Guild Wars 2

If we want to balance this game, this cannot happen. I was sore from 5k backstabs, but when I saw that douzy in my combat log, well, here’s my post.
The only thing I’ve seen higher was a 15k Eviserate, and well, we don’t see that build very often.
I don’t know if he burst me down to get that 2HKO, but if you can reliably get numbers like that, why do thieves even need to try skilled play.

I don’t know how much you know about thieves but 10k backstabs aren’t the norm at all.

Now a thief can maximize damage to try to get consistent high numbers using the signet burst build.

If you check the thief forums for a recent post:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/More-4-signet-bursting/first#post3504166

It contains this video

http://youtu.be/X5STvYuVeCQ

This is the equivalent of the 15k eviserate build pure glass all in. Some thieves run it but not many. You don’t have to run exactly this to hit 10k but if you do get 10k without running this build you got lucky or hit someone very squishy.

If you miss this burst at all your only escape is a quick CnD.

Well, the Clock and Dagger was the other 5k of my health, and this was a little group fight in wvw, and the thief got me before I even knew he was part of it. They nerfed haste to allow players time to react. I’m looking for the same here.

I got hit with a 3k steal, 6k cnd, 13k backstab combo the other day. 22k damage in half a second. I’m not tanky, but still have 2.4-2.5k armor, so it’s not like I’m full glass. Thieves are dumb.

You need more burst yourself, and then you will learn to love these thieves: they are usually very bad. They build very glassy, but one burning speed + LF or burning speed + arcane wave downs them. You don’t even need to land Firegrab to destroy them.

The harder thieves are the ones that are start enough to not go full-glass. In fact, if they take 30 in trickery, they can interrupt your ether renewal regardless of whether you have stab or not (their steal will steal 1 boon and daze, and prioritizes stab first). If you are pure bunker, this fight is miserable. If you have some good offense yourself, know when to pop your utilities/auras, and know when to dodge, you will love the fools who build super-squishy.

To OP: if you get oneshot on a decent build, that’s because the thief was running a silly all-in build and is now out of the fight for the duration of his cooldowns. Need I remind you elementalist can put up equally high burst in an equally short time, given an equally silly build?

To everyone else in this thread: before you go all L2P on this man, let me guarantee you the same thing would happen to you. The amount of burst that kind of build puts out won’t be stopped by any reasonable WvW roaming build. These kind of thieves are very rare for some reason, so you probably haven’t seen them. A good thief will shadowstep+sword 2+weapon swap+infiltrator’s signet+steal to you and burst you down in an instant from over ballista range. It’s extremely impressive to see it happen, not gonna lie. Even if you’re able to see the thief coming you’ll get surprised by the fact he near instantly blinked 4k units to get to you, and you’ll be too slow without a doubt to stun break and condi cleanse the immob from panic strike.

And that’s if you see him coming.

I suggest you all go try this combo in heart of the mists, it’s quite fun and really cool to do. Three signets+shadowstep+basi, scholar runes 30/30/0/0/10

Looking at extremes doesn’t say all that much about relative balance.

That being said : I broke 2 records over the last few days (both wvw) :

I received a 13168 backstab followed by about 7500 instakilling me a week ago while being half tanky, i can’t remember ever getting hit for more than 11k before that. He had all stars aligned there and then some.

I hit some level 80 asura with a single meteor shower 3x over 10k two days ago. I finished him around cast finish, like he got hit by the first 5 meteors and they all crit like a truck (one of them new critting trucks). Never seen anything like it. He walked through me when started casting, i wasnt even aiming for the poor guy.

Then again, in both cases the attacker had 12k hp or less.

I am all for a crit nerf.

I play all professions in spvp(as I focus only on the pvp gameplay,rather than pve or WvW) with a main thief.Those builds with signets are plain horrible,because you are actually effective(if you land every hit) one time in a period of 40-50 seconds.Low movement options,bad survivability etc.Such build can only exist in WvW where you can fight 1 time in 5 minutes-burst someone down->run away with shortbow.
When you play some real PvP like the tournaments with over 40-50 rank,then you’ll see that thief is ONLY good for roaming points,picking off someone on low hp and again short bow-ing to the next point.
If as an ele you can’t at least escape a thief with such newbie burst build then the problem is in you.Thieves based on crit dmg never jump on ele without help,cause it’s plain stupid.
As a profession concept thief is MEANT to burst and we’ve seen only nerfs since the dawn of guild wars 2,after which we became only roamers and a free kill in teamfights.
So as you eles can constantly buff yourself with armors and regens, thieves can and should do huge amount of burst.Else why bothering at all playing a thief,when you can just roll warrior with even bigger amount of dmg output,heavy armor,20+k hp and 10+seconds of dmg ignore.

kitten please! I ate a 9.8k cloak and dagger+ sigil of fire proc…did not even live long enough to eat the backstab lol

Diesel Stelar.3709:

I play all professions in spvp(as I focus only on the pvp gameplay,rather than pve or WvW) with a main thief.Those builds with signets are plain horrible,because you are actually effective(if you land every hit) one time in a period of 40-50 seconds.Low movement options,bad survivability etc.Such build can only exist in WvW where you can fight 1 time in 5 minutes-burst someone down->run away with shortbow.
When you play some real PvP like the tournaments with over 40-50 rank,then you’ll see that thief is ONLY good for roaming points,picking off someone on low hp and again short bow-ing to the next point.
If as an ele you can’t at least escape a thief with such newbie burst build then the problem is in you.Thieves based on crit dmg never jump on ele without help,cause it’s plain stupid.
As a profession concept thief is MEANT to burst and we’ve seen only nerfs since the dawn of guild wars 2,after which we became only roamers and a free kill in teamfights.
So as you eles can constantly buff yourself with armors and regens, thieves can and should do huge amount of burst.Else why bothering at all playing a thief,when you can just roll warrior with even bigger amount of dmg output,heavy armor,20+k hp and 10+seconds of dmg ignore.

First off, obviously this post is about wvw since you don’t see those numbers in spvp. Secondly, low movement options? Are you kittening serious? The thief that killed me in half a second jumped instantly from a mile away using multiple teleports. There is no lack of movement for burst builds. And bad survivability? Ya, it’s really hard to survive when you can go invisible every three seconds.

There’s no l2p for fighting thieves. It’s a broken class with broken mechanics. Thieves will never be balanced until stealth gets neutered to where it needs to be. It should have been an extremely limited use, short duration tactical ability, not something thieves spam every time revealed is up since it is always the optimal action.

come on men.. i can be upset for a immortal ele too!! but don t spam text like: nerf a tanky ele that killed me in 5 secs meanwhile i was invisible. that s kinda ridicolous!
i play thief and i can tell you a thing: my BS is around 6k. Against a good ele it s very difficult: i go stealth? he spams aoe. I BS him? the trade is, often, bad for me: an ele with 17 k life, with protection is hit for less than 5k. His dmg is quite the same, but he has lot of stun, escape, regen. Just learn how play against us! A lot of time i have to reset fight against few secs after engage, know why?? aoe fire spam when i am stealth, stun with earth, kitten with thunders. 10 BS is possible in 2 way: u r very squishy or the thief is very squishy. in the second way, if he doesn t kill u eith eng, he s dead, and he knows it. Play knowking it

These thieves are the easiest to beat. If you see them coming you can easily avoid their combo and burst them down within 1-2 secs if they don’t run away after they fail their initial combo. They are not rare at all in tier 1 servers. Both sor and jq have a whole bunch of these full glass thieves. The rare are the ones that don’t rely on perm/constant stealth to perform great like triggerless.

dreztina.4820:

First off, obviously this post is about wvw since you don’t see those numbers in spvp. Secondly, low movement options? Are you kittening serious? The thief that killed me in half a second jumped instantly from a mile away using multiple teleports. There is no lack of movement for burst builds. And bad survivability? Ya, it’s really hard to survive when you can go invisible every three seconds.

There’s no l2p for fighting thieves. It’s a broken class with broken mechanics. Thieves will never be balanced until stealth gets neutered to where it needs to be. It should have been an extremely limited use, short duration tactical ability, not something thieves spam every time revealed is up since it is always the optimal action.

Bursts on thief are based on critical strikes and deadly arts.To do those numbers as crit thieves equip signets,which automaticlly EXCLUDES STEALTH UTILITIES.He jumped you with 1/2 shots of shortbow,infiltrator signet hit(with basilik venom) followed by cloack and dagger followed by steal.You know that after 1 shot of shortbow takes about 1/3 + 1 point of initiative.After 2 shortbow blinks he’s left wtih 2 points.If you can see him jumping from “mile away” i am sorry you are too bad to dodge his first strike after which thief combo breaks and he has to run.
Where are those stealths every 3 seconds in the burst build tell me.I have more than 1000 games with thief only in pvp..probably there’s some secret combination of venoms + crit from deadly arts and critical strikes that make me stealth?The only stealth zerk thief has is his HEAL.
Conclusion : Either the thief that killed you wasn’t d/d zerk(shadow step/shadow trap(which is the only skill that can actually teleport a thief through a HUGE distance if there are no obstacles in the way)),he got lucky with the crit chance and you have zerk equip or the thief was full dps and you were too slow to react to an incoming 1 hit miracle thief.

Don’t worry dude all these know it all pros telling you to L2P obviously know the exact moment and angle that an invisible enemy will backstab you while you are moving around.

It IS experience because fighting burst builds like that you anticipate whats going to happen BUT luck IS also a very large factor.

When i am hard pressed and i know a huge nuke like that is comming i will waste a big cooldown like Updraft to unbalance the thief and if i don’t succeed at least i will avoid some dmg.Also i can counter attack with Fire or even air attunement depending on the situation.

Usualy a thief will be very good if he manages to kill you 1vs1 cause thats where you can see how skillfull they are.I am not talking for button 2 mashers.I get kittened at them too but its not worth it.

I have to admit though very skilled thieves will own me 80% of the time and i can carry my own wheight.

Ye I said it as well,the burst build is a lot about luck.Will you get off the crit on the first strikes or not.
Also what I forgot to tell the angry guy @dreztina is that ye sPvP is not as viable balance indicator as GvG in Guild Wars 1,but sure as hell WvW isn’t ANY factor for skill builds and pvp in particular.
To intercept any probably troll answers like “you play on a copper WvW server to say that”,I play on Seafarer’s Rest.

The thief might have had:

25 stacks of blood lust (from sigil) for +250 power
WvW bloodlust for +50 power/precision
WvW Guard stacks for +100 power/condi dmg

Combine that with a glassy DPS build and those numbers are no longer “rare”.

Every profession in the game is capable of that kind of number. The problem is the delivery mechanic and disengage ability of some professions versus others.

BlackBeard.2873:

You need more burst yourself, and then you will learn to love these thieves: they are usually very bad. They build very glassy, but one burning speed + LF or burning speed + arcane wave downs them. You don’t even need to land Firegrab to destroy them.

The harder thieves are the ones that are start enough to not go full-glass. In fact, if they take 30 in trickery, they can interrupt your ether renewal regardless of whether you have stab or not (their steal will steal 1 boon and daze, and prioritizes stab first). If you are pure bunker, this fight is miserable. If you have some good offense yourself, know when to pop your utilities/auras, and know when to dodge, you will love the fools who build super-squishy.

More burst on yourself won’t help when you’re dead from the first shot.

In burst vs. burst, he who strikes first, wins. The thief, with stealth, will always strike first.

I’ve said this many times before: Backstabbing Stealth thieves are a hard counter to glass zerk eles.

Mochann.5298:

BlackBeard.2873:

You need more burst yourself, and then you will learn to love these thieves: they are usually very bad. They build very glassy, but one burning speed + LF or burning speed + arcane wave downs them. You don’t even need to land Firegrab to destroy them.

The harder thieves are the ones that are start enough to not go full-glass. In fact, if they take 30 in trickery, they can interrupt your ether renewal regardless of whether you have stab or not (their steal will steal 1 boon and daze, and prioritizes stab first). If you are pure bunker, this fight is miserable. If you have some good offense yourself, know when to pop your utilities/auras, and know when to dodge, you will love the fools who build super-squishy.

More burst on yourself won’t help when you’re dead from the first shot.

In burst vs. burst, he who strikes first, wins. The thief, with stealth, will always strike first.

I’ve said this many times before: Backstabbing Stealth thieves are a hard counter to glass zerk eles.

The difference is you don’t have to be glass as ele to burst a glass thief down in one sec. The thief will always strike first if you fail to notice him coming or fail to dodge. Even if the thief is on stealth we have invulnerability and block skills that allows us to strike first as soon as they come out of stealth. Even if the thief strikes first, it will require at least 2 hits to get you down. If you have good reflexes and your utilities are not on cd, you can avoid the second hit and down him first. Full glass thieves are that easy to defeat.

Mochann.5298:

BlackBeard.2873:

You need more burst yourself, and then you will learn to love these thieves: they are usually very bad. They build very glassy, but one burning speed + LF or burning speed + arcane wave downs them. You don’t even need to land Firegrab to destroy them.

The harder thieves are the ones that are start enough to not go full-glass. In fact, if they take 30 in trickery, they can interrupt your ether renewal regardless of whether you have stab or not (their steal will steal 1 boon and daze, and prioritizes stab first). If you are pure bunker, this fight is miserable. If you have some good offense yourself, know when to pop your utilities/auras, and know when to dodge, you will love the fools who build super-squishy.

More burst on yourself won’t help when you’re dead from the first shot.

In burst vs. burst, he who strikes first, wins. The thief, with stealth, will always strike first.

I’ve said this many times before: Backstabbing Stealth thieves are a hard counter to glass zerk eles.

I’d go even further and say that any kind of thief is a hard counter to glass zerker eles. Thieves are the main reason you always have to have a metric frackton of toughness.

I’ve only solo’d a thief once on ele, and that was zerker fresh air build. (It felt good.) And I get it how quickly a thief will fall to ele aoe, but this has usually only been when I was with other people they had to fight against. It feels very much like a thief will go straight for my ele though and I’m 2 OHKO.
Anyway, what gear do I need to help? All the toughness gear seems to be a real sacrifice to damage output. I started the game in undead carrion, 0-10-30-10-20 and that didn’t seem to help. Zerkers been fun in a ‘finally big numbers’ kind of way.
I’ve been enjoying this Elemental Surge build, which means I can bypass precision so long as my Critical Damage is high for some good damage. The pvp soldier rune really helped me survive too. That was 0-25-0-15-30 build.
And you’re so right Juno, I do remember the thief having a couple (not quite 5) stacks of that guard junk. I have 9 toons. I’m nowhere near that with any of them. Needless to say, I’m very interested in account wxp and the changes to zerker coming. On the point of the 10k backstab, it all may be irrelevant come tomorrow.

Lol thats not bad, I have 3k armor and when I am 1v3-4 I get to 50% life and try to pull out to regen and get jumped by a 4th or 5th person (always a thief) spamming 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 for 3k damage a hit. Seriously, wish I could spam Fire Grab Fire Grab Fire Grab over and over too.

oZii.2864:

I don’t know how much you know about thieves but 10k backstabs aren’t the norm at all.

Sounds like you don’t know much about thieves, judging by the statement you just made.

Omg Casey.5973:

oZii.2864:

I don’t know how much you know about thieves but 10k backstabs aren’t the norm at all.

Sounds like you don’t know much about thieves, judging by the statement you just made.

OR you are referring to PvE just going by your guild? Nothing against DnT though so don’t get me wrong there.

10k backstabs aren’t the norm in WvW for backstab thieves which this topic is about. 6-8k for backstab alone is more of the norm with 5k – 6k for warrior and guardians. You can get lucky and get 10k running a standard WvW hidden killer build like Wish’s build but 10k is not the norm. You need signet all in to get consistently higher numbers but at the cost of survivability.

I run wish’s backstab hidden killer build on my thief modified but still at 2100 power no buffs with 110 crit damage and 10k is still not the norm unless you put points into deadly arts. People out roaming in WvW tend to run a bit more tanky shadow arts investment is almost a must in WvW for a thief. What I hit on uplevels doesn’t matter cause they are uplevels.

LightningBlaze.4913:

Mochann.5298:

BlackBeard.2873:

You need more burst yourself, and then you will learn to love these thieves: they are usually very bad. They build very glassy, but one burning speed + LF or burning speed + arcane wave downs them. You don’t even need to land Firegrab to destroy them.

The harder thieves are the ones that are start enough to not go full-glass. In fact, if they take 30 in trickery, they can interrupt your ether renewal regardless of whether you have stab or not (their steal will steal 1 boon and daze, and prioritizes stab first). If you are pure bunker, this fight is miserable. If you have some good offense yourself, know when to pop your utilities/auras, and know when to dodge, you will love the fools who build super-squishy.

More burst on yourself won’t help when you’re dead from the first shot.

In burst vs. burst, he who strikes first, wins. The thief, with stealth, will always strike first.

I’ve said this many times before: Backstabbing Stealth thieves are a hard counter to glass zerk eles.

The difference is you don’t have to be glass as ele to burst a glass thief down in one sec. The thief will always strike first if you fail to notice him coming or fail to dodge. Even if the thief is on stealth we have invulnerability and block skills that allows us to strike first as soon as they come out of stealth. Even if the thief strikes first, it will require at least 2 hits to get you down. If you have good reflexes and your utilities are not on cd, you can avoid the second hit and down him first. Full glass thieves are that easy to defeat.

You don;t have to glass, but I choose to glass. I’m just saying that glass thief stealth backstabber is a hard counter to glass ele. Of course a non-glass Ele stands a far better chance against them.

I apologize if it sounded like I was saying “L2P” before, and I was working under the assumption you were a d/d bunker ele that hits like a wet noodle until it stacks up might (as most posters who I don’t recognize are likely to still run).

If you are full-glass, backstab thief will own you. It is why nobody is advised to run full-glass. To beat a BS thief, you need to have enough toughness/vitality to survive the initial combo, a way to recover your health quickly, then a way to counter-burst them. In pvp, Phantaram is able to beat thieves with his s/d fresh-air build when running valks ammy. I have no trouble on a valks d/d ele (in pvp), or (wvw) sustained damage dps ele taking down thieves b/c I make sure every build has enough toughness/vitality and a stunbreak.

For wvw, the rule of thumb is:
~1600 toughness (slightly less if you have 5 pts in earth and lingering elements)
~15K Health
~The rest as much offense as possible, getting approximately equal precision/crit damage (accounting for +20% crit chance due to fury).

Any build with this level of defense can wipe the floor with glass thieves (except the few times they pick you off when you have no CDs or are mid-fight) when you learn to be quick on the stun-break/aura/earth swap for prot. Just survive the first 1-2 hit, put up arcane shield and heal, then burst in fire and they go down.

If you aren’t a thief and run full-glass you are asking to be preyed on all-day. Don’t run full-glass for your own sanity. You can still do great damage by building enough survivability so you get to burst-back.

Eles weakest point is receiving Burst damage from 2 well played burst pricks. Even LF out, A4 , A3 and you are still going to face trouble.

The most common WvW build for D/D thieves is either 10/30/30 or 0/30/30/10. I’ve ran both for a long time in WvW. Backstabs with those build normally hit for up to 7.5k damage with 25 bloodlust. Larger hits are only possible against upscaled or full glass players.

A few weeks ago my thief with 2.4k defense got hit in a zergy fight for 15.2k damage by churning earth. I know churning earth is a highly telegraphed skill (played ele by myself). Just saying, thats more damage than a full Steal -> CnD -> Backstab combo on my thief.

Ermergerd thieves hit too hard~~~

https://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/1566x881q90/89/29fv.jpg

Meanwhile, in Elementalist land…

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/Asking-help-how-regarding-an-elementalist/2499263

In the end cheese builds are cheese builds. On my balanced build thief I averaged 6K backstabs. I remember landing a ~12k backstab on an up-leveled necro and giggling like a school girl.

BlackBeard.2873:

I apologize if it sounded like I was saying “L2P” before, and I was working under the assumption you were a d/d bunker ele that hits like a wet noodle until it stacks up might (as most posters who I don’t recognize are likely to still run).

Omg Beard I’m still out running full Clerics! Providing supports!

teg.1340:

The most common WvW build for D/D thieves is either 10/30/30 or 0/30/30/10. I’ve ran both for a long time in WvW. Backstabs with those build normally hit for up to 7.5k damage with 25 bloodlust. Larger hits are only possible against upscaled or full glass players.

A few weeks ago my thief with 2.4k defense got hit in a zergy fight for 15.2k damage by churning earth. I know churning earth is a highly telegraphed skill (played ele by myself). Just saying, thats more damage than a full Steal -> CnD -> Backstab combo on my thief.

Thats what I run which is the common backstab build in WvW. I don’t know what OMGcasey is playing or where but 10k is not the norm in WvW. I put the last 10 in trick I don’t understand the appeal of the 10 in acro. I understand 10 in DA for mug.