Guild Wars 2

Seriously, that thief build is bullkitten.

I feel sorry everytime i play it, sad part is i have to play it cuz of random condies floating around and celestial builds everywhere.

Do something.

How about you explain why it’s “bullkitten” instead of ranting randomly. S/D thief is fine as long as celestial axebow and turret engi/AI builds in general are fine.

Im not sure why you would feel sorry when you play it. In what world is evading worst than Pistol #5 permablind? I don’t think most people understand that S/D isn’t cheese and can easily be countered by certain specs. Just because your precious hambow can’t beat it doesn’t mean it’s bad.

All the whiners don’t understand that S/D thief is the hardest thief spec to play. All the S/D thieves that ou get wrecked by are probably highly skilled. And don’t say “you don’t need skill to evade spam”. Think about this, An acro thief doesn’t have as much damage as a CS thief, and they can’t stealth spam in pvp, so their only defense is evades. No other meta builds have permanent evade because the only other meta build that uses zerker amulet is mesmer which has a high amount of teleports and distortion.

All I can say is L2P

Also I’d like to 1v1 you because Im almost 100% sure you don’t know how to play S/D thief.

Dude I don’t want to sound rude but How long till you get good at this game?

Like really, every I mean EVERY kittening thread/post from you is about whining, nerf this nerf that buff this buff that, balance these balance those STOP already.

And why people still think S/D is broken, IT DOESN’T.

What brought back S/D again into the meta? new runes/sigils.

Do you want to see when S/D was OP? let me find some random video from Jumper when s/d was beyond op when 2 was a stunbreak and had not cd when FS stole 2 buffs instead of 1.

In those times S/D was broken, OP, strong, or w/e you want to name it. S/D is good in this meta only for the buffs to runes/sigils.

EDIT: The only thing I will nerf would be Feline Grace.

From the bottom to the top tier (Multiple current players in the enxt ToL2) have all stated s/d is toxic. There is no L2P issue when there is no counter to evade. Conditions can be countered, physical damage can be counter. Blocks can be negated with unblockable..what about high evade? there is no counter to high evade. The only practical application to it is be become an annoying kitten target and use a lot of teleports, stealth and evades and upset their attack. This reduces encounters to annoy vs annoy.

I like s/d by virtue it does not use stealth as a go to every 8 seconds. However this is feedback about s/d from the newest to the most experienced players. They don’t like it. Just like hambow which no one liked, and yet still had the most obvious animations got nerfed purely for that reason. The Cc was just too repeatable. I can imagine the official nerf reason will be “To separate the damage from the evade.”

Only thing to say….. is L2P.

can beat using full zerker static discharge engineer fairly easily so I’m leaning towards l2p

pls move the the cry thead thats been floating around. something thats been around since the start of the game is just now becoming an issue?

celestial DD ele – Hambow – celestial engie and more builds are stronger than SD thieves.

Maybe in the super skyhigh top tier where you can find people like Shad or Sizer this build can wreck people, but from the point of view of me, a noob that play in the % of the leaderboards and dont give a kitten about competitive play, the build is not a problem at all, every time i play it i struggle against the high sustain builds, while i can win most 1v2 i do when i use an hambow.

and most important: OP is a troll.

agreeing with everyone else on this, S/D thief is fairly insignificant next to some of the bigger fish.
Hambow is still ridiculously strong after 8 months, AI builds are still running rampant,
cancerous condi builds are still spamming condis all over the place.
S/D is still fairly low on my loathing list!

Elxdark.9702:

Dude I don’t want to sound rude but How long till you get good at this game?

Like really, every I mean EVERY kittening thread/post from you is about whining, nerf this nerf that buff this buff that, balance these balance those STOP already.

And why people still think S/D is broken, IT DOESN’T.

What brought back S/D again into the meta? new runes/sigils.

Do you want to see when S/D was OP? let me find some random video from Jumper when s/d was beyond op when 2 was a stunbreak and had not cd when FS stole 2 buffs instead of 1.

In those times S/D was broken, OP, strong, or w/e you want to name it. S/D is good in this meta only for the buffs to runes/sigils.

EDIT: The only thing I will nerf would be Feline Grace.

S/D is not good in this meta, it’s literally broken.

I know perfectly that the main problem are runes and sigils, point is they need to be addressed fast cuz thief is literally removing 80% of build diversity in PvP: basically current meta has nothing to do with “right comps, good meshing” and kittenz, current meta is “everything that doesn’t get instagibbed by a thief” with the sole exception of mesmer and only because portal too stronk.

S/D thief currently cannot fail against anyone, he can even over extend for such absurds amount of times there’s no point even in building a team strategy, just play it like if you were in solo q.

Thief shouldn’t have high damage, high survivability and the best mobility: it’s broken.

Again, don’t pin this entirely on s/d thieves.

It’s the boons, runes and sigils (this in particular) that need to be looked at one more time – affecting every class, and giving at least several classes and builds too much of an edge.

Its the same way u counter someone in smash bros spamming the dodge button ! ! ??

Better timings, positionings and most importantly work on your mind game capabaility.

The mind game ability goes in the same catagory as trying to hit an interupt on someone fakecasting alot

u cannot turn off your brains and go auto pilot and spam keys vs thieves

Mrbig.8019:

Elxdark.9702:

Dude I don’t want to sound rude but How long till you get good at this game?

Like really, every I mean EVERY kittening thread/post from you is about whining, nerf this nerf that buff this buff that, balance these balance those STOP already.

And why people still think S/D is broken, IT DOESN’T.

What brought back S/D again into the meta? new runes/sigils.

Do you want to see when S/D was OP? let me find some random video from Jumper when s/d was beyond op when 2 was a stunbreak and had not cd when FS stole 2 buffs instead of 1.

In those times S/D was broken, OP, strong, or w/e you want to name it. S/D is good in this meta only for the buffs to runes/sigils.

EDIT: The only thing I will nerf would be Feline Grace.

S/D is not good in this meta, it’s literally broken.

I know perfectly that the main problem are runes and sigils, point is they need to be addressed fast cuz thief is literally removing 80% of build diversity in PvP: basically current meta has nothing to do with “right comps, good meshing” and kittenz, current meta is “everything that doesn’t get instagibbed by a thief” with the sole exception of mesmer and only because portal too stronk.

S/D thief currently cannot fail against anyone, he can even over extend for such absurds amount of times there’s no point even in building a team strategy, just play it like if you were in solo q.

Thief shouldn’t have high damage, high survivability and the best mobility: it’s broken.

You’re contradicting yourself so hard. You know well that it’s runes and sigils but then you blame the thief. If you know it’s the sigils combo why don’t you make a qq post about that? Instead of hurr durr thief2stronk4me.

So do you want to nerf the only active build in this AI passive meta?
As Sizer said, you can’t win vs a thief just by spamming skill with the same rotation.
And why open a new thread on S\D thieves when there is already one in the first page? Do you think this will get more attention by Devs?
5 months ago when “Shadow Return” was an instant skill and a break stun, when F\S was stealing 2 boons instead of just 1, then the S\D thief was balanced.
Now if anything it needs a buff.
Celestial ele, Hambow and Celestial engie say hello!!

nerf steal or put Line of sight on thiefs,that only will make difference between good and bad thiefs,mesmer and other glassy classes will be able to kite and all will be happy

Paragon.5479:

nerf steal or put Line of sight on thiefs,that only will make difference between good and bad thiefs,mesmer and other glassy classes will be able to kite and all will be happy

and how do you suggest to nerf steal? A class ability that requires 1 full trait line and a half for being in par with all the F abilities of other classes

CntrlAltDefeat.1465:

There is no L2P issue when there is no counter to evade. Conditions can be countered, physical damage can be counter. Blocks can be negated with unblockable..what about high evade? there is no counter to high evade.

This is the biggest issue that most players tend to overlook. Going by what Anet said in their recent readyup about balance. Thief has no passive defenses, they only have active sustain aka evades and dodges. This is true. But when you look at the big picture in regards to passive defenses vs active defenses:

Passive defenses has ways to obstruct its function:

• Healing is countered by poison
• High armor is countered by vulnerability
• Defense boons such as prot and regen can be removed

So passive defenses has a definite counter. But when you look at active defenses:

• Dodge has weakness
• Evade has nothing

The difference between passive defense and active defense is quite large. What players need to understand is something simple: The greatest form of mitigation one can have is not getting hit at all.

High armor soaks up damage yes, but even lich form will hit a 3400 armored character for 5k. But with evades and dodges you can avoid hits like that entirely. This is what makes evade insanely powerful.

It makes even the most squishy character tanky because they aren’t receiving damage. Thief is the most complained about when it comes to evade simply because they have the option to choose when they want to evade instead of being bound to cooldowns. So this makes thief a non rotation based class, unorthodox in that regard.

The simple solution is to introduce across all eight classes ways to bypass evade. It can be one skill that does it or it can be a temporary buff like given to signet of strength that allows ones skills to bypass evade.

A mechanic that has no counter is toxic to the game. I can guarantee you that IF Anet introduced evade counter play among the eight classes then complaints about S/D would simply vanish.

Daily Thief QQ: Check!

You could produce evade counters, or just remove such frequent evades. Removal fitting with the games intended design and balance.

perma-evade aka evade for like 3-4 seconds.

I don’t get how someone playing S/D can QQ about this so much, you should know fine well that it is still perfectly easy to blow evades pointlessly and that perma-evading actually lasts an extremely short duration and will do nohting for you in a 1vX against GOOD players.
Bunkerish-D/D Eles, Soldier Warriors, Bunker Guards. These guys are extremely difficult to fight (damage) as a S/D thief, this build is not overpowered. Even many engi builds are hell to face due to the AoE and Necros always pose a threat to any thief build, this one especially.

It has very clear strengths and weaknesses.

s/d along with the “Bigger fish” are all products of poor risk/reward design in a counter build environment and they need to be evened out with a proper ratio.

In a lot of these cases there is way to much tankiness (and an over abundance of evades counts) that’s stacked up on really high damage with very little set up to achieve max damage.

So you either scrap all high risk / high reward builds and buff them. Or bring every thing else in line.

Aza.2105:

CntrlAltDefeat.1465:

There is no L2P issue when there is no counter to evade. Conditions can be countered, physical damage can be counter. Blocks can be negated with unblockable..what about high evade? there is no counter to high evade.

This is the biggest issue that most players tend to overlook. Going by what Anet said in their recent readyup about balance. Thief has no passive defenses, they only have active sustain aka evades and dodges. This is true. But when you look at the big picture in regards to passive defenses vs active defenses:

Passive defenses has ways to obstruct its function:

• Healing is countered by poison
• High armor is countered by vulnerability
• Defense boons such as prot and regen can be removed

So passive defenses has a definite counter. But when you look at active defenses:

• Dodge has weakness
• Evade has nothing

The difference between passive defense and active defense is quite large. What players need to understand is something simple: The greatest form of mitigation one can have is not getting hit at all.

High armor soaks up damage yes, but even lich form will hit a 3400 armored character for 5k. But with evades and dodges you can avoid hits like that entirely. This is what makes evade insanely powerful.

It makes even the most squishy character tanky because they aren’t receiving damage. Thief is the most complained about when it comes to evade simply because they have the option to choose when they want to evade instead of being bound to cooldowns. So this makes thief a non rotation based class, unorthodox in that regard.

The simple solution is to introduce across all eight classes ways to bypass evade. It can be one skill that does it or it can be a temporary buff like given to signet of strength that allows ones skills to bypass evade.

A mechanic that has no counter is toxic to the game. I can guarantee you that IF Anet introduced evade counter play among the eight classes then complaints about S/D would simply vanish.

So do you want to introduce another kind of mindless skill that requires even less skill than spamming AoE around without even get a target, just because it can hit anyway, no matter if the opponent dodge or not?

Realy, let’s make this game even more easy

The counter to evade is called “good timing”, but you know what? It requires skill but people are too used to AI passive playstyles and AoE spamming thinking they are outplaying their opponents. Timing? what is it!! let’s just nerf the only active counter to this mindless button smashing that doesn’t even require a target to be effective.

Do you know yes that good thieves don’t spam evades? they use perfect timing, strike when needed and only dodge what needs to be dodged, on the other side an S\D noob thief that think to be safe just by dodging all over the map, is just counter productive to his team, he does no damage and bring no support and also will die easily to all these bunkers meta build around nowadays.

Kolly.9872:

So do you want to introduce another kind of mindless skill that requires even less skill than spamming AoE around without even get a target, just because it can hit anyway, no matter if the opponent dodge or not?

The counter to evade is called “good timing”, but you know what? It requires skill but people are too used to AI passive playstyles and AoE spamming thinking they are outplaying their opponents. Timing? what is it!! let’s just nerf the only active counter to this mindless button smashing that doesn’t even require a target to be effective.

I see a lot of problems with what you are saying here. The biggest being your use of good timing. Good timing is related to animation, its true that gw2 is suppose to be a animation observant game. But its all a lie, there are too many things that negate it being dependent on animations to be true. Lets look at a few of them:

• Asuras
• Massive amounts of particle effects from aoe
• Passive AI cluttering the screen
• Near instant animations that do not have a tell-tale sign but pack a lot of damage or utility

All of this is why the good timing scenario falls apart. In fighting games good timing works because there are only two characters on the screen that are central focus. With animations being categorized by its power rating. Weak attacks have fast animations, hard hitting attacks usually have long animations.

In gw2 this is not the case. Lets look at flanking strike. Its casting time is 1/2 sec. With latency it makes it unlikely that your “good timing” scenario is applicable. Looking at other evades such as withdraw, it doesn’t even have a casting time. The only instance where the case of good timing applies is with warrior. Since they are one of the only classes in the game that have animations you can counter play.

Thiefs are like Rats.. There are way too many of them. and 80% of the thiefs in the game have general no knowledge about what they are doing. OP not really as it is a class to master in my perfective. But sadly too many plays them, because they think “thief OP as hell” when they got no clue to what they are actual doing.

its sad ;__;

The only things that need nerfs in sPvP:

That kitten Warrior Long bow massive damage AoE field, Idk wtf that is but its OP, does more damage than any necro field I ever sat in. Eeryone complains about “hambows” but I have no problems with hammers, just the longbow, that skill in particular.

Engi turrets (or at least that elite). So broken in conquest

Also wouldn’t mind might in general nerfed.

That is all

Elxdark.9702:

Dude I don’t want to sound rude but How long till you get good at this game?

Like really, every I mean EVERY kittening thread/post from you is about whining, nerf this nerf that buff this buff that, balance these balance those STOP already.

And why people still think S/D is broken, IT DOESN’T.

What brought back S/D again into the meta? new runes/sigils.

Do you want to see when S/D was OP? let me find some random video from Jumper when s/d was beyond op when 2 was a stunbreak and had not cd when FS stole 2 buffs instead of 1.

In those times S/D was broken, OP, strong, or w/e you want to name it. S/D is good in this meta only for the buffs to runes/sigils.

EDIT: The only thing I will nerf would be Feline Grace.

Those were the good days of S/D thieves That’s when I got my champ shadow title. So many lulz were had.

Stealth is getting really old, really fast.

It’s so boring to fight against Thiefs or Mesmers.

I love how people still defend S/D thief as if it isnt broken.

cooldumbname.8594:

I love how people still defend S/D thief as if it isnt broken.

Fire + air sigils are broken not s/d

Don’t nerf sigils. You’re gonna hurt everyone.
Don’t nerf acrobatics, the entire trait line should not pay for one spec that isn’t even OP.
Don’t nerf trickery, you will hurt non-S/D thieves more.
If you must nerf anything, let it be Flank Strike/Larc Strike. Increase initiative cost by like one and you will have less evade spamming. Otherwise? Use weakness on the thief and hurt their evades.
50% nerf, 50% Learn-to-Counterplay.

Kolly.9872:

Aza.2105:

CntrlAltDefeat.1465:

There is no L2P issue when there is no counter to evade. Conditions can be countered, physical damage can be counter. Blocks can be negated with unblockable..what about high evade? there is no counter to high evade.

This is the biggest issue that most players tend to overlook. Going by what Anet said in their recent readyup about balance. Thief has no passive defenses, they only have active sustain aka evades and dodges. This is true. But when you look at the big picture in regards to passive defenses vs active defenses:

Passive defenses has ways to obstruct its function:

• Healing is countered by poison
• High armor is countered by vulnerability
• Defense boons such as prot and regen can be removed

So passive defenses has a definite counter. But when you look at active defenses:

• Dodge has weakness
• Evade has nothing

The difference between passive defense and active defense is quite large. What players need to understand is something simple: The greatest form of mitigation one can have is not getting hit at all.

High armor soaks up damage yes, but even lich form will hit a 3400 armored character for 5k. But with evades and dodges you can avoid hits like that entirely. This is what makes evade insanely powerful.

It makes even the most squishy character tanky because they aren’t receiving damage. Thief is the most complained about when it comes to evade simply because they have the option to choose when they want to evade instead of being bound to cooldowns. So this makes thief a non rotation based class, unorthodox in that regard.

The simple solution is to introduce across all eight classes ways to bypass evade. It can be one skill that does it or it can be a temporary buff like given to signet of strength that allows ones skills to bypass evade.

A mechanic that has no counter is toxic to the game. I can guarantee you that IF Anet introduced evade counter play among the eight classes then complaints about S/D would simply vanish.

So do you want to introduce another kind of mindless skill that requires even less skill than spamming AoE around without even get a target, just because it can hit anyway, no matter if the opponent dodge or not?

Realy, let’s make this game even more easy

The counter to evade is called “good timing”, but you know what? It requires skill but people are too used to AI passive playstyles and AoE spamming thinking they are outplaying their opponents. Timing? what is it!! let’s just nerf the only active counter to this mindless button smashing that doesn’t even require a target to be effective.

Do you know yes that good thieves don’t spam evades? they use perfect timing, strike when needed and only dodge what needs to be dodged, on the other side an S\D noob thief that think to be safe just by dodging all over the map, is just counter productive to his team, he does no damage and bring no support and also will die easily to all these bunkers meta build around nowadays.

How bout we make mechanic parity. Evade on use skills that move the player from position x to position Y are movement based. Much like rush, shield bash, whirlwind attack, whirling wrath, bull rush are all effected by cripple and chill. It makes the skill range reduced, sluggish and lethargic. It does what the condition is stated to do. It slows the target down. These effects do not effect thief roll skills. in fairness these the evade on use skills thieve’s have are not leap finishers, but neith er is the whirling skills mentioned. This means mesmer staff and thief on skill use are subject to what every other professions movement skills are. What I am talking about is laws are only laws when they apply to everyone. get it now?

To continue this point, you seem to dismissed what is the crux of my point. All mechanics in game to lesser or greater extends have counter play capacity. However in a biased control situation of where I can spam evade endlessly between attacks my opponent has little to no hope of ever defeating me. This currently is balanced by the simple fact that one cannot spam evades endlessly. So if we narrow the focus to be an opponent has a lot more evades than everyone else, it cannot be denied logically that the player does a good advantage. So if we take a typical set up rotation of shadow return, larceny, shadow return back, teleport in, larceny, retreat step, steal in, larceny, roll evade back, sword teleport in, larceny, sword retreat..the counter play people seem to be suggesting to me is position myself well. What part of good positioning is countering this rotation?. All I am doing is playing defensively. I am not actually countering anything. If you fire a missile at a military boat and the boat simply sails away from that landing spot, that is defense from good positioning. If they fire an anti airborne missile to destroy the incoming missile, that is countering. There is a difference and the two play style tactics are being considered the same, when they are not. As stated above evade on skill use do not get countered by typical cripple/chill conditions. Because these skills evade on use, skills like power block are also useless because even if you did hit, thieve’s do not have cool downs on weapon skills and you can’t interrupt teleports forcing a mesmer power block. So using the logic above that one cannot down a target they cannot hit, or one will have increased difficultly countering a target they have higher percentages of not hitting and following through with the other fact established, that thieve’s have a far greater load out of teleport, instant cast, no cool downs and evade on use skills, this only underlines the obvious..the counter play to them is virtually non existent and leads to my original established situation much earlier on. Your best defense (which is not counter play) is just move, stealth, teleport and make yourself an annoying target. However this is nothing more than the naval boat just sailing in circles making itself a hard target. It is not pressuring, or countering the attack at all. When the thieve knows your dodges and evades will run out a lot sooner than theirs, this firmly establishes advantage goes to them. Why does it go back to them?..because high evade has no counter. Only limited defense. In fairness I don’t want to see this thief destroyed, just to see that mechanic laws in game apply to all professions. Currently movement kittening skills don’t impact thief play and some mesmer play the same way they do every other profession. This is not nerfing, it is just making combat mechanics apply equally to all professions. If you still can’t grasp what I man, imagine this situation. All warrior burst/movement skills evade on use. Rush>>whirlwind attack>swap>shield bash>eviserate>bull’s rush>swap>100B(the only time u can hit them now)>whirlwind..It is not impossible currently with solid play and good keybinds to create thief s/d rotations thru teleports(can’t be interrupted) evade on use skills, roll for initiative, steal, roll of recovery etc to establish longish chains of extremely high evade chains while still being able to strike your opponent at the same time.

CntrlAltDefeat.1465:

To continue this point, you seem to dismissed what is the crux of my point. All mechanics in game to lesser or greater extends have counter play capacity. However in a biased control situation of where I can spam evade endlessly between attacks my opponent has little to no hope of ever defeating me. This currently is balanced by the simple fact that one cannot spam evades endlessly. So if we narrow the focus to be an opponent has a lot more evades than everyone else, it cannot be denied logically that the player does a good advantage. So if we take a typical set up rotation of shadow return, larceny, shadow return back, teleport in, larceny, retreat step, steal in, larceny, roll evade back, sword teleport in, larceny, sword retreat..the counter play people seem to be suggesting to me is position myself well. What part of good positioning is countering this rotation?. All I am doing is playing defensively. I am not actually countering anything. If you fire a missile at a military boat and the boat simply sails away from that landing spot, that is defense from good positioning. If they fire an anti airborne missile to destroy the incoming missile, that is countering. There is a difference and the two play style tactics are being considered the same, when they are not. As stated above evade on skill use do not get countered by typical cripple/chill conditions. Because these skills evade on use, skills like power block are also useless because even if you did hit, thieve’s do not have cool downs on weapon skills and you can’t interrupt teleports forcing a mesmer power block. So using the logic above that one cannot down a target they cannot hit, or one will have increased difficultly countering a target they have higher percentages of not hitting and following through with the other fact established, that thieve’s have a far greater load out of teleport, instant cast, no cool downs and evade on use skills, this only underlines the obvious..the counter play to them is virtually non existent and leads to my original established situation much earlier on. Your best defense (which is not counter play) is just move, stealth, teleport and make yourself an annoying target. However this is nothing more than the naval boat just sailing in circles making itself a hard target. It is not pressuring, or countering the attack at all. When the thieve knows your dodges and evades will run out a lot sooner than theirs, this firmly establishes advantage goes to them. Why does it go back to them?..because high evade has no counter. Only limited defense. In fairness I don’t want to see this thief destroyed, just to see that mechanic laws in game apply to all professions. Currently movement kittening skills don’t impact thief play and some mesmer play the same way they do every other profession. This is not nerfing, it is just making combat mechanics apply equally to all professions. If you still can’t grasp what I man, imagine this situation. All warrior burst/movement skills evade on use. Rush>>whirlwind attack>swap>shield bash>eviserate>bull’s rush>swap>100B(the only time u can hit them now)>whirlwind..It is not impossible currently with solid play and good keybinds to create thief s/d rotations thru teleports(can’t be interrupted) evade on use skills, roll for initiative, steal, roll of recovery etc to establish longish chains of extremely high evade chains while still being able to strike your opponent at the same time.

Thief use Flanking/Larcenous strike combo max 4x in row with all initiative regen traits maybe 4.5×.Evade is only on Flaking strike(0.5sec evade and 1+sec animation), Flanking strike + LA strike has 3sec(4×3=13sec total cast time) cast time and only 0.5sec evade -> 0.5sec evade every 3sec = 2sec evade on full initiative WOW. Where is your PERMA EVADE ?

Farzo.8410:

Stealth is getting really old, really fast.

It’s so boring to fight against Thiefs or Mesmers.

What? Boring?

On the contrary – I find it the most fun. Boring is fighting tanky warriors/engi/guard/necro even ele – avoid the bullkitten and keep chipping away at those pve-like health bars.

At least vs thief and mesmer you can take away a significant chunk of hp with one good burst, even if they’re a little tanky. Much more fun to anticipate stealth attacks and time counter bursts, than to bash your head against the aforementioned bunker brick walls.

Anyway, on topic
- raise air sigil ICD to 5s
- give all sigils of the same type shared cooldown
- change sigil of battle to 3 stacks of might for 10 seconds

Therefore – can’t use two of the same type on one weapon – so must be one swap and one crit for example.
Also have choice between high single target proc (air) and medium damage aoe proc (fire).

That would be a decent starting point IMO.

Evilek.5690:

CntrlAltDefeat.1465:

To continue this point, you seem to dismissed what is the crux of my point. All mechanics in game to lesser or greater extends have counter play capacity. However in a biased control situation of where I can spam evade endlessly between attacks my opponent has little to no hope of ever defeating me. This currently is balanced by the simple fact that one cannot spam evades endlessly. So if we narrow the focus to be an opponent has a lot more evades than everyone else, it cannot be denied logically that the player does a good advantage. So if we take a typical set up rotation of shadow return, larceny, shadow return back, teleport in, larceny, retreat step, steal in, larceny, roll evade back, sword teleport in, larceny, sword retreat..the counter play people seem to be suggesting to me is position myself well. What part of good positioning is countering this rotation?. All I am doing is playing defensively. I am not actually countering anything. If you fire a missile at a military boat and the boat simply sails away from that landing spot, that is defense from good positioning. If they fire an anti airborne missile to destroy the incoming missile, that is countering. There is a difference and the two play style tactics are being considered the same, when they are not. As stated above evade on skill use do not get countered by typical cripple/chill conditions. Because these skills evade on use, skills like power block are also useless because even if you did hit, thieve’s do not have cool downs on weapon skills and you can’t interrupt teleports forcing a mesmer power block. So using the logic above that one cannot down a target they cannot hit, or one will have increased difficultly countering a target they have higher percentages of not hitting and following through with the other fact established, that thieve’s have a far greater load out of teleport, instant cast, no cool downs and evade on use skills, this only underlines the obvious..the counter play to them is virtually non existent and leads to my original established situation much earlier on. Your best defense (which is not counter play) is just move, stealth, teleport and make yourself an annoying target. However this is nothing more than the naval boat just sailing in circles making itself a hard target. It is not pressuring, or countering the attack at all. When the thieve knows your dodges and evades will run out a lot sooner than theirs, this firmly establishes advantage goes to them. Why does it go back to them?..because high evade has no counter. Only limited defense. In fairness I don’t want to see this thief destroyed, just to see that mechanic laws in game apply to all professions. Currently movement kittening skills don’t impact thief play and some mesmer play the same way they do every other profession. This is not nerfing, it is just making combat mechanics apply equally to all professions. If you still can’t grasp what I man, imagine this situation. All warrior burst/movement skills evade on use. Rush>>whirlwind attack>swap>shield bash>eviserate>bull’s rush>swap>100B(the only time u can hit them now)>whirlwind..It is not impossible currently with solid play and good keybinds to create thief s/d rotations thru teleports(can’t be interrupted) evade on use skills, roll for initiative, steal, roll of recovery etc to establish longish chains of extremely high evade chains while still being able to strike your opponent at the same time.

Thief use Flanking/Larcenous strike combo max 4x in row with all initiative regen traits maybe 4.5×.Evade is only on Flaking strike(0.5sec evade and 1+sec animation), Flanking strike + LA strike has 3sec(4×3=13sec total cast time) cast time and only 0.5sec evade -> 0.5sec evade every 3sec = 2sec evade on full initiative WOW. Where is your PERMA EVADE ?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hC8SPipFMdk

false statements and bad knowledge of the game mechanincs vs proven evidence?
Sorry mate but you’re on the wrong forum.
90% of the people here have no clue about how the thief works
thank you for the effort anyway

Curunen.8729:

Farzo.8410:

Stealth is getting really old, really fast.

It’s so boring to fight against Thiefs or Mesmers.

What? Boring?

On the contrary – I find it the most fun. Boring is fighting tanky warriors/engi/guard/necro even ele – avoid the bullkitten and keep chipping away at those pve-like health bars.

At least vs thief and mesmer you can take away a significant chunk of hp with one good burst, even if they’re a little tanky. Much more fun to anticipate stealth attacks and time counter bursts, than to bash your head against the aforementioned bunker brick walls.

Anyway, on topic
- raise air sigil ICD to 5s
- give all sigils of the same type shared cooldown
- change sigil of battle to 3 stacks of might for 10 seconds

Therefore – can’t use two of the same type on one weapon – so must be one swap and one crit for example.
Also have choice between high single target proc (air) and medium damage aoe proc (fire).

That would be a decent starting point IMO.

All sigils same CD doesn’t make sense

Air sigil: 3 sec CD single target strike
Fire sigil : 5 sec CD aoe strike

Earth sigil : 2 sec CD single target bleed
Torment sigil : 5 sec CD aoe torment(WWW)

Unless air and earth get buff they should not be the same CD.

Sagat.3285:

Curunen.8729:

Farzo.8410:

Stealth is getting really old, really fast.

It’s so boring to fight against Thiefs or Mesmers.

What? Boring?

On the contrary – I find it the most fun. Boring is fighting tanky warriors/engi/guard/necro even ele – avoid the bullkitten and keep chipping away at those pve-like health bars.

At least vs thief and mesmer you can take away a significant chunk of hp with one good burst, even if they’re a little tanky. Much more fun to anticipate stealth attacks and time counter bursts, than to bash your head against the aforementioned bunker brick walls.

Anyway, on topic
- raise air sigil ICD to 5s
- give all sigils of the same type shared cooldown
- change sigil of battle to 3 stacks of might for 10 seconds

Therefore – can’t use two of the same type on one weapon – so must be one swap and one crit for example.
Also have choice between high single target proc (air) and medium damage aoe proc (fire).

That would be a decent starting point IMO.

All sigils same CD doesn’t make sense

Air sigil: 3 sec CD single target strike
Fire sigil : 5 sec CD aoe strike

Earth sigil : 2 sec CD single target bleed
Torment sigil : 5 sec CD aoe torment(WWW)

Unless air and earth get buff they should not be the same CD.

I think you’re misunderstanding what I said – unless I’m misinterpreting your reply.

All same type sigils should share ICD as it did in the past. However different type sigils will have separate ICD, which is different from how it was in the past.

What I am suggesting is that sharing cooldown means you equip one single sigil of a single type on one weapon set.

So you can’t put for example generosity + fire because only one will proc and both should go on cooldown. But you can put generosity and battle, each with independant cooldown.

I’m not suggesting they all have the same CD – Earth should still still be 2s, Fire 5s, generosity 9s and so on.

Regarding Air and Fire – because one is single target high damage and the other is multitarget medium damage, I suggested both should have equal ICD – 5 seconds. Air could have a slight damage buff to compensate.

Evilek.5690:

CntrlAltDefeat.1465:

To continue this point, you seem to dismissed what is the crux of my point. All mechanics in game to lesser or greater extends have counter play capacity. However in a biased control situation of where I can spam evade endlessly between attacks my opponent has little to no hope of ever defeating me. This currently is balanced by the simple fact that one cannot spam evades endlessly. So if we narrow the focus to be an opponent has a lot more evades than everyone else, it cannot be denied logically that the player does a good advantage. So if we take a typical set up rotation of shadow return, larceny, shadow return back, teleport in, larceny, retreat step, steal in, larceny, roll evade back, sword teleport in, larceny, sword retreat..the counter play people seem to be suggesting to me is position myself well. What part of good positioning is countering this rotation?. All I am doing is playing defensively. I am not actually countering anything. If you fire a missile at a military boat and the boat simply sails away from that landing spot, that is defense from good positioning. If they fire an anti airborne missile to destroy the incoming missile, that is countering. There is a difference and the two play style tactics are being considered the same, when they are not. As stated above evade on skill use do not get countered by typical cripple/chill conditions. Because these skills evade on use, skills like power block are also useless because even if you did hit, thieve’s do not have cool downs on weapon skills and you can’t interrupt teleports forcing a mesmer power block. So using the logic above that one cannot down a target they cannot hit, or one will have increased difficultly countering a target they have higher percentages of not hitting and following through with the other fact established, that thieve’s have a far greater load out of teleport, instant cast, no cool downs and evade on use skills, this only underlines the obvious..the counter play to them is virtually non existent and leads to my original established situation much earlier on. Your best defense (which is not counter play) is just move, stealth, teleport and make yourself an annoying target. However this is nothing more than the naval boat just sailing in circles making itself a hard target. It is not pressuring, or countering the attack at all. When the thieve knows your dodges and evades will run out a lot sooner than theirs, this firmly establishes advantage goes to them. Why does it go back to them?..because high evade has no counter. Only limited defense. In fairness I don’t want to see this thief destroyed, just to see that mechanic laws in game apply to all professions. Currently movement kittening skills don’t impact thief play and some mesmer play the same way they do every other profession. This is not nerfing, it is just making combat mechanics apply equally to all professions. If you still can’t grasp what I man, imagine this situation. All warrior burst/movement skills evade on use. Rush>>whirlwind attack>swap>shield bash>eviserate>bull’s rush>swap>100B(the only time u can hit them now)>whirlwind..It is not impossible currently with solid play and good keybinds to create thief s/d rotations thru teleports(can’t be interrupted) evade on use skills, roll for initiative, steal, roll of recovery etc to establish longish chains of extremely high evade chains while still being able to strike your opponent at the same time.

Thief use Flanking/Larcenous strike combo max 4x in row with all initiative regen traits maybe 4.5×.Evade is only on Flaking strike(0.5sec evade and 1+sec animation), Flanking strike + LA strike has 3sec(4×3=13sec total cast time) cast time and only 0.5sec evade -> 0.5sec evade every 3sec = 2sec evade on full initiative WOW. Where is your PERMA EVADE ?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hC8SPipFMdk

2 secs of evade with initiative huh? You forgot to add in the evade from Withdraw and dodge. Thief has a extremely high vigor uptime. So that’s a lot of evade/dodge aka not being hit by damage.

Aza.2105:

2 secs of evade with initiative huh? You forgot to add in the evade from Withdraw and dodge. Thief has a extremely high vigor uptime. So that’s a lot of evade/dodge aka not being hit by damage.

ok the Thief gets about 11 seconds of evade in 1 minute (using Withdrow and Flanking Strike), wasting all the initiative bar and with the best initiative regen traits.

Warrior in comparison gets 10 second of damage immunity in 1 minute (using Shield Stance and Endure pain), without traits that improve the duration of those skills or reduce the cooldown.
But thief is OP cos it has “perma evade” right while Warriors just have more HP and better armor and the ability to stunlock someone to death.

Seriously, not saying warrior is OP but people should understand that the only survivability power on S\D thief relies exclusively on evasion, nerf it and you’ll kill that build.
And there are not so many other build a thief may use for being able to play in this meta.

Kolly.9872:

Aza.2105:

2 secs of evade with initiative huh? You forgot to add in the evade from Withdraw and dodge. Thief has a extremely high vigor uptime. So that’s a lot of evade/dodge aka not being hit by damage.

ok the Thief gets about 11 seconds of evade in 1 minute (using Withdrow and Flanking Strike), wasting all the initiative bar and with the best initiative regen traits.

Warrior in comparison gets 10 second of damage immunity in 1 minute (using Shield Stance and Endure pain), without traits that improve the duration of those skills or reduce the cooldown.
But thief is OP cos it has “perma evade” right while Warriors just have more HP and better armor and the ability to stunlock someone to death.

Seriously, not saying warrior is OP but people should understand that the only survivability power on S\D thief relies exclusively on evasion, nerf it and you’ll kill that build.
And there are not so many other build a thief may use for being able to play in this meta.

You have to include all aspects.

Defy/Endure Pain: Is only physical damage immunity. They are still suspectible to CC and conditions.

Shield Stance: There are skills which are unblockable

There are no skills that can bypass evade.

Also, you have to take into consideration stealth too. That is another form of active mitigation. So is the ability to just teleport away in a x,y,z axis with infiltrator strike.

Another big thing you have to consider is the intervals of vulnerability. When a warrior uses their cooldowns it leaves a large interval of vulnerability to attack them. They ckittene shield block to help fill the interval some what, but it won’t be enough to bridge the gap between when defy/endure pain is back off cd.

With thief they have very small intervals where they are vulnerable. And they have many ways to fill in those intervals of vulnerability via escapes, stealth and a enormous access to vigor. I think this is the part most players tend to complain about indirectly.

You cannot compare the sustain system of different armor classes it’s irrational. Glass ele>glass thief>glass war the lower the armor the more rewarding the sustain but because glass guardian has lower HP than war they get better sustain system AKA the holy blind and meditations which is closer to ele or thief sustain.

In shorther terms : block/stances/GS<stealth,evade<Sc/F set up

Medi guard doesn’t have any sustain. Aside from smite condition the other meditations have much too long of a cooldown to provide sustain.

Maybe you have a different definition of sustain and because of this I’m not seeing the point you are trying to make.

Aza.2105:

Evilek.5690:

CntrlAltDefeat.1465:

To continue this point, you seem to dismissed what is the crux of my point. All mechanics in game to lesser or greater extends have counter play capacity. However in a biased control situation of where I can spam evade endlessly between attacks my opponent has little to no hope of ever defeating me. This currently is balanced by the simple fact that one cannot spam evades endlessly. So if we narrow the focus to be an opponent has a lot more evades than everyone else, it cannot be denied logically that the player does a good advantage. So if we take a typical set up rotation of shadow return, larceny, shadow return back, teleport in, larceny, retreat step, steal in, larceny, roll evade back, sword teleport in, larceny, sword retreat..the counter play people seem to be suggesting to me is position myself well. What part of good positioning is countering this rotation?. All I am doing is playing defensively. I am not actually countering anything. If you fire a missile at a military boat and the boat simply sails away from that landing spot, that is defense from good positioning. If they fire an anti airborne missile to destroy the incoming missile, that is countering. There is a difference and the two play style tactics are being considered the same, when they are not. As stated above evade on skill use do not get countered by typical cripple/chill conditions. Because these skills evade on use, skills like power block are also useless because even if you did hit, thieve’s do not have cool downs on weapon skills and you can’t interrupt teleports forcing a mesmer power block. So using the logic above that one cannot down a target they cannot hit, or one will have increased difficultly countering a target they have higher percentages of not hitting and following through with the other fact established, that thieve’s have a far greater load out of teleport, instant cast, no cool downs and evade on use skills, this only underlines the obvious..the counter play to them is virtually non existent and leads to my original established situation much earlier on. Your best defense (which is not counter play) is just move, stealth, teleport and make yourself an annoying target. However this is nothing more than the naval boat just sailing in circles making itself a hard target. It is not pressuring, or countering the attack at all. When the thieve knows your dodges and evades will run out a lot sooner than theirs, this firmly establishes advantage goes to them. Why does it go back to them?..because high evade has no counter. Only limited defense. In fairness I don’t want to see this thief destroyed, just to see that mechanic laws in game apply to all professions. Currently movement kittening skills don’t impact thief play and some mesmer play the same way they do every other profession. This is not nerfing, it is just making combat mechanics apply equally to all professions. If you still can’t grasp what I man, imagine this situation. All warrior burst/movement skills evade on use. Rush>>whirlwind attack>swap>shield bash>eviserate>bull’s rush>swap>100B(the only time u can hit them now)>whirlwind..It is not impossible currently with solid play and good keybinds to create thief s/d rotations thru teleports(can’t be interrupted) evade on use skills, roll for initiative, steal, roll of recovery etc to establish longish chains of extremely high evade chains while still being able to strike your opponent at the same time.

Thief use Flanking/Larcenous strike combo max 4x in row with all initiative regen traits maybe 4.5×.Evade is only on Flaking strike(0.5sec evade and 1+sec animation), Flanking strike + LA strike has 3sec(4×3=13sec total cast time) cast time and only 0.5sec evade -> 0.5sec evade every 3sec = 2sec evade on full initiative WOW. Where is your PERMA EVADE ?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hC8SPipFMdk

2 secs of evade with initiative huh? You forgot to add in the evade from Withdraw and dodge. Thief has a extremely high vigor uptime. So that’s a lot of evade/dodge aka not being hit by damage.

All clas has V evade,vigor(engineer,elementalist->perma vigor) All other class has protection boon Thief does not.

Thief(s/d)

10.5k Base HP
Medium armor
Thief does not: protection,stability(only on Dagger Storm),passive HP regen,block,invurnerability.
Thief has: 2sec evade when he spend all invitiative/stealth+3/4 sec evade on heal skil every 15 sec , V evade, 12sec regen every 30 sec, 50% vigor up time and 12sec 1x might,swiftnes,fury every 22 sec.

as i look at this, i realize, its going to end up being another thief build that gets the money loving end of the anet dev shaft and nerf so warriors can rampage even more.

Evilek.5690:

All clas has V evade,vigor(engineer,elementalist->perma vigor) All other class has protection boon Thief does not.

Thief(s/d)

10.5k Base HP
Medium armor
Thief does not: protection,stability(only on Dagger Storm),passive HP regen,block,invurnerability.
Thief has: 2sec evade when he spend all invitiative/stealth+3/4 sec evade on heal skil every 15 sec , V evade, 12sec regen every 30 sec, 50% vigor up time and 12sec 1x might,swiftnes,fury every 22 sec.

Like I mentioned in one of my previous replies. The greatest form of mitigation you can have is not receiving damage at all. Thief has the highest uptime of not getting hit at all. And very tiny intervals between when all of their ability to do this is down. To fill in the gaps of downtime they can just simply leave the fight and wait for their initiative and endurance to be nearly recharged.

What needs to be done is S/D needs its windows of vulnerability greatly increased.

Offensively, the problem with the class in general and this build in particular is the stacking air and fire procs. Other than this the build is more of a sustained DPS build with limited burst.

Defensively, the problem is the same with many builds for the class: initiative regen. But if you adjust initiative regen to reduce the amount of evades and active stealth, you’re going to have to improve the class elsewhere since it simply doesn’t have the tools to stand out in the open twiddling its thumbs soaking damage.