Leo Schrodingers Cat.2497

> @"Turk.5460" said:

> > @"Leo Schrodingers Cat.2497" said:

> > > @"Faaris.8013" said:

> > > Can you elaborate why you dislike rifle deadeye in WvW?

> >

> >

> > I'm more curious why he thinks rifle is the only way when most go Daredevil D/P

>

> I mostly see the usual D/P Daredevil and now a whole bunch of FoTM Core S/D. The DE's I *do* see are far and few in between and are almost always heavily reliant on stealth.

You just haven't seen the loud ones :/. I'm a loud one. I get Charzooka and hide in a bush and blow people up. If you can't see that massive gun, you deserve to get shot by a DJ.

There was a fishing event!?

> @"Faaris.8013" said:

> Can you elaborate why you dislike rifle deadeye in WvW?

I'm more curious why he thinks rifle is the only way when most go Daredevil D/P

> @"Crinn.7864" said:

> > @"caveman.5840" said:

> > why not just make hitting ageis from stealth reveal you and remove the cool down

> Why not dodges as well? Or should people who manage to predict your backstab not be rewarded for their efforts?

>

> imho casting a stealth attack should always reveal regardless of if it hits or not.

>

>

I fail to call moving around like a chicken with your head cut off and spamming AOEs or melees to hit a cloaked thief "prediction". A thief shouldn't be punished this severely for a single god damn interaction.

Also... if you take deadeye at any point. Do not even bother with Rune of the Deadeye. It's a piece of shit. While runes with profession names are normally well tailored to the profession... this thing is completely redundant and has too much of a cost to get too little benefit.

Actually... now that I think about it... we even had a trait made into an insane risk that makes it almost never worth to take into PvP.

If you can afford it, look into putting your trinkets into defensive stats rather than more damage. The trinkets don't really net you a decent amount of damage. But Vitality is multiplied by 10 (I think) for every point you're given. And keeping your defences up can help you from getting trashed when your endurance gets frozen (Daredevil's stupid slipperyness nerf)

But the trinkets having defensive stats can really come through for you when things get out of control.

If you're taking a Shadow Arts heavy build, taking healing power is actually a pretty strong idea. As Shadow arts gives you the ability to restore HP for every second you're invisible, and the healing trinkets will scale quite decently.

Taking toughness on the runes isn't a terrible idea either. Daredevil is designed to be very in your face, as shown by its incredibly boring rune. You won't be able to dodge everything, and a little bit of toughness will help make your 16-17k HP pool last a little longer.

For armor...

Marauder's is my main go to for most cases for Core, Deadeye, and Daredevil.

I take Valks with toughness trinkets, and maybe weapons when I plan on doing guild fights as core thief, or assault interception. About the size of a party, or a squad fighting each other. That is for Core and DD. If I am Deadeye, I'll take Assassins, or Marauds as the armor. And then Magi for Weapon, and trinkets with Furious oil. For that situation, utilities is what ever for Core and Thief. For Deadeye, I usually have snipers cover, shadow flare. The last one varies from Shadow Step, Smoke Bomb, Roll for Initiative, Shadow Gust, or Smoke Screen. Smoke screen is always taken if there's a bunch of Rangers.

Zerks only when I am very sure that I am just taking a defensive role on Deadeye.

Outside of the Valks case, my trinkets are almost always Healing Power, and if I am not Deadeye, I have the Rune of Rage for fury.

> @"Konig Des Todes.2086" said:

> > @"Leo Schrodingers Cat.2497" said:

> > I'd bet my charr horns that the "Tribal Charrs" we encountered is actually just a front, and the main branch of the ash legion is headquartered there.

>

> The heavy prevalence of magic, and total lack of anything subterfuge-like, heavily implies against this theory.

>

> Not to mention the great distance.

A little too serious, aren't you?

> @"Almost in War.9326" said:

> Claw of the Khan-Ur

>

> The Claw of the Khan-Ur is an ancient charr artifact that resided within the ruins of Ascalon City. It is described as a ungue with two blades jutting forward and two blades backwards, set with four gems; red, black, gray, and gold, for each of the children of the first Khan-Ur.

> 

>

> Also, this is the Centurion's Claw from HoM

> 

>

>

> I'd say it's quite obvious.

> Although, I'm not sure I fear they'll just throw it at us without any lore involved around it. I mean... it's almost the Excalibur of Charr culture Can't we have something like the Shining Blade, an explanation of why we are now using it or something.

> I'm still gonna craft it regardless, I'm a #CharrMasterRace supporter after all.

I'd go with a replica of the claw. I'm pretty sure that Charr Conesures and culture researchers would love to have a replica of the real thing. So some Iron Legion weapon smith got to thinking and made a bunch of these things to sell at top dollar. Needless to say they sold pretty damn well while Smouldor is sitting on the real one in his office... in a glass box. He's contemplating if that's the actual real one... or if the Ash legion thought it'd be safer in their hands, and took it to where ever the HELL their main camp actually is.

I'd bet my charr horns that the "Tribal Charrs" we encountered is actually just a front, and the main branch of the ash legion is headquartered there.

Either to consume Ley energy, to destroy the Zyphers if they got there some how, or to watch the view as Tyria destroys its self.

I'm not entirely sure what the rules of being branded are. It could very well be Will power, exposure to Kralkatorrik's searing presence, or what have you.

Lore wise, General Alomora Soulkeeper lost her warband to Kralkatorrik. What happened was he flew overhead during a battle for Ebonhawk and caused that huge brand gouge. Members of her warband had became warped and turned into crystalline monsters while the ground melted and swirled. But she and a few others did not. She was forced to put her warband down.

In another instance... there was a Charr who was sent to investigate the mountain that was actually that damned dragon. It killed lots of people, blew him a good distance and broke a lot of his bones with a flap of its wings. And then breathed on him. His breath was described to be blistering hot if I remembered, and that branded him.

> @"saerni.2584" said:

> What would you replace it with?

>

> Not sure a power creep like this would be healthy for the profession overall.

It's not a power creep. This traitline is almost always grabbed, specifically for the +3 initiative. Unlike other classes, thief's main abilities lies in his weapon skills. Both offensively, and defensively. While the utilities are often highly situational or defensive.

Having that +3 made baseline would definitely improve the build options that thief gets, and probably change the utilities they take.

As for replacement... I'd probably do something like... Dance of Cloaks "Successfully Dodging attacks grants initiative recharge bonus." treat it like leading blows, where the more stacks you build up, the quicker your initiative rises. Though this would probably be stupid on Daredevil.

The other option

"Displacer" After successfully evading an attack the next incoming attack within 3secs is guranteed to be a miss. Internal cooldown of 5-7secs after proc. This means that after the 3 seconds has passed, it will be up again in 2-4 seconds.

This would open up the door for weapon sets such as D/D, S/D and the Spear as it gives them a decent defensive option.

OR.... just return ricochet and put it there...

Thief has always been the most hated profession in the game.

First to be Blamed. First to be Flamed. First to be kicked. First to be kicked AGAIN. First to get nerfed. First to be called overpowered when we're not. First to lose territory in this game's mechanics to other professions. Last to get bug fixes (Shadow Trap anyone?). Over-limited (Deadeye's first release state). Mechanics getting muddled (cool down on backstab).

You can absolutely stomp an entire game alone, and you'll get nasty PMs from both your team and the opposing team.

> @"kash.9213" said:

> > @"Sir Vincent III.1286" said:

> > We call it "positional awareness". It is a skill every Thief develops over time after dying so many times. Some people call it "L2P", but that's just rude.

>

> I think the OP is talking about buggy places where teleport skills wont activate even if there is enough space, proper pathing, and ground target foot prints are green to go/ SMC has a lot of those spots.

That kinda went over your head.

> @"kybraga.7103" said:

> Now the question is: How much better would Magi Stats and other stats with Healing/Precision be if this did affect healing? :astonished:

It'd give me a reason to the druid more for being primarily used for healing in a game that advertised no healers needed.

> @"Sir Vincent III.1286" said:

> I'm surprised that this is not universally known yet, but since we're doing this, Death's Retreat has the same effect. You can double shadowstep flips by pressing and holding Death's Retreat, assuming you have enough Initiatives to do two flips. Someone showed this to me and it's the best tool to get away in WvW, at least for me.

But I've put that to use too. Combined with roll for initiative there's no way they can actually catch up to me in a short span of time.

I actually just use the rifle to replace shortbow all together. Once you get good at aiming backwards, it actually behaves exactly like shortbow, in that you can shadowstep onto raised platforms liked normal.

Why would it affect healing?

Lessers are called such because they are not on demand like the actual utility/ability you might have in your hot bar. They only proc under certain conditions and not always at the best of times. Thief's lesser Haste for instance in the trickery lineup. Thief can only get the haste from hitting someone from the side or behind, when in most cases it's probably better for the thief to have exact control over when he gets haste. Trust me... Haste is scary on thieves. And Lesser Caltrops. The caltrops are on demand as they drop when you dodge, but have a short duration and a much smaller radius.

It's also possible that Lessers are not actually affected by traits, as I don't believe any of the thief's lesser abilities are actually affected by the trait that restores all CDs for a random utility type. Or CDRs for tricks and traps.

So you're clearly making tradeoffs to get the full utility for free.

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by the last point. But it seems to me that it's working as intended?

I thought I was a scary dead eye... you're the bigger monster.

Though is it me... or is thief the most mechanic heavy class in PvP?

I don't think other professions have as many unspoken skill interactions and combos as thief does. Like the one mile Thief gank. Stealing into a spiking damage attack. Or using the Steal/Infiltrator's signet as an escape manuever. And you really can't go far with thief without knowing them.

I'd rather keep mercy as it is. It's a surprisingly useful skill when you time it right in PvP. I'm not top 50 PvPer or some shit. But I'm pretty sure you'd understand that putting it on your hotbar, and then using it when someone is guaranteed to be dead will restore much needed initiative and prepare you for your next fight. I don't really use it for retargeting, as my general strategy is to always kill one target at a time.

> @"Maugetarr.6823" said:

> This was actually really helpful. I didn't know it functioned this way and it smoothes out rifle play a bit.

> @"Dahkeus.8243" said:

> I did not know this! Thanks for the tip!

Not a problem. Another useful fact when it really counts... is that if a shadow step is instant, it will not cancel Death's Judgement.

This is particularly useful when you're laying down the finishing blow, but someone decided to run out of range. Because the Shadowstep doesn't cover your full range you'll have a small safety buffer as you close the distance to finish him off. Or better yet, relocate or close the distance to swap to a melee weapon immediately to finish them off. Closing in early helps with not giving them a chance to dodge, or hit a reflect button without fear of you canceling the ability.

Infiltrator's Signet, and Shadow Step are really useful for this.

The engie needed a redesign more than the mesmer.

> @"ZerotheFang.5890" said:

> i agree the magi amulet was a bit much with some healing type builds, but could we do something about stealth in spvp thief kinda disappears too much to fast and can rapid cast those, or engi stealth gyro.

You do know there are abilities that reveals stealthed enemies right?

I... am really not liking what I am seeing. I am mostly a thief main, so I may be a bit biased.

But thieves are supposed to be high mobility, high damaged sort of people. Usually their entire gameplay in the past had been to get in and hit someone so hard that they don't have a chance to react. And if you draw the fight out, you're supposed to outplay them. The damage nerf to the auto is a little frustrating to see, especially when we're sitting on an annoying cool down for backstab, and that we don't exactly have the ability to freely rotate out skills without blocking out the others. This would just force us into always taking trickery again.

The buff to the signet is nice... but most of them aren't actually used as most of the passives and actives aren't worth what other utilities can do for you. So it's really redundant when you could have improved the other signets to bring them up to usable levels.

I'm fine with the smoke screen buff.

I'd rather DaggerStorm be buffed in what it can do, than have the cool down be reflected. It's the thief's only access to stability, and it has so many glaring issues behind it. Namely that you deal more damage when you have more people near you, or you're right on top of someone.

> @"reikken.4961" said:

> > @"Vinceman.4572" said:

> > > @"reikken.4961" said:

> > > Meta builds are NOT intended to maximize success chance. For the most part they're intended to maximize clear speed.

> > >

> > > There are of course many non meta builds that decrease clear speed and also decrease success chance, as they simply offer less dps or give fewer buffs , but there are also lots of builds that usually increase success chance in exchange for decreasing (potential) clear speed, by offering the group more defense and failsafes, or by simply being easier on the player playing it.

> > >

> > > Furthermore, in many cases the more defensive builds actually increase clear speed just by virtue of keeping people up and doing dps.

> >

> > Or you just swap one dps class to a third healer like some pugs are doing on Matthias for example. You are still faster than having 6-10 more or less suboptimal builds that are not better in surviving but very much capped in their dps. In a pug I would never play with 2 druids and 6 players with bad dps than with 3 healer and 5 players with good dps. The first group is most likely to fail even bosses like Cairn, Mursaat Overseer and Samarog which are one of the easiest boss encounters in the game because they have to handle many more mechanics than the other group. Even Escort is a pain in the ... if your group isn't able to clean the bottom with decent dps. Trust me, I've seen such teams, it was a nightmare.

> > Raid bosses have either one hit mechanics or you can easily take 2-3 hits in zerker/viper gear before going into downstate. It is **not easier** with defensive gear in raids, that's a missbelief.

>

> You're making too many assumptions about what constitutes more defensive. We're not talking about swapping your weavers to soldier gear and calling it a day. Running a third healer is indeed an example of non meta and more defensive. As is running a tempest healer in any capacity. And some examples for dps builds is carrion firebrand (gain 8k health for like 3%? dps loss), running invigorating precision on thief, or (lol) any kind of necromancer (the class is extremely tanky for a dps because of barrier/shroud). Or like that one time I not only played scourge, but also swapped out soul reaping for blood magic to help a little with healing but mostly help with reviving downs since transfusion+ritual of life is OP. And like magic, our formerly struggling group suddenly cleared the boss.

Taking marauder's on thief which is a... 6% dps loss for nearly 18,000 hp which is enough to keep the thief alive when the healer's aren't on point. Or when the thief eats a shit load of damage in a mere nanosecond.