Sir Vincent III.1286

Part of playing any game is to understand mechanics and taking note of animation timing. In an arcade fighting game (i.e. Street Fighter) you have to time your attacks else you'll miss the certain area of your target where you can deal a lot of damage or denying them from blocking your attacks. If you mistimed your attacks, you won't get the expected favorable result. The Thief profession works in the similar way. You have to sometimes wait for the animation to finish before following up with your attacks. Sometimes that delays are there by design, which to be honest have frustrated many Thieves ever since (i.e. Heartseeker's after cast delay). So you have to understand that you have to control the urge to juggle your opponent midair because it won't work in this game. Even though I agree that you should be able to, it's just not how this game is design, thus I won't think they will change that anytime soon. As for weakening charge, you have to literally wait for their feet to touch the ground when pulling and yours to touch the ground when teleporting (due to aftercast delay) before you can do anything to them. This is the flaw of the game engine's inability to process everything so the game is designed to give the engine time to process, thus the delays. In other games with similar interactions and amount of effects that are being processed in real time (i.e. Destiny 2), I have not experience the design flaw that exists in GW2. GW2's engine is just an old design using old technology that is now struggling to keep up with our beastly computers.

Keep Basilisk Venom as is but make the "turn to stone" a status effect called "Petrified". If you are petrified, you will receive no effect from your boons (i.e. Regen will not heal you, Protection will not grant dmg reduction, Aegis will not block, etc.) for the duration of the effect. This will be the opposite of Resistance ignoring effect of conditions, which Petrified will ignore the effects from boons. This will make this skill very appealing and effective without stripping any boon from the target.

P/P also has way better synergy with Invigorating Precision, one of the best traits Thieves have access to.I'm not sure why everyone is dissing P/P here. The only thing bad about it is it has no built in multitarget at all, but it's a very viable set. It's arguably more generally usable in PvE than Rifle is with the latter being a lot more situational. The difference, as previously mentioned, is mobility. If you're fine with P/P while sluggish, then that's fine if you like that. However, Rifle is objectively way better due to its single target power, better range, and access to mobility in comparison to P/P. P/P needs a lot of work and ArenaNet promised long time ago that they are working on it, but that was like, what? 2-3 years ago?

IMO, just change the runes to Scholar and you're good to go. If that rune is too expensive for you, Ogre is a cheaper alternative.

To be honest, I only really want Impact Strike to have the following; a dash mechanic from 300 range for each strike usable in midair.better animation with visual sprites so everyone know that you're using an Elite skill. The bigger the flashier the better.Also, it doesn't have to be fist, which is really weird since you're holding a weapon in each hand or using both hands. The first strike should be an elbow strike, followed by knee uppercut, and finish off with a drop kick using both legs. If the target is downed, we simply step on them with both feet -- M.Bison style.Also if you're using a staff, it should be a special animation doing the Impact Strike with your staff. First strike will be a dashing thrust, followed by the staff swing upward scoop, and finished with a staff ground slam.

For open world PvE, you're better off with the staff + P/P since you can use the staff for AoE and P/P for single target. Rifle is cumbersome in open world PvE since the mobs comes in number and Rifle is mostly single target. Also marking every single mob when one dies is a big PITA. I wish Collateral Damage will automatically randomly mark one of the mobs hit by it.

Channeled skills acts like a condition damage. Once the skill is applied, it will continue to deal damage for the duration, just like conditions, whether you're in stealth or not as long as you remain in range. There is no other solution to this other than to get out of range.

As long as you cannot decap while in stealth, I don't believe D/P can be meta. S/D boon denial should be meta.

I don't agree with this. The reason why Unload stacks might is because you pay for it with initiatives. Auto-attacks would stack might faster than unload in your proposition and that would be a big problem. IMO, the solution instead is to reduce the risk. Since Lotus Strike has .25s casting time, I think that would be the best skill to add a .25s evade frame.

This is so true. I so hate Mesmers and even so Mirages. And I'm starting to hate Firebrands too.

You have a lot of crit chance and high crit damage, however poor power and survivability. I can see what you're trying to do here, you build Might stacks with P/P and cantrips then swap to Rifle for finisher. In a party where you have someone in charge of keeping everyone alive, this can work. However, you kinda overkilled on the precision. What you need is base power. If I were to tweak this, I would swap the Head, Chest, Legs and Amulet pieces to Berserker. This will give you some power without sacrificing too much precision and ferocity. If you add 25 stacks of Might, you get that nice 3k power and 80% crit (100% with fury). The reason you want power is not only to make your crit damage higher, but you also want your skills to scale higher. I did this very same thing with one of my Thieves, full Assassin gears, but it didn't do that much damage despite of my attacks critting all the time. So I swapped the weapons and trinkets to Berserker and you can see the difference right away. Since ascended gear is really expensive to make, I didn't change the head, chest, and legs, which would have been the best solution. So I only changed the ones I can afford to replace. Since this is just a theory in your part, don't make the same mistake that I did.

P/P has a projectile denial in a form of combo finish projectile that applies blind. Not very reliable, but it exists. Both weapon set has no access to stealth, so that's not really an advantage of the Rifle. If we're talking about DE Rifle vs DE P/P, then P/P also have access to stealth. In fact, even Core P/P has access to stealth if SA is taken and DD P/P has access to stealth if Bound is taken. So it really comes down to mobility that P/P is lacking which is needed the most at 900 range. Rifle have shadowstep and infinite Swiftness at 1200 range. This is why P/P is not a valid choice since you'll be purposely limiting your options.

This is similar to my proposal so long time ago. Backstab, for example, should not require stealth, instead it should become available depending to your position to your target. If you're behind the target, Skill#1 should change to Backstab. The Thief will then have to work to get behind their target while not in stealth. Stealth at this point will simply be a defensive mechanism instead of a per-requisite for stealth attacks and stealth attacks would cease to exist. Sure you can go in stealth to sneak behind your target, but that will serve as a telegraph to your intention to backstab. I personally never like the idea of stealth attack, but of course, ArenaNet knows best even though historically they never did.

This is actually an acceptable solution. Stealth Attacks are only available within 5s after going in stealth. I'd support this. That's only if you take SA. You lose that mitigation if in other builds. But yes, a 5s window for stealth attack after stealth is acceptable...to me, at least. It doesn't actually fix the problem of stacking stealth OOC/from long range and just timing out the duration into a new stealth before the visual effect drops for the burst, though. That is because stacking stealth isn't the problem and it requires no fixing. If you can time your new stealth without your target noticing, then all props to you for pulling it off. It's extremely easy to do with only a little practice and is a core skill of playing D/D. I don't think it will have enough of an effect to resolve much.Having to practice it shows that it would be the best solution since it will separate skilled and unskilled Thieves from taking advantage of extended stealth. There is also room for error that will create a window of opportunity for the would-be-victim to react.

It is unfortunate that P/P is not a valid ranged weapon set at the moment.

I want to break this down since there are valid points in the OPs post. This depends on the build and who's using it. In general, not all Thief can play meta build and often tweaked to support their playstyle. This make each Thief build unique for the player instead of have a general build called meta. The reason for the tweak is proof that the Thief is not "relevant through every single meta" and there are times that Thief would be a very bad pick. This is simply not true. Compare to the Guardian who can save themselves and others at the same time, Thieves struggles to even save themselves. I have to say that you have a valid point here. I, myself, do not like watching Thieves as a decap +1 profession. It's degrading to the profession to act as a gopher (errand boy). For a different reasoning from yours, I want to see Thieves more invested in team fights. Also, I do agree that something has to be done with SB#5. Shadowstep has 50s CD while SB#5 has 6s CD that can be used twice in a row at full Initiative. There was a discussion about SB#5, but I don't think there has been a solution to this issue. However, I disagree with your point about Sword#2. Infiltrator Return only last 15s thus the Thief has to find the balance to pull off what you have described. That required high level skill and experience to know where to place return and when to return. Besides, locking Sword#2 to Infiltrator's Return means that the Thief have sacrificed access to Infiltrator's Strike for a short window of tactical advantage. Also there is a risk that the Thief placed the return point on the opposite side of the map which is an acceptable trade off for what benefit the skill provides. Although I agree that SB#5 needs to be addressed, but if the Thief failed at decap, doesn't that mean you keep your node? How is that a reward for the Thief? Even though Thief has high mobility, it is by no means unmatched. IMO, seeing Thief in the matches again is a good thing. Seeing the Thief as a gopher really irritates me. The decap +1 role has to die.

This is actually an acceptable solution. Stealth Attacks are only available within 5s after going in stealth. I'd support this. That's only if you take SA. You lose that mitigation if in other builds. But yes, a 5s window for stealth attack after stealth is acceptable...to me, at least. It doesn't actually fix the problem of stacking stealth OOC/from long range and just timing out the duration into a new stealth before the visual effect drops for the burst, though.That is because stacking stealth isn't the problem and it requires no fixing. If you can time your new stealth without your target noticing, then all props to you for pulling it off.

This is actually an acceptable solution. Stealth Attacks are only available within 5s after going in stealth. I'd support this. That's only if you take SA. You lose that mitigation if in other builds. But yes, a 5s window for stealth attack after stealth is acceptable...to me, at least.

I'm voting for the second question, "What feels/felt more rewarding?" As for the first question, "What takes more skill?" -- that would be option #1. I'm playing a game, not working, thus I don't want to work hard for something that I can achieve by playing.

Getting taunted in stealth has never happened to me, so it's interesting. I agree that if taunted, they should attack the provocateur. I can't think of a reason why the Deadeye would not be attacking. It does sounds like a bug. Unless...the Deadeye stowed their weapon after getting taunted. Not 100% sure, but it's possible.

But humour me for a moment, what builds would suffer from my suggestion? Are you saying other thief builds would suffer because they can't stack 12 seconds of stealth? Or are you saying that the oneshot back stab stealth builds are fine and don't need balancing? Due to this reason: Every builds. And I would argue that If thats the only stealth they could stack then it would be fine. But being able to stack that much stealth and still have cooldowns which further extend the stealth is a problem. But In general I would seek to discourage builds that can approach in stealth and then one shot a target. Then the Dev has to give Thief reliable access to Protection, Stability, Resilience, Alacrity, and, most of all, Aegis. Not to mention, passive invulnerability. That way, we don't have to use stealth when approaching our target. The fact that Thief has limited to no access to these defensive skills, extended stealth is necessary for our survival. No it doesn't, It only needs these things if anet deleted stealth. Stealthing for longer than 6 seconds is overkill. There's more to playing thief than sitting in stealth for long durations. Thief doesn't need the abillity to approach unseen and hit 15k openers before the target can react. I'm not trying to hate thief here. If you read my replies in the WvW marked thread you can see that I strongly advocate for the reveal mechanic to be completely reworked as 2 second stealth's followed by a 5 second reveal guts stealth builds completely. Its completely unfair. But to say thief NEEDS to stealth for long durations like more than 7 seconds to be effective is a gross exaggeration. The extended stealth is not the one doing all the one-shot-kills or dealing massive damage. You're proposing a solution to something else that is not even directly related to the problem presented here. Stealth is not used just for offensive positioning, rather it is the core defense mechanism of the Thief profession. Stealthing for longer than 6s or even 1hr is not overkill. Stealth does nothing to anyone other than the Thief and as someone has mentioned here, there is no interaction. Since that is the case, nerfing stealth is grossly inappropriate if the cause of the problem is MBS and DJ or other sources that boosts damage. If the Thief can hit your for 15k, would it matter if the Thief is in stealth or not? I get hit for more than that by a Soulbeast. Ranger didn't even need stealth to deal that much damage. So the fact of the matter is, the damage is too much no matter what the profession, it's not about extended stealth. The fact that you're so focus on extended stealth tells me that your objective is not about balancing the damage, rather to nerf the Thief unnecessarily and using MBS and DJ as a vehicle to get there. That's so dishonest. TL;DR:You want to nerf a defensive mechanic due to complainst about offensive mechanics, makes zero sense.

But humour me for a moment, what builds would suffer from my suggestion? Are you saying other thief builds would suffer because they can't stack 12 seconds of stealth? Or are you saying that the oneshot back stab stealth builds are fine and don't need balancing? Due to this reason: Every builds. And I would argue that If thats the only stealth they could stack then it would be fine. But being able to stack that much stealth and still have cooldowns which further extend the stealth is a problem. But In general I would seek to discourage builds that can approach in stealth and then one shot a target.Then the Dev has to give Thief reliable access to Protection, Stability, Resilience, Alacrity, and, most of all, Aegis. Not to mention, passive invulnerability. That way, we don't have to use stealth when approaching our target. The fact that Thief has limited to no access to these defensive skills, extended stealth is necessary for our survival.

It'd be an interesting build consideration if it did care always care about which skill is on cooldown. Improvisation is still powered by Steal/Swipe/Mark and therefore dependent on cooldown, after all, so it's not unlimited, and in a real PvP situation it's probably not practical to ensure that you always have exactly one utility skill on cooldown every time you Steal. If they're looking to avoid the RNG aspect, it probably should always recharge a skill on cooldown if there is one. They won't do that due to Swindlers, Lead attacks, and Sleight of Hand. Imagine this, I use Assassin's signet, then Steal. Since it is the only skill on CD, it resets. Then I use it again. That's a total of 1080 power boost. Yeah, no. Doesn't work like that. You'll only get 1 assassin's signet still, since its a buff. You won't be able to have 2 of the same buffs at the same time.It doesn't stack like Might? If that is the case, I stand corrected.

But humour me for a moment, what builds would suffer from my suggestion? Are you saying other thief builds would suffer because they can't stack 12 seconds of stealth? Or are you saying that the oneshot back stab stealth builds are fine and don't need balancing? Due to this reason: Every builds.

Thats because its completely false. A one shot thief DE at the time of its backstab can achieve the following stats: 3476 power (without might) and 260% critical damage. Couple that with 15% damage boost against marked targets, the 10% boost against targets above 50% (CS trait ferocious strikes), 5% given from scholar runes and you have more than enough burst damage to take out even tanky targets. You're claim that these builds can only oneshot pure glass is nonsense. Further more this build has 10 seconds of quickness after the backstab lands. So anything that survives the first hit will die in 0.2 seconds afterwards anyway. Also not trying to convince you. I'm simply pointing out that you are wrong. You're ignoring the fact that marking someone is a dead giveaway that something really bad will happen. If you just stood there, you deserve to be one shotted. In my experience, most of my targets puts up a defense after being marked denying me that one shot MBS. I've also denied multiple one shot MBS with my Thief. So no, you're not convincing anyone.