bq pd.2148

could you elaborate on the synergy you are trying to create a bit? smoke blasts: given that they are stealth attacks, they apply revealed when they hit. even if stealth runs out while the projectile is midair. so you will not be able to gain stealth from smoke blast. when using skill 3, this reveal does not apply but one usually would use that skill with more than 1 axe and so for stealth one would need the cunning salvo to be the last one to hit and only 1 stealth attack in the mix. other blasts: effects like healing, applying a condition like blind, granting might before the damage will be better for the thief. be it for traits that require % hp, exposed weakness or well might is obvious, but even swiftness from lightning would get damage boost from premeditation so better to apply before the damage. so the only benefit i see for the blast before damage is in the very niche scenario where you hit someone with a stealth attack, then do not generate any other axe while reveal is up, to then place a smoke field under the target and use skill 3 for personal stealth. i would consider that very niche. ally stealth already does apply as they do not get revealed from you dealing damage, if you want to stealth a (downed) ally that is being cleaved. am i missing something fun/effective that would work by changing the order?

less buttons means you have an easier time utilizing the full potential of the build, but it also means the build has less options to handle what your opponent throws at you. now this game is rather old and while there are plenty of people who can play this game for years without learning the basics, there are now plenty of people with a decent enough experience level that they can and will use builds with higher potential than yours to a sufficient degree that your build wont be able to keep up. spvp has a low population and WvW has no matchmaking for small scale encounters to begin with, that you will regularly run into people that you simply can not beat with that build/approach. if you are alright with that limitation and have fun with it, go for it. for fun is the most important reason to play a build, i would presume that for many however your build is too weak to truly enjoy. lets get more into the details of what your build does/doesnt: first of all when you say pvp, do you specifically mean spvp or WvW? the former is a lot more restricted in terms of what works, because encounters are more balanced and there is a scoring context that actually evaluates performance, while goals and play styles in WvW can be a lot more varied. for spvp consider what role your build could even cover? too slow to roam, to weak to sidenode/teamfight. personally no idea what would be the purpose of it for your team. what can your mates expect from you? for WvW on the other hand, the warclaw alone lets you pick/avoid many fights so just go for fights you think you can take or at least enjoy trying. dodges are awesome if you know what to dodge to begin with, but they are also all animation locks that experienced opponents will use to time their burst/cc, so you will be hit by it right after your dodge. parries do not exist really, tho i suppose upcoming spear skill 5 is kind of a parry. for most skills this is still too costly / too many skills are multihit. interrupts used to be really strong and enough to kill people with PI, but they have been nerfed. interrupting for the most part sets the skills interrupted on a ~5s cooldown, so you then still need to have enough in your kit to actually pressure the target sufficiently in these 5 seconds before they use the skill again. headshot is really expensive in terms of initiative and does not do anything besides interrupt. so i personally end up rarely interrupting with this skills specifically, usually only heal skills or like a tempest overload and then only if i do not have steal or don't want to use it for specific reasons. not to mention that a lot of single stack stab/aegis spamm these days make for rare opportunities to even land it to begin with. the relic is on disable, but the sigils are only on interrupting. so you can not just spam a headshot and gain their effect, your target needs to be actually interrupted by it. using signet only is already a severe limitation, not using them ever means you are not even utilizing the potential of the build you are running further cutting into your overall performance. i would advice against such a restriction. running bound over dash, you should be aware that the usual weaknesses are: lack of mobility, now sword can compensate that if you are good at using your skill 2 to kite your enemies but they might have an easy time to kite you if you do not have more swiftness/speed sources. using smoke + bound and shadow arts as a large part of your sustain means your 2 main weaknesses are immob and reveal. unless you have placed your sword 2 port beyond LoS, it will be difficult for your build to deal with either. try to keep your daggerstorm as a defensive skill for such a situation. but generally i prefer for smoke + bound builds to run withdraw and/or RoI for the immob and shadowstep/shadow portal against reveal. be aware that these can shut down your defenses and work out some gameplan on what you will do with your build once you inevitably find yourself immobilized or revealed. infiltrator's signet is a stunbreak, but ofc you would have to actively use it. it is only more focus on precision, if a more complex build overwhelms you too much. i think with more experience you only will be holding yourself back with a passive playstyle. these days its also a lot more spammy gameplay, used to be more precise when the game was slower but also when we (specifically WvW) had more damage across the board (before feb 2020 and patches leading up to it)

exactly that is what i gathered from the video. i thought that either change above specifically does more or less what you suggest with 1. the skill can not be activated midair. if the skill is instant, it wont be mid jump as you need to be on ground when the teleport goes off. this does not change the competitive use of it negatively for the thief, it would be a straight boost as it would allow getting out of CC/getting away without being interruptable. the no port as it was worked like this: cast the skill without jump and you return like normal, jump while casting and you do not port back but the 'port marker' resets. so you can use jumped version to chase people down instead of teleporting back. again a buff without removing the current functionality at all. (except for exploit stuff) maybe another option would be to make the port back to work like that of a portal. that would mean not useable out of range, no path requirement but you would get to exactly the marked location and not end up somewhere else due to pathing jankyness.

green teams outside t1 are the ones that have lost the week prior. given 1up1down system that only lasts a couple weeks between reshuffles, yes green is usually (outside of t1 and first week) the ones that are not in the tier they belong, while red is like the ones that are a bit too strong for the tier.

the skill had 2 important changes in the earlier years, not sure if the exploit actually worked with the old versions. both changes were nerfs to the skill for competitive modes. first it was changed from instant + stunbreak to have a cast time. looking at those videos it seems to be important to finish the cast midair (maybe thats not required, i am not an expert on the exploit). finishing the skill midair is only possible because of the cast time as the skill can not be activated midair. finishing the cast mid air used to not port you back at all. this was changed i think the same time as staff 3 jumping was removed, but could be wrong. can't find info about it on quick wiki glance. again if the cast needs to finish midair for this exploit and we just revert to not teleporting at all in that case, that would fix this particular exploit. i wouldn't mind reverting either of those 2* nerfs to get rid of the exploit if possible. *stunbreak and instant cast remove were actually 2 seperate changes. the staff jump exploits i think also work with some other jump skills like DH wings of resolve, there higher gates/walls would be the appropriate fix. shadow portal i personally would like to keep, while roaming i run it on any build as it is the most efficient option to avoid needless fights, helps greatly to safe time on supply runs and is just the best escape skill, which allows one to build/play with a bit more 'risk' - ofc its bad if you notice too late that it has run out or if you don't even set it assuming an easy fight. porting other people into objectives i managed to hide in i only do if they come to siege it anyway, but i would prefer if they would actually siege another structure to draw the defenders away/utilize that i bind them there.

this has nothing to do with the chain of quotes you have replied to. now i am certain that you are just a troll.

target painters apply the marked effect like sentries, they do not apply revealed. now if you stealth for more than 2 seconds while marked, you get shortly revealed. but for most 1 vs X fights that i don't have to run from, it does not matter if i am marked or not as i wouldn't stay that long in stealth anyway. important is to frequently get into stealth to activate all the traits + get a stealth attack, which for the way i play axe, the stealth attack does like half of my total damage. where it does make a difference is in thief vs thief, but usually there is still enough options left to kite the 30s and /laugh so what? the tricks still dont make stealth more overpowered in wvw than it is pvp. now beyond semantics i don't expect much to come of this thread, you can even see that there is not much engagement with the points raised as the topic has come up very frequently and likely will continue to do so.

bit late to edit in an addendum so ill post it separately: if current low ini costs are retained and chains were to advance regardless of hit, shadow assault stealth duration should be cut down to 2 seconds. this is so it is not used like current black powder + 2x spaced heartseeker for near permastealth with mobility and much less counterplay. current interaction has an animation lock in a predictable area at a predictable time, this would not.

a harbinger running sword + spear at me i would assume to be power, breath slightly in their direction and watch them dissolve.

defending events are so elusive to get, because most of the rewards in WvW are participation based to even out the rewards across different ways to play the mode, mostly large vs small scale. one should not get almost the same rewards for being afk most of the time. if the rewards would scale (down from a much higher base than currently) with the amount of players participating in an event / a kill, so that small scale would get similar rewards as large scale, participation rewards can be toned down and moved more to reward actually playing the mode. defense events would still be a problem as they would need to scale not only based on defenders but also the effort put in by the attackers, defending against 1 person passing by and hitting the gates with their warclaw for a bit is afterall not the same as defending against a large group with siege and all.

by this forums logic if a build is strong, its users are all bad and carried by it. that said, i do rarely run into harbingers, easily 10 reapers per harbinger and might even run into more core necros than harbingers, so finding a rare good one among them is not that easy.

no there is no such item. something does not get more powerful with the existence of a soft counter.

i think someone in my guild had the same issue a couple of days ago, looks like in this reddit post? the suggestion at the bottom of that post to clear the cache did work for her, so might want to give that a try.

i misunderstood then, my bad. thought it was about what should count for the participation, not what currently works.

i feel like the difficulty to get the masteries maxed mainly depends on the abundance of mastery points and their ease of access as the exp is easily gained, especially with boosters running. in that regard i didn't have to go much out of my way to get enough mastery points, despite not doing any of the strikes and so it was easy to get them. however i wouldn't mind more options to gain mastery points so players can pick and choose more. for HoT for example i have like 30 extra mastery points (might be also because i did do raids and adventures for gen2 weapons), indicating that there are more than enough options to skip some but for other mastery areas i have 0-5 spare mastery points.