Zacchary.6183

> @"Chips.7968" said: > > @"Zacchary.6183" said: > > I've helped zerg fights with speed runes, acro and Choking Gas. You'd be amazed how much it softens the tip of a push. Basically, wait for a enemy zerg push > aim at tip > Dash back > daze interrupts > ez kills. > > If in a blob vs blob they're pushing with no aegis or stability, then a thief poison field doing a daze if their actively casting is going to be the least of their problems. Often their stability and aegis gets eaten away by random attacks anyways. Choking gas just makes it easier to chip away at anyone who comes to the front, buffed or not.

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?PaQAQlVwiYXMJGJO8XnvKA-zRRYDhJGF4zoCFQMTApsMUI-e DE Rifle. Ez, braindead, high damage, hard to die with if you know what you are doing.

I've helped zerg fights with speed runes, acro and Choking Gas. You'd be amazed how much it softens the tip of a push. Basically, wait for a enemy zerg push > aim at tip > Dash back > daze interrupts > ez kills.

> @"Gotejjeken.1267" said: > Think there just needs to be some more reveal ability added to most classes and a way to reliably CC evades. The latter will be super tricky as it'd effect all classes, but the dodge / teleport spam is getting a little ridiculous from a few classes now. > > Since most of these discussions devolve into thief vs. ranger (as far as balance goes), have a few suggestions from that standpoint... > > As a suggestion, I think Druid for instance is actually in a good place, one that could be used as a model for thief. You can be tanky and you have quite a bit of immob ability, but don't have the power to really kill anything with a decent cleanse. In that way, it plays similar role to thief, where you exist to harrass and +1, and can win most 1v1's against inexperienced players, but get doubled up or have anyone with access to CC spam of their own and you are up a creek. Druid to me is more thoughtful in general though, as there is no real instant escape button--you have celestial shadow but must give up other good utilities (verdant etching) to get it. > > What I'm saying is, I think the thief has too many escape buttons and therefore does not encourage thoughtful play. It currently is like Soulbeast, where a lot of the times a SB can stack protection and stability and power through most things at 1500 range--if you get close they switch to GS and run. In a group you'll never catch them, and it's such a braindead unbalanced way to play. Thief is same, has both stealth, stunbreaks, cc mitagations, etc. with no real tradeoff other than the super low HP / armor if they happen to fall asleep for a bit. Save for stealth, all professions have stunbreaks, CC mitigations, etc. Thief only ever has active defenses. Their heals are trash, their boons are limited, and there is very little fire-and-forget to the profession. What trips people up is thief **does not have solid rotations**. You cannot entirely predict when something is off cooldown because their weapon skills are spammable. Bottom line, people need to play the profession and understand it if they want to take it out. Nerfing its active defenses is not how you go about doing it.

> @"Hollowperspectiv.3047" said: > > @"Zacchary.6183" said: > > Unpopular opinion: I'm glad d/p is dead, even if its by accident. > > This is Bound. Nothing to do with d/p. > @"DeceiverX.8361" said: > > @"Zacchary.6183" said: > > Unpopular opinion: I'm glad d/p is dead, even if its by accident. > > No, D/P dominates with Dash, and just generally dominates. Bound builds aren't even the top-tier ones. Ah my bad. UPDATE: So I checked it out myself and while Bound doesn't work period, Impaling Lotus does. I noticed that the daggers thrown themselves were flagged as the "blinding bolts". It seems like someone was trying to change how the two interacted with combo fields and ended up breaking them.

~~Unpopular opinion: I'm glad d/p is dead, even if its by accident.~~ EDIT: Misread. Still don't like it.

> @"Exitus.3297" said: > > @"NorthernRedStar.3054" said: > > > @"Exitus.3297" said: > > > When my friend told me about the nerfs, I seriously thought he was trolling. > > > > > > Then I looked at them and not only did they nerf Infiltrator's Arrow, gutting its mobility, they did it in the most uncreative way possible. On top of that, instead of giving Thieves something to work with in terms of defense to compensate for said nerf in mobility, they nerfed their defense. These nerfs were completely out of the blue. If I had to guess where they were gunna nerf the Thief next, I would said it would have been Shadow Arts due to how much some of the traits that contribute to perma-stealthing are used as a crutch. > > > > > > It isn't even just about these nerfs (or how out of the blue they are). Remember back on the February Patch when they basically annihilated the Acrobatics traitline, giving the only decent traits 300 seconds? Remember back when everyone was saying that they are just going to be "placeholders" until they can find something better to do with them? They're still there, untouched, virtually unusable in any PvP scenario. Meanwhile, in the land of Deadeye, their PvP rotation literally consists of spamming Skirmisher's Shot over and over until they hit 7 Malice with Maleficent 7, get off a stealth attack, and rinse and repeat ad nauseam. It has been this way since February and it has yet to be touched. The sad part is that the only reason Deadeyes do this is because it is the only realistic way they can do significant damage. I could go on > > > > > > Then the OP mentioned that there are no Devs that play Thief. I have no idea how true this is, but at this point I don't doubt it. No Dev in their right mind who even plays Thief would even let this slide. > > > > > > I thought for awhile about what other alternatives I could take, and to be quite honest. I'm a Thief main, and I primarily play this game for the PvP. I want the game to work. I want Thieves to be in a good spot, but not overpowered. I was willing to give this balance team a chance, but I think I'm just done with this game now. It's obvious based on the balance team's trend that ongoing balance issues are going to get ignored, while pumping out changes that don't make any sense. > > > > > > (P.S, to the OP, Most of the people I know who swapped out of Thief went to Power Rev or Holosmith, mostly the former) > > > > > > > > > > For what it's worth; I've never seen an Anet dev play thief. N-E-V-E-R. I knew about the upcoming Consume Plasma nerf, but I had no idea they'd also be nerfing Sap Essence (one of the few remaining actually hard-hitting thief skills). I'm confused as to why, if Signet of Agility was _such an issue_ , they couldn't just up the cooldown by 5-10 seconds? Then again, considering how limited its use is with its current cooldown as things stand... And people are actually out there talking about it as this 'superb condi cleanse', when it literally only does that while granting an added (now half a ) dodge. It's not like it's a stun break. > > > > I really am not much of a fan of deadeye's gameplay pattern. But that's the road Anet's pigeonholing me onto. > > What's super ironic is that the same players that are saying the nerf is justified are the same ones that are complaining about the stealth uptime, not realizing what they've just done. The whole point is to make thieves killable to them. That's why they do it.

> @"NorthernRedStar.3054" said: > our current balance head is an elementalist main Oh goodie.

*(Unhindered Combatant Dashes, Speed Runes and Channeled Vigors past you)* Nothing personal, kid.

If they didn't want thieves to spam skills, they should not have given them the initiative system. Considering certain skills now leave you open simply by using them, it might be a good idea to play other professions in competitive game modes.

> @"Fat Disgrace.4275" said: > > @"Heizero.9183" said: > > If youre already using Eagle I highly recommend Infiltratuon runes. Really great synergy with thief and good stats while still retaining Eagle's damage increase to low health . > > Ooh, i forgot all about that rune. I use it on my Steady Sniper build.

permastelth teef too stronk delet pls thx

There is no such thing as rotation on thief. The very design makes rotating skills impractical and near pointless. The closest you'll ever get with deadeye rifle is Skirmisher's x3 > Dodge (Silent Scope) > Death's Judgement with Maleficent Seven. The rest of the profession + elite specs are spam/use as needed because that's how the initiative system works.