Rico.5710

For leveling as a new/returning player sword/pistol is a good option. You have a teleport on skill 2, invulnerability and cleave damage on skill 3 (you evade during the attack, even though the tool tip doesn't state that) and an aoe blind field on skill 5 (good to keep you safe against multiple enemies). You can keep pistol/pistol as a ranged weapon set. Deadeye (the second elite specialisation for thief) with pistol/pistol is also a very strong option for open world. You have to be level 80 to unlock it though, so that might be something for you to work towards to in the future. Have fun!

You can still activate and take the portal to get away, even when stunned. The reason why the stun break was removed is because before you could activate the portal to break a stun and then not take the portal, which was clearly not intended by Anet.

Using longbow over hammer is a big dps loss on longer fights, that may be the reason. 35k is still good though.

Don't know about eles (doesn't lighning flash still has no activation time?) but unnatural traversal got nerved because you could insta-down people out of nowhere with the GS5+teleport -> GS2+tail swipe combo. Willbenders don't have much hard cc (if at all), so you can dodge/block when they teleport to you, revenants ports have all activation time iirc and specter can lock you down, but doesn't have enough burst potential to kill you without any time to react. Can't speak about Chronos though

Specter still has 3 less initiative, mech has no tool kit and harbinger gets its health reduced thanks to blight. Don't know why some trade offs got removed and others didn't 😞

Acrobatics sadly can't get group quickness 😞 Anet is very cautious about not giving quickness or alac trough core traitlines (that's why alac got moved from nature magic to druid for example). Otherwise specter could give both quickness AND alac at the same time and that's clearly something Anet doesn't want. Self-quickness on the other hand shouldn't be problematic and could be a welcome improvement for acrobatics.

I am, thanks. I just don't want sword to be made useless again. Lots of movement skills have evade frames baked in. The funcuality is still the same as your roll attack but now you can use it for (dis-)engaging too, it's just plan better than rolling in the dirt looking cool. Yes! Or to stick to your target, it's way more flexible now.

Please no. The evade frame is still the same as before and the leap we have now is way more useful than rolling around the target

"Ranger" has nothing to do with "ranged combat", you know?

What exactly got changed? Can't find anything regarding greatsword in the update notes

Ranger =/= ranged combat

Since we got the latest balance preview a few days ago and anet asked for feedback i would like to suggest to let pet swap traits (zephyr's speed i.e.) also trigger when merging/unmerging as SB again. Back when SB only had one pet i loved the playstyle of merging/unmerging to trigger zephyr's speed, either to do a burst combo with quickness or for disengaging with superspeed. I know the reversal of the one-pet-tradeoff for SBs was an overall buff, but now i have to swap pets everytime i want these traits to trigger, which is something i don't always want to do. Allowing us to trigger pet swap traits both with merging/unmerging and actual pet swaps would lead to more flexibility imo. One could stay on an offensive pet and merge for a quickness-burst-combo or swap to a more defensive pet to disengage for example, i hope you get what i mean. I also don't think this would be that much of a buff and more like a qol chance, since the ICDs of said traits would still remain. What do you think?

Warrior?

Yes he indeed looks human to me. I don't see any green skin, looks more grayish to me because it's hidden inside the shadow of his hood and the hair looks more like strains of hair than leafs... also why should thief be the only class where the race changes between the images of core and elite specializations, it just doesn't make sense

Looks more human to me tbh... also isn't the race and gender always the same for these and the elite specs images? Engi is always a male charr, ele always a female human etc. Thief seems so be always a male human

You need to take deadly arts instead of trickery for maximum dps. You also don't really need the assassin pieces or precision infusions, since you have the extra crit chance from twin fangs while flanking, so best to go all berserker here. Taking premediation instead of silent scope should also be quite a big dps boost

Dude, just stop already... all he said was that he disagrees with your decisions and that it comes down to preferences, so there is no real "right" answer. It wasn't an insult and you're taking this way too personal

In addition to Head Shot, which was already mentioned, you also have a 4s knockdown on the staff stealth attack. Use both + the elite skill and you have more cc than you will ever need in pve

You already can dismount midair. https://youtu.be/fPVBT9VwtkA

Also on unleashed hammer #3 and the greatsword ambush attack i think.