Rezok.2709

How is it not clear? You literally said you didn't pay attention. It has a pop-up on the center of the screen explaining it all, prompting you to select your preferred game modes for dailies and even makes you confirm it. It explains everything for you, you just decided to actively ignore it, then complain that you don't understand it. I swear, the majority of complaints about this system comes from people that didn't even bother to look at it first. Like people complaining "I only get 1g now!" without even looking at the astral rewards - wouldn't you know, you can actually get more gold per daily than before. But you can also choose different rewards if you don't care about that 1g. It's literally all around better rewards (with maybe the one negative loss being WvW reward track potions used for Gift of Battle). Yes, the Vault has some issues like being locked into three dailies, and those are worth discussing - but 80% of the complaints are just people with the comprehension of a toddler.

I am 100% convinced that animation isn't meant to be on Double Tap. It's chains circling around the bullet, it just has to have been designed for Spotter's Shot - you know, the shot that actually Immobilizes, the condition with chains as the icon. And it would just be so on brand for Anet to not even notice they mixed up the animations on thief.

Honestly, this is the problem. I am fine with DE losing mobility to deal damage, I'm fine with DE being a glass cannon, I can even get behind all their weird restrictions like having to be behind the target. And being single target rather than AoE like everyone else is fine, it's the sniper fantasy after all. The fact that our main damage ability doesn't even pierce, making a random add completely ruin your day is okay - because when we hit out target, we deal massive damage. Or, well... We are supposed to, at least. DE should absolutely be among the best at single target damage. If other professions can do more damage, as AoE, while generally keeping more survivability and / or group support - then you know something is wrong.

Sustain for thief is a bit different than for other professions, imo. By design, the rogue / assassin / thief class will always be somewhat squishy, but rely on mobility / evading damage more than anything else. Since we have a lot of ways to turn initiative into mobility, you can consider ini regen part of your sustain - which makes Maleficent Seven great, as it gives a ton of initiative. Aside from that, Maleficent Seven grants you Protection and Regen, adding to more traditional sustain. Also, marked targets deal less damage to you. Outside of that, the Deadeye trait line does not provide sustain directly, but Silent Scope arguably provides the best access to stealth you can get on a thief. Add in Shadow Meld and this makes Deadeye arguably the best style of thief to utilize Shadow Arts. Shadow Arts grants you a sizeable heal both when you enter or leave stealth, as well as remove damage conditions. It grants Superspeed (mobility = avoid damage). You gain stacks of Venom, which siphons health, and so does your stealth attacks. Lastly, entering or leaving stealth grants initiative, which you can use defensively. So Deadeye actually has a lot of sustain if you build for it. Either by using full dps trait lines, but utilizing boons and high initiative regen for reactive defenses (and here you can always turn all that initiative into damage when you're not in danger). Or by using an actual defensive trait line to synergize with Deadeye, allowing for actual healing sustain. You can go all out with both, and add in Invigorating Precision from Critical Strikes and use Signet of Malice if you really want to. You have plenty of sustain, but most people prefer not to use it since you still won't facetank as hard as professions more designed for it, and in general, why even bother when you can just trait for damage all the way and use all the evading to survive?

All reaper builds are chill. Kind of their shtick.

I'm actually quite puzzled by the decision. While I completely disagree about their choice of not just giving us axe/axe, at least I understand where they are coming from with the whole dual skill thing (not that the argument makes much sense when looking at elementalist). But sure, when we think about how the dual skill can be defining for a whole new build, I understand that introducing both might be overkill in terms of builds it creates due to the nature of how the thief works with initiative. I also understand why we didn't get an off-hand previously. The elite specs have been treated almost as a sub-class, more than just a new trait line. They needed to give us main-hand / two-hand weapons because they could not realise the gameplay of those "sub-classes" with just an off-hand. We had no weapon that would actually make Specter work. We had no long range weapon to make Deadeye work. But now there is no elite spec, literally just a new weapon. This is the perfect time to introduce a new off-hand to thief. And I'd argue it is actually the choice that would bring the most "content" from the least amount of work. They would need to design two skills alongside four dual skills. This is just one more skill than they need to design for a MH weapon. But they'd give us so much more potential in builds. By giving us a MH weapon, they essentially give us potential for two new builds (one with each of our off-hands). But if they gave off-hand axe, we would get potential for four new builds, one for each MH. Essentially doubling the potential by just designing a single more skill. And it even makes it better down the line, when they introduce a new MH again, they just need to design a single additional skill, but they'd also open up potential for one additional build. It just puzzles me because it seems like not giving us a new off-hand is shooting both the player and themselves in the foot.

Because they'd have to design additional skills due to the thief dual skill mechanic. You must understand how impossible that is when they already spend all their time designing four professions worth of skills for the elementalist.

Almost everything about them is. Death's Retreat is a shadowstep. Sniper's Cover literally says "create a barrier of shadows...". And everytime you shoot your rifle a burst of shadow comes out, and the shots are clearly entangled with shadow magic. Spotter's shot is quite clearly some sort of shadow chains that immobilize. Kneeling cause shadow magic to flow around you. Deadeye's Mark somehow cause the target to take increasing damage from you through Malice, which is most likely also shadow magic (what else would it be?). And the theme continues in the traits as well. Besides, I think you read way too much into the "evolution of previous traitlines". It's not like that sit and look at things thief already have and try to make an elite spec out of it.

I absolutely love SB since it have become an actual condi weapon. The AA bleed on poisoned targets is actually pretty strong, and if you play DE the stealth attack is 3x bleed on a lot of enemies. While I'd honestly like 2 to just get a rework completely, I think it is in a better spot as an actual DPS weapon than it's ever been.

I don't think it has the same problems. Scepter opens up the magical themes, which already makes it much different. As for actual role, it will probably be a 600-900 range weapon. So competing with P/P and P/D. Considering P/P is literally just power Unload spam, I think it's rather easy to not step on that playstyle. As for P/D, that already have a rather special style where it isn't truly ranged. Rather, it wants to get close to use Shadow Strike and Cloak and Dagger, but have temporarily moments at range. Anything else done at 600-900 range would be a new combat style for thief. Compared to GS, it's much harder. A GS would have to somehow not be cleave melee. So either purely single target (imagine the rage if thief got literally the only GS to not cleave out of all professions, and making it basically daggers) or ranged somehow, like mesmer (again, pretty sure the thief community would rage over that).

Thief have permanent Fury without even trying if you pick Critical Strikes. And both Rifle and P/P have perma 25x Might. Trickery gives over 50% uptime on swiftness and Vigor and steals 3 boons on every Steal use. Oh, and then of course Maleficent Seven alone gives perma 25x Might, Fury, Regen, Swiftness, Vigor and Protection. Thief has a ton of boon generation already, with the right builds probably some of the best without even having to try. The only "problem" is it's not boon sharing, but in terms of giving yourself boons I have no idea how you can say "barely even provide their own Fury". Unless you play without traits.

I find it a bit weird how people are so negative about scepter - I'd say it makes quite a lot of sense. Greatsword would fill the same role as staff, so among the other weapons I'd say only off-hand sword and scepter makes any sense for thief. Off-hand sword would probably not allow much for a new playstyle, rather just some more variation of our old playstyles, seeing how much the main hand dominates the playstyle on thief. Sure I'd love a GS thief, but that's mainly because I don't like Daredevil that much, but I understand that the gameplay of them would overlap. Personally I think scepter sounds really fun, my only concern is how lackluster the previous Elite Specs have been, so I don't have high hopes for them actually making scepter what it could be.

Deadly Arts, Critical Strikes and Trickery is a great core power thief build. Gives some options for you to play around with, but is also relatively straight forward and easy to understand when to change a few traits. Deadly Arts got Dagger training or Mug, then Even the Odds or Revealed Training, then Executioner. Critical Strikes got Twin Fangs, then Practiced Tolerance or Deadly Aim for P/P and lastly three cool choices. No Quarter is a great all around DPS boost. At lower level without max crit, Hidden Killer can be really fun. Lastly, Invigorating Precision is amazing for self healing. Trickery Thrill of the Crime gives you some nice buffs, Bountiful Theft to remove boons and Sleight of Hand to give you an interrupt and reduced Steal CD.

You are complaining about thief solo survivability while running celestial, a stat line that is clearly not great for thief in any way. I think you might want to look into the strengths of thief instead. Thief doesn't work with a bit of everything. Look at the Critical Strike trait line, you got a trait that heals based on your crit damage. This means stacking power, precision and ferocity becomes your defense. In contrast to your celestial build, this will heal way more than your healing stat can ever do. You also have Signet of Malice, healing 134 per attack. This sync great with P/P, where you do 8 shots with Unload, that's 1072 healing. Unload also easily does 15k damage, meaning you heal 3000 (if you have fury, which you can easily keep 100% uptime on). This means you heal +4000 for every Unload. With Deadeye Maleficent Seven you also constantly get enough initiative that you never have to do anything but spam Unload, and you get permanent Vigor, Regen (around 130 per second) and Protection to further help survival. Or run rifle and do Death's Judgement for 30k hits / 6000 healing. Honestly, at this point you can facetank most things, only weakness is you have low HP, so if something can literally one shot you, it is troublesome. But even this can be off-set just by picking up a bit of Marauder gear, just enough to where you never get one shot but still get insane healing.

This isn't really an issue specific to thieves in GW2, it's how the rogue / assassin class is treated in all MMORPG's, simply due to the nature of them. They have huge burst, can turn invisible, and insane mobility. This is the class in most MMORPG's, and it is frustrating to many people to fight against. A big problem is any new / not so good players might find it directly unfair, because they don't know how to fight it. Of course the part they fail to realize is that the stealth and mobility is off-set with them being super squishy - not being hit is their defense, because when they are hit they die. But a good thief vs a bad player means the bad player might feel like the thief is untouchable, all while doing huge crits. A good warrior might also completely overwhelm them, but they have much less evasion, so the bad player will at least be able to land some hits and feel like they did something. Of course the warrior has much more armor and health, so they are nowhere near losing, but it does feel much less frustrating to fight.