Jugglemonkey.8741

Or put a icd on some effects that are two strong like a 5 sec icd on gas daze and keep the cost reasonable. I was about to comment this. I'd much sooner see a 5s icd on the daze and have the skill reverted to 4 ini, would be powerful but not spammable then. Either that or rework so poison stacks were necessary, that implementation felt a lot more balanced imo. That said, this is the dev's fault for giving us a spammable AoE CC, of course it was going to get nerfed into the floor sooner or later.

They could be teens. Not holding people to commonly accepted social standards because "they're just teens" sounds like a great plan for the future.Edit: Obvious sarcasm, not a jab ^^

Out of interest, how many people complaining about ANet here are also getting mitigating circumstances at work, school, university etc? If you're getting extra slack on your deadlines, or your marks bumped up to make up for not being in school etc because covid19 is impacting your work, but then not extending that same courtesy to ANet devs, isn't that more than a little unkind? Just a thought.

Why does thief mobility need toning down? In PvP we can't duel because we lack sustain and don't have enough damage to do more than +1, that means our role is decap, that's it. In WvW that mobility advantage is meaningless when everyone has mounts; if you die to thief before he resets it wasn't his mobility that killed you, and if the thief goes out of combat to reset just mount up and leave him to himself. In PvE, who even cares about mobility? I mean, the old nerf excuse was that thief has top mobility so it must not be able to 1v1 and must have no sustain, so if you want mobility nerfed then what exactly is your reasoning? What are you prepared to buff on thief in return? Seriously, explain your reasoning, I'd love to hear it.

Have you tried since the SA rework? Between tormenting runes, the life steal on sneak attacks from SA, the spider venom stacks from stealth from SA and the permanent regen from M7, you've actually got a lot more sustain than you might think. Also, you're assuming that the deadeye stays in P/D all the time, rifle makes for quite a good defensive weapon with the range, projectile hate and the stealth on dodge. Lastly, it seems unfair to fault the spec for being unable to kill someone that has specifically built to sustain it, if that wasn't the case the build would be OP. Your sustain still falls woefully short of any other roamer. You cant survive being focused for very long, even now. Your sustained damage also suffers since you lack the way to get in to unlock unload. Rifle is pretty bad on condi builds. The range is not that great (1200 unless you kneel, but then youre immobile and the enemy can just run after you) and the projectile screen is fairly easy to circumvent. My point is that you replace DE with Trickery. DEs mark is a marked (heh) downgrade for P/D, as it removes the teleport you use to be able to to start unload spamming. On DE you will greatly struggle ever even getting to the unload spam unless you run something like Infiltrators Signet.Okay, well, you do you. It's a good build, and one of the stronger roaming builds available to thief atm imo. And yeah, the sustain is nothing compared to boonbeast or weaver, but if we had that level of sustain on top of our active defenses we would be stupid OP, there's a reason nobody bothers fighting a weaver in a 1v1 these days.

Have you tried since the SA rework? Between tormenting runes, the life steal on sneak attacks from SA, the spider venom stacks from stealth from SA and the permanent regen from M7, you've actually got a lot more sustain than you might think. Also, you're assuming that the deadeye stays in P/D all the time, rifle makes for quite a good defensive weapon with the range, projectile hate and the stealth on dodge. Lastly, it seems unfair to fault the spec for being unable to kill someone that has specifically built to sustain it, if that wasn't the case the build would be OP. Edit: Trickery is a much better choice if you take daredevil for sure because you can time your burst for when the opponent has no cleanses, but is wasted on deadeye as you're pretty much required to use your mark at the start of a fight. Deadeye is more of a sustained playstyle, which is actually why P/D is strong now repeater can spam 20 stacks of bleed on something with very fast reapplication. The speed of application makes it a great cover condi and a good way to force cleanses, and while the bleeds don't last long, the poisons and torments do.

Tbh, if any class has to have stupid sustain, I'm kinda ok with it being necro given it lacks mobility, dodges, stealth, blocks etc etc. I have more of a problem with classes that HAVE those mechanics and yet still have excellent sustain through passive heals and boons tbh, and that's a balance issue on it's own. Think about it, if everyone has the same damage output, why would you choose the classes with little sustain and active defense over the ones that have plenty of it? Damage and sustain ought to have an inversely proportional relationship, and for some builds that's just not the case.

If people continue saying thief ought to do no damage because stealth and mobility, we might as well ask for this tbh. Welcome to the sentinel shortbow thief decap meta xD

There were thief nerf threads in season 1 of PvP, the same time people would AFK until you rerolled to anything other than thief or warrior. It's a thief, so some people will call for it to be nerfed on principle, no matter what state thief is actually in. Most thief mains are used to it by now, but thanks for the effort nonetheless ^^

Making new builds and inappropriately testing them on anyone stupid enough to chase me, usually. I still miss playing a stealthless trapper thief like a meditrapper guard, that was a fun build and got me a lot of reports from people who didn't know what I just did. Messing about with friends is the core of the game mode though. If anything, I'm burning out at the moment because I've been playing long enough that the majority of the friends I've made along the way no longer play. I miss the duels and random silliness. Stuff like bad balance, warclaw giving everyone the speed of a daredevil, getting marked from sentries, towers, keeps, random players (seriously, what doesn't mark you these days?) all make things more difficult than it was to accomplish anything solo, but it's usually fun all the same. That said, some of the new mechanics do degrade the gameplay in my opinion, stuff like auto upgrading objectives. Used to be that upgrading and holding an objective could be a guild's main task for days, with players from the guild scouting the tower and defending it's camps, and the prolonged fights and tactics you got from it is something you just don't see as much now.

Depends if they want thief to be anything other than a hit and run class, whether they do remains to be seen. I noticed my phone has been autocorrecting nerfing to needing..Lol, honestly didn't notice, I guess my brain autocorrected it back ^^

Depends if they want thief to be anything other than a hit and run class, whether they do remains to be seen.

Sorry about that haha. Tbh I stand by what I said earlier, unless pistol whip gets reverted to 5 initiative, I don't see it being that useable right now. The damage nerf was fine, even the stun duration nerf was fine, but the initiative nerf on top of the other two nerfs cuts both damage and sustain through evades, which is much more painful. Edit for tiredness

Know the big difference though? The expenses for all the other items are not tied to weekly limited account wide resources. Players who made multiple legendary armors from WvW, will not see those tickets again, putting them at a direct disadvantage versus other players who did not spend those tickets. Players who made multiple pvp legendary armors will not see those PvP League tickets again, putting them at a direct disadvantage versus players who did not spend those tickets. Players who made multiple pve legendary armors will not see those LI again, and while this might be the least of the gated materials disadvantage wise, it still puts there players behind. If this was an issue of ONLY cost, it would be annoying but manageable. The way it is now though: you are directly putting players who spent MORE resources and effort into the game at a disadvantage over others who invested less effort. This was never the case with any of the previous alterations, which effectively only resulted in more gold/money having been spent/wasted. The fact that you believe this system is "ruined" by one player versus another, speaks volumes as to how you view the player base. Basically you are saying: everything I agree with is fine, everyone else just suck it up. FYI, the biggest group of players will remain the ones WITHOUT any legendaries. Where is their share in all this glory and goodness? Out of interest, would you be happy if they refunded the time gated currencies but that was it? If not, then I suspect that short of making an achievement for donating legendary armor, there's not going to be an upside.

Unfortunately that's a common issue among most of thief's weapon kit's. That's just the nature of having no cooldown limitations. You'll simply dump your resources into the most effective skill you have available. Unless they start making Feef weapon kits rely more on comboing skills together (Kind of like how Cloak and Dagger sets up for a Backstab meaning chain backstabs is 515151 etc) this will always be the case. But as is, they kind of seem to be going the path of chucking like 3 situational utility skills onto a weapon set and then 1 attack as opposed to trying to create more diverse attack combos... An example of an easy to implement combo, would be to move PW's stun over to Headshot. So then to do your PW you'll 4 > 3. Other possibilites can be more conditional damage boosts, sort of like how Ranger's Dagger 4 skill deals bonus damage against movement impaired enemies, meaning you want to combo it after you apply an impairment (Such as Dagger 5, Axe 3, Sword 1/2). Of course, such a thing would need to be balanced in a way that the init (Also time) cost of setting up the combo and the damage boosted strike is more effective than simply spamming the unboosted strike multiple times (I.e. Heartseeker spam against high health targets) I would enjoy that sort of thing tbh. Would need a rework of virtually every weapon thief has, and I'm not sure if the devs will bother with that at this point in the game's lifespan. Would make for a pretty cool elite spec tho. There is a potential issue of complexity. For sure. It would make deadeye kneel a lot more interesting if they used combo mechanics on the kneel skills tho, rather than the skills just being slightly better versions of the non kneel ones. And they could replace rifle 3 outright with a skill that combos off movement impeding condis and even if it did no damage but added CC it would be an improvement Personally Id rather they remove Kneel. Part of the problem is that Kneel replaces the skills with worse ones than the non-kneel. The correct way of playing Rifle DE is to never kneel.Eh, sniper's cover has its uses when trying to build malice vs a couple soulbeasts, and skirmisher's shot guarantees fury for no quarter for a damage boost on your DJ, but in general, you're not wrong. Honestly though, a big part of the problem for me is that DJ gets janky when it gets close to max range and misses for no particular reason. I'd rather rework something than lose it in general, that's just me tho.

Unfortunately that's a common issue among most of thief's weapon kit's. That's just the nature of having no cooldown limitations. You'll simply dump your resources into the most effective skill you have available. Unless they start making Feef weapon kits rely more on comboing skills together (Kind of like how Cloak and Dagger sets up for a Backstab meaning chain backstabs is 515151 etc) this will always be the case. But as is, they kind of seem to be going the path of chucking like 3 situational utility skills onto a weapon set and then 1 attack as opposed to trying to create more diverse attack combos... An example of an easy to implement combo, would be to move PW's stun over to Headshot. So then to do your PW you'll 4 > 3. Other possibilites can be more conditional damage boosts, sort of like how Ranger's Dagger 4 skill deals bonus damage against movement impaired enemies, meaning you want to combo it after you apply an impairment (Such as Dagger 5, Axe 3, Sword 1/2). Of course, such a thing would need to be balanced in a way that the init (Also time) cost of setting up the combo and the damage boosted strike is more effective than simply spamming the unboosted strike multiple times (I.e. Heartseeker spam against high health targets) I would enjoy that sort of thing tbh. Would need a rework of virtually every weapon thief has, and I'm not sure if the devs will bother with that at this point in the game's lifespan. Would make for a pretty cool elite spec tho. There is a potential issue of complexity. For sure. It would make deadeye kneel a lot more interesting if they used combo mechanics on the kneel skills tho, rather than the skills just being slightly better versions of the non kneel ones. And they could replace rifle 3 outright with a skill that combos off movement impeding condis and even if it did no damage but added CC it would be an improvement

Unfortunately that's a common issue among most of thief's weapon kit's. That's just the nature of having no cooldown limitations. You'll simply dump your resources into the most effective skill you have available. Unless they start making Feef weapon kits rely more on comboing skills together (Kind of like how Cloak and Dagger sets up for a Backstab meaning chain backstabs is 515151 etc) this will always be the case. But as is, they kind of seem to be going the path of chucking like 3 situational utility skills onto a weapon set and then 1 attack as opposed to trying to create more diverse attack combos... An example of an easy to implement combo, would be to move PW's stun over to Headshot. So then to do your PW you'll 4 > 3. Other possibilites can be more conditional damage boosts, sort of like how Ranger's Dagger 4 skill deals bonus damage against movement impaired enemies, meaning you want to combo it after you apply an impairment (Such as Dagger 5, Axe 3, Sword 1/2). Of course, such a thing would need to be balanced in a way that the init (Also time) cost of setting up the combo and the damage boosted strike is more effective than simply spamming the unboosted strike multiple times (I.e. Heartseeker spam against high health targets)I would enjoy that sort of thing tbh. Would need a rework of virtually every weapon thief has, and I'm not sure if the devs will bother with that at this point in the game's lifespan. Would make for a pretty cool elite spec tho.

@topic:Pistol Whip itself is fine. Make it stronger you are basically back at spamming sword 2, 3, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 3, 2 ... no one likes to fight against that and no one want's to play that for more than 5 minutes. It's still more engaging than heartseeker spam Unfortunately that's a common issue among most of thief's weapon kit's.Sadly yeah. If they reverted the ini cost to 5 that would be enough to make it useable, as it is it doesn't out damage or out evade S/D. If PI gets reworked into something useful on interrupt I could see S/P being used as a control set, but at the moment it's not really good enough.

Depends on your build. I play deadeye, so I have trailblazer weapons and trinkets with a mix of vipers and rabid armor to get enough precision to gain malice reliably while also having enough duration to get whole numbers on the ticks of important skills. A mix of grieving and carrion can also be fun, and has the advantage of being very cheap to make, but I'm still working on getting that to do as much damage as I'd like.

@topic:Pistol Whip itself is fine. Make it stronger you are basically back at spamming sword 2, 3, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2, 3, 2 ... no one likes to fight against that and no one want's to play that for more than 5 minutes. It's still more engaging than heartseeker spam

We should probably go ahead and close this thread, I think the OP has had all the on topic replies he's going to get at this point.

I fought a spellbreaker yesterday that made great use of magebane tether to reveal me and pull me close for bursts. In general, you have waaaaaay more burst (adrenaline spending) skills than I do stunbreaks, and your sustain is bound up in that too. Remember that full counter will apply the tether if it hits, and it has a reasonable range on it as well. Something he did was use the dagger F1 in the area where I was after I had stealthed; thieves are unlikely to dodge in stealth, meaning I often got hit by it and revealed by the tether. He then ran in the opposite direction to pull me, and then he burst. If you're weird like me and tend to run tanky thief builds, it's a battle of attrition in both directions, if the thief is glass you just need to keep track of their stunbreaks, play defensively and use magebane to force them to burn them and go ham when you know they can't break out of it. Happy hunting ^^ PS; if they are doing the whirl from the stolen item (looks more yellow than daggerstorm), they are reflecting projectiles but aren't evading. That's a good opportunity to use full counter to tether them, and because of the range they probably won't dodge it in time.

I main deadeye, and fight soulbeasts often as they are a popular roamer. Here's some thoughts, in no particular order. Firstly, build. You're generally going to be wanting to run deadeye with shadow arts, with the third traitline being preference. Trickery works well for the utility, critical strikes is better for damage. You can run berserker, marauder and valkyrie and get good results on a burst centred build. My current preference for a stealth playstyle is valkyrie with hidden killer (critical strikes grandmaster trait), and marauder with trickery over critical strikes for less stealthy approaches. You can also run things like deadly arts together with trickery and deadeye, but you will have little stealth so this will be more challenging. In general, out of the two, ranger is the only long range DPS because it remains effective right up to 1700-1800 range, whereas there are a number of pathing issues with rifle projectiles that make death's judgement miss at max range for no real reason unless your target is sitting perfectly still. Consequently, deadeye functions most comfortably at 900-1200 range where the pathing is more reliable. In addition to this, deadeye's strongest bursts are performed in melee range, whereas soulbeast can hit just as hard at max range as in close. These things make the playstyle of deadeye feel more like that of a skirmisher than a sniper. Pre balance patch, on the CS/SA/DE hidden killer build you would typically see 6k spotter's shots and 17k death's judgements using the mark>assassin signet>spotter's shot>death's judgement combo to land a 3 malice death's judgement. This is important, as generally it is impractical to build full malice in a group fight as the target will be aware of the threat and you will have only small windows to hit the target through the various projectile hate sources flying around, whereas this combo hits hard with little warning. There was a bug with assassin's signet that caused it to hit harder than it should that got fixed in the last balance patch, meaning that after this fix and the direct damage reduction to death's judgement, you're looking more in the 8-11k range for death's judgement with a 4k spotter's shot. That's on a glassy target without protection on three malice, seven malice would have you hitting for up to 14k on the death's judgement, where pre patch you'd easily be hitting for 23-26k, with a few 30k hits when the conditions and target are perfect. After you factor in boons, projectile hate etc, you're just not going to be downing anything with that combo. Once your target is aware you're gunning for him, he's likely to move to the centre of his group and hope that his friends body block for him. The damage on death's judgement is modified by malice, which is only applicable to the marked target; if someone body blocks your target, you're looking at a 4k hit regardless of malice, and you a sitting duck out of stealth. Ranger has no such restriction, it's damage being in relation to damage modifiers on the ranger independent of the target, and it's shots will all pierce when traited meaning instead of being body blocked, you'd potentially take out two targets instead. Deadeye brings an abundant amount of stealth, allowing you to fight in situations you might not be able to on soulbeast. This can be a double edged sword around towers however, so you need to be aware of routes that avoid sentries and the range of each tower's sentry field to get the most from it. I have a core S/D build that I use when fighting while marked is unavoidable, soulbeast doesn't need to make any such concessions. Something to consider with deadeye is the limitations rifle places on your build. It sounds obvious, but if you choose rifle as a tool for long range, your second set will determine your playstyle. If you choose D/P, you will have permastealth, but you will lack the z axis mobility of shortbow. If you take shortbow and the opponent has a lot of projectile hate, you might be unable to kill him at all. Both soulbeast and deadeye can be run as a boon bunker to pretty great success, both specs being capable of maintaining permanent protection if you know what you're doing. Deadeye also gets 33% damage reduction while revealed from flickering shadows, and 10% damage reduction from iron sights, meaning that with protection you have around 40-50% damage reduction in total before toughness. The key difference between them is that while soulbeast is much better at taking damage due to it's immunities and better sustain options, deadeye can be specced into boonrip quite effectively, meaning it can much more easily counter specs like protection holo, boonbeast, weaver etc. Your mileage may vary, play both and see what you prefer.

Well, honestly if you're a mesmer player, you're struggling with thief less because thief is OP and more because mesmer got nerfed into the floor.

I agree, i was fighting today vs theif as a mesmer and I can say that I am very dissapointed by the recent changes in gw2. Thief was running away 3 kilometers from me, i was trying to kill him half an hour. What is that?They removed hammer damage from warrior making it almost useless but improved thiefs to fly all over the map.... o.O You are both correct in that thieves can still do absurd damage, but not about the cooldowns or about the lack of counterplay, or about having all of those strengths in one build. Most builds dedicated to burst are extreme one trick ponies now, in that they have no flexibility if something goes wrong. Builds with the required utility and flexibility to sustain an offensive cannot burst you from 100-0 without opportunity for counterplay. Let's take my glass DE build as an example; yes, my build can do 20k+ in under a second to glassy players with no protection or damage mitigation, so I can get cheap kills vs glassy enemies. There are some important drawbacks though: 1) The burst only works if they let it happen, the mark hits 2 seconds before the burst on average because of the cast time on binding shadow, so if you're aware you can counter it by dodging or using a defensive skill. 2) The build uses two offensive utilities to achieve that damage (assassin signet and binding shadow), having nowhere near 20k damage without them. This forces a 30s cooldown on the burst, meaning I can't do anything to you for 30s if it misses. That ought to be plenty of opportunity for you to escape or heal up. 3) The burst is neutered by taking dura runes, earth runes for added magnetic aura (works automatically) or surging runes for shocking aura (needs timing, but adds hard CC to shut down the combo entirely). These are available to all classes, should you wish to take them, and would allow you to turn and smack me with your own burst, a trade of blows I will probably lose. Unfortunately, most players panic when they get hit hard, and instead of turning and hitting the thief with their own burst, they choke. 4) I don't build for perma stealth because of weapon choices and the fact that using two offensive utilities means the third has to be shadowstep for a stunbreak, meaning if I use my stealth from heal and shadow meld to approach the target unseen, I don't have enough stealth to wait for the offensive utilities to come off cooldown if I whiff the burst. If I stay in the fight after the burst and you're not dead, odds are I soon will be. 5) Pretty much no matter the build, I am not going to be one shotting a trailblazer or bunker build. So if you struggle with thieves bursting you, run a bunker condi build and use effects that are instant cast to attack the thief when he's attacking and at his most vulnerable. Think of things like building on condi rev's traited conditions on legend swap by slotting geomancy, hydromancy, doom and torment sigils, and using legend swap then weapon swap as the thief engages in melee to proc all the sigils at once and nuke him. Works with necro shroud too, with traited weakening shroud to further weaken the thief's damage. This means, if you are aware enough to dodge/block/do ANYTHING between mark applying and binding shadow hitting, you will force me to disengage, and force a 30s window before I can do anything meaningful again. Almost every high burst thief build running assassin signet has a similar restriction. If someone doesn't consider taking toughness or damage mitigation like protection, doesn't take advantage of the weaknesses in my build, and plays with the reaction times of a potato, I can't really be blamed for that now can I?