New Thief Elite Preview.

[kash.9213]

5 hours ago, Shiyo.3578 said:

Please be an actual elite and not a dead on arrival elite like deadeye.

Deadeye was awesome on arrival. It's still a good elite even if stealth on dodge is kind of dumb and annoying, I'd rather have Cursed Bullet back somehow. And, Shadow Meld needs to go for a better Kneel stance or something. 

[Zacchary.6183]

5 minutes ago, kash.9213 said:

I'd rather have Cursed Bullet back somehow.

I would rather have the initial Malicious Restoration back that ate your malice but healed upwards of 11k and cured a condition per malice. It was godly with m7.

[draxynnic.3719]

6 hours ago, UNOwen.7132 said:

It is, actually. Consider how much effort other classes have to put into keeping all the boons up for their party. And then you want thief to just be able to press 1 button to do it. Hell, even the "challenge" you propose wouldnt be there. You just press the button as often as you need, and whatever initiative is left you can spend, its extremely straightforward.

Like alacren pressing F4 on recharge and just making sure that the rest of their rotation doesn't leave them short on energy when F4 comes on recharge?

 

That's it. That's the distinction between alacren and a DPS ren in gameplay terms. Appropriate use of utilities can add more support, but a hypothetical support thief would have access to utilities too.

 

Alacmirage isn't much more difficult. Quickbrand requires pressing more buttons but still isn't exactly test flying an X-15. 

 

You're presenting thief support as a false dichotomy between being overly simple and overly complex. A single support effect on the weapons bar that consumes initiative? The challenge would be in knowing how much initiative to spend on that versus how much to spend doing DPS. There's room for a second support effect as the sneak attack, which might be being fuelled by C&D, requiring balancing resource use. And there's room for support utilities that might need to be used at the right time for best effect.

 

Seems to me like that could get it to a level that at least clears 'press F4 on recharge and just make sure you don't spend too much energy when it's about to finish recharging' or 'make your entire build about dodging with dual staff and dodge as much as possible' without becoming a piano that destroys the initiative mechanic.

[kash.9213]

14 minutes ago, Zacchary.6183 said:

I would rather have the initial Malicious Restoration back that ate your malice but healed upwards of 11k and cured a condition per malice. It was godly with m7.

That would be insane, but imagine putting something deliberate and effective like that on your team. 

[UNOwen.7132]

27 minutes ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

Like alacren pressing F4 on recharge and just making sure that the rest of their rotation doesn't leave them short on energy when F4 comes on recharge?

 

That's it. That's the distinction between alacren and a DPS ren in gameplay terms. Appropriate use of utilities can add more support, but a hypothetical support thief would have access to utilities too.

... you do know Alacrity Renegade isnt a support build, but a DPS build with incidental alacrity? Were not talking about being able to maintain exactly 1 boon (Thief can already do that with DE. Its not good). Were talking about maintaining a whole bunch of them. 

 

 

27 minutes ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

Alacmirage isn't much more difficult. Quickbrand requires pressing more buttons but still isn't exactly test flying an X-15. 

 

You're presenting thief support as a false dichotomy between being overly simple and overly complex. A single support effect on the weapons bar that consumes initiative? The challenge would be in knowing how much initiative to spend on that versus how much to spend doing DPS. There's room for a second support effect as the sneak attack, which might be being fuelled by C&D, requiring balancing resource use. And there's room for support utilities that might need to be used at the right time for best effect.

 

And the other buidls you present do in fact involve a lot more than just pressing 1 button. Thats why they function. And the dichotomy is between being too easy, and not being thief. Sure, you can make multiple of the skills provide boons, but then you create a set in stone rotation that ignores what makes initiative unique. And if its just one, then providing support is too easily. As for utilities, same issue, runs into thief not being thief.

 

27 minutes ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

Seems to me like that could get it to a level that at least clears 'press F4 on recharge and just make sure you don't spend too much energy when it's about to finish recharging' or 'make your entire build about dodging with dual staff and dodge as much as possible' without becoming a piano that destroys the initiative mechanic.

There is no way to reach a point where its not defeating the purpose of initiative *or* too easy to maintain support. Its either or.

[UNOwen.7132]

1 hour ago, Zacchary.6183 said:

ABSOLUTELY WRONG. You skipped over them because you are fairly new to thief and you had no way to do any research on the topic. And I can make that assumption because of your disappointingly bad attempt at "theorycrafting" (Seriously? sm0l poison carries a bleed-heavy build? "thing sucks because it isn't overpowered"? Come on lol) But now you have some research material with the old forum's archive I gracefully provided (You're welcome btw), you can now actually do some some decent research and have a better understanding of thief's plight. The worst stat combination in the game back then was Power/prec/Magic Find, btw.

Oh wow, you're trying to talk about 2013. When people still thought D/D was thieves best weapon set. 🤣

Except, it doesn't even mention anything about warriors or guardians replacing thief. So your lovely example is not only irrelevant, its wrong. 

 

No, you make assumptions because you dont play thief and dont even remotely understand even the most basic things such as "boosting a builds damage by 33-100% makes a bad build good". You see my theorycrafting, but lack even the fundamentals to understand why its correct, or the knowledge to see that it wasnt me that came up with it, it was the thief community as a whole. You are just embarassing yourself. 

 

1 hour ago, Zacchary.6183 said:

Go back to your ele main pls.

EDIT: Oh, and I was right about those runes, boyo.

Since you have done nothing but project your mistakes on me, am I safe to assume youre an Ele main who has never touched thief? Yeah probably. So go back to your Ele main.

[Zacchary.6183]

16 minutes ago, UNOwen.7132 said:

>NO U!

Keep it up. I am almost convinced you even have one.

EDIT: In all seriousness though, I have already shown you don't argue in good faith. You blatantly avoid questions you know will expose how much you actually know and you dance around the point after I produced evidence of these facts. The only reason why thieves dropped the profession was because anet gave the thief community an opportunity to collaborate with the dev team, only to show they didn't even consider anything the community said. If you even cared to read anything I have given you, you would see that.

But you don't care about facts or discussion because the whole reason why you argue in the first place is to look like you're knowledgeable. You're not and almost everything you have said in the thread can be discarded as an argument. Wikipedia only tells you so much. I hope you learn a bit more about the profession and bring something to discussions other than toxicity, because I have given you plenty of chances. I'm not wasting time on red herrings, strawmans, projection and conjecture spam, so enjoy your victory over this butchered discourse. Have a good night.

Edited October 9, 2021 by Zacchary.6183

[UNOwen.7132]

32 minutes ago, Zacchary.6183 said:

Keep it up. I am almost convinced you even have one.

EDIT: In all seriousness though, I have already shown you don't argue in good faith. You blatantly avoid questions you know will expose how much you actually know and you dance around the point after I produced evidence of these facts. The only reason why thieves dropped the profession was because anet gave the thief community an opportunity to collaborate with the dev team, only to show they didn't even consider anything the community said. If you even cared to read anything I have given you, you would see that.

No. What you have shown is that you don't argue in good faith. You bring up things from the first year of the game as if they are relevant or even show what you said they show (they didnt, literally search for "guardian" or "warrior" in the thing you linked and prepare to be disappointed), didnt involve a time people had not figured out the game yet (The ele meta in PvE was yet to be discovered too) or just had any point at all. Oh and what you say is once again not actually in what you linked. Yes I read what you linked. Just making up something and linking an old thread don't work, sorry.

 

32 minutes ago, Zacchary.6183 said:

But you don't care about facts or discussion because the whole reason why you argue in the first place is to look like you're knowledgeable. You're not and almost everything you have said in the thread can be discarded as an argument. Wikipedia only tells you so much. I hope you learn a bit more about the profession and bring something to discussions other than toxicity, because I have given you plenty of chances. I'm not wasting time on red herrings, strawmans, projection and conjecture spam, so enjoy your victory over this butchered discourse. Have a good night.

Says the guy who has made it very clear he doesnt care about facts or discussions, only argues because he wants to look nowledgeable, and is the one whose "arguments" (if you can call them that) can be discarded. And you are the one who needs to learn about thief.

 

Remember, of the things you proposed, 3 already existed in the game exactly as you proposed them (meaning not only did you not know the profession at all, you didnt even bother to check real quick), a good chunk involved applying stealths to allies via smokefields which you didnt know only Shortbow 2 could do, involved applying vigor to thieves (Which you didnt know thief already does even though its a literally mandatory trait in all competitive gamemodes), suggested a 50% speed boost on stealth for moving around the map (which doesnt work because out of combat 33% is the highest you can get, which you would know if you played thief because Meld with Shadows is a minor trait), didnt know why stealth ressing loses to cleaves (even though this is basic thief knowledge) and didnt know that black powder is much too small to cover a point (which you would know if you played thief because D/P is pretty much the meta build for years now). 

 

Beyond that, you have shown you dont understand why deadly ambition made D/D meta (even as you saw that it increased your damage by at least 33%), didnt know that Pulmonary Impact does practically no damage in PvP, didnt understand why its not viable in PvE, and so on and so forth. You have shown your knowledge of thief to be so lackluster, I am certain your average thief hater would know the class better.

[draxynnic.3719]

13 hours ago, UNOwen.7132 said:

... you do know Alacrity Renegade isnt a support build, but a DPS build with incidental alacrity? Were not talking about being able to maintain exactly 1 boon (Thief can already do that with DE. Its not good). Were talking about maintaining a whole bunch of them. 

Yep, because every raid and strike group, and most high-level fractal groups, ask for alacrity because what is probably the second most important boon in cooperative game modes is sooooo incidental.

 

And even then, your claim is untrue, since the rest of the build can potentially be other forms of support, such as stability from Jalis, projectile block from Ventari, and/or the Kalla elite. "Support" does not mean you need to have even a single piece of healing power gear. But the defining expectation of alacren? Press F4 on recharge and don't mess up your energy management so that you can't.

13 hours ago, UNOwen.7132 said:

 

And the other buidls you present do in fact involve a lot more than just pressing 1 button. Thats why they function. And the dichotomy is between being too easy, and not being thief. Sure, you can make multiple of the skills provide boons, but then you create a set in stone rotation that ignores what makes initiative unique. And if its just one, then providing support is too easily. As for utilities, same issue, runs into thief not being thief.

And hypothetical support thief could also involve pressing more than one button, as I outlined. Have a direct initiative spender and a stealth attack with supportive effects. Have utilities that add to the support.

13 hours ago, UNOwen.7132 said:

There is no way to reach a point where its not defeating the purpose of initiative *or* too easy to maintain support. Its either or.

It's... not exactly groundbreaking for a support build to lean on a mix of weapon skills, utility skills, and mechanic skills to provide their support. You'd have some support skills that rely on initiative, some that don't. Claiming it's either or is a false dichotomy when it can be both.

 

Thief gameplay already involves combining the use of weapon skills that use initiative with utility skills and steal (or the steal substitute) that do not. Support thief using a mix of weapon skills that use initiative with utility skills and a steal-replacement skill that are on cooldowns would just be following the trend that's been established with thief from release.

[Forum Moderator.3074]

I would like to remind you all about keeping your posts civil and on topic and please refrain of using your posts to personally attack other users.

[UNOwen.7132]

1 hour ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

Yep, because every raid and strike group, and most high-level fractal groups, ask for alacrity because what is probably the second most important boon in cooperative game modes is sooooo incidental.

It is. It's juts a bonus it provides. You can have actual support builds take over alacrity, but the DPS loss from having a power revenant provide it is so little its often worth doing it. Condi can do it too, for an even smaller DPS loss, but you need 2 revenants. Condi thief incidentally provides vigor, Condi Berserker incidentally provides the banners. They provide something important, but they're not support builds, they're DPS builds.

 

1 hour ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

And even then, your claim is untrue, since the rest of the build can potentially be other forms of support, such as stability from Jalis, projectile block from Ventari, and/or the Kalla elite. "Support" does not mean you need to have even a single piece of healing power gear. But the defining expectation of alacren? Press F4 on recharge and don't mess up your energy management so that you can't.

Those are different builds. That build does not use Ventari or Jalis, it uses Shiro. You could switch to a different, actual suport build in theory. But it would be a different build, with different legends, different gear and different trait. Support means your focus is on providing support for your allies at the cost of doing low DPS. Alacrity Renegades focus is on doing damage, and their DPS is high.

 

1 hour ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

And hypothetical support thief could also involve pressing more than one button, as I outlined. Have a direct initiative spender and a stealth attack with supportive effects. Have utilities that add to the support.

It's... not exactly groundbreaking for a support build to lean on a mix of weapon skills, utility skills, and mechanic skills to provide their support. You'd have some support skills that rely on initiative, some that don't. Claiming it's either or is a false dichotomy when it can be both.

Ok, in that case you created a build that has a set in stone rotation that defeats the point of initiative. Which is just as bad. Thats the problem, its one, or the other. You can't make a support thief build that doesnt defeat the point of initiative *or* is too easy. Its one or the other. As for utility skills, their cooldown is too prohibitive to really carry the build, and again, making theif into a set rotation build makes it very not thief. 

 

1 hour ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

Thief gameplay already involves combining the use of weapon skills that use initiative with utility skills and steal (or the steal substitute) that do not. Support thief using a mix of weapon skills that use initiative with utility skills and a steal-replacement skill that are on cooldowns would just be following the trend that's been established with thief from release.

Not really. Here is the deal. What defines thief is being free-form. Thief should be able to alter its rotation quickly without falling too far behind, or use its utility skills interchangable or when the situation calls for it. You can't do that with a support build that involves utilities, as that would instead be a set in stone rotation that is the opposite of freeform, and the opposite of thief. It would play like Ranger or Elementalist, not thief.

[draxynnic.3719]

7 hours ago, UNOwen.7132 said:

It is. It's juts a bonus it provides. You can have actual support builds take over alacrity, but the DPS loss from having a power revenant provide it is so little its often worth doing it. Condi can do it too, for an even smaller DPS loss, but you need 2 revenants. Condi thief incidentally provides vigor, Condi Berserker incidentally provides the banners. They provide something important, but they're not support builds, they're DPS builds.

 

Those are different builds. That build does not use Ventari or Jalis, it uses Shiro. You could switch to a different, actual suport build in theory. But it would be a different build, with different legends, different gear and different trait. Support means your focus is on providing support for your allies at the cost of doing low DPS. Alacrity Renegades focus is on doing damage, and their DPS is high.

I'd like to see you rock up to a fractal, raid, or strike group that was asking for an alacren, not use Righteous Rebel, and try to claim that it doesn't matter that you're not using RR because the alacrity is only "incidental".

 

Alacrity is the point of the build, with it being literally there in the name. It's everything else that's incidental. Offering a bit of DPS (but still well under the benchmark of actual DPS builds) is incidental. If the encounter and/or group needs it, you can switch legends to provide other things like stability, projectile hate, or boon removal, and it's still fundamentally a variant of alacren. The focus of the build is providing alacrity through Righteous Rebel, Orders from Above, and enough boon duration to get 100% uptime. If you've got that, you're an alacren, regardless of what else you bring to the table (which will likely default to DPS, but a good alacren player knows when to switch to something with a little less DPS in exchange for some other utility). If you don't, you're not.

 

The thing you're missing here is that some boons are rarer and more valuable than others. Boon deadeye providing might and fury isn't highly valued because there are a lot of other ways to get might and fury, having a player who's only role is to provide that is redundant. Alacrity and quickness are rare, high-impact boons. Builds that bring them do so because those boons ARE important enough to have a player dedicated to providing them. Everything else is nice to have, but it's the quickness or alacrity that's essential.

7 hours ago, UNOwen.7132 said:

 

Ok, in that case you created a build that has a set in stone rotation that defeats the point of initiative. Which is just as bad. Thats the problem, its one, or the other. You can't make a support thief build that doesnt defeat the point of initiative *or* is too easy. Its one or the other. As for utility skills, their cooldown is too prohibitive to really carry the build, and again, making theif into a set rotation build makes it very not thief. 

 

Not really. Here is the deal. What defines thief is being free-form. Thief should be able to alter its rotation quickly without falling too far behind, or use its utility skills interchangable or when the situation calls for it. You can't do that with a support build that involves utilities, as that would instead be a set in stone rotation that is the opposite of freeform, and the opposite of thief. It would play like Ranger or Elementalist, not thief.

Nah, I've created a build that's similar to existing thief builds, except supportive instead.

 

Consider pistol/pistol builds. Generally speaking, you want to spam Unload. But you have other ways you can spend initiative if you need to - you can throw an immobilise or a daze, or create a blinding smoke field. You've got a particular thing that you do with that weaponset, and initiative gives you the freedom to either spam that or mix in other things as the situation demands.

 

You've then got your utility skills. Signets are common, in part because thief has signets that are useful both for active and passive use (Agility, for instance, provides precision, but is also a good condition removal, and Malice provides power, but you can either leave it alone for steady power or activate it for a quick burst as needed). Other utility skills on a P/P build tend to be either defensive skills that you use when needed, offensive skills that add to your DPS, or stealth skills (which kinda do both, since you can use them to Sneak Attack while waiting for Initiative to build back up).

 

Now, let's apply these principles to a theoretical support thief. Let's say the primary support it brings to the table is party alacrity. You have an initiative skill that provides alacrity - let's call it Siphon Memory, and say that it applies Chill to the target and Alacrity to the thief, while a trait allows the thief to also provide Alacrity to their allies. This becomes the hypothetical alac thief's equivalent of Unload - the core initiative skill of their build. Utilities could then complement this in a number of ways. If you're otherwise only caring about damage - like quickbrand or Shiro alacren, builds that most people still regard as support - then maybe you're utilities are all about boosting damage. Or maybe there's a utility that provides alacrity directly, which allows you to spend less initiative on Siphon Memory and be able to situationally use other initiative skills - in this case, having a utility skill in rotation actually increases freedom by freeing up initiative to use for something else.

 

Or the utility skills could be packed for dealing with specific situations. A projectile-heavy fight might justify bringing Smoke Screen and Seal Area. Venoms could provide a little extra DPS and healing through Leeching Venoms. The elite spec might bring additional utilities that are useful for various forms of situational support.

 

At the bottom line, you could end up with something very similar to alacren: your primary form of support is Providing Alacrity To The Group, and otherwise you might be able to get away with a DPS setup plugging away doing (checks benchmarks) ~28k DPS. Or if the group requires additional utility, you could provide it - you're not a primary DPS role to begin with, so the opportunity cost for you to switch out DPS utilities for some form of additional support is lower (this is why it's usually druids rather than soulbeasts that bring spirits, even if soulbeasts theoretically could). 

 

And if you're making the argument that alacren doesn't count as support... then you've basically already conceded. Most people will consider Permanent Alacrity For The Group to be a support role, even if a build is primarily DPS otherwise. I'm pretty sure that an alac thief will satisfy people wanting a support thief, probably more than whatever you define as support would.

[UNOwen.7132]

2 hours ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

I'd like to see you rock up to a fractal, raid, or strike group that was asking for an alacren, not use Righteous Rebel, and try to claim that it doesn't matter that you're not using RR because the alacrity is only "incidental".

 

Alacrity is the point of the build, with it being literally there in the name. It's everything else that's incidental. Offering a bit of DPS (but still well under the benchmark of actual DPS builds) is incidental. If the encounter and/or group needs it, you can switch legends to provide other things like stability, projectile hate, or boon removal, and it's still fundamentally a variant of alacren. The focus of the build is providing alacrity through Righteous Rebel, Orders from Above, and enough boon duration to get 100% uptime. If you've got that, you're an alacren, regardless of what else you bring to the table (which will likely default to DPS, but a good alacren player knows when to switch to something with a little less DPS in exchange for some other utility). If you don't, you're not.

It would appear you miss the point of what incidental means. But here is a simple question. If your raid or strike group happens to already have alacrity uptime. Lets say, someone is bringing full boon Chronomancer. Do you change your entire build as Alacrity Renegade? Nope. Actually, you change almost nothing. You change the stats on your gear (and only the stats, your runes and sigils are identical, your weapons are identical), and 1 trait. Thats it. That is the entire difference. Because the build started as a power DPS build, and then we realised "oh you can lose a little DPS and also keep up Alacrity", so now its a DPS build that just happens to also provide alacrity.

 

On the other hand, you can't just switch legends. Do that, and your builds sucks. There are other builds, but they're radically different. For example, the Ventari build requires you to change an entire traitline, your entire set of runes, a sigil, your stats, your food, and a trait. Thats an entirely different build. Because the focus of the build is to be a power DPS. It's like saying the focus of Druid is providing Spotter. 

 

2 hours ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

The thing you're missing here is that some boons are rarer and more valuable than others. Boon deadeye providing might and fury isn't highly valued because there are a lot of other ways to get might and fury, having a player who's only role is to provide that is redundant. Alacrity and quickness are rare, high-impact boons. Builds that bring them do so because those boons ARE important enough to have a player dedicated to providing them. Everything else is nice to have, but it's the quickness or alacrity that's essential.

Nah, I've created a build that's similar to existing thief builds, except supportive instead.

The thing you're missing is how Alacrity Renegade came to be, what the build is actually about, and what you're talking about means. Yes, its important to have alacrity. Its just as important to have spotter, to have banners, to have Spirits, and so on. But those are not the only role of their respective builds. Bannerslaves main role is DPS, it just also brings banners. Druids main role is healing and support, it just also brings Spotter and Spirit. Alacrity Renegades main role is DPS, it just happens to bring alacrity. And no, you haven't.

 

 

2 hours ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

Consider pistol/pistol builds. Generally speaking, you want to spam Unload. But you have other ways you can spend initiative if you need to - you can throw an immobilise or a daze, or create a blinding smoke field. You've got a particular thing that you do with that weaponset, and initiative gives you the freedom to either spam that or mix in other things as the situation demands.

Yes, consider pistol builds. Where doing anything but spamming unload causes your DPS to drop so drastically you might as well just go down. There are no situations in which doing any of those is correct. That ... is a problem with Pistol/Pistol specifically, but it's there. However, it's the same problem a support build that has it all on 1 skill would have. 

 

 

2 hours ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

You've then got your utility skills. Signets are common, in part because thief has signets that are useful both for active and passive use (Agility, for instance, provides precision, but is also a good condition removal, and Malice provides power, but you can either leave it alone for steady power or activate it for a quick burst as needed). Other utility skills on a P/P build tend to be either defensive skills that you use when needed, offensive skills that add to your DPS, or stealth skills (which kinda do both, since you can use them to Sneak Attack while waiting for Initiative to build back up).

Signets are common because they give stat boosts. You dont activate them in PvE. PvP Agility is really useful, Assassins is not (Malice is the heal one). A PvE P/P build would simply use the standard 2 signets plus Roll for Initiative for more, well, initiative. None of the things you claim though.

 

 

2 hours ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

Now, let's apply these principles to a theoretical support thief. Let's say the primary support it brings to the table is party alacrity. You have an initiative skill that provides alacrity - let's call it Siphon Memory, and say that it applies Chill to the target and Alacrity to the thief, while a trait allows the thief to also provide Alacrity to their allies. This becomes the hypothetical alac thief's equivalent of Unload - the core initiative skill of their build. Utilities could then complement this in a number of ways. If you're otherwise only caring about damage - like quickbrand or Shiro alacren, builds that most people still regard as support - then maybe you're utilities are all about boosting damage. Or maybe there's a utility that provides alacrity directly, which allows you to spend less initiative on Siphon Memory and be able to situationally use other initiative skills - in this case, having a utility skill in rotation actually increases freedom by freeing up initiative to use for something else.

Ok. Let's assume that. Well, that alone won't help you. You need to be a DPS build that also happens to bring alacrity to be a viable altenrative to Alacrity Renegade. Well, it cant be just the skill doing enough damage. That would make you an easier alacrity renegade, and Anet cant have that. And it cant be just another skill either, because its still a simpler version. So, this doesn't work. Instead ,it would likely involve multiple initiative skills working off of each other to maintain alacrity. Oh but would you look at that, you created a set in stone rotation that defeats the point of initiative. Funny how its exactly one, or exactly the other, and no possibility of anything else, isnt it?

 

 

2 hours ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

Or the utility skills could be packed for dealing with specific situations. A projectile-heavy fight might justify bringing Smoke Screen and Seal Area. Venoms could provide a little extra DPS and healing through Leeching Venoms. The elite spec might bring additional utilities that are useful for various forms of situational support.

If you can do enough DPS without having to bring the signets, Arenanet is gonna nerf you. Can't have that. The idea of "oh you could have additional utilities that are useful for situational support" is also nonsense. Either theyre always something you use, in which case set rotation. Or they're not, in which case you use the 2 signets for DPS.

 

2 hours ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

At the bottom line, you could end up with something very similar to alacren: your primary form of support is Providing Alacrity To The Group, and otherwise you might be able to get away with a DPS setup plugging away doing (checks benchmarks) ~28k DPS. Or if the group requires additional utility, you could provide it - you're not a primary DPS role to begin with, so the opportunity cost for you to switch out DPS utilities for some form of additional support is lower (this is why it's usually druids rather than soulbeasts that bring spirits, even if soulbeasts theoretically could). 

Alacrity Ren is a primary DPS role. The opportunity cost to switch out DPS utilities for more support is insanely high, because just switching utilities isnt enough, you need to switch a whole lot more, at which point youre doign no DPS, which remember, is your primary purpose. Anyway, as above, alacrity ren situation runs into the standard 2 issues.

 

 

2 hours ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

And if you're making the argument that alacren doesn't count as support... then you've basically already conceded. Most people will consider Permanent Alacrity For The Group to be a support role, even if a build is primarily DPS otherwise. I'm pretty sure that an alac thief will satisfy people wanting a support thief, probably more than whatever you define as support would.

Most people would not. Most people correctly know the history (it being a DPS build that people figure out could also just provide alacrity at a small cost to DPS vs the much larger increase in DPS the Chrono gets for not having to provide alacrity), know that its also focused on doing DPS while the alacrity is just something you press off cooldown, and know that you basically switch almost nothing if your chrono is bringing the alacrity. An alacrity thief also wouldn't work, as pointed out above. Same issue of either "way easier version of Alacrity Renegade -> not allowed to be viable" or "relies on set rotation -> not thief anymore".

[draxynnic.3719]

27 minutes ago, UNOwen.7132 said:

It would appear you miss the point of what incidental means. But here is a simple question. If your raid or strike group happens to already have alacrity uptime. Lets say, someone is bringing full boon Chronomancer. Do you change your entire build as Alacrity Renegade? Nope. Actually, you change almost nothing. You change the stats on your gear (and only the stats, your runes and sigils are identical, your weapons are identical), and 1 trait. Thats it. That is the entire difference. Because the build started as a power DPS build, and then we realised "oh you can lose a little DPS and also keep up Alacrity", so now its a DPS build that just happens to also provide alacrity.

Incidental basically means "happening as a result of something else".

 

People don't bring alacren because it's a DPS build that just happens to also provide alacrity. Despite the changes appearing to be fairly minor on paper, making those changes cut your DPS by 20%, and power renegade wasn't a top-DPS DPS build to begin with. People ask for alacren specifically to bring alacrity, and it's any damage that they bring alongside that that is incidental. Sure, it's nice to have, and all else being equal an alacrity build that does more damage will be preferred over one that doesn't, but the alacrity is the reason that the player has that spot in the team.

 

Sure, you can switch to a DPS build with relatively few changes to the build, but that's how GW2 build design works: relatively minor changes can completely change your role. An alacren's role is support in the form of a high-value boon, and the damage it does is incidental to that primary role. If you switch, you've changed role. A hypothetical support thief might also be just a few changes away from being a DPS thief.

27 minutes ago, UNOwen.7132 said:

 

On the other hand, you can't just switch legends. Do that, and your builds sucks. There are other builds, but they're radically different. For example, the Ventari build requires you to change an entire traitline, your entire set of runes, a sigil, your stats, your food, and a trait. Thats an entirely different build. Because the focus of the build is to be a power DPS. It's like saying the focus of Druid is providing Spotter. 

You absolutely can, actually. Dwarf works perfectly fine with Devastation. If you're bringing Ventari just for the projectile hate, you don't care about ventari traits because you're not planning to spend energy on healing anyway. If you want Mallyx for boon rip, you might consider swapping to condi alacren, but you don't have to. And guess what? Condi alacren is still an alacren. It's just a variant of the build.

27 minutes ago, UNOwen.7132 said:

 

The thing you're missing is how Alacrity Renegade came to be, what the build is actually about, and what you're talking about means. Yes, its important to have alacrity. Its just as important to have spotter, to have banners, to have Spirits, and so on. But those are not the only role of their respective builds. Bannerslaves main role is DPS, it just also brings banners. Druids main role is healing and support, it just also brings Spotter and Spirit. Alacrity Renegades main role is DPS, it just happens to bring alacrity. And no, you haven't.

Amazing. Everything you just said is wrong.

 

If you bring an alacren, you're bringing it for alacrity. If you wanted DPS, you'd bring full DPS.

 

If you bring a bannerslave, you want the banners. If you didn't, you'd bring a full DPS build.

 

Druids are healing and support. Spirits are PART of that healing and support, albeit something that can be traded out for additional utility if the encounter requires it.

27 minutes ago, UNOwen.7132 said:

Yes, consider pistol builds. Where doing anything but spamming unload causes your DPS to drop so drastically you might as well just go down. There are no situations in which doing any of those is correct. That ... is a problem with Pistol/Pistol specifically, but it's there. However, it's the same problem a support build that has it all on 1 skill would have.

Breakbars. Keeping a powerful melee opponent at a distance. Setting up a smoke field to switch weapons and blast (or for someone else to use). Sure, you want to Unload most of the time, but sometimes you need to use something else so you can go back to Unloading freely.

 

And this is fairly typical of thief weapon sets: you've usually got a couple of skills that are mostly about DPS that you want to spam, a couple that help keep you alive or set things up so that you can do so, and maybe one or two that aren't really useful for the setup you're using, but it doesn't really matter because you just spend initiative on the skills that ARE useful instead. The hypothetical alacthief could do something similar. Maybe it has the alacrity skill and a DPS skill in there, and if it's focused on alacrity it mainly uses the former and mixes in the latter when it has spare initiative, while a DPS build might still use the alacrity skill in order to provide a bit of soft CC and to speed the recharge of utility skills.

27 minutes ago, UNOwen.7132 said:

Signets are common because they give stat boosts. You dont activate them in PvE. PvP Agility is really useful, Assassins is not (Malice is the heal one). A PvE P/P build would simply use the standard 2 signets plus Roll for Initiative for more, well, initiative. None of the things you claim though.

Assassin's IS often worth using if you want burst damage for any particular reason (like, say, maximising your power while spending all your initiative Unloading).

27 minutes ago, UNOwen.7132 said:

Ok. Let's assume that. Well, that alone won't help you. You need to be a DPS build that also happens to bring alacrity to be a viable altenrative to Alacrity Renegade. Well, it cant be just the skill doing enough damage. That would make you an easier alacrity renegade, and Anet cant have that. And it cant be just another skill either, because its still a simpler version. So, this doesn't work. Instead ,it would likely involve multiple initiative skills working off of each other to maintain alacrity. Oh but would you look at that, you created a set in stone rotation that defeats the point of initiative. Funny how its exactly one, or exactly the other, and no possibility of anything else, isnt it?

Alacren presses F4 on recharge, and makes sure it doesn't deplete its energy enough to prevent it from pressing F4 on recharge.

 

Hypothetical alacthief uses the alacrity generator on a timer that allows it to maintain alacrity, while not spending so much initiative on other things to prevent it from upkeeping alacrity.

 

I'm not seeing a fundamental distinction between the two, certainly not anything that creates the dichotomy you claim.

27 minutes ago, UNOwen.7132 said:

If you can do enough DPS without having to bring the signets, Arenanet is gonna nerf you. Can't have that. The idea of "oh you could have additional utilities that are useful for situational support" is also nonsense. Either theyre always something you use, in which case set rotation. Or they're not, in which case you use the 2 signets for DPS.

Except there ARE builds that don't rely on the signets to convert utility slots into DPS. And as for set rotations... doesn't seem to be any worse in that sense from "unload until initiative is consumed, Roll for Initiative, unload again" to me.

 

The "freedom" of thief initiative is that it allows you to use whichever weapon skills you choose to use depending on what you need. It says nothing about how your utility skills can or should work.

27 minutes ago, UNOwen.7132 said:

 

Alacrity Ren is a primary DPS role. The opportunity cost to switch out DPS utilities for more support is insanely high, because just switching utilities isnt enough, you need to switch a whole lot more, at which point youre doign no DPS, which remember, is your primary purpose. Anyway, as above, alacrity ren situation runs into the standard 2 issues.

28k DPS is not primary DPS. Primary DPS should benchmark at least 35k, or conditions that are comparable to that. The primary purpose of alacren is providing alacrity. Beyond that, having higher DPS is a competitive advantage over other alacrity sources, but the primary role of an alacren is to provide boon support in the form of alacrity.

27 minutes ago, UNOwen.7132 said:

Most people would not. Most people correctly know the history (it being a DPS build that people figure out could also just provide alacrity at a small cost to DPS vs the much larger increase in DPS the Chrono gets for not having to provide alacrity), know that its also focused on doing DPS while the alacrity is just something you press off cooldown, and know that you basically switch almost nothing if your chrono is bringing the alacrity. An alacrity thief also wouldn't work, as pointed out above. Same issue of either "way easier version of Alacrity Renegade -> not allowed to be viable" or "relies on set rotation -> not thief anymore".

Again, you're talking about competitive advantage there, not about role (plus, I don't think chrono can realistically provide 100% team alacrity upkeep any more anyway, that's why it got moved to mirage). Alacren overtook chrono for fractals at the time because it allowed for role compression and less DPS loss overall, but it's still brought because people need alacrity.

 

The role of an alacren is to provide support. Any DPS it provides is incidental. It's support that provides more DPS than, say, heal renegade - because it trades healing for better damage - but its reason for being in the team/squad is still "provide alacrity".

 

A thief build that can realistically substitute for an alacren or alacmirage would fit under the category of "support".

[Overworld.9613]

The new Elite Spec needs to have a name also starting with D so we have an even harder time differentiating between Daredevil, Deadeye and kitten Normal Thief Build. 

[Felices Bladewing.3914]

the big problem Anet has to overcome which every thief elitespec is the obstacle of core thief having no identity in the first place.

 

In order to solve this rootproblem, the balance team have to decide what playstyle the thief is in their game first and than making changes aroud this for balancing purposes and than they have a possibility to create neat especs revolving around this "indentity" instead of creating a totally new one.

 

What i mean with this is when compared to other MMOs or even lets say RPGs with a class/profession based power system a thief/rouge/assassin/outlaw/nightblade or whatever you call it in the respective game is mostly one of the following:

 

1. a melee glasscannon, who can deal high burstdamage to a single target in a short time and than running out of steam and because of lacking defensive tools has to retreat - a typical hit and run character with an amazing engage skill (stealth/shadoiwsteps) [stealth is totally fine as engagement tool, but not as a disengagement tool]
2. a CC/interupting based fighter, creating dispersion on a battlefield and creates chaos to enemies positioning (like scorpion wire)
3. a master of dots with poison/bleed etc. dealing heavy dps without being in the near of the target all the time.

These are just the biggest three that come to my mind while writing this but as you may realize 2 and 3 are already occupied by other professions in GW2 by default with the mesmer and the necro.

 

So Anet has either to make core thief the first option or think about another identity asap. And can than create new especs complementing aspects of this profession.

 

Deadeye was a fantastic espec flavor-wise but this was totally counterintuive to the playstyle a thief-like character should operate which is why many thief player did not like it. It was more like a rangerclass than a thief. And i dont think the new espec while be more thieflike because thief has no place in the game at the moment.

 

And dont come with sPvP - this mode is like irrelevant to 90% of player base - you shouldnt balance around that anymore, or rather balance for it after redesigning its purpose in PvE and maybe even WvW.

[Tails.9372]

36 minutes ago, Felices Bladewing.3914 said:

Deadeye was a fantastic espec flavor-wise but this was totally counterintuive to the playstyle a thief-like character should operate which is why many thief player did not like it.

Well to be fair one of the main reasons people didn't like it is because it didn't even deliver on what the theme promised. It's supposed to be a sniper assassin but it lacks range (base range is only 33% more than pistol and even in "sniper mode" it's less than the effective range of LB) and is forced into some weird jumping around as part of its rotation. People would have liked the e-spec a lot more if they actually tried to make the gameplay properly fit the theme instead of them trying to hard to put a "unique spin" on it.

Edited October 10, 2021 by Tails.9372

[Felices Bladewing.3914]

2 hours ago, Tails.9372 said:

Well to be fair one of the main reasons people didn't like it is because it didn't even deliver on what the theme promised. It's supposed to be a sniper assassin but it lacks range (base range is only 33% more than pistol and even in "sniper mode" it's less than the effective range of LB) and is forced into some weird jumping around as part of its rotation. People would have liked the e-spec a lot more if they actually tried to make the gameplay properly fit the theme instead of them trying to hard to put a "unique spin" on it.

 

true story, but all those things would be even more non-thief and more ranger-like.

Which is some kind of admitting that Thief will be only viable when adapting or either claiming other professions territory

[MrForz.1953]

2 hours ago, Tails.9372 said:

Well to be fair one of the main reasons people didn't like it is because it didn't even deliver on what the theme promised. It's supposed to be a sniper assassin but it lacks range (base range is only 33% more than pistol and even in "sniper mode" it's less than the effective range of LB) and is forced into some weird jumping around as part of its rotation. People would have liked the e-spec a lot more if they actually tried to make the gameplay properly fit the theme instead of them trying to hard to put a "unique spin" on it.

 

Out of curiosity, what would the "theme" imply?

[UNOwen.7132]

9 hours ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

Incidental basically means "happening as a result of something else".

 

People don't bring alacren because it's a DPS build that just happens to also provide alacrity. Despite the changes appearing to be fairly minor on paper, making those changes cut your DPS by 20%, and power renegade wasn't a top-DPS DPS build to begin with. People ask for alacren specifically to bring alacrity, and it's any damage that they bring alongside that that is incidental. Sure, it's nice to have, and all else being equal an alacrity build that does more damage will be preferred over one that doesn't, but the alacrity is the reason that the player has that spot in the team.

People very much so bring Alacren because its a DPS build that just happens to also provide alacrity. Sure, Power Renegade wasnt at the very top tier, but it was still quite good. And the DPS loss you get by bringing a DPS build that happens to provide alacrity is smaller than the DPS increase you get from freeing your chronomancer from providing alacrity. Remember, Chronomancer used to be the build that provided alacrity. Its only when we got a DPS with incidental alacrity that that changed.

 

 

9 hours ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

Sure, you can switch to a DPS build with relatively few changes to the build, but that's how GW2 build design works: relatively minor changes can completely change your role. An alacren's role is support in the form of a high-value boon, and the damage it does is incidental to that primary role. If you switch, you've changed role. A hypothetical support thief might also be just a few changes away from being a DPS thief.

False. Its not because "relatively minor changes can completely change your role". Its because their role is completely IDENTICAL. They're both power DPS builds, Alacrity Renegade just happens to also bring alacrity. If you switch that trait and your gears stats, you have kept the same role. Soulbeast does not become a support just because it's bringing the spirits instead of the druid. 

 

9 hours ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

You absolutely can, actually. Dwarf works perfectly fine with Devastation. If you're bringing Ventari just for the projectile hate, you don't care about ventari traits because you're not planning to spend energy on healing anyway. If you want Mallyx for boon rip, you might consider swapping to condi alacren, but you don't have to. And guess what? Condi alacren is still an alacren. It's just a variant of the build.

Amazing. Everything you just said is wrong.

No you cant. If you do that, you lose so much DPS, which remember is your primary role, while what you bring is ... very unimpressive. Same with dwarf. Oh and Condi Alacren isnt a variant of the power alacren build. Its a variant of condi renegade. Likewise a DPS build that happens to bring alacrity.

 

 

9 hours ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

If you bring an alacren, you're bringing it for alacrity. If you wanted DPS, you'd bring full DPS.

 

If you bring a bannerslave, you want the banners. If you didn't, you'd bring a full DPS build.

If you bring an Alacren, you're bringing it for the DPS while still having alacrity. If you just wanted alacrity, you'd let your Chronomancer provide it. If you bring a bannerslave, you do want the banners, but it also happens to be a full DPS build anyway, so once again, you get a two for one. But its primary role is DPS.

 

 

9 hours ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

Druids are healing and support. Spirits are PART of that healing and support, albeit something that can be traded out for additional utility if the encounter requires it.

And if a Soulbeast is providing the spirits, theyre not a support. And you're proving my point, its not the only role of it.

 

9 hours ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

Breakbars. Keeping a powerful melee opponent at a distance. Setting up a smoke field to switch weapons and blast (or for someone else to use). Sure, you want to Unload most of the time, but sometimes you need to use something else so you can go back to Unloading freely.

Thief has better options for breakbars that don't lose as much DPS. Headshot and Bodyshot are both pretty terrible for breakbar damage. Smokefield for blast finishers, you'd lose way too much DPS (you'd be in shortbow for 9 seconds), and what exactly are you gonna use stealth for anyway? Dungeons aren't relevant anymore.

 

9 hours ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

And this is fairly typical of thief weapon sets: you've usually got a couple of skills that are mostly about DPS that you want to spam, a couple that help keep you alive or set things up so that you can do so, and maybe one or two that aren't really useful for the setup you're using, but it doesn't really matter because you just spend initiative on the skills that ARE useful instead. The hypothetical alacthief could do something similar. Maybe it has the alacrity skill and a DPS skill in there, and if it's focused on alacrity it mainly uses the former and mixes in the latter when it has spare initiative, while a DPS build might still use the alacrity skill in order to provide a bit of soft CC and to speed the recharge of utility skills.

What's fairly typical of thief weaponsets actually is that for some reason, most of the skills are worthless in PvE. Often times just because Anet for some reason decides to set their ini costs to wack values. A hypothetical alacrity thief would either be too easy, or use a set rotation.

 

9 hours ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

Assassin's IS often worth using if you want burst damage for any particular reason (like, say, maximising your power while spending all your initiative Unloading).

Alacren presses F4 on recharge, and makes sure it doesn't deplete its energy enough to prevent it from pressing F4 on recharge.

It's not. You lose more DPS than you gain. Used to be ok, until we realised that the skill was bugged and still provided the old bonus as well. It's been fixed, now its an exclusively passive skill. And Alacren presses 4 on recharge but otherwise doesn't alter the DPS rotation much if at all.

 

 

9 hours ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

Hypothetical alacthief uses the alacrity generator on a timer that allows it to maintain alacrity, while not spending so much initiative on other things to prevent it from upkeeping alacrity.

Which would be way, way too easy, and so not something they would allow to be viable. Alacren is a power DPS build that happens to provide alacrity, and its only accepted because its a pretty hard thing to do. Thief can't even do top DPS despite providing nothing else because its easy. Do you think they would allow an easier Alacren? 

 

 

9 hours ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

I'm not seeing a fundamental distinction between the two, certainly not anything that creates the dichotomy you claim.

Except there ARE builds that don't rely on the signets to convert utility slots into DPS. And as for set rotations... doesn't seem to be any worse in that sense from "unload until initiative is consumed, Roll for Initiative, unload again" to me.

There aren't. There are builds that instead use venoms to convert utility slows into DPS (aka condi builds which dont benefit from the signets), but there are no builds that use the utility slot for actual utility. As for set rotations, the point is that they defeat the point of initiative. Spamming the same skill is also not ideal (And I do wish they gave thieves a reason to not use the same skill every time), but at least it is something unique to initiative. A rotation is not.

 

9 hours ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

The "freedom" of thief initiative is that it allows you to use whichever weapon skills you choose to use depending on what you need. It says nothing about how your utility skills can or should work.

No, the way utility skills works just comes from the ones we already have. It's like how engineer will always have double kits. You're just not gonna pass up a DPS boost. 

 

9 hours ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

28k DPS is not primary DPS. Primary DPS should benchmark at least 35k, or conditions that are comparable to that. The primary purpose of alacren is providing alacrity. Beyond that, having higher DPS is a competitive advantage over other alacrity sources, but the primary role of an alacren is to provide boon support in the form of alacrity.

Again, you're talking about competitive advantage there, not about role (plus, I don't think chrono can realistically provide 100% team alacrity upkeep any more anyway, that's why it got moved to mirage). Alacren overtook chrono for fractals at the time because it allowed for role compression and less DPS loss overall, but it's still brought because people need alacrity.

It is primary DPS. Yes, you take a DPS hit in order to increase DPS elsewhere by allowing the Chronomancer to also go for DPS rather than being full support. If you add the DPS gain there to Alacrity Renegade (Which you should, since thats effectively DPS the Alacrity Renegade is providing), well thats another 10-15k, so the DPS Alacrity Renegade actually provides to the party is 38-43k. Quite far ahead of your 35k . And no, the primary role is to be DPS that also happens to have alacrity so your chrono can do more DPS. Oh and as for Alacrity Mirage which people also switched to for similar reasons, the DPS loss there is greater, so Alacrity Renegade comes out ahead.

 

 

9 hours ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

The role of an alacren is to provide support. Any DPS it provides is incidental. It's support that provides more DPS than, say, heal renegade - because it trades healing for better damage - but its reason for being in the team/squad is still "provide alacrity".

The role of an Alacren is to provide DPS. The Alacrity is an incidental benefit that lets you let your previous alacrity source also do DPS. Its DPS that takes a small DPS loss to let your Chrono or hell mirage, do more DPS. Its reason for being in the team/squad is still "Provide DPS while still maintaining alacrity". If all you wanted is alacrity, then the Chrono or Mirage you already have in the team/squad can still provide it. But that would lose DPS. So Alacren is there to increase DPS.

 

 

9 hours ago, draxynnic.3719 said:

A thief build that can realistically substitute for an alacren or alacmirage would fit under the category of "support".

It would fit under the category of DPS that incidentally provides something important. Like Soulbeast taking spirits and spotter if your squad has no Druid.

[Jugglemonkey.8741]

5 hours ago, UNOwen.7132 said:

People very much so bring Alacren because its a DPS build that just happens to also provide alacrity. Sure, Power Renegade wasnt at the very top tier, but it was still quite good. And the DPS loss you get by bringing a DPS build that happens to provide alacrity is smaller than the DPS increase you get from freeing your chronomancer from providing alacrity. Remember, Chronomancer used to be the build that provided alacrity. Its only when we got a DPS with incidental alacrity that that changed.

 

 

False. Its not because "relatively minor changes can completely change your role". Its because their role is completely IDENTICAL. They're both power DPS builds, Alacrity Renegade just happens to also bring alacrity. If you switch that trait and your gears stats, you have kept the same role. Soulbeast does not become a support just because it's bringing the spirits instead of the druid. 

 

No you cant. If you do that, you lose so much DPS, which remember is your primary role, while what you bring is ... very unimpressive. Same with dwarf. Oh and Condi Alacren isnt a variant of the power alacren build. Its a variant of condi renegade. Likewise a DPS build that happens to bring alacrity.

 

 

If you bring an Alacren, you're bringing it for the DPS while still having alacrity. If you just wanted alacrity, you'd let your Chronomancer provide it. If you bring a bannerslave, you do want the banners, but it also happens to be a full DPS build anyway, so once again, you get a two for one. But its primary role is DPS.

 

 

And if a Soulbeast is providing the spirits, theyre not a support. And you're proving my point, its not the only role of it.

 

Thief has better options for breakbars that don't lose as much DPS. Headshot and Bodyshot are both pretty terrible for breakbar damage. Smokefield for blast finishers, you'd lose way too much DPS (you'd be in shortbow for 9 seconds), and what exactly are you gonna use stealth for anyway? Dungeons aren't relevant anymore.

 

What's fairly typical of thief weaponsets actually is that for some reason, most of the skills are worthless in PvE. Often times just because Anet for some reason decides to set their ini costs to wack values. A hypothetical alacrity thief would either be too easy, or use a set rotation.

 

It's not. You lose more DPS than you gain. Used to be ok, until we realised that the skill was bugged and still provided the old bonus as well. It's been fixed, now its an exclusively passive skill. And Alacren presses 4 on recharge but otherwise doesn't alter the DPS rotation much if at all.

 

 

Which would be way, way too easy, and so not something they would allow to be viable. Alacren is a power DPS build that happens to provide alacrity, and its only accepted because its a pretty hard thing to do. Thief can't even do top DPS despite providing nothing else because its easy. Do you think they would allow an easier Alacren? 

 

 

There aren't. There are builds that instead use venoms to convert utility slows into DPS (aka condi builds which dont benefit from the signets), but there are no builds that use the utility slot for actual utility. As for set rotations, the point is that they defeat the point of initiative. Spamming the same skill is also not ideal (And I do wish they gave thieves a reason to not use the same skill every time), but at least it is something unique to initiative. A rotation is not.

 

No, the way utility skills works just comes from the ones we already have. It's like how engineer will always have double kits. You're just not gonna pass up a DPS boost. 

 

It is primary DPS. Yes, you take a DPS hit in order to increase DPS elsewhere by allowing the Chronomancer to also go for DPS rather than being full support. If you add the DPS gain there to Alacrity Renegade (Which you should, since thats effectively DPS the Alacrity Renegade is providing), well thats another 10-15k, so the DPS Alacrity Renegade actually provides to the party is 38-43k. Quite far ahead of your 35k . And no, the primary role is to be DPS that also happens to have alacrity so your chrono can do more DPS. Oh and as for Alacrity Mirage which people also switched to for similar reasons, the DPS loss there is greater, so Alacrity Renegade comes out ahead.

 

 

The role of an Alacren is to provide DPS. The Alacrity is an incidental benefit that lets you let your previous alacrity source also do DPS. Its DPS that takes a small DPS loss to let your Chrono or hell mirage, do more DPS. Its reason for being in the team/squad is still "Provide DPS while still maintaining alacrity". If all you wanted is alacrity, then the Chrono or Mirage you already have in the team/squad can still provide it. But that would lose DPS. So Alacren is there to increase DPS.

 

 

It would fit under the category of DPS that incidentally provides something important. Like Soulbeast taking spirits and spotter if your squad has no Druid.

All of this makes me wonder if you actually play fractals at all, or if you just read up on the meta then come here to argue about it. 

[itspomf.9523]

Been kicking some thoughts around, regarding Thief elite evolutions.

 

And after reviewing Deadeye (which seems to come up a lot, maybe, in the massive wall of text preceding this post), and thinking about it some, I've come to a potentially unwelcome conclusion.

 

But first, we're all familiar with the idea that Daredevil stems from the Acrobatics specialization, which got completely "revamped" (more like torn apart) around and between the Big Specialization Update of ... 2015-ish and the release of Heart of Thorns.  Makes sense enough, considering that they're all about dodging, staying in the fight (rather than out of it), and sustaining themselves through active defenses (be that dodges, weapon evades, or Bandit's Defense).

 

The question, then, is what did Deadeye come from?  Their slot skills are all shadow-themed, but nothing else about them is.

 

In reflection, I'd thought it was either Trickery or Deadly Arts, but it cannot be the latter (which focuses on condition application and poison despite the "Executioner" trait and "Payback" having affinity with "Improvisation").  Trickery makes sense because of their strong reliance upon Deadeye's Mark and the ability to buff your party members (which "Thrill of the Crime" and "Bountiful Theft" help maximize).  However, they can equally focus on a more damage-oriented approach, and many of Deadeye's traits feel similar to the Critical Strikes specialization.

 

I'd thus propose that it could be themed as a hybrid of both:  the application of precision strikes (befitting a rifle and ranged attacks) and cunning through the use of various skills to gain the upper-hand in battle (their slot skills and Cantrips, specifically).

 

Following that logic, and the possibility of a "two-specialization" evolution for our new Sailor Scout elite, that leaves Shadow Arts and Deadly Arts as roots.

 

On the one hand, we might finally see a competent conditions built / elite that isn't Daredevil's somewhat wonky approach -- which wouldn't appease those of us looking for a more supportive role, after Deadeye -- while on the other, we're faced with what Shadow Arts means:  a potentially heavier reliance on life siphon, stealth, and subsequent stealth attacks.

 

While that latter would certainly befit the Oni of GW1, I personally worry that we'll not be receiving the coveted Shadow Form many of us have hoped for (nor as a Steal replacement), and that this elite will only bring further contention with the rest of the playerbase over people being upset about the stealth mechanics.

 

I hope to be proven wrong.

[Zacchary.6183]

51 minutes ago, fluffdragon.1523 said:

The question, then, is what did Deadeye come from?  Their slot skills are all shadow-themed, but nothing else about them is.

Deadeye was (I think) an ele-thief as the cantrips each were based off of an element. The spec looked like it would have come as a  "Shadow Arts" spec since the utilities and traits were more focused around stealth. However, the spec offered many damage bonuses and much synergy when combined with Deadly Arts and/or Critical Strikes instead. It could have been a support spec (like snipers often are) if the boons it generated could be shared with allies. But it is merely a might/fury bot and self-buffer.

[Overworld.9613]

I just want the sceptre (or if it turns out to be a different weapon) to be equippable in the off hand as well as the main.  

The class has 3 main hand and 2 off hand weapons and 2 two-handed weapons (2 that can't be used together so you're only able to access either staff or rifle).

For a class that's described in game as being very versatile, seem odd we only learned to use pointy sticks and guns/small bows. The only classes with less weapons than Thief is Engineer (who has their own set of weapon kits unique to them) and elementalist (who have the 4 attunements, and on core weapons they can act like different weapons more than expac weapons). Kinda makes Thief seem like a punk who's pretending they can do it all.

 

Thief is supposed to be the class who uses weapons wrong for great effect. Their ultimate skill in using a gun is to have it backfire and make a cloud of smoke.

[draxynnic.3719]

So, I put the question to a couple of guild discords of people who play high-end content. 8/8 responses were that alacren was support. Some were condescending enough that I had to follow up by letting the person know that I wasn't the person who doubted this.

 

Snowcrows, incidentally, also agrees.

 

A couple elaborated (unprompted) by pointing out that the alacren is one of the first players to be asked to shift build (by switching in a different legend or two) in order to deal with various mechanics since asking a support to do so meant losing less overall DPS.

 

So yes, the community consensus is that alacren is support. And therefore support thief can be made with a similar level of complexity.

 

It's not just alacren, too. Harbinger and catalyst (for all the latter's flaws) have group quickness just by maintaining their specialisation mechanic for a certain proportion of time (I think harbinger needs a little under 50% shroud uptime if you add an elixir or two to the mix, and catalyst needs about 33% or even as low as 25% uptime of air jade sphere if they have Sphere Specialist and maximum boon duration). Neither are requiring complex rotations for their support effect. So, if anything, ArenaNet seems to be trending away from needing complex rotations to support.

 

The reason why I'm using alacrity as an example, however, is twofold:

 

First, because there aren't any alacrity givers in the new set of elite specs yet (unless Battle Presence is made to work with Phoenix Protocol to grant Alacrity...), and given that we've got two quickness givers in the current set, it would be strange for alacrity support to remain as something that only mesmers and revenants have when quickness support is soon to reach the point where more professions have it than not.

 

Second, there's a trend for group alacrity to be on the professions and specialisations that get less out of it due to being limited by some resource other than the recharges that alacrity speeds up. Revenants are limited by energy, mirages by endurance... thieves being limited by initiative would fit this trend nicely.