Guild Wars 2

just wondering how this will be addressed. well played attrition thieves are impossible to take down 1v1 (unless stunlocked by a hammer warrior) because they can just leave. secondly, their health is always at 100% as they heal up and clear conditions whenever they want.

builds like these are making GW2 pvp not fun. they require absolutely no skill to play, and tremendous skill to counter.

also wondering how thief stealth in general will work in the upcoming pvp patch. i assume there’s something big in the works because certain aspects of the thief are pretty silly, and it’s been left as is for 6 months, which is kinda crazy.

If you’re talking about condition thieves, they’re pretty useless and almost never played in competitive play.

i agree, they are useless, but just because ure useless doesnt mean u should have godmode.

nerva.7940:

just wondering how this will be addressed. well played attrition thieves are impossible to take down 1v1 (unless stunlocked by a hammer warrior) because they can just leave. secondly, their health is always at 100% as they heal up and clear conditions whenever they want.

builds like these are making GW2 pvp not fun. they require absolutely no skill to play, and tremendous skill to counter.

also wondering how thief stealth in general will work in the upcoming pvp patch. i assume there’s something big in the works because certain aspects of the thief are pretty silly, and it’s been left as is for 6 months, which is kinda crazy.

thief stealth is fine, they dont heal whenever they want AND this build is extremely easy to counter, just time your dodges with the thieve’s cloak and dagger and its an easy fight. use your slows and try to be behind him so he misses CaD.
yes this build(i assume you’re talking about pistol/dagger build?) is very strong 1 vs 1, even 1vs2 in spvp and 1 vs many in wvw due to culling, but its a really useless build for your team, even more in wvw where 1vs1 matters so little.
in spvp, if you dont think you can kill this kind of thief you can just ignore him (and wait for teammates) cuz they do low damage, unless they pop thieves guild.

Not to mention you just need to stand on the point and remove conditions/heal when you can and you will take it from them since half the time they are stealth and don’t take points.

Every build has a counter. S/D theives, some necro, engie and guardian builds mess p/d up.

thief stealth is NOT fine. absolutely not fine. as i said, just because it’s “only strong in 1v1” and “does little for the team in organized pvp” does not mean it should be godmode, which it is (ability to disengage on demand from just about any situation, reset fight, drop targets, heal up, etc.).

builds that are not fun to play against (d/d eles, bunker guards, a bunch of thief specs) are preventing spvp from really taking off. yes there are counters, yes you need to have 10x the skill to counter a cheese build, but GW2 has a little too much cheese imo that makes pvp less than desirable for casuals.

While we’re at it, nerf ranger’s 1 v 1 spec, they’re not fun to play against either…

Anything that I loose to ever is not fun for me.

You’re 100% right Nerva. Who do these thief players think they are, expecting to sacrifice burst for a tanky attrition spec? Who care’s that the spec is useless in TPvP, useless for capping or guarding points, extremely slow to kill, and ineffective to run in general in the current condition-cleanse heavy meta. Why should they gain any survivability for all those sacrifices? I mean they’re thieves, right, and you’ve made it perfectly clear you hate the class with a logic blinding passion. The spec should do kitten front end damage, easily cleansed condition damage, be useless in TPvP, not be able to hold points, do no burst so it takes forever to kill a player, AND die really quickly and easily.

evilapprentice.6379:

You’re 100% right Nerva. Who do these thief players think they are, expecting to sacrifice burst for a tanky attrition spec? Who care’s that the spec is useless in TPvP, useless for capping or guarding points, extremely slow to kill, and ineffective to run in general in the current condition-cleanse heavy meta. Why should they gain any survivability for all those sacrifices? I mean they’re thieves, right, and you’ve made it perfectly clear you hate the class with a logic blinding passion. The spec should do kitten front end damage, easily cleansed condition damage, be useless in TPvP, not be able to hold points, do no burst so it takes forever to kill a player, AND die really quickly and easily.

They are extremely hard for rangers in particular to take down, and they are not fun to fight against because you don’t see them for long enough to get off a burst combo; and many run with good healing and condition removal in stealth.

They do take skill to play-however, it is much harder to kill them than to play one (at least as a ranger). How do other classes/builds fare against them? I don’t think I’m good enough at any other class to judge how strong they are. I’m sure a good d/d ele would wipe the floor with them, but other than that?

Yasha.5963:

evilapprentice.6379:

You’re 100% right Nerva. Who do these thief players think they are, expecting to sacrifice burst for a tanky attrition spec? Who care’s that the spec is useless in TPvP, useless for capping or guarding points, extremely slow to kill, and ineffective to run in general in the current condition-cleanse heavy meta. Why should they gain any survivability for all those sacrifices? I mean they’re thieves, right, and you’ve made it perfectly clear you hate the class with a logic blinding passion. The spec should do kitten front end damage, easily cleansed condition damage, be useless in TPvP, not be able to hold points, do no burst so it takes forever to kill a player, AND die really quickly and easily.

They are extremely hard for rangers in particular to take down, and they are not fun to fight against because you don’t see them for long enough to get off a burst combo; and many run with good healing and condition removal in stealth.

They do take skill to play-however, it is much harder to kill them than to play one (at least as a ranger). How do other classes/builds fare against them? I don’t think I’m good enough at any other class to judge how strong they are. I’m sure a good d/d ele would wipe the floor with them, but other than that?

Its alot like fighting a bunker, except the thief has no Knockback and can’t hold points.

For rangers, healing spring almost completely neutralizes P/D – Regen makes kittenty pistol autoattack damage nearly non-existent, combined with constantly stripping conditions means the thief will be doing almost 0 damage to you. 15 seconds out of every 30 seconds, you should be close to invincible. The fight should take, at absolute minimum, a full minute and a half, and honestly, it can go on much, much longer.
Every second you’re holding the point, you’re winning the fight. Even if you start to lose the fight, your team should have plenty of time to respond with help.

Any ele running Water (IE, all of them) can just ignore a P/D thief – they might as well not even be there.

Bunker guards are similar to D/D ele’s – any competently played one will completely neutralize it.

Its a strong spec against most warriors , but P/D thief is still squishy enough to get eaten alive if you get caught in a frenzy → HB, and a high hp hybrid with a rifle can be a good fight.

You destroy minion necro’s because mindless AI + caltrops = lol, but any other spec has the upper hand against P/D conditions. P/D can still win, but its an uphill battle.

Strong against mesmers, because caltrops hurts shatter, and mindless AI can’t dodge CnD, but a well played Mes can still win.

Didn’t fight enough Engi’s when I was running the spec to give my 2 cents on them.

Against another P/D spec, its just a toss up. Against other specs, its a dance that favors direct damage. All P/D has to do is kitten up once, and they might be downed. A D/D glass cannon can kitten up a couple times and still win the fight, because your damage is so slow. Equally played, P/D should win nearly every time though.

In any of the above scenario’s though, minimum fight time should never fall below 30 seconds, and it will often take longer than that. That’s a minimum of 30 seconds of you holding the point (if you lose the point to a P/D thief while still alive, its a L2P issue. That’s not me being rude, its just a fact – P/D is a joke unless they’re stealthing as often as possible, and often spending nearly the full duration stealthed for positioning and health regen, except against another stealth heavy thief of course) Thats a huge amount of time for any team to react.

Stiv.1820:

Anything that I loose to ever is not fun for me.

Wear a belt, and buy clothes in the proper size.

Give me a break, such a thief will not be good in tourny. YOu cant kill a good bunker like this. YOud probably lose/have to run away from a good ele in a 1on1 even cause you woudlnt outdps there heals without staying non invisible long enough to be dpsed down.

daydream.2938:

Give me a break, such a thief will not be good in tourny. YOu cant kill a good bunker like this. YOud probably lose/have to run away from a good ele in a 1on1 even cause you woudlnt outdps there heals without staying non invisible long enough to be dpsed down.

Right on brother, tournies are all that matter in this game. I mean I have no idea how people are going to play it when the only practice and introduction is hotjoin, thus meaning no one will touch them and the already long queues are going to go even further, ending with only a handful of teams playing the same people over and over again with no variation. But yeah, unless its in the top teams playerset, then its clearly not OP.

nerva.7940:

i agree, they are useless, but just because ure useless doesnt mean u should have godmode.

The only thing i know that can actually reach a decent godmode level for some time is guardian…thieves are far away from being unkillable…

And everything that sits in stealth for really long times is pretty unuseful in tpvp because if you want to keep stealthing you can’t attack and you can’t contest points while in stealth…so yes maybe noone would catch you but you can’t do kitten and it would be a 4vs5, not so smart imo

a thief doesn’t need to kill to be effective. it seems people don’t get the concept of stalling. If a thief can keep a player on the node (i.e mesmer/ranger) or more than one for that matters, it means that your team is fighting without that mesmer (timewarp lol) in a team fight, or that ur team is having a 3v5/3v4 somewhere else. plus, u know that u can’t leave that point, bc there is or there is not a thief in stealth somewhere.

plus, what the hell, u r saying d/p does not damage? have u tried doing the smoke combo field and heartseeker through it? u get next to infinite stealth and can re engage whenever u want. and regen/condi removal on stealth is not op at all u can even get might when u r in stealth. u can’t get burst, bc u hit and stealth, and if u have thief guild (elite), kitten it, if u r not a bunker, u r a certain death, there r few elites that can pale that one in 1v1

u find urself in a pinch, short-bow and infiltrator arrow away. or just cluster bomb the point for 2-3k crit hits 5 times >.&lt

and thief vs ranger? get real, a good thief should not loose to a ranger. he just need to shoot with a sb and when u get low (half health or less) just come at u and backstab. nub thief r the ones that rush at a ranger with vasilisk venom from the go, for that reason they die 70-80% of the time, they get immo by traps, burned/poisoned, and pet kd the kitten out of them.

did i mention heartseeker+haste before stealth runs out and the glitched stealth animation? or the times cluster bombs hits 2 times ? nvm

Lelouch.8452:

a thief doesn’t need to kill to be effective. it seems people don’t get the concept of stalling. If a thief can keep a player on the node (i.e mesmer/ranger) or more than one for that matters, it means that your team is fighting without that mesmer (timewarp lol) in a team fight, or that ur team is having a 3v5/3v4 somewhere else. plus, u know that u can’t leave that point, bc there is or there is not a thief in stealth somewhere.

plus, what the hell, u r saying d/p does not damage? have u tried doing the smoke combo field and heartseeker through it? u get next to infinite stealth and can re engage whenever u want. and regen/condi removal on stealth is not op at all u can even get might when u r in stealth. u can’t get burst, bc u hit and stealth, and if u have thief guild (elite), kitten it, if u r not a bunker, u r a certain death, there r few elites that can pale that one in 1v1

u find urself in a pinch, short-bow and infiltrator arrow away. or just cluster bomb the point for 2-3k crit hits 5 times >.&lt

and thief vs ranger? get real, a good thief should not loose to a ranger. he just need to shoot with a sb and when u get low (half health or less) just come at u and backstab. nub thief r the ones that rush at a ranger with vasilisk venom from the go, for that reason they die 70-80% of the time, they get immo by traps, burned/poisoned, and pet kd the kitten out of them.

did i mention heartseeker+haste before stealth runs out and the glitched stealth animation? or the times cluster bombs hits 2 times ? nvm

P/D. Pee/Dee. Pistol/Dagger. Attrition spec (its right in the title). 0/0/30/20/20. Condition damage, not direct damage.

Even if you’re keeping a target on point, both teams are down a player, and the enemy team is holding the point. Advantage, other team.

evilapprentice.6379:

P/D. Pee/Dee. Pistol/Dagger. Attrition spec (its right in the title). 0/0/30/20/20. Condition damage, not direct damage.

Even if you’re keeping a target on point, both teams are down a player, and the enemy team is holding the point. Advantage, other team.

wut? we have a node, they have a node, big team fight going on, one of they player is at the back node (forced to be, e.i mesmer, crucial in team fights) and we have ours at the team fight. how is to their advantage? if they have anything below a bunker on the back node it’s easy for a bursty thief with a real sense vs which class he can fight and which one to avoid.

>.< if the thief knows he can kill the back node player, a free kill/cap. if he can’t, bc it’s a bunker or simply too much for him to handle, he can peel off and go back to the team fight and call 1 at back node, still leaving a situation of 1 player to dis advantage.

Lelouch.8452:

evilapprentice.6379:

P/D. Pee/Dee. Pistol/Dagger. Attrition spec (its right in the title). 0/0/30/20/20. Condition damage, not direct damage.

Even if you’re keeping a target on point, both teams are down a player, and the enemy team is holding the point. Advantage, other team.

wut? we have a node, they have a node, big team fight going on, one of they player is at the back node (forced to be, e.i mesmer, crucial in team fights) and we have ours at the team fight. how is to their advantage? if they have anything below a bunker on the back node it’s easy for a bursty thief with a real sense vs which class he can fight and which one to avoid.

>.< if the thief knows he can kill the back node player, a free kill/cap. if he can’t, bc it’s a bunker or simply too much for him to handle, he can peel off and go back to the team fight and call 1 at back node, still leaving a situation of 1 player to dis advantage.

there’s more strategical value to waiting for the Mesmer to drop portal then forcing him back to home with a roamer (ele or thief usually), then burn his portal and just go back to mid. So the team keeping thief at home still has advantage if their team’s ele can just rlt over to far and blow the Mesmer port then just rtl back to mid.
I suppose only 2 or 3 teams on NA actually have to brains to do this right now, but once we get our ladder system perhaps the game will actually become competitive ;p

lets address the concern at hand here: not one spec should be able to near-perma stealth, and be unkillable if so desired. not one spec should require a concerted effort from 3-4 individuals to down. this is cheese. please eliminate cheesy builds from the game that are not fun to play against.

build is fine.

pls don’t homogenize this game.

i’m sorry nerva, but stealth counters pets. i’m pretty sure you play bunker ranger, so you will have a hard time putting that spec down on your own. but he will never kill you & never take your point, so outside of honor duelling i don’t see the issue.

faeral.7120:

build is fine.

pls don’t homogenize this game.

i’m sorry nerva, but stealth counters pets. i’m pretty sure you play bunker ranger, so you will have a hard time putting that spec down on your own. but he will never kill you & never take your point, so outside of honor duelling i don’t see the issue.

i play other profs and specs as well. i havent lost to an attrition thief. BUT my point is: godmode. nobody should have near infinite stealth. it’s a broken mechanic.

Let me start off by saying that this build is most certainly not useless if done right. It is, point blank, NOT an easy spec to play. It is the most fast paced of any build I’ve tried, and there are a lot of ways to make the actual spec. I have gone through 7-8 different builds and have over 2000 games as a condi thief. 110-130 bleed ticks depending on might stacks, usually around the 120 mark. 2100 tough, strong self healing that becomes the best self healing in the game against a few people or anything else I can hit. As lelouch said, you don’t have to kill to be effective, keeping a point neut for an extra 20 seconds and holding 2 people while your team gets the other 2 points is more than enough. After that the spec is also very good in team fights if you comp the team right. You don’t run a pure bleed spec as the only condition spec.

nerva.7940:

faeral.7120:

build is fine.

pls don’t homogenize this game.

i’m sorry nerva, but stealth counters pets. i’m pretty sure you play bunker ranger, so you will have a hard time putting that spec down on your own. but he will never kill you & never take your point, so outside of honor duelling i don’t see the issue.

i play other profs and specs as well. i havent lost to an attrition thief. BUT my point is: godmode. nobody should have near infinite stealth. it’s a broken mechanic.

On your other classes you can dodge/block/immune C&D. On your ranger you are screwed because of your pet. Hard counter, at least you say you don’t die.

Infinite stealth attrition builds are a microcosmic example of why I can’t bring myself to play Guild Wars 2 regularly. They simply aren’t fun to play against, and they reek of bad design.

However, say one word about it on the forums, and people defend it to the death, even while admitting that the build isn’t competitively viable due to Conquest being the game mode of choice. I guess we’re forgetting that people want Deathmatch-style PvP modes.

What happens to these builds that are impossible to fight if/when simple Deathmatch is implemented? One more common annoyance that pushes even more people away from the game on account of a simple lack of fun.

This community just makes me sad. Contradictions layered upon contradictions, without a reasonable discussion to be found.

Cogbyrn.7283:

I guess we’re forgetting that people want Deathmatch-style PvP modes.

I guess you’re forgetting that it’s not?

And on that topic, you really can’t play deathmatch games as a glass cannon. Everyone would have to have a balanced surv/damage build like this thief build.

If you want deathmatch go to WvW and play that style. P/D thieves are really good in WvW except for the fact they have no way to stop people from simply running to guards or to any other form of safety.

Stiv.1820:

If you want deathmatch go to WvW and play that style. P/D thieves are really good in WvW except for the fact they have no way to stop people from simply running to guards or to any other form of safety.

I do play WvW, and P/D Thieves are impossible to fight to the point where it simply isn’t fun. You can try to make a legitimate argument that being forced to run to guards or into a keep because the little Thief can’t really be attacked is fun, but you’re probably going to have a difficult time.

I was sticking to sPvP, since this is the sPvP forum. Even here, if they decide to add Deathmatch-style arenas in the future for the fun people are chomping at the bit about, builds like this are going to dump all over that fun.

Sometimes bad design has nothing to do with balance.

Cogbyrn.7283:

Stiv.1820:

If you want deathmatch go to WvW and play that style. P/D thieves are really good in WvW except for the fact they have no way to stop people from simply running to guards or to any other form of safety.

I do play WvW, and P/D Thieves are impossible to fight to the point where it simply isn’t fun. You can try to make a legitimate argument that being forced to run to guards or into a keep because the little Thief can’t really be attacked is fun, but you’re probably going to have a difficult time.

I was sticking to sPvP, since this is the sPvP forum. Even here, if they decide to add Deathmatch-style arenas in the future for the fun people are chomping at the bit about, builds like this are going to dump all over that fun.

Sometimes bad design has nothing to do with balance.

I think people here understand that whatever the goals are of a specific match will change what builds are effective for that match. CTF, deathmatch, TDM, LMS, conquest and whatever else would all have different builds that were desirable and more effective than others.

Arguing to nerf a build because it’s more powerful in a specific game type, even if that game type did exist is kinda pointless. Each game type would then require a set of nerfs that would homogenize each class down to a stale bore of a game.

Stiv.1820:

Cogbyrn.7283:

Stiv.1820:

If you want deathmatch go to WvW and play that style. P/D thieves are really good in WvW except for the fact they have no way to stop people from simply running to guards or to any other form of safety.

I do play WvW, and P/D Thieves are impossible to fight to the point where it simply isn’t fun. You can try to make a legitimate argument that being forced to run to guards or into a keep because the little Thief can’t really be attacked is fun, but you’re probably going to have a difficult time.

I was sticking to sPvP, since this is the sPvP forum. Even here, if they decide to add Deathmatch-style arenas in the future for the fun people are chomping at the bit about, builds like this are going to dump all over that fun.

Sometimes bad design has nothing to do with balance.

I think people here understand that whatever the goals are of a specific match will change what builds are effective for that match. CTF, deathmatch, TDM, LMS, conquest and whatever else would all have different builds that were desirable and more effective than others.

Arguing to nerf a build because it’s more powerful in a specific game type, even if that game type did exist is kinda pointless. Each game type would then require a set of nerfs that would homogenize each class down to a stale bore of a game.

There’s a difference between asking for nerfs and arguing that design mechanics should be changed. It’s a matter of subtlety that many posters walk all over because they’d rather not think about the details.

If they changed the stealth mechanic so it was more interesting for both sides instead of a Thief just disappearing completely and his/her opponent randomly guessing, then yes, in certain situations the Thief would be at a disadvantage versus the previous stealth mechanic. You could argue it’s a simple nerf, woe to Thieves, etc, but many of us would rather see the Thief class compensated for such a change in order to maintain diverse build viability.

If Stealth is such a crutch, to the point where it can’t even be discussed without robble robble Thief defense, why not redesign it and make it a utility that can be used to effect sparingly instead of one that can just be abused repeatedly? Why not compensate Thieves such that mobility is the larger focus, perhaps giving more Shadowstep options to provide Thieves with more ways to get in and out without pigeonholing them?

Why not make the whole game more engaging and fun for all parties instead of just trying to stagnate enjoyable design with flat, sweeping arguments out of a fear that the class will be nerfed into oblivion?

Stiv has established himself as a thief-defending zealot, that much is clear. p/d is absolutely disgusting in wvw, and an annoyance in spvp due to a virtual godmode. denying this is silly.

nerva.7940:

Stiv has established himself as a thief-defending zealot, that much is clear. p/d is absolutely disgusting in wvw, and an annoyance in spvp due to a virtual godmode. denying this is silly.

I have an account full of professions. I have a guild of friends who play all sorts of professions. Why is it that none of us have the same problems that you do nor feel the need to make Thief nerf threads many times daily?

At least Cogbyrn’s argument is it’s just not fun (which is subjective). You get mad when you get bursted down while already distracted fighting someone else then come here to rage.

nerva.7940:

this happens to me all the time on my ranger bunker. ranger bunker is a high skill cap bunker that’s very rewarding to play when mastered. i could be handling 1 or 2 guys on point, barely surviving, hovering between 6-12k health lets say. and some thief roamer, who i cant see coming, will come in and instagib me for 13k burst on 2k toughness, instantly.

the problem is – WHERE IS THE SKILL? how am i to react to the most reliable single target burst in the game when i cant see it coming?

I don’t care if you try to change your argument once you get pinned down, this shows me what you want to be able to do. Even the so called “godmode” attrition p/d thief has no way to survive that.

Stiv.1820:

At least Cogbyrn’s argument is it’s just not fun (which is subjective).

True. When we get into what’s fun or not, it’s almost impossible to have any sort of objective discussion. Luckily, forums exist for defending subjective opinions/beliefs for the sake of… I don’t know. I’m bored and need a break from testing this dev work.

Anyway, here’s a question I’d like to see answered:

What do you (not just you, Stiv, the general “you”, but you seem to apply as well) find fun/enjoyable about fighting against something like a P/D Thief?

When answering, please highlight the class/spec that you’re using for your perspective. When someone says “Yeah, P/D Thieves are fun, they’re hard to catch, yadda yadda”, then it comes out that they play D/D Ele, there’s a general feeling of “Well, you’re the other class that’s impossible to kill, so of course it’s no big deal for you”. If a similar statement came from someone who played a build similar to mine (Hammer/GS Warrior), it could potentially lead to interesting rapport.

And yes, I understand that a condition/attrition-based class that is designed to stay at range and has good escape mechanisms is a pretty strong counter to a melee-centric Warrior. Remember that I don’t really care about the balance aspect. I’m arguing that combating a stealth-heavy survival Thief results in an experience that lacks interesting counter-play options for the non-Thief, creating a stale guessing game that provides minimal success feedback and results in the wrong kind of frustration.

Cogbyrn.7283:

Stiv.1820:

At least Cogbyrn’s argument is it’s just not fun (which is subjective).

True. When we get into what’s fun or not, it’s almost impossible to have any sort of objective discussion. Luckily, forums exist for defending subjective opinions/beliefs for the sake of… I don’t know. I’m bored and need a break from testing this dev work.

Anyway, here’s a question I’d like to see answered:

What do you (not just you, Stiv, the general “you”, but you seem to apply as well) find fun/enjoyable about fighting against something like a P/D Thief?

When answering, please highlight the class/spec that you’re using for your perspective. When someone says “Yeah, P/D Thieves are fun, they’re hard to catch, yadda yadda”, then it comes out that they play D/D Ele, there’s a general feeling of “Well, you’re the other class that’s impossible to kill, so of course it’s no big deal for you”. If a similar statement came from someone who played a build similar to mine (Hammer/GS Warrior), it could potentially lead to interesting rapport.

And yes, I understand that a condition/attrition-based class that is designed to stay at range and has good escape mechanisms is a pretty strong counter to a melee-centric Warrior. Remember that I don’t really care about the balance aspect. I’m arguing that combating a stealth-heavy survival Thief results in an experience that lacks interesting counter-play options for the non-Thief, creating a stale guessing game that provides minimal success feedback and results in the wrong kind of frustration.

Well my current main profession and gameplay type currently is S/D – D/D Thief in WvW. So I’m not sure if that eliminates me from the discussion. I play a balanced build designed to survive but use on swap crit sigil on a dagger to give on demand 5Kish bursts when needed.

My current build is actually a pretty hard counter to P/D thives. I’d go so far as to say they have zero chance agaist my setup.

Anyway I find it enjoyable to evade Cloak and Dagger. Knowing when they want to do it, seeing them come for it then stuffing it is fun for me. Do I like it when I get hit with it? Nope. Other than actually killing them that is probably the most joy out of that fight.

Thinking about fights that way, I’m not sure if off the top of my head I could come up with more than one thing for every build. What’s fun about fighting bunker guardians? Dazing them at low health I guess.. warriors, backstabbing them when they are in Frenzy. Burst Thieves? Surviving their burst then killing them in their refuge.

Stiv.1820:

Well my current main profession and gameplay type currently is S/D – D/D Thief in WvW. So I’m not sure if that eliminates me from the discussion.

well it kinda does man. you just dont see the situation for what it is because, maybe, youre having too much fun abusing culling. in my opinion, youre an exploiter of a broken mechanic. but i cant ask everyone to boycott the thief in wvw, so i sort of accept it for what it is: inefficient allocation of dev resources. people will always abuse these things, regardless. it’s up to the devs to get on these problems as soon as they appear, not 5 months later (im talking about poor thief balancing, not culling).

culling or no culling, some aspects of the thief are more than annoying. theyre actually too effective for little to no risk to the thief. due to how much survivability stealth gives. mesmers are guilty as well.

Co-signing everything said by Cogbyrn. That man deserves a medal.

Stiv.1820:

Well my current main profession and gameplay type currently is S/D – D/D Thief in WvW. So I’m not sure if that eliminates me from the discussion. I play a balanced build designed to survive but use on swap crit sigil on a dagger to give on demand 5Kish bursts when needed.

My current build is actually a pretty hard counter to P/D thives. I’d go so far as to say they have zero chance agaist my setup.

Anyway I find it enjoyable to evade Cloak and Dagger. Knowing when they want to do it, seeing them come for it then stuffing it is fun for me. Do I like it when I get hit with it? Nope. Other than actually killing them that is probably the most joy out of that fight.

Thinking about fights that way, I’m not sure if off the top of my head I could come up with more than one thing for every build. What’s fun about fighting bunker guardians? Dazing them at low health I guess.. warriors, backstabbing them when they are in Frenzy. Burst Thieves? Surviving their burst then killing them in their refuge.

No build would eliminate you from the discussion. If you played a P/D Thief, you still have a perspective on the fight that is worth investigating.

Anyway, I find fun in predictive counter-play and reactive counter-play both. In your instance, yes, predicting the C&D can certainly be fun. The opponent’s down 6 initiative and standing DIH right out in the open. That’s all well and good, but what if the prediction fails, and the ability lands? It puts the Thief’s enemy into a situation that relies on a guessing game with little indication of success.

Take, for example, a Guardian with a GS. You can predict the Leap to avoid the blind, then engage right up in their face or counter with a one-hit ability to break up their combo. However, if that fails, you still have options. For my Warrior:

1. If the Guardian goes right into the whirl, I can pop something like Endure Pain and deliver a 100B right in their face. I could also whirlwind through them for at least 2 hits, or burn the blind with a regular attack then whirl through to avoid most of their damage.

2. If the Guardian goes into the Binding AoE, I can spend the time it takes for them to cast burning the blind, then dodge the pull command that tends to follow immediately, or burn stability and get right up in their face to do damage before they whirl, or dodge the binding blade attack altogether and create space, remove the blind, and re-engage.

When an attack lands, I feel like I still have interesting options that might have me on the back foot, but still allow me to potentially regain the initiative if I play the next few steps properly. Many classes have this interplay, and it creates (in my opinion of course) a much more engaging fight.

If we look back at C&D, let’s say it lands. Now the Thief is invisible. Traited properly, the stealth will also blind, so if I have something like a Hammer, following up with AoE lock-down of any sort will fail on the first hit, and if I spend the 3/4ths second burning the blind, the number of places the Thief could be grows exponentially. I’ve been led to believe that trait is less popular though, so if the Thief stealths right next to me, I can try to go straight into an AoE lockdown. However, even if I land a full combo, I have almost no way of knowing. If my Adrenaline is spent without any other targets in the area, I can assume that something like Earthshaker lands, but it’s the only ability that provides valuable feedback.

There’s no knocking the Thief out of stealth, or being rewarded with a visual upon guessing properly. Any follow-up to that ability landing just feels very lacking to me. The counter-play isn’t there, and I don’t believe spamming auto-attacks in hopes that they chain because the Thief doesn’t know how to step off to the side is rewarding counter-play.

That’s my thought process, anyway.

Before I head out in a rush, I’d like to point out that I came across a Shadowstep Thief, and I had a blast. Sure, it was infuriating to wonder where the Thief went, see him across the field, then see him pop right back next to me repeatedly. However, I saw potential to improve upon the situation and play better in a way that would provide tangible rewards, so the frustration I was feeling at playing poorly was brimming with tactical potential to improve. Against something like P/D, either I’m dodging the C&D, or things are going terribly. Again, it just feels like poor, shallow design to me that I’d like to see changed to the improvement of the Thief class.

I also feel like the problem is potentially overshadowed because so many Thieves are entranced by the idea of backstabbing for 15000 damage, and I squish 95% of those fools. If it’s the case that Thieves need to be D/D because it’s the only viable burst solution to some of the bunker builds, then well, a lot of things need to be fixed. I’d rather aim at fixing them instead of dancing around them.

Cogbyrn, I don’t have time right now to get into details. Next week I can forum it up again. I’m just going to say that your points are valid. I take blind on stealth because it’s required due to how good it is, not because I want to. If changes could be made to make it more fun for both parties it would be welcome. I play the “shadowstep thief” like the one you fought. Sword#2 and shadowstep slotted. It’s really fun and comes at the cost of not being able to C&D as much.

I agree with everything Cogbyrn has said. My main was a thief and I loved it until I realized how boring it was compared to playing other classes. You’re always spamming something, only because you can. Even if you say, “I don’t spam”, you know that’s all you have to do regardless. You see good thieves all the time fighting well and then right as they’re about to lose, panicking and spamming 2 to get the kill, like they were trying reallllly hard not to spam the entire fight but said screw it toward the end. Sure, you both know it was cheesy, but it still worked and it was easy to do, so why work harder than you have to? It’s not the thief’s fault it’s a boring class.

Fighting P/D is ungodly boring. 11115 11115 11115 is the rotation. I played 0/0/30/20/20 venom share constantly. It just felt totally boring while playing it, but your ability to never die makes you tolerate it. For awhile at least. Of course if you think it’s boring on land fighting HS, DB, SA, PW spam, you can just go in the water and fight Shadowy Assault spam. 555555555. How much more boring could you possibly get? The thief needs a lot of help, despite how strong it is currently it’s strong in a very unfortunate way. I would like to see more builds allowing the type of play S/D offers, with more mobility and trickery options, more useful poisons and traps, and more balanced build opportunities; it would be nice to play a build in the middle of “burst really fast” and “die really slow”.

I find trying to outwit/guess them fun.

Once again I find myself merely needing to agree with what Cogbyrn has said rather than type out my own responses. You sir have it exactly right imo, Cog.

+1

nerva.7940:

i agree, they are useless, but just because ure useless doesnt mean u should have godmode.

i can have godmode too just by sitting in my spawn! holy! op! nerf pls