saerni.2584

Hello all, I’m going to write up my review of the recent patch from the perspective of a condi-Hybrid thief player who has run P/D for a very long time. Obviously, there are quite a few other builds out there but I wanted to share some insights specific to my build as it is developing post-patch. First, let me stress how important the new Smoke Screen is. Any build with either Leaps or Blasts can use this field for Stealth. Shortbow is especially powerful in this context by providing AoE stealth on Cluster Bomb. Any thief with Shadow Arts and Smoke Screen can achieve significant AoE stealth uptime. Shadow Arts review: In the adapt tier the trade off between stealth on steal with the deception cooldown and Shadow’s Embrace is harsh. Thief doesn’t have that much condi cleanse so the trade off hurts more than other trade offs might be. Deception cooldown might be better to just increase the uses of HiS to reach a decent degree of condi cleanse and utility.Leeching Venoms could be better. The extra stacks of venom from this could occur faster. I think the observation that one stack at the outset of gaining stealth could be more appropriate. This appears to be balanced around staying in stealth for the full duration to get six stacks, that is a full 18+ seconds. That’s possible with Smoke Screen and Cluster Bomb but that’s a long time just to get an extra 6k poison damage over 10 seconds. Rending Shade: this one is...pretty ok. The extra fear is nice and there is a mix of defense and offense possible with using this trait. But, and this is important: the trait should trigger at the target. Sometimes I need fear at at a specific point and that point should be where I hit and not just a clunky AoE around me. A few other points: Short bow can blast Smoke Screen from a fair distance. You don’t need to be standing in the circle to stack stealth. Leeching Venoms (once it stacks venoms to 4+) is decent. But this is balanced around having those stacks so you need to be stacking stealth between fights to make this trait worth taking. If you aren’t able to permastealth or close to it then you shouldn’t take this trait. When fighting CI Mirage you can try to burst and then disengage. Build up venom stacks in stealth and then do another burst. This degree of condi will help down the Mirage and give you a fighting chance 1v1.

Sneak Attack gets additional duration of 1 second per malice on a base 1second duration of torment per shot. I think it would be better balanced if every 1 malice you gained 1 second duration and at five malice you gained an additional stack of torment per hit. So a five Malice Attack gives you 10 torment for 5 seconds duration. Or with M7 you can get up to 10 stacks for 7 seconds. Right now the torment application solely by duration feels a lot weaker than MBS or DJ. A damage condi needs to do enough damage. Pistol is not like Shortbow or Sword with CC ability stealth attacks.

Yes it used to scale with Malice. But I’m not sure about consuming it.

To be fair survivability contributes to sustain. If I have to heal 40% less often but have 25% less heal regen I come out ahead. I think the biggest issue when fighting CI Mirage is that anyone with low stability and lacking sufficient cleave is going to seriously suffer in an even fight. You need some form of cleave against condi Mirage because of the way extra condi is applied from clones. In team fights that cleave leaves Mirage vulnerable unless played more carefully or against weaker players. Sustain is also an issue because you need to reach the clones and then the Mesmer. Currently, the interrupt plus immobilize really is key to this builds ability to sustain both in terms of survival and avoiding losing clones to cleave. Tldr: Cut the interrupt Immobilize to a reasonable level and a lot of issues are solved.

Yes. I’ve known since it was released. It also works on white ambient creatures.

Marked should prevent stacking stealth. It shouldn’t make singular stealth applications while visible shorter. Making sure there is only a two second window to hit a stealth attack is awkward. Melee requires gap closing and even ranged attacks require LoS. All that in only a 2 second window is a huge punishment. It would be one thing if only sentries worked to mark targets. But there are towers too which makes solo roaming on a stealth class an extremely limited activity when you are already outnumbered in enemy territory.

After I play test a bit from recent patch I’ll upload some gameplay. It’s hybrid, but 4K plus condi ticks count I think.

Given a few reports of seemingly broken abilities I’d be inclined to think this is a bug. I can’t test it while I don’t have access to the game, but I encourage everyone to make bug reports. Clearly, Rending Shade fearing around the thief when you hit a target at range makes no sense. It looks like the coder based it on around the thief assuming the thief needed an AoE fear defensively while in melee range. But, the whole point of Rending Shade is to fear your target and nearby enemies, and that won’t happen for a ranged set unless you aren’t using it like a ranged set.

@Straegen.2938 They changed what hidden thief does. It may not be as bad to continue to select SE as you think.

I’ll add this here:

@Trevor Boyer.6524 You made a mistake on function gyro. At 50% added the cooldown goes up by each additional gyro spawned. So, assuming you stomp 3 and res 3 at the same time that adds 15x5 seconds to the recharge. As such, in that extreme example, you have a cooldown of 105 seconds. More likely you will have two downed (one enemy and one ally). The cooldown is 45 seconds. So this gives you a chance to save an ally from cleave while stomping an enemy once every 45 seconds. Strong but will have to see how much better it is than some of the scourge resurrection bots.

Technically some of that is being shifted to SA using leeching venoms. You’d gain some of the poison in DA and some in SA. But, you don’t have to be using a dagger to do it so build diversity goes up. I’m not sure how condi d/d will do in the end but we still need details on a lot of things (internal cooldowns and numbers on certain new traits).

Rending Shade should let you AoE fear on downed bodies. Some interesting stuff in this upcoming patch.

I’m closing in on a build. Currently I’m using Sword/Torch and Staff. The build can easily hit over 15 stacks of burning consistently and has plenty of AoE heals, cleanse etc.

How would Sneak Attack become an auto attack? It already functions like a slower version of damage and bleed. Also, with DE Sneak Attack gets malice based bonuses through torment. That would disappear in an auto attack version.

P/P has plenty of potential access between Daredevil and Deadeye. Does P/P itself have stealth? No but there are plenty of ways to access it now. We don’t play weapon sets in a vacuum. And yes, Unload is over performing and the consensus has been that to buff the set overall you would need to decrease the output potential of Unload. You and a few others seem to think stepping on P/D and unique play styles is an acceptable path to buffing things for P/P users. I, obviously, disagree.

You seemed to be saying we should remove the unique aspects of pistol and move towards a pure ranged DPS with boons for our primary attack. That sounds a lot like rifle to me at least. Nerf Unload and buff Sneak Attack and Repeater. No need to swap Unload with our auto attack to buff it. Keep the uniqueness of the sets while making it more viable. P/D is fun to play. We should buff it to make more players willing to try it.

So rather than improve an existing idea you want to make it a clone of Rifle power damage? Lol. Don’t just assume hybrid can’t work. Could it use a buff, sure. But just because Unload is overloaded doesn’t mean the hybrid idea isn’t workable.

No, there isn’t a bleed on crit trait. And I’ll echo the others who are concerned this proposal so far isn’t detailed enough and doesn’t properly buff the sets. Why a 1200 range attack? Does this make the pistol workable at the projectile velocities currently used? I’m not clear on how this makes the set reward more skillful play. Issues with pistol: Skills don’t do enough damage (power/condi) and are overshadowed by other options (see 2).Unload performs exceptionally well with just needing to press a single button and does too many things (damage, boon application) which makes Sneak Attack and Body Shot weaker by comparison and in balancing.Repeater needs to do more damage to be effective. Body Shot needs to be more reliable.Sneak Attack needs to do more damage (as a channeled attack with that many projectiles and requiring stealth to activate).

No I don't want two reload skills for thief pistol, and it doesn't make sense either. What I'm saying is, make reload skill 1 and give skill 3 something new entirely that would be as useful and the rest. And what would this new skill be?

Pistol/Pistol? Pistol/Dagger? You need to clarify what you are talking about when you ask for a rework, namely: 1) Why a rework is justified2) What exactly you want changed and how You said replace auto attack with Unload but really what you are saying is: “buff auto attack and nerf Unload as needed to compensate.” Now, to me that’s not really a full rework. So if you have ideas for other skills you should raise them and we can go over whether certain other skills need buffs. Edit: There’s plenty of posts in the thief sub forum that discuss this kind of issue in depth.

Most of the buffs to thief need to happen outside of the meta spec. Other than that a lot of the “Thief sucks” comments aren’t really fair representations of where Thief is, overall, as a profession.

The support aspect is secondary. I’m thinking sinister and grieving for core stats and then some others to round everything out. For now I’m going to have a little more hp than the base, just to be safe.

I’d also mention that the Balthazar mention is due to the Runes with bonus burning and HP.

I’ve been running offhand torch. The crit helps with getting procs on the trait that add 5 burn stacks and let you throw an extra torch for another 4 stacks. Build is for pve generally. I’ve done some theory crafting and built up to 1750 power/1050 condi/900 ish healing with 16k hp and low toughness atm. Currently using Sword/Torch and Staff. Honor/Radiance/FB. Support means, mantras for heal, cleanse and protection for allies. Symbols are set up to heal as well. Edit: stats are with stacking sigil for e tra healing power. Might drop it depending on the sustain (might want more toughness instead).