Topher.5631

This is going to do nothing but bring in a stale bunker meta Druid / Rev / Tempest / Chrono / Necro / Thief / War sustain buffs plus alacrity spam means mindless use of CDs. Harb will be a necessary evil now to do anything P.S., they didn't nerf OWP in pvp, just pve

I havent had anything terrible, but Sonfish made a post on the old forums about how queue goes up to 2 hours then boots you (season 1 wait times were garbage)

Players should have to be on the field doing stuff. They need to do x amount of damage, take x amount of damage, defend or attack a node. All of these put the player in a position where they are playing the game. If you're "afk" but being hit, at least you are a distraction. Most importantly, they are trackable. If you havent done one of those things in the last 30s then flag the player.

No I have over 3k games on DE and play at the plat+ level. Hardest counter is weaver hands down Lots of reflect means you cant kill easily Weakness means you cant build malice SB vs DE is a toss up. Sic em is a problem, but if you cant kill me in the channel time it takes me to use my elite then your advantage is nullified

I have been contemplating this a lot and wanted to get a general sense of how the community feels. Anet had said previously that they would introduce frequent balance patches (which has not been implemented), and people have been complaining about bots, duo queue ranked, etc. for months. Knowing that anet has failed to deliver simple pvp fixes and failed the community in that respect, it wouldn't be hard to imagine people skipping out on buying another add-on for this game. However, I could see the argument for buying it, saying that "The new builds will probably be OP" or "It could give more build variety". So if you consider yourself primarily a pvp player, will you buy another expansion despite all of the mismanagement? Curious to see where the pvp community stands on this

It's kinda hard to explain just from saying "You're wrong", so let me give an example If you are a thief on far point, and your team just killed something that typically counters you (DH, holo, etc). That player will most likely be off respawn and come to contest that point. It is more efficient to decap it and go back to fighting instead of fighting a losing battle to lose the point anyways. From there you can snowball more as opposed to capping a point that will add 10-20 to your score. Likewise, if your teammate is fighting a losing battle on another point, time is of the essence. It's your job to be there to help. That time it takes to full cap can lose the fight for your team mate and void any benefit from full capping that point. There are a lot of other examples, but the gist is that it comes back to snowballing the enemy team better. Thief has more mobility than any other class, your potential to help your team win is wasted sitting on a point (in some cases).

In my defense it was really late when I did that lol, mbhttp://gw2skills.net/editor/?PawAoiVlNw2YiMLGJO2OrrdA-zZoOkCUApIDyUI40B

In my defense it was really late when I did that lol, mbhttp://gw2skills.net/editor/?PawAoiVlNw2YiMLGJO2OrrdA-zZoOkCUApIDyUI40B

In my defense it was late at night when I did that lol, and I think the way I got to the website was using the link from a friend who was theory crafting on necro /facepalmhttp://gw2skills.net/editor/?PawAoiVlNw2YiMLGJO2OrrdA-zZoOkCUApIDyUI40B The reason shadowstrike needs a cast time is so it gives the opponent time to react. There are gap closers sure, but those are all way lower cooldown than shadowstrike. The thief can keep up pressure way longer than they should be able to just because it has no cooldown, only a 4 second lock-out of the skill. A cast time would allow counterplay and mind games to make the thief waste ini, so they'd have to be smarter about using it. Repeater has enough damage to keep most people on their toes, plus the fact that it only costs 2 initiative and a 1 second cast time means that in effect it only costs 1 initiative because they recuperate one by the end of the channel. That's wayway too spammy, even by thief standards. I'm not saying that it needs an initiative increase, I agree with you it's lazy balance, but the bleed duration needs to be cut down a bit, or if the teleport distance from shadowstrike is cut then they would still be in very close proximity to the target while doing a 1s channel, which would leave them more vulnerable to counterplay. And i'd like to re-iterate, i'm not a random who was strolling along in unranked one day, got ganked by the build, rage quit, and came to the forums to qq about it. I've played this build for at least 8 months now and it is too strong. I've participated in 1v1 tournaments and only lost to a legend ranked player after he put on a bunch condi clears (https://www.twitch.tv/videos/469227197?filter=all&sort=time starting at 6:30, 30:20, 53:00). The reason thief is not up there with other professions in ranked is because it requires close communication with the team in order to play effectively, or the other team could run 5 bruiser classes, play 2 points and basically hard counter by comp alone. It's not a build thing, it's just the nature of thief that causes it to be out of the meta more often than not. 1v1 it can hold its own if played right, just like any class can. However, this build shuts out too much potential for the opponent to counterplay effectively, to the point where only 2 meta builds counter. Thief should be top tier, and I would love for it to be. I've been a thief main since HoT came out, but this build is unhealthy for the game as a whole

You're saying a thief build needs to be nerfed... if they can +1 with it? Where did you get that from ?I've played almost 6k games on thief and the next closest is 2.7, so I don't want thief to be useless

Potent poison is way better than improv, a 20% damage increase (Plus additional venom stacks when you use 3 and 2) is something you're really going to feel the lack of if you don't take it. That allows you to take something other than the AoE smoke field (which is mainly used for damage and gets in the way of your poison finishers since a projectile can only combo once) Also RFI doesn't give you enough kiting ability, and the initiative gain is meh. If you can't kill your target w/o having the Initiative from RFI you need to bait cooldowns or play smarter instead of trying to burst them again right off the bat. That's why portal or blinding powder is better so you can re-position to decap or BP use another stealth attack with pistol 1 which procs the life steal and a free venom, plus a free 4 seconds to breathe and kite while you find another good time to burst.

It's weak to core necro / condi rev and it's hard to beat a ranger with itEverything else is easier than cake 'cause they either can't close the distance or can't clear the condis fast enough

Countered by condi herald / necro and a little rough vs ranger, same as the one on metabattle

Also a good idea, that would encourage some sort of rotation

Very slight variation, but it still plays the same. http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?PSwEcEWoMBmHLhxxKxU66sVD-z5IeKZKC6VCEwQoiFgAHA On this one you get stealth from the heal and steal instead of just heal, but you could combo that with Steal + Dagger 5 on the metabattle build and get the same result The meta burst for this build is Shortbow 4 on the target, steal + stealth (through dagger 5 or the steal itself), sneak attack from the pistol (combo finishes with the poison field for more poison), then 3 3 (which also combos with the poison). That's enough to knock down a lot of people and takes about 4 seconds to execute from the time the poison hits the ground, without using any venoms (try it in the FFA arena). It's very low risk because you still have all your utilities to kite while your burst comes off CD in another 16 seconds, not to mention P/D 3 to get away from anyone who closes the gap. Even if you don't land the full burst, there aren't a lot of options for the enemy to counterplay. If they're melee you kite with 3 or 5. If they're ranged, you have enough distance from the 3 skill to LoS them, or stealth if you can't manage that. That's why the first skill in the 3 chain needs an actual cast time, so that way they can be CC-ed by something to allow counterplay, as well as reduce the bleed duration on the second one in the chain. This allows the opponent to have a little bit more freedom with condi clears and puts more emphasis on combo-ing it right in order to get good results, instead of 3333 spam being a safe choice. In addition, the second skill in the chain only costs 2 initiative, which is way more cost effective for damage than any other skill that thief has, so that needs to be increased too.

I've played this build since they made the change to P/D 3 and gotten pretty far on NA with it. Its only counters are reflects / projectile hate (mainly from weaver, but other than that weavers are easy to burst down with the build), and condi core necro. Core necro got nerfed a bit so there's going to be a lot more running around now. The build is way too strong. Way too much stealth access and the sneak attack on pistol 1 does a lot of damage when combo-ed right. The build needs a nerf in the form of reducing bleed duration on P/D 3 and the sneak attack, as well as a cast time on the first skill for P/D 3 (it's basically instant cast as long as you aren't CC-ed). That will allow some counterplay when a melee class gets in range, and make spamming 3 less lucrative. As it stands now it is very easy to win a 1v2 with in the hands of a good player

Power thief as it stands is in a bad state. It can't plus fights on side nodes effectively because of the condis flying around from necro and rev, and ranger has a lot of sustain to withstand a thief burst. Nerfing those 3 would bring power thief back into the meta a bit more. As to the viability of this p/d condi build, i've been playing it for about a year now (ever since they made the change to p/d 3), and I got to rank 30 on NA playing solo with it. If the 3 I mentioned get nerfed out of the meta, I can guarantee the next one will be p/d condi thief aids. Necro forces it out of the meta because of all the condi transfer, rev has too much resistance, and ranger has a lot of ways to clear the condis. That's the only reason you don't see more p/d running around, 'cause top tier pvp has a lot of necros rangers and revs. However, to prevent a lot of them showing up in the next meta (but not nerfed to hell) you need to reduce the backwards teleport on p/d 3 and increase the initiative cost on the follow up attack by 1, as well as reduce the bleed duration from it. After that the skill level will be decent, but it needs to be nerfed along with rev ranger and necro, or the next season will be aids

After you kill the pet, put pet swap on cooldown instead of after the ranger switches pets. That way it rewards rangers who pay attention to it, while still offering counterplay for those who have a hard time with it. Make it res after using something like strength of the pack, or move it to a master tier trait in beastmastery . After that, don't touch stats. Like previously mentioned, it should be a mechanic of the class and not something useless, but it still needs to be toned down.~Not a ranger main btw

No, 'cause I enjoy playing sub-par builds in a casual environment. Being pressured to perform at 100% every match is not good for something that is supposed to be a relaxing activity