and traveler runes. That way it's not bound to a particular build. So ideally, something like: 8 to all stats +1 ini regen per 10s 12 to all stats +1 ini regen per 10s 16 to all stats 25% movement speed; Gain 1 initiative when striking with a sneak attack All utility, so you'd have the trade off of worse damage. But the extra ini opens up builds that take two damage lines etc. Edit: Changed the 6th bonus from 2 to 1 ini regen on sneak attack

Also this. I also prefer S/D rifle on deadeye for duelling and general roaming, but the S/P build is better for PvE in my opinion because of the blinds and better CC for breakbars. In general you can't go too far wrong with a CS/trick/DE build, everything else is personal preference.

True, but if the idea is a trade off in utility then surely the cooldowns ought to be the same across specs? Mark gets longer range but loses the instant cast and teleport, swipe gets unblockable but loses range. I could understand it if a longer cooldown was the trade off for greater utility in the elite specs, but as it is it seems kinda backwards.

Can't go too far wrong with this, I've been using it to solo dragon response missions and the bonus is that it will work for WvW quite happily without changing gear. I use vampirism runes over pack runes as the life gain on kill along with invigorating precision keeps you healed up very nicely, and I use mercy and roll for initiative over signets to manage ini and give more pistol whip spam, but the general idea is the same.

The guy you're replying to actually reported me for exploiting the game once because he disliked being immobilised in old choking gas (when it dazed on pulse). I wouldn't bother trying to get a reasonable discussion out of him.

One of the sillier salty whispers I got was in German. I replied saying sorry I don't speak French, and he just apologised.

Some of the most entertaining interactions I've had have been from someone salt whispering me in WvW using the block function. If you don't want to do that then you can always set yourself offline for the time you're in WvW, you can't see guild chat when offline which can be a pain but if you're in discord/teamspeak you won't be missing much anyways. Edit: Depending on their level of vitriol, their experience and my mood, sometimes I reply nicely (usually if it was a low rank player I will be nice), sometimes I just laugh at them (usually when I dare to offend someone simply by existing), sometimes I ignore them entirely (when people try too hard to get a reaction) and sometimes I just hide whispers altogether. It's free entertainment as far as I'm concerned I but don't feel like I'm obliged to reply or even read any of it.

Shortbow gets a lot out of the poison, bleed and torment related traits in Trickery and Deadly arts now. It's a bit like steal in that can customise it to do lots of different things, which is kinda cool I think. Besides what the other guy said in reducing the cost of infiltrator's arrow, I don't know what you'd even add to it with a weapon specific trait either.

This is also true. If duellists decide to gank, they are no longer duelling and are fair game, so interrupt them as much as you want.

Pretty sure it's interrupt, but choking gas is still pretty strong for that given it's unblockable. It's not nearly as strong as the old pulsing version was, but that would be all kinds of OP now that torment does double damage to stationary targets.