Guild Wars 2

S/D thief is clearly an issue in the current iteration because it brings too many things to a team:
- High burst damage thanks to fire/air sigils
- High survivability due to evades
- Good team-control due to trickery
- High map-control/pressure due to mobility
- Good team-support thanks to shadow refuge

On top of it, it has a very-low CD heal that is impossible to interrupt and adds to the evasion spam. A few options for fixing it:

Change withdraw: Immediately evades for 3/4 s backwards, then 1/4s cast of heal. This makes it possible to interrupt and adds counterplay. Alternatively, increase the CD and health gained, so that the thief is vulnerable for longer after heal. Taking HiS would be an option, but this also suffers from the longer CD and stealth on-point.

Change trickery: Admittedly, fully traited steal is a bit OP and is the only way in the game to get around stability. Perhaps the added reduction in cast time can be moved. This would have a negative influence on other thief builds, but might help strike at the issue of thief deleting other zerkers from existence.

Change fire/air sigil: This should be done regardless, b/c their damage is unavoidable, cheap, and gives unreasonable amounts of burst to a high-survival build like this. Perhaps a simple exception of these two not being used together, or increase the CD, or reduce their proc-rates.

Change acrobatics: Feline grace could have a CD or give you back only 5 or 10 endurance instead (so its not a full 3 dodges per full-bar). Fluid strikes could only give +10% damage when endurance is full.

Change the sword/dagger weapon skills: lower damage on inf. strike or flanking strike. If lowering flanking strike, maybe put more damage on larc. strike or give back the boon strip (so that it is a must evade).

Change the utils: Increase the CD of shadowstep (this is already unreasonably low) or make signet of agility give 50 endurance on a 20s CD (so more chances to cure condis too, but less dodging). Shadow refuge could be given a 3/4s cast time (so its actually interruptible), or not provide extra healing (esp. on downed bodies), or only be cast PbAOE.

Change mechanics: Require ports to have LOS to be successful (although Grouch has said they don’t want to add counterplay in this way to me before).

I would not recommend all of these, but here are some options that could increase counterplay and allow S/D to remain viable. Some of these options have more unintended consequences than others, although those consequences aren’t necessarily bad.

I appreciate the mature discussion you all have been able to put forth!

Sizer.2654:

Sd thieves r not the problem , it is trickery steal !!

Ways to fix steal would be to remove the short amount of period a character moves extremely slow after being dazed / steal.

Increase it’s cd or

Make it that when your specced on dazing your steal in return does 50% less dmg or no dmg at all

I would love to see a nerf to steal , to increase the gap between good and bad thiefs

Sizer, I’m sorry but I don’t think it’s steal. If it was just the trickery line people would be griping about d/p thieves, s/p thieves etc etc or even s/d crit strikes thieves. But no people are not complaining about the crit strikes+trickery build with s/d, d/p, or s/p. People are complaining about s/d 2/0/0/6/6 build. It does too much damage, has too much utility, and too much sustainability.

Ye and how is extra evade + boon steal more OP than 5k hits from stealth or someone pistolwhipping you in face while beeing invulnerable?
Topic is full o kitten and someone just wants OP pistol offhand back into meta, cuz dem on demand spammable interrupts and aoe smoke blinds mad “balanced”
Acrobatics is a bit over the top, trickery is OP and SD is fine…
Everyone talking like Sizer moved from critical strikes to acrobatics when actually he moved points from CS into trickery after the patch.

Leeto.1570:

Ye and how is extra evade + boon steal more OP than 5k hits from stealth or someone pistolwhipping you in face while beeing invulnerable?
Topic is full o kitten and someone just wants OP pistol offhand back into meta, cuz dem on demand spammable interrupts and aoe smoke blinds mad “balanced”
Acrobatics is a bit over the top, trickery is OP and SD is fine…
Everyone talking like Sizer moved from critical strikes to acrobatics when actually he moved points from CS into trickery after the patch.

Mainly because it is easier to pull off than off hand pistol. Off hand pistol requires much more management of your initiative and s/p is the most initiative heavy spec in the game, also none of these other specs would work without points in critical strikes.

Waiting for this thread to be moved to the “graveyard” like the old ones.

2 by shad, 2 by me, all merged and all sent to “profession balance forum”, roflmao.

Sizer.2654:

Sd thieves r not the problem , it is trickery steal !!

Ways to fix steal would be to remove the short amount of period a character moves extremely slow after being dazed / steal.

Increase it’s cd or

Make it that when your specced on dazing your steal in return does 50% less dmg or no dmg at all

I would love to see a nerf to steal , to increase the gap between good and bad thiefs

No sizer, trickery steal is not the problem.

The problem is that current meta focuses on might stacking AND might runes ( + might stacking boon steal) + strenght runes sixth bonus FINALLY working ( after 2 years) + air-fire sigil damage scaling with power ( and might consequentially) allow that therefore useless build ( 2-0-0-6-6 ) with no damage whatsoever to hit like a truck.

Do you remember how u struggled in 1vs1 arena after patch before putting traits into trickery ?

No thief build should be able to put such damage without points into CS, a thief can’t have good damage, high survivability AND the best mobility in a single package.

That’s just broken.

ShakeItOut.6781:

Saying and repeating that s/d is not the problem without justifying with arguments why perma dodge shouldn’t be nerfed doesn’t help this thread. Besides, we are talking about s/d nerf, not all thief’s spec nerf: the increase in steal cd wouldn’t help at all, imho. Let’s talk, on the other hand, about nerfing the acrobatics line which is, according to lots of people here, the main problem and, second, doing something about double sigil proc.

Acro traitline is not the problem, without trickery steal that build would be very very weak even against S/P thieves ( and against almost all other meta builds) since it would lack the sustain traited steal gives ( 2k heal on a 20 sec CD) AND ( mostly) the attack of opportunity + double boon steal+ vigor traited steal gives.

Acro thieves shouldn’t have it, cuz they already have tons of evades.

Trickery thieves shouldn’t have it, cuz it is already enough as a self sustain-defending tool.

This explains why S/D 2-0-0-6-6 is an abomination for this game.

Remove rune of strenght ( mostly due to the fact A SINGLE RUNE SET is settling the meta) and bring back air-fire shared cooldown, or make them FIXED DAMAGE instead of making them scale with might

No more 2-0-0-6-6 S/D thieves will exist, 100% sure.

It’s just kittened that this as 1 of the easier builds is so OP. Very few thieves play d/p because it’s less forgiving and because it’s kinda weak compared to s/d.

jportell.2197:

Leeto.1570:

Ye and how is extra evade + boon steal more OP than 5k hits from stealth or someone pistolwhipping you in face while beeing invulnerable?
Topic is full o kitten and someone just wants OP pistol offhand back into meta, cuz dem on demand spammable interrupts and aoe smoke blinds mad “balanced”
Acrobatics is a bit over the top, trickery is OP and SD is fine…
Everyone talking like Sizer moved from critical strikes to acrobatics when actually he moved points from CS into trickery after the patch.

Mainly because it is easier to pull off than off hand pistol. Off hand pistol requires much more management of your initiative and s/p is the most initiative heavy spec in the game, also none of these other specs would work without points in critical strikes.

Pistolwhip got overnerfed and DP is such a joke it should never be meta spec, oh the competetiveness of getting bursted from stealth… and s/p already works better with 2/0/0/6/6 than 2/6/0/0/6. And why d/p s/p plays with 2/6/0/0/6 and not 2/6/0/6/0 if acrobatics is bigger problem than trickery?
It has nothing to do with weapon set beeing OP, its about multiple things that all sum up, like PW beeing overnerfed, acrobatics beeing good, trickery beeing over the top and critical strikes beeing nothing special.

It is an absurd mashing together of all the defense and utility of previous Thief specs with the lacking damage made up for through procs and might. The spec is the result of the Sigil/Rune change and it ALLOWS thieves to use the weaker damage and higher defense of sd (which went out of favour because it wasnt as an efficient killer as PW) while not even having to spec into a dps line.

The weapon set is annoying but wouldn’t likely be used without the Sigil/Rune buffs. Basicly the spec is carried by procs and might, these effects will not be changed any time soon.

Metrix.5867:

Hello kind community,

Today we will talk about s/d thief, the most op and skill less build in this game.
Perma dodge, 8k insta bursts (with air/fire procs) and barely anything that can kill it in a teamfight.
Is this balanced? No it’s not, thief is supposed to be a class with the highest mobility/single target dmg in the game but with low survivability except for stealth, right now it is the class with the highest single target dmg, the highest moblity BUT a very high survivability that is gamebreaking.
Dear anet, I ask you to nerf s/d thief survivability or thief survivability in general. How about rebalance the 2nd minor trait in acrobatics, maybe give it a 5 second cooldown? Maybe nerf initiative, everyone knows initiative is insanely broken since the increase and you now almost always have the initiative that you need. Maybe nerf trickery a bit? It’s not normal that every build requires this trait line, but how will this affect other builds? I don’t want thief to become unviable nor certain builds to get unplayable but s/d thief is atm by far the strongest build in the game and it needs a nerf.

Also I don’t enjoy getting destroyed by them as a mesmer.

- Misha and Shad.

TLDR- Sizer hurt us. Please nerf him.

Thief since 2 years. Stopped here to say S/D (current meta build, not the weapon set itself) is broken, annoying and cancer to the game. Feline Grace needs to go. The trickery line is not the problem.
EDIT: To those that are raging over the trickery line, if it weren’t for s/d, trickery is the only thing that gives thieves a place in team fights. It’s either that, or going venom share.

I main thief and I would like to see the vigor obtained from acrobatics lowered, or steal nerfed to an extent. The meta build is too easy to play, and its much harder to separate good thieves from bad ones. I want to play a build that is useful to my team and not just dodge roll and 3 spam. It makes me sad when I am pretty much forced to play it when I want to win because of how broken it is.

Rome.3192:

EDIT: To those that are raging over the trickery line, if it weren’t for s/d, trickery is the only thing that gives thieves a place in team fights. It’s either that, or going venom share.

Not raging, but I would ask if you think that a class that has so much inherent mobility (map control) and incredibly 1v1 capabilities (thanks to stealth, evasion, blinds, etc.), as well as common support options like shadow-refuge, and excellent ranged aoe damage/poison (shortbow) deserves to have even MORE teamfight capability beyond that?

I think a good niche for thief (that would open up roles for things like mesmer/burst ele) would be a very selfish roamer with best mobility and excellent 1v1’s, while the other high-dps builds bring more team-support capability. Why would I ever want to bring a mesmer (besides portal) if thief can also strip stab and interrupt stomps (with more than just shadow refuge), and owns the mirror with such a burst profession?

Here’s my small input: I main my thief. I love the class, and I’ll never let it go. But I play game where I really struggle against a bunker engi or guard, or I get too eager to get into a teamfight and the errant AOE damage from the enemies that aren’t even focusing me kills me. Sometimes I go to take out a high priority target and both of my sigils proc and they go down in an instant, sometimes I’m not so lucky and the ferocity nerf really shows, so I have a hell of a time chipping through their defense.

And after a long day of having to constantly outplay any opponent I come across (which feels sooooo good. Every time.) I’ll occasionally jump onto my warrior and think about the following:

Running str runes and zerk stats, I still have nearly 2x the hp of my thief. I can dance right in the middle of a teamfight and my passive healing keeps me going (and I don’t even have to think about real damage mitigation.) and after all that, I’ll just SLAM my opponents every chance I get with an 8-10k eviscerate. That’s way more damage than I ever do on my full glass zerker thief.

I guess I got a little side tracked here, because I know
We’re Talking about S/D thieves and I mainly do dagger stuff, but what I’m getting at is this: I wouldn’t mind seeing the S/D play style nerfed (mostly through changes in the sigils.) but if that happens, we need higher backstab damage, because that’s all we’d have left.

This is like thief sow me i died,and if it is not funny it would be sad!

biggest problem are the endless gapclosers on thief – special s/d thief

yes s/d theif need alot skill but the enemy just has no chance to leave the fight even when use ev erything he have – it is not possible to cc the thief and leave the fight even when land everthingy on him – the thief need just press a button and bam he TELEPORT like scotty direkt to his target

this ninja like gameplay is nice and fun but all this gapclosers should be changed to a more skill based gameplay – like skillshots and when not hit the target it use double initiative (like ride the lighning from ele)

uptime from blindfield on pistol is absolut op too and need to be changed

thx – bye

BlackBeard.2873:

Not raging, but I would ask if you think that a class that has so much inherent mobility (map control) and incredibly 1v1 capabilities (thanks to stealth, evasion, blinds, etc.), as well as common support options like shadow-refuge, and excellent ranged aoe damage/poison (shortbow) deserves to have even MORE teamfight capability beyond that?

I think a good niche for thief (that would open up roles for things like mesmer/burst ele) would be a very selfish roamer with best mobility and excellent 1v1’s, while the other high-dps builds bring more team-support capability. Why would I ever want to bring a mesmer (besides portal) if thief can also strip stab and interrupt stomps (with more than just shadow refuge), and owns the mirror with such a burst profession?

A D/P thief or an S/D without acrobatics has little 1v1 potential, good mobility and little team support. Unlike with current S/D, a 2/6/0/0/6 build has to really outplay their opponents to have a decent chance of winning. Hambows, Eviscerate War, DPS Guardians, Engineers, D/D Elementalists, Terrormancers, Minion mancers, phantasm mesmers, condition mesmers – these are all tough encounters if not hard counters (as they should be, since they are built for their 1v1s).
As to why one should bring a mesmer, shatter in particular – AoE boon ripping with shatters, null field etc. (thief has 3 boon rip on a 22 sec CD with 30 trickery), portal, moa, time warp, feedback, aoe healing/condi cleanse if playing mantras, boon share if playing with chaos line and signet etc. There are a lot of roles mesmers can fulfil in team fights, some of them largely unexplored. Also, if there’s a problem with mesmers not being able to fill a role – fix mesmers, don’t break thieves.

remove fire & air sigils from pvp, thank me later

introduce more dmg modifying sigils with short internal cd or dmg modifying sigils when certain conditions are meet

right now fire&air are only viable sigils for pure burst and they are carring a lot of builds

also they are pure bs random procs that involve no skill and are encouraging builds like beforemention sd teef

What’s the point? You nerf one build and you get another horribly cheesey thief meta build. They should fix the class not this minor bs.

It has become obvious that OP just wants to have S/P or D/P back in meta, while not touching their beloved trickery traitline, which is the actual problem, besides double sigil procs. What a hypocrite.

The effectiveness of the sigils should scale based on how offensive you build your character. A defensive build that gets carried for a big part by sigil procs is just wrong imo.

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stomp

Volrath.1473:

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dead thief

fixed for you

Am I the only one excited to fight when I see s/d thief ? I never complained about that spec I’m more worried about d/p or other p/d what is going on?

-Any class can use the air and fire sigils(It affects everybody)
-Trickery is good because Steal is a decent mechanism(Invest in the unique trait line to buff their mechanism and it becomes decent{rangers should try that})
-You are losing because you don’t time your burst(because with me conditions do the trick)
-Vigor on thief was already nerfed and balanced(the community did not evolve but regressed)
-Thief is the normal version of mesmer without the AI(they trick you and you panic and get confused)
-Opinions will remain opinions(Majority doesn’t always win)
-Thief is no where to close to high survivability without full SA and 4 in Acro(It’s a know fact)

Kolly.9872:

Volrath.1473:

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dead thief

fixed for you

I play exclusively thief and am rank 63 atm i know what i’m talking about here.

D/D and D/P 222222222222222 spam is annoying but extremely easy to deal with. S/D 333333333333333 spam is not. not fun to play with and not fun to play against.

This thread…

In order to get Steal to it’s “OP” level, you have to devote 8/14 of your trait points to it. 57+% of your traits into one skill on a 21.5s CD. If anything, the stolen skills should be looked at and adjusted as some are in fact OP (plasma, mace hc and Ice shard come to mind), but that is a general nerf to the thief and this thread is about Acro/Trick thief.

There are a couple of things ANET could do (doing all of these would probably kill the build):

1. Feline Grace: I’ve always felt this should only return the endurance IF you successfully evade an attack. Doing this should reduce this spec’s 1v1 ability a bit, but keep it viable in team fights.

2. Fluid Strikes: 10% damage increase for 90%+ of the time seems like a lot for a defensive trait line. Maybe a drop to 5-7% to start.

3. Signet of Agility: 100% endurance gain on instant cast that also removes condis is kind of strong when used with this build. There are a couple different things they could do here, add a .5-.75s cast time to it or make it proc 3s of vigor base and an additional 1s for each condition removed but no base endurance gain.
—————————————————-

Also, the double proc of air and fire aren’t what make this build viable offensively… couple of things had to happen to get it were it is today in addition to the air/fire changes:

1. Base init regen increase
2. Zerk Amulet getting increased crit dmg after the intro of ferocity
3. Intro of new rune types

Only 1 of those things is unique to the thief.

FWIW, unless you can average 2 (1.98…) targets per fire sig proc, you get more damage over time using sigil of force or accuracy. Unless my math is wrong… which is entirely possible, i think it’s a wash as to whether you go air/force, air/acc or air/fire over time.

So all the glorious community is here

Personally I feel that S/D is fine on its own, but the 20066 spec is utterly stupid because of damage it produce. Whats the point taking damage lines, when taking like 30-50% more survivability costs you only 10-15% damage? I believe it can be fixed by adjusting 25 minor trait in acro, as of now it is 10% while endurance is not full. Like you know, easily controllable 10% damage increase, while other lanes require some other types of situations (conditions, ini, or even be in stealth to stack might).
So the suggestion is make felince grace major trait and, and change 25 minor trait into something like “Power of inertia” trait, to make it worth same 10% damage overall but to reduce control aspect of this increase.
I think this can fix 20066, because if thief is going to burst he should use all his evades to make considerable amount of damage and leave his back vulnerable.
As for me, i’m not playing 20066, using “improvisation” and so glad with it, but S/D is fine on its own, IMO.
Faeleth

Pixels.6532:

This thread…

In order to get Steal to it’s “OP” level, you have to devote 8/14 of your trait points to it. 57+% of your traits into one skill on a 21.5s CD. If anything, the stolen skills should be looked at and adjusted as some are in fact OP (plasma, mace hc and Ice shard come to mind), but that is a general nerf to the thief and this thread is about Acro/Trick thief.

There are a couple of things ANET could do (doing all of these would probably kill the build):

1. Feline Grace: I’ve always felt this should only return the endurance IF you successfully evade an attack. Doing this should reduce this spec’s 1v1 ability a bit, but keep it viable in team fights.

2. Fluid Strikes: 10% damage increase for 90%+ of the time seems like a lot for a defensive trait line. Maybe a drop to 5-7% to start.

3. Signet of Agility: 100% endurance gain on instant cast that also removes condis is kind of strong when used with this build. There are a couple different things they could do here, add a .5-.75s cast time to it or make it proc 3s of vigor base and an additional 1s for each condition removed but no base endurance gain.
—————————————————-

Also, the double proc of air and fire aren’t what make this build viable offensively… couple of things had to happen to get it were it is today in addition to the air/fire changes:

1. Base init regen increase
2. Zerk Amulet getting increased crit dmg after the intro of ferocity
3. Intro of new rune types

Only 1 of those things is unique to the thief.

FWIW, unless you can average 2 (1.98…) targets per fire sig proc, you get more damage over time using sigil of force or accuracy. Unless my math is wrong… which is entirely possible, i think it’s a wash as to whether you go air/force, air/acc or air/fire over time.

Signet of Agility only removes 1 condi and although I agree that it might look op with this specific build, it is not for every other so they should not touch the signet but nerf the spec, just not to much or it will join the other specs in the “useless spec bin”.

The reason I play with this signet is because I don’t have any points in acrobatics and also the extra crit chance benefits my spec. It is a well designed signet that is useful for many builds. thieves already have very little useful utilities, pls don’t limit us even more.

all we have is black powder, shadow refuge, shadow step and a couple of signets, every thing else (poisons, traps etc…) is just terribly designed and do not fit the profession at all, not 1 spec takes advantage of these utilities. tks for that A-net!

Volrath.1473:

Kolly.9872:

Volrath.1473:

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dead thief

fixed for you

I play exclusively thief and am rank 63 atm i know what i’m talking about here.

D/D and D/P 222222222222222 spam is annoying but extremely easy to deal with. S/D 333333333333333 spam is not. not fun to play with and not fun to play against.

rank 63 and you cannot beat a “spamming thief”
this proves only how the rank means nothing at all

I agree with Pixels, it’s not the S\D (2 0 0 6 6) thief OP but the synergy between that spec and some utilities\trait that makes that build annoying to fight with.
There are many more OP builds around, easier to play and requiring a much less active playstyle to be succesfull with.

Volrath.1473:

Signet of Agility only removes 1 condi and although I agree that it might look op with this specific build, it is not for every other so they should not touch the signet but nerf the spec, just not to much or it will join the other specs in the “useless spec bin”.

It removes 1 for each nearby ally. Unless the tool tip is completely wrong… but I feel like I’ve seen it remove more than one in team fights…

Pixels.6532:

Volrath.1473:

Signet of Agility only removes 1 condi and although I agree that it might look op with this specific build, it is not for every other so they should not touch the signet but nerf the spec, just not to much or it will join the other specs in the “useless spec bin”.

It removes 1 for each nearby ally. Unless the tool tip is completely wrong… but I feel like I’ve seen it remove more than one in team fights…

the tooltip is correct, it removes 1 for each nearby ally, maybe this is the only thief utility that worked fine since the beginning

It also refills endurance to 5 nearby allies

I can’t believe some people actually defend S/D. It is incredible.

on my thief i still prefer S/P, i abuse the crap out of blackpowder XD
if a warrior lands a hit, i’ve done it wrong!

laquito.5269:

It has become obvious that OP just wants to have S/P or D/P back in meta, while not touching their beloved trickery traitline, which is the actual problem, besides double sigil procs. What a hypocrite.

This is true. I remember their guild used to have a thief that ran around spamming pistol whip.

Thieves are just stupidly over powered class when there is no counter to them having infinite stealth options with escape options given from divine beings (ANET loves boring warriors and thieves), along with explosive damage outcome. Where is the nerfs? Oh wait its ANET…

Insanity.5174:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01wq6bm2BM4

/enjoy

anyway,all thiefs are cancer to the game no matter how good/bad you are and what build u’re using.

if A-Net can survive to this I am sure they will nerf it.
This video shows very well why thieves need to be nerfed to oblivion. Well done m8

GinghamLion.3614:

Here’s my small input: I main my thief. I love the class, and I’ll never let it go. But I play game where I really struggle against a bunker engi or guard, or I get too eager to get into a teamfight and the errant AOE damage from the enemies that aren’t even focusing me kills me. Sometimes I go to take out a high priority target and both of my sigils proc and they go down in an instant, sometimes I’m not so lucky and the ferocity nerf really shows, so I have a hell of a time chipping through their defense.

And after a long day of having to constantly outplay any opponent I come across (which feels sooooo good. Every time.) I’ll occasionally jump onto my warrior and think about the following:

Running str runes and zerk stats, I still have nearly 2x the hp of my thief. I can dance right in the middle of a teamfight and my passive healing keeps me going (and I don’t even have to think about real damage mitigation.) and after all that, I’ll just SLAM my opponents every chance I get with an 8-10k eviscerate. That’s way more damage than I ever do on my full glass zerker thief.

I guess I got a little side tracked here, because I know
We’re Talking about S/D thieves and I mainly do dagger stuff, but what I’m getting at is this: I wouldn’t mind seeing the S/D play style nerfed (mostly through changes in the sigils.) but if that happens, we need higher backstab damage, because that’s all we’d have left.

Totally agree, and actually s/d is one of the least troublesome aspects of balance in this game (from my pov anyway).

You are all wrong guys, thief is actually underpowered: just check out the profession balance forums

personal opinion:
things that are somewhat broken besides the initiative system
withdraw
feline grace
slight of hand/steal cd
fire+air sigils
hight amount of blinks

Stand-alone they are not particularly overpowered (except for the spamable blinks maybe), but under certain circumstances (e.g. feline grace+perma vigor) or when they are combined it gets ridiculous.
Moving the 10% crit damage from the traitline to the amulett as a result of the crit damage → ferocity change has also helped the 2 0 0 6 6 build.

Oh, and while sizer’s build is annoying to face, the version with shadow step instead of signet of agility is actually much more annoying because it has 2(3) stunbreaks instead of 1 as well as even more condition removal.

Did this thread seriously turn into a “nerf D/D” thread?

Rome.3192:

Did this thread seriously turn into a “nerf D/D” thread?

no – it turns into a “what is wrong with thief” thread

Lol at the ppl telling Misha to time his burst better.

This post is aimed at the devs anyway; s/d isn’t fun to play or play against. It needs more (mechanical!) counter play.

And it’s not an even match up vs sceptre/f GS guard FYI, which is broken because if anything we should have the advantage vs thieves. That’s pretty much why I play guard, after all.

This thread is full of QQs waaa i struggle against sword dagger thieves why you no make them easy kills for me Anet pls pls pls.
April 10th saw a big nerf to S/D as a set already and the overall vigor upkeep for thieves , this 2/0/0/6/6 might be meta in spvp ( i assume thats the only game mode 99% of you have any clue about ) but try using it say in WvW ( where sets like D/P are beyond OP ) and then tell me how ’easy" of a build it is.

i expect a “well i don’t care about WvW” comment but the thing is i don’t care whether you care or not i bring it up because Arena net take all game modes into consideration when nerfing a set and another big nerf to S/D will see it dead anywhere besides spvp.

I do agree with most regarding the sigils however thieves aren’t the only ones who benefit from that so the problem is with the way the sigils proc rather than the S/D thief.

i mean why don’t we nerf D/D eles because they could have insane sustain by putting 30 in water and yet hit like a truck because of the might stacking they get from strength runes …………see how kitten i sounded there you sound exactly the same in case you are wondering .

TheThiefMaster.3812:

i expect a “well i don’t care about WvW” comment but the thing is i don’t care whether you care or not i bring it up because Arena net take all game modes into consideration when nerfing a set and another big nerf to S/D will see it dead anywhere besides spvp.

stop talking bs. pistol whip nerf was PvP only too.

and nobody uses s/d for pve anyway.

Jekkt.6045:

TheThiefMaster.3812:

i expect a “well i don’t care about WvW” comment but the thing is i don’t care whether you care or not i bring it up because Arena net take all game modes into consideration when nerfing a set and another big nerf to S/D will see it dead anywhere besides spvp.

stop talking bs. pistol whip nerf was PvP only too.

and nobody uses s/d for pve anyway.

So what do you suggest genius? You want the acro line to be nerfed in SPVP only ?

i dont think that it would be a technical problem. either nerf acro or nerf the damage.

Just remove Fire\Air proccing together, it’s a overall nerf, everyone is happy and stop the QQs

I can’t say it often enough, the 2 0 0 6 6 build itself is fine, trading survivability/utility for raw damage.

It’s a survival/utility spec, the problem with it is that it currently does too much damage, mainly due to fire/air sigils and might stacking.
Making fire and air sigils share a cooldown would be the first step, not only would this fix some thief related issues, but also on other professions.
Might stacking is still too strong. 45% might duration on an offensive rune is simply too much. Might stacking also leads to fire/air sigils doing more damage.

As usual those topics always lead to hate campaigns against thieves (i’ve read every single aspect of this one build being too strong, everybody has it’s own opinion on wich part is the “OP” one) yet nobody notices nobody ran this build prior to the last balance patch. (Well, of course some did, me included, the build was good but had its downside: less damage.) Thieves didn’t get buffs, runes and sigils got changed and messed things up.

As some people also brought up, thief is not the only profession wich is arguably too strong at the moment due to specific runes/sigils. Fix them and you will fix not only thief, but also other classes, mainly warrior and ele.

I really looked forward to see a greater variety of runes/sigils being used (thus more build diversity) but there are still (again) a few completely outperforming the others. Please adress those issues rather than balancing classes around “meta” runes. Profession balance should not be that dependent on equipment. It only leads to less diversity.

I did say it few months ago, keep buffing engis/bunkers/condi/aoe spam in pvp and you won’t see anything but perma evade thieves since it is only reliable way to play thief in current meta (soloq at least).

Backstab thieves usually get scewed w/o well coordinated team so no real point to play them right now.

I don’t defend s/d, i find it pretty silly build but before you cry about evade thieves look at current meta and ask yourself what can thief with their crap survival (+ nerf to lyssa runes) play in current mess aka pvp?

Nerf aoe spam, nerf condis, nerf bunkers, nerf engis in generall (it still boggles my mind why they were buffed, whyyyyy anet, just whyyyyy???) and maybe people will start to play other builds.

But obviously won’t happen, because people want to play bunkers, never die, run in circles, spam aoe and watch their ai kill everyone. So don’t wonder that you have to fight perma evade thieves and stop crying for nerfs, YOU (bunkers, condi, aoe, ai spammers) are the main reason why thieves play that build, they are just adjusting to brainless builds that everyone plays atm.

Cynz.9437:

I did say it few months ago, keep buffing engis/bunkers/condi/aoe spam in pvp and you won’t see anything but perma evade thieves since it is only reliable way to play thief in current meta (soloq at least).

Backstab thieves usually get kitten on w/o well coordinated team so no real point to play them right now.

I don’t defend s/d, i find it pretty silly build but before you cry about evade thieves look at current meta and ask yourself what can thief with their crap survival (+ nerf to lyssa runes) play in current mess aka pvp?

Nerf aoe spam, nerf condis, nerf bunkers, nerf engis in generall (it still boggles my mind why they were buffed, whyyyyy anet, just whyyyyy???) and maybe people will start to play other builds.

But obviously won’t happen, because people want to play bunkers, never die, run in circles, spam aoe and watch their ai kill everyone. So don’t wonder that you have to fight perma evade thieves and stop crying for nerfs, YOU (bunkers, condi, aoe, ai spammers) are the main reason why thieves play that build, they are just adjusting to brainless builds that everyone plays atm.

Yep this.

I honestly cannot understand this thread. These days thief in general is one of the classes I fear the least. A lot of people seem to play s/d nowadays, but it doesn’t have enough burst to kill most of what is running around (see above quoted post) and then it has to die in a sea of aoe/cc or back off. Its really only good for what its meant to do- finishing off weakened targets and pressuring/killing squishies.

If the other thief builds seem weak then buff them, give dagger and backstab more damage, increase the heal on the venom heal, give SA +20% damage when coming out of stealth, that kind of thing.

Btw, interesting fact: Flanking strike is based off of underwater combat and since underwater combat isn’t balanced then how is s/d?? :<