13 January, 2023--What Is Not Being Used

[Grand Marshal.4098]

Scorpion Wire is essential in WvW troll builds around SM. Comm pulls, general bullshittin and obnoxious CC. 

Best skill ngl. 

[Noko Anon.9154]

13 hours ago, Yasai.3549 said:

 

I don't have any suggestions. I'm much more interested in other people's discussion about the topic. If I hadn't made this post, I wouldn't have learned so many niche things about thief that others have brought up within the thread. The observations that I've gleaned going over dedicated repositories don't talk about niches, only match-ups. It's thanks to players like you that I can become a better player myself.

[raido.4073]

On 1/15/2023 at 2:19 PM, Dadnir.5038 said:

Players will always say that their favourite profession in UP and expect the majority to agree with them.

The truth is that when you commit to a character, you always end up feeling it's inherent limits and you can't help to compare those limits to the limits of other professions. It often lead to a feeling of inferiority that end up in minimizing the strengths of a profession and exagerating it's weaknesses.

 

Only the unwise do that, after a while you normally understand that if you want a true view of each profession potential you need to play them a little to avoid presuming things based on limited personal perception.

It's also a must have in pvp to know other profession to be able to counter them more efficiently.

 

Concerning the main post physical skill are all good :

- Bandit defense is 20 sec CD (16 sec with talent) stun breaker with a 1,5 sec block + the follow up kick who knockdown for 2 sec how is that bad ?

- Distracting dagger : with pressure striking (Trickery) and Impacting disruption (Daredevil) it can hit quite hard on defiant foe and also it reward you for having reflex because you can easily kick enemy with average cast time.

- Impairing dagger is also correct with the right trait it's a 5 stack poison + slow + immobilize and being a 100% combo finisher projectile can be used in smoke zone to blind enemy (or to proc other zone debuff)

- impact strike is better than basilisk venom until 3 people (impact = 432, Basilisk = 450).

 

For the rest :

- Signet of shadow passive is useful if you don't have swiftness and the active is also pretty strong 10 vulnerability stack + weakness + blind on 5 target a 1200 range with a 20 second CD and if you use signet of power from critical strikes line with the shadow art line it can get pretty strong with the stealth on kill.

 

- All deception skill are useful others in this post have covered it.

 

- Cantrip all work correctly (but their CD is a little too long certainly because of payback in deadeye line) shadow meld is pretty good since it dispel revealed which can be handy and give you enough stealth time with hide in shadow healing skill to pass certain pack of annoying monster or flee a pvp fight with 9 sec of stealth.

 

- Daggerstorm isn't bad but the CD is way too long, 60 sec would be better.

 

- Venoms are bland and only worth it in a 5 people group (pretty weird that poisons are group support skill) wish they improve them to be at least less bland and more useful in solo.

 

- Withdraw and roll for initiative are horrible and should be changed to be simple evade, these two skill have tried to kill me or stuck me in the environment more than they helped me.

 

i'm more concerned about underwater thief personally because every time i  go underwater as a thief i'm just frustrated because the weapon are horrible and you can't use (without exagheration) 75% of your skill (as deadeye you can't use any cantrip except mercy)....

 

 

[Noko Anon.9154]

9 minutes ago, raido.4073 said:

 

 

Could underwater skills be updated, though? I was under the impression that water combat was a no-no in current design. Even the Leviathan was intended to be fought with skiffs, unless I'm misunderstanding the fight's mechanics entirely.

[raido.4073]

7 minutes ago, Noko Anon.9154 said:

Could underwater skills be updated, though? I was under the impression that water combat was a no-no in current design. Even the Leviathan was intended to be fought with skiffs, unless I'm misunderstanding the fight's mechanics entirely.

 

My impression is more that they didn't have the time to update it properly because Necro/Warrior/Elem are correct underwater compared to thief so with a little more manpower and time they could clean that and since Anet is recruiting more people they could maybe do that in the close future.

 

For the leviathan the skiff is here to clean the thick skin buff but you can also do it by letting yourself being swallowed and killing weak spot in the belly (just don't go alone or you will just get disgested).

You can also stay on the neck of the leviathan to be able to dps him with ground weapon but you will still need people to clean the thick skin buff.

[Doggie.3184]

9 hours ago, Noko Anon.9154 said:

Could underwater skills be updated, though? I was under the impression that water combat was a no-no in current design. Even the Leviathan was intended to be fought with skiffs, unless I'm misunderstanding the fight's mechanics entirely.

It is very frustrating to me that I can't use Wells, have no Alacrity access and no water weapons apply Torment when in water. Speargun also has no good spam skill for condi damage to build Shroud. Condi Specter may actually be the worst class in the game in water and makes me wish it'd just auto-swap me to something else when I enter it.

Edited January 18, 2023 by Doggie.3184

[Noko Anon.9154]

17 hours ago, Doggie.3184 said:

 

I didn't even notice these bleak problems... I mainly do WvW, and very rarely will combat willingly be done in the water in that kind of an environment. Good commanders have kept me on dry land with very few exceptions, like hunting down strays of a broken PUG in Bay. Is the solution something as simple as having wells activate on the thief when they're submerged, or does something else need to be done for them to work underwater? I would imagine that the difficulty from a well comes from wanting it to be a flat, 360-degree area, rather than a full sphere.

[Doggie.3184]

5 hours ago, Noko Anon.9154 said:

I didn't even notice these bleak problems... I mainly do WvW, and very rarely will combat willingly be done in the water in that kind of an environment. Good commanders have kept me on dry land with very few exceptions, like hunting down strays of a broken PUG in Bay. Is the solution something as simple as having wells activate on the thief when they're submerged, or does something else need to be done for them to work underwater? I would imagine that the difficulty from a well comes from wanting it to be a flat, 360-degree area, rather than a full sphere.

Some weeks ago there were two fights I had in water~ one was Druid and other was Necro, because that's where they felt most comfortable and wouldn't stop retreating into it. Wasn't a whole lot I could do on a condi build. I'd have to switch to strike damage Daredevil and tordepo them in the throatneck with Spear.

Though druid is just invincible to damage right now so probably wouldn't matter too much, idk. In the end I just left cuz it was taking forever.

Edited January 19, 2023 by Doggie.3184

[UNOwen.7132]

Pulmonary Impact also isnt used in PvP or WvW anymore due to being entirely worthless, so Id add it to the list of "traits not used anywhere". 

[Noko Anon.9154]

21 hours ago, UNOwen.7132 said:

 

There is this P/P Daredevil build going around that is using Pulmonary Impact, which is why I didn’t include it in that part of the OP. That being said, I have heard that PI was heavily nerfed at some point. Is there a reason why? It would seem that having an option for thieves to spend initiative on pistol 4 instead of pistol 5 would reward more active play styles, and thieves already have a lack of reliable AoE outside of melee-range staves; improving short bow 4 seems like a good option daredevil should have, on the outside looking in.

[Zacchary.6183]

11 hours ago, Noko Anon.9154 said:

Is there a reason why?

Originally it did close to 2k unavoidable damage. So someone who was good at interrupting would have gotten the most out of it and essentially kill anyone they want by timing their interrupts properly. So naturally, it got nerfed to hell.

[Lithril Ashwalker.6230]

5 hours ago, Zacchary.6183 said:

Originally it did close to 2k unavoidable damage. So someone who was good at interrupting would have gotten the most out of it and essentially kill anyone they want by timing their interrupts properly. So naturally, it got nerfed to hell.

Daredevil roaming squads designed to rip stability off constantly on targets and spamming headshots on called targets could still pull it off if avoiding reflects...if u stack over 2 PI's, they automatically trigger both chunks of dmg. So bassy stacks 2 times as well. U gave me an idea...watch discord soon

[Noko Anon.9154]

10 hours ago, Zacchary.6183 said:

 

Was there a given reason why Pulmonary Impact was nerfed to the point of being unusable, rather than marginally tuned down or reworked into a different mechanic?

[UNOwen.7132]

On 1/25/2023 at 5:10 PM, Noko Anon.9154 said:

There is this P/P Daredevil build going around that is using Pulmonary Impact, which is why I didn’t include it in that part of the OP. That being said, I have heard that PI was heavily nerfed at some point. Is there a reason why? It would seem that having an option for thieves to spend initiative on pistol 4 instead of pistol 5 would reward more active play styles, and thieves already have a lack of reliable AoE outside of melee-range staves; improving short bow 4 seems like a good option daredevil should have, on the outside looking in.

I dont think there is one now? Because even on P/P, its just way worse than both other options, it does like 200 damage.

 

Depends on which nerf. The first nerf is because it made for a very powerful option in +1s, as you stopped the enemies heal or other important skill while doing a sizeable chunk of damage. The second nerf was part of the february megapatch where all damage was reduced, though for reasons that no one knows, it was reduced by 66% instead of the normal 30%. And yeah, we dont know why, but it made the trait a strong contender for worst trait in the game.

[UNOwen.7132]

10 hours ago, Lithril Ashwalker.6230 said:

Daredevil roaming squads designed to rip stability off constantly on targets and spamming headshots on called targets could still pull it off if avoiding reflects...if u stack over 2 PI's, they automatically trigger both chunks of dmg. So bassy stacks 2 times as well. U gave me an idea...watch discord soon

Yeah good luck with that, even 5 PIs together would barely clear 2k, maybe.

[Ezekiel.1985]

Are you lumping sPVP and WVW together? Cause I don't do much/any sPVP really but I enjoy WVW and my commentary from the "PVP" perspective specifically refers to WVW
 

I also think you're not accounting for people switching on utilities for specific instances but not having them as part of their "always on" loadout (such as smokescreen or Shadow Refuge)

Some notes on the notes: 
 

Shadow Refuge: is very useful for "pausing" and escaping a fight to heal up for a decent amount of time when you need. That's basically its function and it's good at that. It can also be used to sneak for extended durations in a way that nothing else is as good at. Smoke + shortbow bomb can get a decent duration, but not as much, and the area has to be totally clear.
 

Impact strike: Really? This is shocking to me, as it is ridiculously good for break bars and I use it for this purpose constantly. In PVP it's a nice way to quickly down kill a key player. Although I mostly mean WVW, as I don't do sPVP much, so I dunno if it's different. I use it that way in WVW though.
 

Bandit's Defense: is great for stopping incoming ranged damage , and is similarly decent for break bars if timed right. It's also a stun break, which is it's own kind of useful. Good for surviving/escaping/charging through ranged barrages in WVW. Extremely short cooldown for all of this is very very nice.
 

Smokescreen: Does exactly what it's supposed to, stops bullets. Very useful in WVW and a number of situations in PVE. Can be used with shortbow blasts for some extended stealth runs, but Refuge is better for this purpose.
 

Caltrops:  Caltrops is good condition damage and also simultaneously good for self-heals in an AE fight with healing signet.

Blood Red Arachnid also said a ton of stuff I concur with across the board.

[Noko Anon.9154]

8 hours ago, Ezekiel.1985 said:

 

I kept them separate. You, and others like you in this discussion, have listed a lot of good reasons to use certain skills in certain situations. The reason I listed them as “not being used” is like you suspected, that they aren’t being listed even as alternative options for major, popular builds.

Do you have any opinions on the traits that aren’t being picked? Others briefly mentioned Pulmonary Impact, but that’s all I can remember seeing after I posted here originally.

[DeceiverX.8361]

In Summary:

Most of the utilities aren't truly bad.  At best, most need cooldown tweaks to see more usability.

D/D and P/P are generally weak and not usable in higher-tier competitive.

S/X needs QoL for PvE.

The Signet class type could use some improvements.  Namely Assassin's Signet.

Preparedness baseline would open up a lot more builds.

Ice Drake Venom is actually just garbage.

[Ezekiel.1985]

6 hours ago, Noko Anon.9154 said:

I kept them separate. You, and others like you in this discussion, have listed a lot of good reasons to use certain skills in certain situations. The reason I listed them as “not being used” is like you suspected, that they aren’t being listed even as alternative options for major, popular builds.

Do you have any opinions on the traits that aren’t being picked? Others briefly mentioned Pulmonary Impact, but that’s all I can remember seeing after I posted here originally.

Pulmonary impact in my experience is really destructive as long as you run enough things to trigger it. I trigger it with fist flurry (into Palm Strike, it adds a 3rd stack when interrupting). Kick from bandit's defense. Each hit  on the Impact Strike  chain can also trigger it, although if you're hitting a single target, only one will actually trigger it (the one that interrupts). You can also have some interesting effects with shortbow #4's interrupt + pulmonary. I think it's very good, personally.

Staff master is also quite good, but I don't use a staff, and I have no endurance problems with dagger + dagger and don't need the endurance per initiative spent. I do have three thieves and two are daredevils - one is a staff thief, and he uses staff master. He's a very dodgy/defensive-ish build though, whereas my main thief is a mix of sustain/dodging and burst damage. The other is a Deadeye and is an overall offense build with a gunslingery theme, usually with pistol+pistol and rifle. Rifle is up while damage is the pure focus, pistol + pistol when it's time to move and survive and sustain (pistol spam + signet + keep moving is very good for sustain, EVEN MORE SO with piercing shots, which I kinda swap on and off depending on the situation leading into a fight)

[Lithril Ashwalker.6230]

Shadow refuge is great as a pseudo Veil from mesmer. Place it in front of a zerg going into smc pushes if they dont have a veil to force target search again akbeit reveal when leaving it. If the zerg is tight or has a slight tail the ones in the back have a little aid in surviving in yhe backlines as SR will disappear before they reach the other side.

Scorpion wire works best when no stability is on target and there arent reflects but pairs greatly with immobilize like a condi rifle spammer DE, especially if you want to see how much hate you can get on you in spvp ranked when the entire enemy team has had enough of your permanent immobilize and yoink spam paired with Payback.

[Doggie.3184]

Siphon on Minipets to proc Thrill of the Crime won't be used anymore in WvW with Minis removed. 😞 indirect nerf to Specter. XD

Rawr, add self-cast Siphon. My Character has a shadow 😛

Edited February 2, 2023 by Doggie.3184