NorthernRedStar.3054

But If we include blocks and other direct damage mitigation/denial skills, along with endurance regen (and ini regen for thief) and passive traits; Mirage has less than every medium armor class, less than ele, and less survivability than war. In any case that isn’t direct access to on demand cooldowns; then it’s loses out on access over time. Some you call out here, but there would have to be massive reductions to everything else before Mirage would “have to much”. You could remove thief’s flat endurance regen, then delete ranger swords and dagger, and they’d still have more than Mirage. What would you honestly get rid of at this point? Reduce distortion so each clone gave half a second of invulnerability? those are people that see mirage 3clone disort, but they keep throwing abilities at them while internally screaming PERMA INVULN. Hah, yeah, I mean..... can you imagine? Describing a 3 second immunity on a long cooldown and requiring long casts/setup as "permanent" or "spammable", when in reality it has only 5% up-time. Seriously, that's almost as crazy as a mesmer-main describing FB projectile-reflects as spammable. Nobody would be as silly as that. ;) "those are people that see ToC dome, but they keep throwing abilities at them while internally screaming PERMA REFLECT" @Ragnar.4257 said: But If we include blocks and other direct damage mitigation/denial skills, along with endurance regen (and ini regen for thief) and passive traits; Mirage has less than every medium armor class, less than ele, and less survivability than war. In any case that isn’t direct access to on demand cooldowns; then it’s loses out on access over time. Some you call out here, but there would have to be massive reductions to everything else before Mirage would “have to much”. You could remove thief’s flat endurance regen, then delete ranger swords and dagger, and they’d still have more than Mirage. What would you honestly get rid of at this point? Reduce distortion so each clone gave half a second of invulnerability? those are people that see mirage 3clone disort, but they keep throwing abilities at them while internally screaming PERMA INVULN. Hah, yeah, I mean..... can you imagine? Describing a 3 second immunity on a long cooldown and requiring long casts/setup as "permanent" or "spammable", when in reality it has only 5% up-time. Seriously, that's almost as crazy as a mesmer-main describing FB projectile-reflects as spammable. Nobody would be as silly as that. ;) "those are people that see ToC dome, but they keep throwing abilities at them while internally screaming PERMA REFLECT" https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Chapter_3:_Valiant_Bulwark 5s duration, 8s cooldown and shield has 4s uptime on 24s cd. seems spammable to me. ....... Tied to ToC on 75s CD. Nobody sits in ToC doing nothing, so its effectively 75s CD. If they do, then that's a win for you. Shield isn't a reflect. ??? If you watch good firebrands play they absolutely will stop casting pages to get the more high value pages as they're needed. > @Trevor Boyer.6524 said: Basically, Grimjack Weaver meta is going to occur middle of this season when next patch is dropped. If you see that kid on a node, don't 1v1 him, just walk away. Weaver is going to be obtusely dominant at sode node play, very very soon. Yeah with 50% nerfed Chaos Vortex I don't see how a Mirage is ever going to be able to duel them 1v1 anymore when competent weavers are already your hardest match up. To be honest, I didn't come here to debate how to use ToC. IMO holding on to ToC for a 2nd dome is worth doing against Deadeyes and Sic'Em SBs, but generally not mirages. There's other stuff you need to be doing. I was just pointing out the hypocrisy of stating that your own stuff is actually balanced and totally blown out of all proportion by whiners, when you see the exact same coming the other way.lol.

What do you mean, the servers are AMAZONG.

I like how this thread turned from suggestion/complaint -oriented development session into an e-penis measuring contest.

Despite mainly being a roamer, a good thief has a multitude of ways to carry. You can keep 2 people busy near the far point for a good minute or so, or actually outduel some classes if you're knowledgeable enough (with decent micro). Generally speaking, as others have pointed out, you want to be fast - unload your burst and move on, even if the target doesn't die. Early leads and catchups are snowballed from small advantages, which is what your goal is to provide your team with. You should be asking yourself, 1) What is the win condition of this game, 2) How do I contribute, 3) What are the requirements for me to contribute? Mind you, this is a constantly evolving progress that includes the skirmishes and movement you're performing all around the map.

Ye, but that goes for multiple skills, especially regarding stealth + quickness, I quite often get shot at by DJ with no tell or sound before DE goes to stealth. I know DE had quickness, went to stealth and fired DJ, but my client is just not picking it up, same for CnD + Backstab when under quickness, by the time my screen sees CnD its actually Backstab. Same, it seems to be a bug because it doesn't happen every time. No forewarning, no sound, nothing before being blasted by a DJ.

Why not? And the counter- why?I don't like the clone mechanic and dislike fighting all mesmer specs because of that, doesn't make the mechanic op nor should it be deleted This describes deadeye... Nothing much to add...quite sad cheap design...virtually no counter...on many classesAnd utterly useless against others. Silly design, honestly. I grew bored of condi thief already, so I don't really mind if it's getting gutted or not. But it's hardly the only oppressive build out there.

They say they dislike condi thief's burst, but allow a lot of builds with much better +1 potential and less meaningful counterplay to roam free. Oh well, at least holo's getting touched.

If they are to touch deadeye, it is only fair to bring other builds of similar damage potential in line. Because let's be honest, being one-shot simply because you let yourself relax for one second, or were focused on a duel, is not fun for the receiving side. You're allowed to have damage and mobility; however, you should not be granted access to mobility, CC AND damage at the same time.

Condi thief and SA Deadeye are surprisingly similar fundamentally; both have a select few builds and classes they are 'conditioned' (read: built) to curbstomp in a +1 or 1v1 scenario. Having said that, and having extensively played deadeye over the past few days, I don't think they'll become a major meta contender as long as sagebrand, holosmith and spellbreaker stay relevant. Why would I pick deadeye over hölösmith who Prime Light Beam you from stealth, and follow up with 3 more stuns/knockups? If the enemy has a revenant or a core thief, prepare for a hard time.

Squishiness isn't a concept focused solely around health pool total. If that was the case, guardian would be the glassiest class of all. You have to account for all of thief's evade skills (outside dodge having a cast and aftercast time. "Perma-avoidance" isn't a realistic concept. Also, meriting every thief build to be low risk / high reward is grossly underplaying the thief player base and class as a whole. Carrion Amulet sacrifices a lot of condi uptime in favor or survivability and initial "burst". You have to take venom sigils, and if you take venom sigils you lose out on boon and condi removal, since the second sigil almost has to be energy because you're unlikely to be taking Signet of Agility because you need a 2nd stun break for warriors and holos. A lot of reaper damage is very telegraphed, and almost always follows a pattern. With the removal of sigil of agility, reaper will be very easy to dodge since their only quickness access will be the initial cast of Reaper Shroud.

It speaks volumes about a class when you don't grow bored of it after years upon years. Great build variety, flexible and innovative skillset. Feels distinctively different from every other class due to initiative and and how the traits work in tandem yet offer a lot of combinations.

PvE, raids, fractals, PvP.

You just listed the 3 builds/classes that are designed to be like that. Are there 3 builds/classes that are designed to be immune specifically to direct (power) damage? If not, OP raises an interesting point.In my opinion, build automatically beating another build should not 'exist'. Or, should I say, the option to nearly completely nullify someone else's effectiveness should not exist. As per league of legends, the reason I dislike(d) top lane is the heavy focus on counter-picking and meta power picks. The reason (I'd argue) the game's easier to balance is the resource mechanic (mana, energy or health), which discourages spamming and makes a gained advantage stick more noticeably. I want player versus player emphasis, not passive effects beating active effort. To Anet's encouragement and credit, this has been the direction they've been moving in lately.

There a number of reasons I would take the Trickery line in an s/d build for conditions. While I do not play s/d I do play a d/d daredevil build and aspects of the two are similar. Added INI. You allude to this when suggesting taking quickpockets over BA as an advantage but the same holds true of TR over Shadowarts. You are not goind to stealth a lot in an s/d build (just as you do not in d/d condition) and with Prepardness and ini on steal 5 more INI is very useful. I have to disagree. The added +3 init from Preparedness is no different from staying in stealth for 3 seconds thanks to Shadow Rejuv. While you are in stealth for 3s, you are also stacking up Spider Venom, which means in your next Malicious Sneak Attack, you are applying Poison, Bleed, and Torment practically for free. Also, waiting for +2 init on steal has a cooldown of 17s while you can get +3 init every 10s with Quick Pockets -- this is why Quick Pockets is better at giving initiatives than waiting for Steal CD. This is dodge vs stealth and DD vs DE. As DD, I agree with you since you have no access to Malicious Sneak Attack. But as DE, you can save your dodges for evading attacks rather than stacking conditions. Not to mention, as DE, you can easily overload with Poison using both 1k Needle and Binding Shadow -- not only they both apply poison but they also trigger Panic Strike. Then you add Leeching Venom to that from SA -- you got a plethora of options to apply poison. Not necessary ever since Concealing Restoration. My Withdraw can also cleanse using SA when Shadow's Embrace is taken. Of course, SA will not work well with S/D, but with P/D -- DA/SA/DE is great. You have to spend 15 initiatives to get the max 15% bonus -- not ideal. I can get extra condition damage from Leeching Venom, Malicious Sneak Attack, and Malice without spending that much Initiatives. In order for BA to shine, your Steal CD has to be low enough for it to matter. Since you have to sacrifice Sleight for BA, it becomes an unnecessary GM trait. The amount of damage BA offer can be gained from Leeching Venom in SA. The only real advantage of BA is it applies a different kind of condition so it can survive a cleanse or acts as a cover. However, due to the high Steal CD, this wouldn't matter at all. Quick Pockets on the other hand will give you 6 initiatives before Steal goes out of cooldown, this is the reason why they want to nerf this. It just gives a lot of fuel for the Thief condition damage build. In a 30s time frame, you can Steal twice with Sleight (net 4 initiatives), apply 6 stacks of Confusion for 3s with BA (WvW), or have net 11 initiatives from Quick Pockets (9 from swapping and 2 from steal). You can see the advantage right away when you put them side by side. BA is the weakest of the 3 GMs. I am not discounting the front load capability of BA but in comparison to other GM traits, it is indeed trash. If we're talking about the PvE version, I would undoubtedly agreed with you, but the nerfed version in PvP and WvW is designed to discourage players from taking it. Consider me discouraged. I'm not sure why would you go D/D daredevil when you can use something better -- P/D Deadeye (DA/SA/DE)? Burning Initiatives to stack bleed makes no sense when you can do so through Malicious Sneak Attack that stacks Poison, Bleed, and Torment practically for free. You should not limit yourself to one build. I have p/d DE as well. My take on the TRickery line is totally different then your own. You talk about staying in stealth for 4 seconds for INI. I do not stay in stealth that long. It not worth it. The SA i take is not rejuv. It is Rending for the boon theft. I do not take shadows embrace in my p/d build for cleanses. I take Hidden thief. Well, I don't like staying in stealth that long either but that is what ArenaNet designed SA for. In order to stack Leeching, you have to stay in stealth at least for 3s. I don't stay in stealth longer than 3s though since I use the last second for Malicious Sneak Attacks. I'm still not a believer in Rending because whether they have boon or not, they still die due to Poison and Vulnerability. The only boon that I would like to strip is Resistance, but that is very rare. I am yet to get in a fight that boon strip in necessary. In PvE, I would take boons strip right away since bosses spams boons. If you don't take Shadow's Embrace, what is your cleanse? There's so many ways to stealth which means many opportunities to cleanse. I believe that it is rarely cleanse and I mentioned that as the advantage of BA is it can act as a cover. However, the way they nerfed Confusion makes it not worth it. It used to be that Condition Damage factors into the damage over time, but that is not the case anymore. The damage over time is flat 10dmg/s per stack at level 80 and the bulk of the damage is when skill is used. So if they don't use any skills, you'll only deal the base damage -- that's not very convincing. Any target that is in a brink of dying will die to anything, even from Malicious Sneak Attack that stacks 3 different DOTs. Even if they don't use any skills, the DOTs will kill them. I think that is my problem with Confusion, it requires an action from your target and if they didn't do anything, you get nothing from your investment. Don't get me wrong, the damage from Confusion is massive, but it is unreliable against competent targets. Confusion doesn't even work on me and I'm not even as skilled as you. The way I look at the trait is; will it work on me? My answer to that is obviously no. In WvW you have to expect to have all kinds of condition on you if you are in a fight. With SA, I don't have to care what conditions I have on me, I'll just cleanse it away. I think you mean Guardian. Necro's stolen item is bleed. Either way, both Necro and Guardian has a lot of ways of dealing with conditions so even if you overload them with conditions, it will either be easily cleansed or transferred to you. So I would hesitate at overloading those professions with conditions, especially the Necro since it can backfire. Also, I disagree. Sleight reduces the Steal CD further down to 17s, thus it is superior to BA which it has to deal with a 22s Steal CD. But I was not arguing that Sleight is better than BA, rather that Quick Pockets is better than both. As for your point, yes that is an impressive amount of conditions, however we are not fighting unresponsive targets and most of those who roam in WvW are very competent. This is why I don't front load my conditions rather I spread them out, thus I pick SA over Trick. As for SA, I can do a back to back Malicious Sneak Attack using Shadow Meld that stacks Poison, Bleed and Torment for an extended amount of time. That seems to be the case. EDIT: typo On P/d thief I use Hide in Shadows along with shadowstep. That generally enough cleanses and comes with the add of the lower cooldown on deception. I find the added stealths from hidden thief invaluable and the best way to set up your burst once the DE has malice stacks high enough to garner the full torment add on of malicious. I do not like using a shadow meld up here. I use shadow meld stealths for the I am in trouble moments and the CnD/steal and stolen item stealths for weaving stealth.How would you rate p/d condi in this meta?

Every class is braindead.

I favor the added mobility DD has over DE. The aftercast on rifle skills feels clunky, to boot.

Yes. I've been looking at ways to slowly change the build I'm using, in preparation of the upcoming changes.

Has anyone else tried this? With the increasing thief hate in the form of elementalists and core necros, how was it? The CD reduction works really nice with the vigor of Bountiful Theft - assuming it doesn't get corrupted/stolen. You also apply the poison burst from Steal more often. Also makes landing Cloak n Dagger easier for follow-up daze, setting for more condi application, boon steal, or autos for the finish. EDIT: I think venom skills should have an active portion, after which the passive part is applied. Not only would this increase the skill cap and ways to apply these skills in combat (particularly outside party share), but it'd look cooler thematics-wise, too. Back in Guild Wars, assassin had Falling Spider, Horns of the Ox - all these fancy animal-themed skill names, with looks and animations to boast. I personally think that'd be a wicked way to rework them in the future.

Translation: "I want everyone to run into melee range of my own overtuned class, and not dodge my 40 stacks of burn/25 stacks of might!" Man, it's almost like there is strategic diversity in the game!

Sounds like a classic case of "I think I'm doing everything right, so I must be doing everything right?!" On top of the usual exaggeration, of course.

I don't think people have issues dueling FA ele.

I have to say i dont agree with you here which is strange.Pets can be kited only if the ranger does not run beast mastery which most do run. Otherwise the pet has far-greater mobility passively than you do as a player in combat let alone ones that have dashes, leaps, blinks, etc There is no realistic kiting them at general in combat speeds. The only way you avoid pets generally is if you have constant access to superspeed or stealth which breaks their targeting causing them to run back to the pet owner or to another target till you re appear this might be enough of a gap to make pets seem avoidable. But generally on most professions that cannot stealth often there is no kiting the pet. The pet is going to get you how much it gets you depends on the situation. The pets are viable mostly at point blank range even with beastmastery traited because 80% of pet attacks are 1s+ cast time and with stop animation , the more skilled the opponents the harder to land any pet attack as you need to find gaps in the enemy defensive rotations and even if manage that..the rock gazelle is the only one that can deal huge power burst due to a bug when it happens...other pets can deal as much dmg as an AA from a warrior or thief..which is still good in my opinion. The main reason why rangers are forced to get beastmastery is because Anet (apologetically) said that increasing attck/speed of core pets would cause problems with the same models used in the core game hence why HoT/PoF pets are better overall. Pets are the ranger mechanic and they're part of the dmg not a separate entity like people want to believe, without the pets the overall dmg of rangers drop by a lot...almost by 70% , outside couple heavy hitting skills ( maul and rapid fire ) the DPS of ranger is rather lacklustre ; considering the fact that PvP offers a more controlled DPS environment, a PvE benchmark can be used more effectively to demonstrate what I am saying. My only gripe about ranger pets is that attempting to kill the pet is not a viable strategy to reduce the rangers effectiveness (currently). The pets that are not the birds are generally as tanky as another player and can be swapped too easily on demand or revived via soul beast fusion with no punishment. In pvp or wvw if you are under attack by a ranger killing the pet should be a viable option to reducing the rangers effectiveness. But you dont really have that choice so you have to ignore the pet and just avoid its key skills for the most part. P.S I don't justify bugged attacks like rock gazelle and with that said I believe that tanky pets should offer support option for the player and only rock gazelle remains outside the spectrum and possibly bristleback, but I do expect squishy pets, that die in a couple aoe , to deal as much dmg as other profession auto-attacks in the 1-2k range ..anything less would be completely unreasonable Any pet that can perform a Disabling attack even more so attacks that are not commanded by the ranger do need to be made more visible imo. Some pets have these kind of things others dont. I agree with this. I think heavier emphasis should be placed on well-timed pet swaps, pet protection and control (F3 anyone?) and their active skills. Instead of, as it currently stands, fights being at times decided by random AI behavior that cannot be predicted. Pets like Rock Gazelle are obnoxious as hell, not only because they have multiple CC effects, but because they hit hard as heck on top of that.

Spamming is something only amateur thieves do, lol. Yet, it seems to be a common consensus among other class mains that they can just get away with it. Also, this is about PvP. Dagger mainhand has pitiful autoattack damage, and sword with strength rune is just enough to have some semblance of presence, but it takes far too long to ramp up against warriors and alike.

What is this 'burst' that Anet thinks condi thief has? Going full-on ape Panic Strike - dodge - Steal will just get your condis cleased by Shake it Off! or water attunement or Consume Conditions in the matter of seconds. The build is already grind 'em out -style as it stands. Unless, of course, you're +1'ing someone who's already blown their cooldowns - but in that case, Fresh Air Ele, DE, Revenant; all these builds kill people faster. What I'm feeling here, is the slow gutting of dagger mainhand damage until all you got is chip damage.

U know it's funny I play the s/d condi build for 3 months and get destroyed by holo's and weaver and guards cuz they have ur burst and condi,holo has the power burst but 10 times the sustain. Than I jump on warrior and fair way better after playing the toon as a whole a few months lmao yeah thief's so op.And I am not saying warrior needs nerfs cuz it doesnt, except rampage and maybe 25% vs barriers (not 7%) lol 1) Weaver and guardian (non-DH) are extremely good against thieves. Particularly core guard with their root. You can out-maneuver and out-skill both of them, but it'll take more time than you'd want to spend. 2) You should beat warrior in a 1v1 scenario and having access to most of your cooldowns. You should be able to at least make holos spend their Elixir U and reset the fight. The way they win the fight is via stunlock, but if you can Flanking Strike and steal their boons during their aftercasts, it can turn into a cakewalk unless the holo's really good. 3) Rampage is an auto-win button against most classes, and you should break some distance between the two of you as soon as you see it activated, unless you've got initiative to spend on dodging. 4) 'disgusting amount of condi damage for just jumping around' is wrong. A lot of the burst comes from landing Steal and stacking Spider Venom (-infuced attacks).