Guild Wars 2

Check this out and remember:
- He had little to no might stacks
- I had no vuln stacks on me
- I was on a heavy armor class “Dragonhunter”
- I was getting hit like this all game, between 8k and 9k almost topping 10k

If that is not a DPS hack, vault’s coefficient damage needs to be nerfed by about 50%

That isn’t even air/fire/blood/leeching hitting or pulm strike.
That is just… vault…

Were u glass cannon?
Did Thief Have BloodLust Sigils and or Force?
Assasins Signet
In other words if the planets align… Staff kittens pretty kitten hard.

The drawback, however, is that it is pretty easy to dodge it or time cc to land in it.

The thief probably gave up mobility/stealth/sustain in some way for more damage.

Nah, I just went in and tested this with 3 other thieves and a /m chat full of people’s input. Realistically “with a max DPS vault spec” you land 1.6 average hits on a light golem with no crit, about 3.4k crits on light, 4-5k when you amp up damage booster from traits and start hitting around 6-7k with might stacks and vulns. With perfect circumstances you can hit 8.5ks on lights with team support boons but never 10k legitly on even a light.

So for someone to hit a heavy target, with no bloodlust, no might stacks, first opening hit in a 1v1 on a node, no vuln on his opponent, for 8k to 10k vaults each hit, that is a DPS hack my friend. – Confirmed.

Go put vaultspam on your thief, try it out. Legitly it deals less than 1/4th the damage I have shown in that screen shot.

Trevor Boyer.6524:

Nah, I just went in and tested this with 3 other thieves and a /m chat full of people’s input. Realistically “with a max DPS vault spec” you land 1.6 average hits on a light golem with no crit, about 3.4k crits on light, 4-5k when you amp up damage booster from traits and start hitting around 6-7k with might stacks and vulns. With perfect circumstances you can hit 8.5ks on lights with team support boons but never 10k legitly on even a light.

So for someone to hit a heavy target, with no bloodlust, no might stacks, first opening hit in a 1v1 on a node, no vuln on his opponent, for 8k to 10k vaults each hit, that is a DPS hack my friend. – Confirmed.

Go put vaultspam on your thief, try it out. Legitly it deals less than 1/4th the damage I have shown in that screen shot.

Doesnt matter if you are a “Heavy target” what matters is how much toughness you actually have stacked. Without any toughness heavy armour only provides..like 10~12% less damage that a light armour class. (1888 base for light, 2167 base for heavy )

Literally just made a theif, through the starting instance and into pvp lobby and on a normal vault built , went and used vault on the golems and was able to reach 8~9k on the heavy target golem, which has 2600 armour. Well over 9k on the medium golem which has 2200 armour, more than a “heavy” class without any toughness. Just under 11k on the light golem, has 2000 armour, more than the light class. If i had any sort of might or vulnerability on my target or gave the target a condition these would be higher but i literally just used vault.

The damage you suffered is entirely normal. Its not that vault has a high damage coeff but theives is one of the classes with most numerous damage mods in most of their trait trees.

Here’s some math:

Taking the formula for damage dealt to be:

Damage done = (Weapon strength) * Power * (skill-specific coefficient) / (target’s Armor)

And the following assumptions:

• Thief to be using marauder’s amulet, scholar runes, force sigil

• Thief has DA/Trickery/Daredevil traitlines and going for all damage modifiers (except executioner)

• Thief is using assassin’s signet

• You are using marauder’s amulet (2167 armor)

• You had one condition on you (vuln, cripple, blind, poison)

Then vault could theoretically hit:

(1111 × 2225 × 2.25)/2167 …. multiplied by 1.94 (critical hit) gives: 4980 damage.

Then come the multipliers from assassin’s signet, traits, runes and sigil: 4980 × 1.1 × 1.1 x 1.1 × 1.1 × 1.15 x 1.05 × 1.07 = 9419 damage.

This isn’t altogether unlikely. The damage is still a bit ridiculous yes, but vault is definitely avoidable on reflex.

Hey Barbie,

Those are normal vault numbers, esp if the thief is running critical strikes traitline which some do. It is also possible he was using force/bloodlust considering no air/blood/fire in the combat log, though I rarely see that. Some do bloodlust on their shortbow.

When fighting them you wanna interrupt on the downward drop part of the animation with cc then burst. Of the 3/4th cast time, the first 1/2 is evade, the last 1/4 is interruptible. Once you learn the animation window they are a little easier to counter (or dodge). best of luck.

he must have been real glass cannon I ran this build . Achieved a 17k crit on a guardian once but normally can get up to 9k-15k.

Here’s a video example of erasing a guard with a single dodge + vault.

I don’t think there is something like a “DPS hack”.

^ i doubt its possible to make one anyway and yeah, completely normal for vault

Not sure exactly what I’m not understanding but here is what it looks like when I use vault with a high DPS setup.

That isn’t hitting anywhere near 10k, let alone nearly 13k like the guy in the video. Guy in the video has 16 stacks of might when he hits his high DPS vault but remember I was 1v1ing someone who was rattling off 8k to 10k vaults with no might, no bloodlust and no stacks of vuln on myself.

Just watched your video you linked. You aren’t using vault. You are using bound. Two totally different skills.

That 7k bound you got on the light golem would have been well over 10k if it was vault.

IF this was without might and you had no invul then he mustve been running a glass build with dare devil runes. One varation of staff is valk amulet and dd runes with air and blood/fire. Add to that another staff with air and bloodlust. Even without assassins signet and might…. You hit like a train…………….

………………… After you dodge.

Ah that explains it.
I thought bound was vault.
Never mind then.

No quarter + practiced tolerance in the critical strikes line. the +250 ferocity with fury with valk amulet helps reach those higher numbers. with DD runes you bound into steal, securing fury and 250 ferocity and 100% crit then vault. try that. give up either DA or Trick.

Ah- just read above, NM. glad it got figured out.

Pretty cheesy when that damage is covered by loads of evade time lol. Hopefully when they ever decide to balance the game, thatl be toned down in the first wave.

https://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Daredevil_-_Vault_Spammer
900 ferocity makes you hit like a truck

Trevor Boyer.6524:

Ah that explains it.
I thought bound was vault.
Never mind then.

Are you serious right now?

This thread truly showcases the PvP powerhouse that is NA gold tier.

fishball.7204:

This thread truly showcases the PvP powerhouse that is NA gold tier.

this lul

iKeostuKen.2738:

Pretty cheesy when that damage is covered by loads of evade time lol. Hopefully when they ever decide to balance the game, thatl be toned down in the first wave.

No need for that.
They just need to add the Benny Hill music every time a Thief starts spamming Vault and evades close to you.
This is ingenious class design,something for the devs to be proud of.

boing,boing,boing,fewwt,fewwt,boing boing……

i love my vault+bounding dodger spam zerker
spamming 10K damage aoes while you’re avoiding damage is awesome

it does rediculous damage but also it has big/ hugeeeeee tell. pretty much yelling dodge me.

Liewec.2896:

i love my vault+bounding dodger spam zerker
spamming 10K damage aoes while you’re avoiding damage is awesome

Why not Valkyrie? Same damage except you don’t die to 1 hit.

fishball.7204:

This thread truly showcases the PvP powerhouse that is NA gold tier.

Then you see them in the top 100 on the leaderboard….

Lord Hammer Hand.4815:

it does rediculous damage but also it has big/ hugeeeeee tell. pretty much yelling dodge me.

Which would be great if the skill had a cooldown, but we can pretty much just use it again and again if someone does avoid it.

I’ve not seen Vault damage get over 8K in sPvP, but WvW is like 10-13K on squishes most of the time.

Simonoly.4352:

Lord Hammer Hand.4815:

it does rediculous damage but also it has big/ hugeeeeee tell. pretty much yelling dodge me.

Which would be great if the skill had a cooldown, but we can pretty much just use it again and again if someone does avoid it.

I’ve not seen Vault damage get over 8K in sPvP, but WvW is like 10-13K on squishes most of the time.

But it has an extremely large telegraph, a punish frame and a large tell for the punish frame, and the Thief is locked into the animation till it ends. And don’t forget that it costs 1/3 of the total Traited initiative pool(almost 1/2 of the Non Traited initiative pool), and requires building solely for damage to do big numbers.

With lag, trying to time when to attack isnt particularly easy to do. Seen thieves bound and vault into blocks and endurance healing skills for more vaults and bounds when you do manage to actually catch them. Very unrewarding gameplay.

Trevor Boyer.6524:

That isn’t even air/fire/blood/leeching hitting or pulm strike.
That is just… vault…

yes this is a legit

HOT has created insane everything creep

iKeostuKen.2738:

Pretty cheesy when that damage is covered by loads of evade time lol. Hopefully when they ever decide to balance the game, thatl be toned down in the first wave.

It’s entirely a skill issue. You can interrupt the downward swing of the vault, you can dodge the vault. A guardian can use their elite skill, or poop out a ton of Aegis to block the Vaults, or they can use the Dragonhunter shield to protect themselves. They have some interrupt tools, but not many- of particular note is that greatsword pull and spear pull will both ignore whether the target is dodging or not so you can brainlessly interrupt the Vault so long as you attached the spear or greatsword. You can also soak the hits using the Focus block or you can use Shield or Longbow knockback to interrupt.

If you land the 5 on LB(probably not meta) or Hammer(lol) you create a zone that the thief can’t even dodge through and force them to pop steal or shadowstep.

Trevor Boyer.6524:

- I was on a heavy armor class “Dragonhunter”

Just targeting this point in particular; heavy armor class is trivial compared to having Toughness as a stat on your armor.

Lots of people defending this ridiculously over powered attack by saying: “oh it can be blocked and dodged and CC’d”. Well you know what? Everything in the game can be dodged and blocked and CC’d. The difference here is that nothing else in the game deals an area of effect instant kill with a single strike.

Vault builds are terrible amongst higher tier players, that’s for sure. That isn’t the problem. The problem is that anyone and I mean anyone who knows how to dodge roll and push #5, can pick this build up and land a vault in the middle of a team fight and down multiple players with a single AoE strike.

Sorry guys, the ceiling may be low but the floor is way too kittening high on this spec and it needs to be reviewed by ArenaNet. Vault specs are worse than turret engi ever was and it makes Dragonhunter trap spamming actually look prestigious.

That’s my opinion anyway.

Arcaedus.7290:

Here’s some math:

Taking the formula for damage dealt to be:

Damage done = (Weapon strength) * Power * (skill-specific coefficient) / (target’s Armor)

And the following assumptions:

• Thief to be using marauder’s amulet, scholar runes, force sigil

• Thief has DA/Trickery/Daredevil traitlines and going for all damage modifiers (except executioner)

• Thief is using assassin’s signet

• You are using marauder’s amulet (2167 armor)

• You had one condition on you (vuln, cripple, blind, poison)

Then vault could theoretically hit:

(1111 × 2225 × 2.25)/2167 …. multiplied by 1.94 (critical hit) gives: 4980 damage.

Then come the multipliers from assassin’s signet, traits, runes and sigil: 4980 × 1.1 × 1.1 x 1.1 × 1.1 × 1.15 x 1.05 × 1.07 = 9419 damage.

This isn’t altogether unlikely. The damage is still a bit ridiculous yes, but vault is definitely avoidable on reflex.

Do not forget the plus 10% DMG After a Dodge roll

i’ve never understood why this build doesn’t get more play. as @Trevor Boyer notes its broken as heck.

i don’t know if you’ve ever had the pleasure of fighting more than one vault thief on a team- but it’s a nightmare. you can’t dodge them both so you just insta die all the time.

choovanski.5462:

i’ve never understood why this build doesn’t get more play. as @Trevor Boyer notes its broken as heck.

i don’t know if you’ve ever had the pleasure of fighting more than one vault thief on a team- but it’s a nightmare. you can’t dodge them both so you just insta die all the time.

try to dodge 2 warriors while they are spaming arc divider every 3 seconds. You will feel the same. Similar feelings with any 2 classes with dps builds while they are focused on you.

Omatsuri.4250:

choovanski.5462:

i’ve never understood why this build doesn’t get more play. as @Trevor Boyer notes its broken as heck.

i don’t know if you’ve ever had the pleasure of fighting more than one vault thief on a team- but it’s a nightmare. you can’t dodge them both so you just insta die all the time.

try to dodge 2 warriors while they are spaming arc divider every 3 seconds. You will feel the same. Similar feelings with any 2 classes with dps builds while they are focused on you.

true, but other classes dont have the insane evade uptime of thief. so at least i can land my own arc divider.

two vault thieves are harder to deal w than three DH in my experience.

when i play ranger with marauder and air sigils sometimes i instant kill people
the damage in this game is too much sometimes and it makes seem like a hack

jihm.2315:

when i play ranger with marauder and air sigils sometimes i instant kill people
the damage in this game is too much sometimes and it makes seem like a hack

When play scrapper I also instantly make rangers kill themselves. I dont think they consider it a hack but I can imagine lots of swearing.

Regarding the thief, I dont mind the damage, if you bring a glasscannon to a fight against a vaulting glasscannon… well the better glasscannon usually wins and the thief is probably already better without vault. Its the evades that make it super OP because that make him invoulnerable to most attrition (ie counteraattacks by tankier builds and condi).

choovanski.5462:

Omatsuri.4250:

choovanski.5462:

i’ve never understood why this build doesn’t get more play. as @Trevor Boyer notes its broken as heck.

i don’t know if you’ve ever had the pleasure of fighting more than one vault thief on a team- but it’s a nightmare. you can’t dodge them both so you just insta die all the time.

try to dodge 2 warriors while they are spaming arc divider every 3 seconds. You will feel the same. Similar feelings with any 2 classes with dps builds while they are focused on you.

true, but other classes dont have the insane evade uptime of thief. so at least i can land my own arc divider.

two vault thieves are harder to deal w than three DH in my experience.

True other classes have only insane invulnerability uptime

1 vault and u is kill. No.

build was broken for a while, its fine now. You can literally walk away from the vault and bound if you position yourself well… dont even need to dodge.

fishball.7204:

This thread truly showcases the PvP powerhouse that is NA gold tier.

I’m still laughing about this.

Falan.1839:

fishball.7204:

This thread truly showcases the PvP powerhouse that is NA gold tier.

I’m still laughing about this.

i know right its so funny NA is so bad hahaha omg hahah

jihm.2315:

when i play ranger with marauder and air sigils sometimes i instant kill people
the damage in this game is too much sometimes and it makes seem like a hack

Yea, this game experienced extreme powercreep with HoT, and almost everything still needs to be dialed back.

Trevor Boyer.6524:

…vault’s coefficient damage needs to be nerfed by about 50%

I died from laughing…and then I had to come back to life so I could laugh even harder.

Omatsuri.4250:

choovanski.5462:

i’ve never understood why this build doesn’t get more play. as @Trevor Boyer notes its broken as heck.

i don’t know if you’ve ever had the pleasure of fighting more than one vault thief on a team- but it’s a nightmare. you can’t dodge them both so you just insta die all the time.

try to dodge 2 warriors while they are spaming arc divider every 3 seconds. You will feel the same. Similar feelings with any 2 classes with dps builds while they are focused on you.

Because once you learn their timing you can cc lock them mid animation….. Vault thieves are pub stompers, they tear apart lower skilled players but have glaring flaws that allow higher skilled players to make quick work of them. There are good staff thieves out there but they do a lot more then spam 5 and dodge.

now I havent read all the comments posted so far, but let me tell you, that those numbers are definitely achievable even without “hacks”.

The basic idea is to run a lot of damage modifiers from traits.

Bounding Dodge (10%) + Executioner (20%) + Lead attacks (15%) + Havoc Mastery (7%) + Exposed Weakness (10%) = 62% damage increase.

If said thief now runs very high ferocity, they can EASILY crit for >10k .
Its not a very popular, but there is a build that uses Valkyrie amulet combined with Daredevil Runes (= guaranteed crit after a dodge roll), where you get 210% crit dmg.

Edit: as people correctly said below: damage modifiers dont just stack additively, but rather inflate one another even more, so the damage increase would actually be significantly higher than I stated.

The more you know, I guess^^ …helps my point either way, though.

BikeIsGone.8675:

now I havent read all the comments posted so far, but let me tell you, that those numbers are definitely achievable even without “hacks”.

The basic idea is to run a lot of damage modifiers from traits.

Bounding Dodge (10%) + Executioner (20%) + Lead attacks (15%) + Havoc Mastery (7%) + Exposed Weakness (10%) = 62% damage increase.

If said thief now runs very high ferocity, they can EASILY crit for >10k .
Its not a very popular, but there is a build that uses Valkyrie amulet combined with Daredevil Runes (= guaranteed crit after a dodge roll), where you get 210% crit dmg.

TFW people think Damage Modifiers are Additive……

Yea he got it wrong about how they stack, but his point still stands that thief has access to a lot of damage modifiers (those listed are about a 78% damage increase), which allow the thief to almost double their damage under the right conditions.

I keep hearing people say how easy it is to avoid the vault and that simply isn’t true in all situations. The good ones start vaulting and then shadow step at you. This makes the vault land instantly and there isn’t time to dodge roll kitten. They also like to stealth first before coming in with it. Essentially the vault thief is trash in a mid fight if he’s trying to be a bruiser about it and brawl on point but the smart ones who wait and creep around first are a guaranteed nuke to hit a team fight, usually dropping 2 or 3 players simultaneously with a single strike.

What’s broken isn’t really the damage behind bound and vault. It’s that they have parameters that allow them to enter a team fight late “when everyone is at half health” and do so in stealth and with a shadow step insta 15k bomb on every opponent at the mid point.

I’m sorry but it’s a bit broken and needs some patching. A good start would be so that none of it’s traits/runes or otherwise it’s procs, would ever work before it is in combat. It’s kind of messed up that they can build up a bunch of damage modifiers while sitting in stealth, ooc from mid and then come in with a 15k AoE nuke on point. That’s a REALLY over powered single strike attack. It’s not the staff thief build that’s broken, it’s just vault nuking. Maybe vault should only hit a maximum of 2 targets or maybe only 1.

Dunno, maybe a better way to explain this isn’t that it’s OP but rather it’s broken. Some of that power needs to be distributed in other places on the staff build, not just dumped all into 1 skill. That way the build as a whole is playable and not just used for single strike point nuking.