saerni.2584

Infiltrators signet. Reduce cooldown to 2O seconds. This skill now Regenerates 2 INI every 10 seconds. Rationale. All other signets have seen buffs . This is the orphan of signets. The lower cooldown will allow sets without ports a port (such as d/d) and the higher INI regen allows for sets to stick in battle longer or even consider dropping TR. Good points. I’ll add it in.

I’ve updated the OP with additional notes for Venoms and some changes to other items. Again, please let me know if a particular skill should be nerfed or buffed and I’ll consider adding it to my OP. Other suggestions welcome as to what I’ve listed in the OP.

the way you said ADJUSTMENT TO IMPROV sent a few shivers down my spine since Adjusting doesnt necessarily mean buff it also can mean nerf and i dont rly think we as thieves could handle if other attacks beside Unload had more ini cost than they do now Oh I meant nerfs. I like DS as an elite. A full reset on that elite has a little too much RNG and a little too much impact. Nerf/change that and buff the rest of Thief to where it needs to be in the current meta. That would be what I’d do.

Thief would be in a much better place with some nerfs to other professions. Dagger storm isn’t OP so much as the elite getting reset makes it happen very often. I expect an adjustment to improv rather than Daggerstorm. Pistol main hand and P/D still need buffs. I’m not sure why people think P/D buffs are useless (a buff moves that play style closer to meta which should be a good thing). It’s also not a zero sum game where P/D buffs lead to nerfs elsewhere. If Daggerstorm gets nerfed it will be nerfed on its own merits.

@Jack Redline.5379 I run a hybrid build so I don’t disagree with taking some condi to round out your damage. I’d also like to remind everyone that in PvP you don’t need to run full glass PvE buildouts because player HP isn’t the same as NPCs in PvE. You can still “burst” without hitting a 30k combo. In most cases a 20k combo will still do the same thing and not require as much commitment. As to ways to get to that 65% (etc): Quickness is a huge help no matter your build for doing damage. You get the advantage of also going into stealth faster which is a big boon for your survivability. You don’t have to hit as hard per strike if you can get all your attacks off quickly.You can also help shut down the enemy mobility. A well timed Immobilize means your allies won’t miss their big hits and you have to do less work. Help your ranger land worldly impact. Aim to do about 50% of their HP in roughly 0-2 seconds. Any longer might not work as well. Most opponents will blow several defensive cooldowns after that and you can play defensively and prepare to re-engage once their defensives are blown.

I have a few issues that mostly have to do with overall power creep: Thief doesn’t hit hard enough. On a Reaper I can hit AoE 50k damage regularly. I don’t have this character built out fully and I hit a 240k damage combo the other day (boss was taking extra damage after breakbar).Thief can’t bypass defenses even when we don’t hit that hard. Piercing, unblockable, etc. Other professions, like Reaper, can consistently have durations (not single attacks) of unblockable strikes. It is actually funny how other more durable professions hit harder, in large AoE, with unblockable damage. Initiative regenerates too slowly compared to the HoT/PoF cooldowns on newer weapons.

The thing is, if the enemy team is competent you can’t simply build for “pure glass lightning” to jump between relatively empty points. The glass thief rarely puts out enough damage against competent players for the relative risk a glass thief build presents. You don’t have enough health and if the enemy is paying attention they will focus you quickly. A retreating thief isn’t doing damage.More defensive builds can stick around a team fight for longer. This does mean they do less spike damage but you don’t need to spike a proper plus 1. If you can do 65% of the enemies health then a competent other player (or two) should be able to secure the kill. That staying power means you can keep fighting in there and help secure the kill. Downed state changes the game significantly here.On mobility many builds have comparable mobility. Building for more speed will get you a tiny advantage but cut into either sustain or damage in a way that undermines your plus one role. In my opinion, the ideal thief helps the team scout, pick targets, down those targets and finish them. If the thief has time the secondary role is decap (which may come along with scouting to see where priority targets are rotating. A third role may be to hit one enemy of a group on respawn and try to stagger out the enemies so they can be killed one at a time rather than risking a team fight.

Bunkers are most effective when three enemies can’t eliminate them. Often this is less about the bunker and more about the three players. I’ve seen teams saying to ignore the enemy bunker when I have almost eliminated that bunkers HP bar solo. It says something when 4 other people can’t spike the same damage as a single person. Scrapper was overtuned after the rework (with a few bugs). I wouldn’t say they are too much now. What I have issue with is not bunker’s survivability. It’s the builds that survive too much for their damage output.

@Edge.8724 PvP wise the best advice I can give is: Build yourself for a role. Conquest is very role dependent and many people aren’t built properly for a role or understand that role when they start out. Fights are over in seconds when people don’t play around their role or are new enough that their ability to play as say, a bunker, isn’t good enough to perform that role. Example 1: A bruiser runs onto mid with no support. Example 2: A bunker who dies easily to a plus 1. Example 3: A side noder who stays in team fights the whole game.Example 4: A bruiser attempts to decap far and dies without decapping.There are oneshot builds out there. There are some overperforming builds that are a bit too survivable for the damage that they deal. However most people are not running pure glass. When you see pure glass your team needs to focus that person first. When they respawn you need to watch out so they don’t gank someone. Glass can swing team fights in either direction. I realize this isn’t super helpful because you are just one player. If you want advice about a specific profession and how to pvp as or against it the profession forums may be more helpful. I agree with you that damage is too high. But I would specify certain skill/trait combinations. I don’t play a oneshot build and I’m fairly squishy. I wouldn’t want some general damage reduction to make me unable to secure kills while the former high damage builds chunk everyone’s health bar for “only” 10k instead of 20k in a half second.

Yeah well, it would be easier to just poll the top 250 at the end of each season plus AT winners and then post the results. But that would involve in game mails, waiting for responses, tallying the results and interpretation. Not that people don’t write massive posts on here. It that would be more effort than a lot of people can/want to put in.

As I suggested in another thread about improvements to PvP: Make several variations of each map. Same mechanics but different obstacles and different geography. Randomize what version people play on when a map is selected. But those kinds of changes won’t stop the problem completely because the bot programs can clearly detect what map is loaded and use pathing for that particular map. I imagine many bots running into walls are poorly programmed or Anet’s background efforts are working to make bots less able to work. Probably the former but the latter is also possible. Going forward Anet needs to: Prevent the bots from pathing correctly to help players/staff identify bots.Flag accounts with high numbers of games per season for review.Review flagged/identified accounts for suspicious activity.Communicate about the percentages of games with confirmed bots and the ELO ranges for those games.Communicate the percentage of player identified bots who were actually bots. Plan to ban identified bots midway through and at the end of each PvP season. Midway bans cover the rest of the season and end of season bans cover the entire following season.

Sadly I’m on my phone so build crafting isn’t really possible at the moment. I’ll take what you wrote and possibly get back with some thoughts later on :)

If the torment ticks were changed to poison, then the reapplication would be easier. Look, anet isn't going to release a rune set that buffs poison, torment, and bleed at the same time. I'd rather have poison + utility conditions (vulnerability, weakness, cripple, blind, slow, chill, etc) then just have torment. That way, we'd have better DPS in PVE, better CC in PVE, and also we'd have better chances in PVP with all the added defenses. That's not support. That's just the obscure places where torment is located. The effectiveness of the ticking conditions (bleed, poison, torment, burn) is sort of irrelevant, since the damage can be adjusted by changing the number of stacks and the duration. There's a few ways to handle condition distribution on a class: (1) Basically one. Ele and Guardian, for example, are all about burn. This makes the rune, sigil, and gear choices easy, because you can buff this condition to the nines. The weakness to cleanse is more about how frequently the condi is applied, and less about having covering conditions.(2) Every condition. Scourge and Renegade, for example, inflict every condition under the sun. The advantage to this is that it is hard to cleanse them all. The disadvantage, however, is that rune and sigil choices are limited to the mediocre nightmare/malice combo for damage. It's no good if all of your covering conditions fall off. Sitting between these two doesn't give you the strengths of both. You get the weaknesses of both. You're hard to build for and easily cleansed, because a lot of cleanse skills hit 2 or 3 conditions at the same time. Unless you break the cleanse threshold, adding one or two additional conditions doesn't help anything. However I digress: I just noticed something. Why the heck does Spider Venom inflict 4 seconds in PVE and 6 seconds in PVP?! What is the logic there? You have just described why Torment is mor effective than Poison in a thief build and why P/d tends to be more effective then d/d deathblossom. Outside dagger #1 with a singular attack in the attack chain , neither the P/D or the D/D set have poison applications inside the set without traiting for the same. Due to all of the cleanses the singular most important factor outside a burst of a number of conditions at once is rate of re-application of the same. Indeed the bursts success is predicated on a high re-application rate. Poison App tends to rely on usage of a venom and or the steal both of which are on high cooldowns whereas torment/bleed can be applied readily over and over again to help maintain pressure between bursts or force a cleanse when those stacks become too dangerous even before you apply burst. I play both the deathblooms d/d thief and the P/d condition thief (I got 7 different thieves now all built different) and as a matter of course find i MUST trait a venom + one other source of Conditions in the d/d build (be it needle trap or impairing daggers) whereas I do not have to trait any of these in the P/d build simply because P/d has ready access to both Torment and bleed. P/D is in the DE line for payback, the lower cooldown on steal (more bursts) and the added torment and INI. D/D is in the Daredevil line as it just does not function as well in DE . D/D deathblossom is much more restrictive as to what you can do with sigils and utilities simply because in essence it has only one way to apply effective condition stacks from within the set. I have just described why torment isn't more effective than poison. Torment is just a funny looking bleed, and thieves don't apply a diverse enough set of conditions to brute force through cleansing. Your example is missing the point, because it is comparing the disparate application methods of two separate builds and blaming it on the type of condition applied. If you took every application of torment and replaced it with poison, then the application problem would be solved. I'd argue that it would be stronger,, because poison kills sustain alongside of doing damage. I think you are misunderstanding me and @babazhook.6805. Yes, you could change all torment application to poison. But I don’t think that is going to happen. Also, torment adds to the diversity of conditions thief can use to inflict damage and prevent a full cleanse. We should celebrate having torment access and not complain. You seem to be saying you want more poison application for thief. That could be through venoms or another mechanism. But I think you are underestimating the value of torment in the condi/hybrid thief kit. Torment does good damage and provides cover conditions with frequent reapplication rate. Condi Thief would, IMO, actually lose a lot of viability if we lost torment on our weapons in exchange for poison.

There are plenty of options depending on what kind of support. Do you want to provide offensive boons? Do you want to provide defensive boons? Do you want to provide projectile denial? Do you want to provide resurrection support? Do you want to provide stealth to allies in smaller coordinated groups? Do you want to help your allies lockdown targets for kills? Do you want to tip enemy boons? Support is pretty broad as a category. I’d recommend you pick a few areas to focus on.

@Blood Red Arachnid.2493 I’m talking about rates of reapplication. Poison is harder to reapply quickly in significant amounts. Bleed and torment are much lower reapplication rates so you can get up to 2-3k ticks relatively quickly after a cleanse. That is where condition pressure starts to matter so what I ranked the condi types the way I did. I agree with the venoms being strange and unwieldy. It’s certainly something that could be looked at. The venoms biggest issue imo is that condi builds struggle in this cleanse environment and venoms are mostly used as pure offensive Utilities. So if it is cleansed or ignored (resistance) you use a valuable utility slot for no benefit. I’d change them to have two components. On hit for X attacks then % chance on attacks for X time. This extends their useful life and makes using the utility not completely wasteful if they just cleanse once after your venom attacks run out.

I mean as a zerg weapon. In a duel, yes the pistol has quite the utility. But in large scale fights, plinking away at one person within 900 range doesn't cut it. The thief has many traits which either give poison or enhance poison damage. The thief also has a lot of skills that inflict a lot of long-term bleeds. This make building for bleed/poison really easy to do. Slap on runes of the afflicted or runes of the krait and you're good to go. Torment, however, is hidden away on on just a few traits/skills, and has no buffing or synergy with traits. Torment has synergy more so with DE through Malicious Sneak Attack. Torment is also pretty solidly supported through Shadowstrike and Dancing Dagger. Poison has bonuses in Deadly Arts but the bonus has to be comparatively big because outside of Choking Gas there isn’t enough poison damage for consistent DPS. If I was ranking our condi from best to worst I’d start with Bleed, followed by Torment, then poison and then confusion (no burning rank because it isn’t effectively available). Bleed is first because we can get it from a lot of sources including autos and evasive abilities like Death Blossom and Daredevil Lotus dodge. Torment also can come from various weapon attacks or Lotus dodge or utilities. Poison can come from steal and from Immobilize or Utilities but is generally on longer cooldowns. Confusion is limited to combo fields and steal if traited. I’m not saying poison can’t spike. Poison can still be effective. But with cleanse being the way it is now you are better off with more frequent application rates, which especially includes torment and bleed.

@Blood Red Arachnid.2493 Some good points on venom scaling. I disagree that Pistol is a strictly worse rifle. Rifle has better damage at superior range but Pistol has different utility depending on the offhand. Rifle doesn’t have an interrupt and offhand Dagger offers a direct stealth skill in melee range. Rifle has a few more boons but Pistol’s Sneak Attack has more projectiles to combo with a field (with 100% chance). I do think some Pistol skills should get a damage buff. I don’t find that condi thief has slow DPS (although D/D isn’t my preferred condi weapon). I find it has its burst neutered by overabundant cleanse. This isn’t specific to thief though.

I suspect, at least for myself, that I'll intentionally underfeed my Skyscale until I can farm enough map currency for the last step. That way, I can spend active time working towards the ultimate goal the entire time. The people who already have the currency can either grind it out at max speed or wait until the 28th. I'm excited to get a new mount but not going to complain if it takes a few extra days.

I really like the vertical nature of the map. Very pretty and can actually use Griffon well in the map.

I’m not toxic. I have tried to get people to focus rather than spout off pointlessly. I sometimes suggest they take a break to relax. Sometimes all you can do is laugh.

Frequent balance patches New PvP modes/events Spectating of ongoing higher level matches Randomized map variants of current maps.

I see plenty of new people and plenty of veterans. I’m inclined to think it’s not any more or less populated in comparison to the overall game. But “no change” wasn’t an option.

Learning thief requires developing an instinctual sense of your own damage and risk you are taking. On Deadeye, you will want to strike hard and reposition, then strike hard again. That can involve waiting out enemy defenses and playing around them in PvP. The best advice is to pick a build that you can use to practice and ask more experienced DE to work with you to understand combos that work and also get you used to the profession. Do you have an MMO mouse? That will help if you can bind skills to that for easy access. You will also want to rebind your skills generally to avoid clicking your skills (I say this as you said you started two months ago). If you are NA I’m willing to help. Give friend me and whisper me in game. I’m usually online for a bit in the mornings eastern time on weekends and sometimes in the evening weekdays.

I’d comment that other elites provide comparable benefits depending on the build. Shadow Meld is a good example of this. That said, Dagger Storm does enough extra damage and is defensive in one of the few semi invuln while attacking moves available to thief. And unlike the others (Death Blossom and Vault for example) the AoE is larger and the semi invuln period is better. This makes it a key part of thief’s ability to stay in a teamfight or hold out for an assist in a XvX situation. Most thieves play builds that need evade and AoE pressure to be effective. So they choose Dagger Storm. Buff other thief builds that don’t use Dagger Storm and you will see more thieves taking less conventional builds.

@Kageseigi.2150 Good point but would need to put a cooldown on initiative on weapon swap trait. Otherwise the flexibility it provides is already limited by existing cooldowns on “on swap” sigils.