Guild Wars 2

This morning i wanted to do my Eternal battlegrounds jumping puzzle . I ran into an elementalist and soon afterwards a thief . I killed both . Then not long after that the same elementalist and a different thief came along together and attacked my while i was harvesting orichalum nodes . I killed and finished off the elementalist, but there was nothing i could do to kill the thief .

He hit like a truck, was in stealth 85% of the time and the remaing 15% he kept dodging . Even if i get hits off on him it did not feel as if he was a glass cannon . but the damage i took sure felt like it .

So my question is , is there a new thief build out there or did i get massively outplayed ??

So you have never encountered a bit more experienced thief before? That is a normal thief and if played right, they can survive really well with smart stealthing. You got outplayed. Simple as that.

Normal thief gameplay is justifiably godmode unfortunetly. They will be nerfed because of how OP they are. Hell, even begginer thieves can be devestating

Yep, Hicci is right. A good berserker thief is probably one of the best 1v1 builds in the game. It’s a nut I’d love to crack. I have a theory that because they

A) need to hit you for initiative
B) using all of their initiative on heartseeker (3 jumps) is roughly equivalent to one ranger Swoop in distance
C) berserker theif has low condition removal besides their autoattack

If you can dodge their attacks and prevent them from landing anything while chasing you through traps, I have a theory that they can be beaten. But this is unorthodox 1v1 and I personally have never defeated a good one. Your best bet is to outrun them when you see them.

For the record, durzilla’s sun spirit build lets me get them ito shadow refuge…that’s about as close to beating a good thief that I’ve ever come to in a 1v1 type situation.

Fear makes them unstealth and they can still be hit with conditions, AoEs, or cleaves when stealthed.

Bunker engineers, with all their nets and conditions, also cause me many problems 1v1 as a ranger.

It’s possibke that theives have another nerf coming but don’t count on that. PvP is a team game and you will do better playing together as a team. Hotjoin is like, you know, random team configurations etc, and that will always lose to a well coordinated team regardless of builds.

Bacon Please.8407:

Normal thief gameplay is justifiably godmode unfortunetly. They will be nerfed because of how OP they are. Hell, even begginer thieves can be devestating

Wait…what?

Keep in mind stealth doesn’t give them invincibility, you can hurt, and even kill, the thief while he/she is stealthed, be adaptive, learn how a thief moves, guard your flank.

You can aim your ranged attacks manually if you don’t have targeting PRACTICE THIS once you get this down you can predict and trace a thief in stealth and kill them, I can not even count how many times I’ve killed a thief after they used CnD to try to escape/get off another burst…

I do not think he was pure GC, because every stealth healed him , and my attacks did not do the damage they would usually do . Funny bit is that i eat thiefs in SPVP even on my silly bowman beastmaster build . But this fight just seemed awkward

That being said i can completely accept being outplayed or even countered by build . As an RTS and MOBA player i have learned to accept this

Was he p/d? This is pretty standard, dodge his sneak attack after the first shot lands on you (you will evade the rest) and that is where 95% of his damage comes from) If you evade the full attack, he will keep shooting until he lands on, so timing the dodge is crucial. It’s very easy to counter, and anyone that says it’s OP just knows nothing about thief.

EDIT: More than likely he was running the heal/cleanse stealth and was a condition spec, meaning he could wear rabid and/or carrion gear and make himself tanky.

Bacon Please.8407:

Normal thief gameplay is not godmode unfortunetly. They won’t be nerfed because of how OP I think they are. Hell, even begginer thieves can be devastating to bad players.

Fixed that for you. Go play thief and learn how to counter. I kill thieves all day on my ranger, and that’s because I have played thief extensively.

Chokolata.1870:

I do not think he was pure GC, because every stealth healed him , and my attacks did not do the damage they would usually do . Funny bit is that i eat thiefs in SPVP even on my silly bowman beastmaster build . But this fight just seemed awkward

That being said i can completely accept being outplayed or even countered by build . As an RTS and MOBA player i have learned to accept this

I wonder if its their “new” deadly shadow arts build that’s surfaced after the QZ nerf, that’s a scary one because it can throw out some big numbers due to high power + being a thief (highest single target burst PERIOD) and then pretty freaking good sustain from the healing and toughness + shadow arts.

I’ll ask my friend who told me about it if he knows more on its weakness, I think it’s pretty vulnerable to condition damage post heal.

Durzlla.6295:

Chokolata.1870:

I do not think he was pure GC, because every stealth healed him , and my attacks did not do the damage they would usually do . Funny bit is that i eat thiefs in SPVP even on my silly bowman beastmaster build . But this fight just seemed awkward

That being said i can completely accept being outplayed or even countered by build . As an RTS and MOBA player i have learned to accept this

I wonder if its their “new” deadly shadow arts build that’s surfaced after the QZ nerf, that’s a scary one because it can throw out some big numbers due to high power + being a thief (highest single target burst PERIOD) and then pretty freaking good sustain from the healing and toughness + shadow arts.

I’ll ask my friend who told me about it if he knows more on its weakness, I think it’s pretty vulnerable to condition damage post heal.

Nothing new about it. The trick to the tanky sustain condition builds is that they rely on their opponent being stupid enough to fight the thief for 5 minutes. More often than not you have plenty of time to run off to a tower/camp/keep. The way to kill them is with burst. If you’re not a burst build, good luck.

Also you should have cleansing, and if you don’t… well I’m surprised you’ve lasted this long.

I dont think ranger has burst, period . Other then some crazy kitten GS GC build … haha

WhiteAndMilky.2514:

Durzlla.6295:

Chokolata.1870:

I do not think he was pure GC, because every stealth healed him , and my attacks did not do the damage they would usually do . Funny bit is that i eat thiefs in SPVP even on my silly bowman beastmaster build . But this fight just seemed awkward

That being said i can completely accept being outplayed or even countered by build . As an RTS and MOBA player i have learned to accept this

I wonder if its their “new” deadly shadow arts build that’s surfaced after the QZ nerf, that’s a scary one because it can throw out some big numbers due to high power + being a thief (highest single target burst PERIOD) and then pretty freaking good sustain from the healing and toughness + shadow arts.

I’ll ask my friend who told me about it if he knows more on its weakness, I think it’s pretty vulnerable to condition damage post heal.

Nothing new about it. The trick to the tanky sustain condition builds is that they rely on their opponent being stupid enough to fight the thief for 5 minutes. More often than not you have plenty of time to run off to a tower/camp/keep. The way to kill them is with burst. If you’re not a burst build, good luck.

Also you should have cleansing, and if you don’t… well I’m surprised you’ve lasted this long.

I personally haven’t seen a clerics thief pre patch, mostly the condi sustain thief or the bursty GC thieves (easy kills).

You don’t -need- burst on the condi thieves btw, they fold into conditions pretty easily and if they can’t keep their bleeds rolling on you for w/e reason they can’t hurt you (Beary bearington says to stop being a kitten and to get over your hemorrhaging)

Lol gzoom. That’s for noobs, trolls, and the lazy. Hopefully people abusing it get banned.

Chokolata.1870:

I dont think ranger has burst, period . Other then some crazy kitten GS GC build … haha

GS/SB with jaguar, very bursty, even with tanky dps gear.

Durzlla.6295:

WhiteAndMilky.2514:

Durzlla.6295:

Chokolata.1870:

I do not think he was pure GC, because every stealth healed him , and my attacks did not do the damage they would usually do . Funny bit is that i eat thiefs in SPVP even on my silly bowman beastmaster build . But this fight just seemed awkward

That being said i can completely accept being outplayed or even countered by build . As an RTS and MOBA player i have learned to accept this

I wonder if its their “new” deadly shadow arts build that’s surfaced after the QZ nerf, that’s a scary one because it can throw out some big numbers due to high power + being a thief (highest single target burst PERIOD) and then pretty freaking good sustain from the healing and toughness + shadow arts.

I’ll ask my friend who told me about it if he knows more on its weakness, I think it’s pretty vulnerable to condition damage post heal.

Nothing new about it. The trick to the tanky sustain condition builds is that they rely on their opponent being stupid enough to fight the thief for 5 minutes. More often than not you have plenty of time to run off to a tower/camp/keep. The way to kill them is with burst. If you’re not a burst build, good luck.

Also you should have cleansing, and if you don’t… well I’m surprised you’ve lasted this long.

I personally haven’t seen a clerics thief pre patch, mostly the condi sustain thief or the bursty GC thieves (easy kills).

You don’t -need- burst on the condi thieves btw, they fold into conditions pretty easily and if they can’t keep their bleeds rolling on you for w/e reason they can’t hurt you (Beary bearington says to stop being a kitten and to get over your hemorrhaging)

I don’t know of any thieves who were good that ran cleric’s gear. I’m talking rabid and carrion. The healing ratio on all the healing traits is terrible, so good thieves don’t run healing power gear.

Conditions are useless against a tanky heal cleanse thief as they can cleanse 2 conditions every 7-8 seconds. THey can also avoid most of them by being in steath half the time. This means you have a 4 second window to apply conditions to them. Even less if you don’t know where they’re coming out of stealth, even less if they evade while out of stealth, like most good thieves will.

EDIT: Forgot heal also cleanses three conditions, burning, poison, and bleeding.

But you are correct about if they cannot land bleeds, they cannot do consistent damage. Cleansing is almost a straight counter to condition thieves. That is why my thief incorporates dodge caltrops as well. That way when you cleanse, you have either cripple, vuln, or bleed on you… and my hope is that you will not cleanse the bleed.

But you can land conditions while they’re stealthed…. It doesn’t give them invulnerability, see that thief who literally JUST STEALTHED in front of you? Hit him in the face with split blade now that his heals been used!!

Durzlla.6295:

But you can land conditions while they’re stealthed…. It doesn’t give them invulnerability, see that thief who literally JUST STEALTHED in front of you? Hit him in the face with split blade now that his heals been used!!

You were blinded by the cloak and dagger, and by the time you get rid of that blind, the p/d thief is already far out of your range. Or like me, I CnD, then dodge roll through you, meaning that even if you did attack fast enough to lose a blind and then go for a second hit, you miss anyways. Oh and now you’re crippled because I left dodge caltrops on you.

Meh i have come to the conclusion that thiefs are just poorly designed . Very frustrating to play against . It has nothing to do with Op or UP , just bad design .

And that is why I deal with traps Durz. Thief popping stealth? Drop Frost, Flame, and a Spike Trap. Grats, you’ve just hit them with 5 status effects that can annoy the hell out of htem and make your life a little easier for a while.

I ran into one only just yesterday, it was like I was hitting him with a toothpick while he hit me back with 5-6k crits, I might have failed completely to dodge his kitten I still don’t quite agree it should be possible for just about every special move he can make to crit for over 5k on someone with over 3000 armor it doesn’t seem right.

I hate thieves it’s the one class I can never reliably deal with in some way when I beat a thief it’s always cause they are terrible and doing nothing right or that I feel get lucky on a dodge and manage to nuke him back.

Chokolata.1870:

Meh i have come to the conclusion that thiefs are just poorly designed . Very frustrating to play against . It has nothing to do with Op or UP , just bad design .

I have 12 80s. I have played most every spec in the game, both in spvp and in wvw. I can honestly say thief is fine the way it is. If you’re willing to take on a profession that is literally designed for single target assassination, you should expect to have a hard fight on your hands. All those other great things that your profession can do and contribute to your team, the thief cannot.

With that said, if you read your enemy before the engagement, and during the start of it. You can quickly form a battle plan to counter and exploit their weaknesses.

step 1: Target enemy, check to see what active effects he has. Is he running signets? Is he running venoms? Do you see nothing?
step 2: Is he ranged or melee? what primary weapon set is he using? What is his secondary set? It might be exactly the same and he is running sigils of energy.
step 3: what is his lead in? is it basilisk venom? If so he relies strongly on this, stun breaker or blink away and you have nullified his entire engage. Many thieves don’t know what to do if they can’t land their full combo.
step 4: find out what his other utilities are. is he running shadow refuge? make him use it early. This is a huge skill for a thief to waste. Did he use blinding powder? well if he’s running signet of shadows then he has hardly anything left, blinding powder is also a huge waste if he gets no sneak attack out of it.
step 5: well the thief is probably dead now, good job.

You need to play as the different professions and spec’s if you plan on countering them effectively. Knowledge is power. I have no issue killing thieves with my GS/SB tanky dps build. 190% vigor > thief. Block backstab, evade cnd, daze, jaguar burst. 2 1/2 auto, dodge roll, auto again for 3rd evade. weapon swap for fury and a second daze, by now he will want to heal, so hit him with poison and cripple. He stealthed after heal, run off and then turn back, pressing 3 on SB for the evade, forcing him to miss another backstab. etc etc

RyuDragnier.9476:

And that is why I deal with traps Durz. Thief popping stealth? Drop Frost, Flame, and a Spike Trap. Grats, you’ve just hit them with 5 status effects that can annoy the hell out of htem and make your life a little easier for a while.

Traps are great against melee thieves, but are almost worthless against a p/d.

If you are conditions bring at least 1 trap. If you are power/crit then use LB 4 to keep them off of you and 2 to hit them through stealth. Timing GS 4 is also very helpful to stop a backstab or a heartseeker spam.

“All those other great things that your profession can do and contribute to your team, the thief cannot.”

Actually thieves are pretty kitten good for team play , they provide smoke fields and are very good for downing enemies in skirmishes , and also hiding people to revive them in skirmishes. These 3 things alone probably make the thief better than even the ranger in team situations. Rangers get a healing spring, which by the way you would need something like a thief with bow to generate aoe heals or a guardian with hammer to heal for you.

Overall, I think thief provides more utility than a ranger does for pvp team play , dunno about PVE. But that’s just me.

Ryan.8367:

“All those other great things that your profession can do and contribute to your team, the thief cannot.”

Actually thieves are pretty kitten good for team play , they provide smoke fields and are very good for downing enemies in skirmishes , and also hiding people to revive them in skirmishes. These 3 things alone probably make the thief better than even the ranger in team situations. Rangers get a healing spring, which by the way you would need something like a thief with bow to generate aoe heals or a guardian with hammer to heal for you.

Overall, I think thief provides more utility than a ranger does for pvp team play , dunno about PVE. But that’s just me.

Rangers have blast finisher aoe heal in spring with drakes on swap fwiw, as well as access to two leaps via swords. We are rangers—adventurers! Masters of nature magic. We don’t need a stinking thief or guardian. But if you want to join me that’s cool I’m sure we could help each other in more ways than you think…(ideas for my wvw guild only sry :p)

Chopps.5047:

Yep, Hicci is right. A good berserker thief is probably one of the best 1v1 builds in the game. It’s a nut I’d love to crack. I have a theory that because they

As a Thief let me fix some stuff for you.

Chopps.5047:

A) need to hit you for initiative

We do not need to hit for inititiative, at all.

Initiative is a skill cost mechanic unique to the thief profession. It replaces recharge on the thief’s weapon skills with a pool of twelve points which are spent when the skills are used and gradually returns over time. Using initiative the thief is able to tactically attack an opponent with their own chains and bursts of damage until they run out of the resource. Initiative is represented by twelve diamond-shaped indicators above the weapon skill slots.

Critical Strikes Opportunist: Critical hits have a 20% chance to restore one initiative (1-second cooldown).
First Strikes: 10% increased damage when initiative is over 6.
Signet Use: Gain 2 initiative when activating a signet. Reduces signet recharge by 20%.
Shadow Arts Infusion of Shadow: Gain 2 initiative when using a skill that stealths you.
Patience: Regain initiative faster while in stealth.
Acrobatics Quick Pockets: Gain 3 initiative on weapon swap while in combat.
Quick Recovery: Gain 2 initiative every 10 seconds.
Trickery Kleptomaniac: Stealing gives you 3 initiative.
Preparedness: Increases maximum initiative by 3.
Lead Attacks: Increases damage by 1% per initiative.
Hastened Replenishment: You receive 4 initiative when using a heal skill.
Initial Strike: Attacks with the first weapon-skill slot have a 7% chance to regain 1 initiative.

Chopps.5047:

B) using all of their initiative on heartseeker (3 jumps) is roughly equivalent to one ranger Swoop in distance

That would be a sign of an epicly bad Thief. This is why Sword/Dagger is better than Dagger/Dagger. It cracks me up that you think Heartseeker is the only closer a Thief has.

Steal = 900 range – Requires Target
Infiltrators Arrow = 900 range – Does not require Target, and applies Blind in a Blast radius, large enough to hit the Ranger you’re chasing who just used Swoop gaining a 1,100 range from you.
Infiltrators Signet = 900 range – Requires Target
Infiltrators Strike = 600 range – Requires Target, but will put a circle down without a target to teleport back to. The Teleport back to ability has no range, as long as you utilize it while it is still available.
Shadowstep = 1200 range – And allows for a return when you want to use it.

Chopps.5047:

C) berserker theif has low condition removal besides their autoattack

No, they do not, and after the above I do not have the energy to keep showing you, your mistakes. Not only can we remove quite a few conditions (especially in stealth) we can create an evasion build that makes the Rangers evasion look weak.

Chopps.5047:

If you can dodge their attacks and prevent them from landing anything while chasing you through traps, I have a theory that they can be beaten. But this is unorthodox 1v1 and I personally have never defeated a good one. Your best bet is to outrun them when you see them.

Putting your back to a good Thief, is a death sentence. Learn to strafe, and strafe a lot. Your pet is our best friend, because the pet can not dodge us, therefore gives us a permanent target. If a Thief stealths, use a melee weapon swinging where you saw him, an where you think he went. Greatsword is best for this.

Chopps.5047:

For the record, durzilla’s sun spirit build lets me get them ito shadow refuge…that’s about as close to beating a good thief that I’ve ever come to in a 1v1 type situation.

I don’t even have Shadow Refuge slotted anymore.

Chopps.5047:

Fear makes them unstealth and they can still be hit with conditions, AoEs, or cleaves when stealthed.

Fear only unstealths you if you’re in Shadow Refuge and you run out of it. AoEs force them to dodge, but that can be a good thing. Cleaves work best.

Most of all, you have to play extremely aggressive against a Thief, and hope you can make them run.

Interesting perspective, thanks jk.

Chopps.5047:

Interesting perspective, thanks jk.

Panther is the best pet to fight a Thief with. If they stealth, stealth your pet. The pets out of stealth damage will rock even good Thieves.

jkctmc.8754:

[all the useful things jkctmc said]

It’s so nice to have someone else with perspective in the thread. The “Fear makes them unstealth” one really made me laugh. Just goes to show how little people know about thieves eh?

Ryan.8367:

Actually thieves are pretty kitten good for team play , they provide smoke fields and are very good for downing enemies in skirmishes , and also hiding people to revive them in skirmishes. These 3 things alone probably make the thief better than even the ranger in team situations. Rangers get a healing spring, which by the way you would need something like a thief with bow to generate aoe heals or a guardian with hammer to heal for you.

Overall, I think thief provides more utility than a ranger does for pvp team play , dunno about PVE. But that’s just me.

Yes but support thief is just that… support. It offers little else. Where as other professions that are support are able to be just as useful as a support thief, AND bring other things to the table.

And yeah, I don’t know about pve. pve is terribly bland and simple in this game, and I don’t know how people do it all day. pvp all day every day.

Did i mention that the thief used pistol+XX and sword+dagger . If not i am sorry

Chokolata.1870:

Did i mention that the thief used pistol+XX and sword+dagger . If not i am sorry

It would have been p/d. If he used p/p on you and he won, something is wrong lol.

So you have everyone being like “thieves are broken” and one guy who relentlessly posts and defends his favorite class with the canned responses of “thieves are just better players than everyone else” or some variant thereof.

I guess it just doesn’t even register to some people.

Anyhow I agree with Chokolata. The thief class is just poorly designed. Best mobility, best combat escapes, best avoidance of retaliation with stealth, some of the highest burst damage in the game or condition damage depending on how the player wants to go with it.

Each thing on its own would be fine, but all of them together on one class is just ridiculous.

Its one of the main reasons I have never bothered to spend any real time on this game.

Though I heard they fixed culling recently so at least the class doesn’t get to win through poor coding and sit there and be like “I’m better than you, kittenol”

Chopps.5047:

Yep, Hicci is right. A good berserker thief is probably one of the best 1v1 builds in the game. It’s a nut I’d love to crack. I have a theory that because they

A) need to hit you for initiative
B) using all of their initiative on heartseeker (3 jumps) is roughly equivalent to one ranger Swoop in distance
C) berserker theif has low condition removal besides their autoattack

If you can dodge their attacks and prevent them from landing anything while chasing you through traps, I have a theory that they can be beaten. But this is unorthodox 1v1 and I personally have never defeated a good one. Your best bet is to outrun them when you see them.

For the record, durzilla’s sun spirit build lets me get them ito shadow refuge…that’s about as close to beating a good thief that I’ve ever come to in a 1v1 type situation.

Fear makes them unstealth and they can still be hit with conditions, AoEs, or cleaves when stealthed.

Bunker engineers, with all their nets and conditions, also cause me many problems 1v1 as a ranger.

It’s possibke that theives have another nerf coming but don’t count on that. PvP is a team game and you will do better playing together as a team. Hotjoin is like, you know, random team configurations etc, and that will always lose to a well coordinated team regardless of builds.

Thief here.

First, I’d be extremely careful about the advice regarding initiative. I, for one, run heavy initiative regeneration, so if you aren’t careful, you might avoid the first wave of attacks only to find yourself caught in the second one with no endurance remaining.

Now, here’s what I’ve found to be effective:

- When they’ve been stealthed for 2+ seconds, start spamming your auto attack, especially if you have a melee weapon like a sword or, better yet, a GS on you. Then proceed to spin in circles while doing this. It makes it a real pain for Backstab-based thieves, who rely on stealth for most of their damage via Backstab, to hit you.
-For the first two or so seconds of stealth, AoE the area where they just stealthed in, or, failing that, use simpler attacks. Thieves aren’t totally unpredictable in stealth; they can’t avoid you fast enough as soon as they have stealthed. Use that time to AoE and lay the damage down on them.
-Running traps? Lay down your traps when the thief stealths. Seriously, while learning my thief, I found that one of the worst things for trying to land a backstab combo is walking into a couple of traps/marks. It’s a real pain.
-Use conditions. Most of them are extremely helpful for you. For instance, bleeds; lots of thieves have really bad condition removal, so, if you manage to land, say, 5 or so bleeds on a thief before they stealth, that’s great. Cripple is also nice for when thieves stealth. Poison is good, especially if the thief runs 30 in SA so that they get “regeneration” while in stealth, which will likely be their main/only source of getting back health.
-Slow down thieves. A lot. Crippling and chilling are two extremely, extremely deadly conditions to use against a thief. In fact, I would say that, out of all of the different ways of countering thieves, this one might be the best. Crippling and chilling thieves makes it impossible for them to do much of anything against you. Sure, you can also immobilize them; the issue I just have with that, though, is that immobilizes are generally harder to get and last a shorter period of time against enemies. That’s why I’d suggest cripple and chill instead.
-Don’t waste attacks while the thief is stealthed. Too many players wait until the thief has been stealthed for 5 seconds, and then- if they’re a warrior, for example- they’ll use 100blades and, once they get backstabbed for 7K damage, they cry “OP! OP!”. It’s horrible, really. What, do they expect thieves to stand right in front of them and shout “hey, use 100b now!”?
-Last piece of advice: if you suspect a thief is a bursty zerker thief, do whatever you can to avoid just the first few attacks. After that, given that these builds don’t run much initiative regeneration most often, the lagging damage output will give you a major damage increase. They’ll try to pull a trick here and there, but, outside of that, avoid those first few hits and it’ll be smooth sailing.

Those are the tips I’d give.

Fritz.5026:

Its one of the main reasons I have never bothered to spend any real time on this game.

You just admitted to basically knowing nothing about thief. Your opinion is immediately discounted.

Fritz.5026:

Anyhow I agree with Chokolata. The thief class is just poorly designed. Best mobility, best combat escapes, best avoidance of retaliation with stealth, some of the highest burst damage in the game or condition damage depending on how the player wants to go with it.

Each thing on its own would be fine, but all of them together on one class is just ridiculous.

It doesnt have the best mobility, d/d ele, warrior, and GS ranger all beat it or are at least on par with sword thief.

Best combat escapes – yes and no. To have really great escapes you need to sacrifice other things like your utility skills. d/d ele has better escapes.

Avoidance of retaliation – what? Do you mean the boon? if so then no, that makes no sense. If you mean the enemy retaliating to the thieves attacks, then you are also wrong. As you can hit thieves in stealth, especially if you are aoe or melee.

Highest burst – comes with a HUGE sacrifice. zerk thief has 12k hp. My rifle warrior killshots for more than that, and I can hit them with it while they are stealthed because it’s a channeled skill. if a thief is full glass, you should laugh in their face and punish them for being so foolish. Send them back to pve.

Highest condition damage? far from it. Especially if you have just 1 cleanse skill.

All of them together – Are you high? You can’t have all of these together. You know absolutely nothing about thief.

I’m also going to have to agree with most of what jk says. Some thieves will use HS three times in a row (depending on the build), but most thief builds won’t.

The one thing I might say that deviates from what jk says is about initiative regeneration. While thieves have a lot of init regenerators available to them, a rather sad amount of them don’t bother to even take a look at them- it’s all about the crits and the backstabs for them. So what’ll happen is- you’ll see them close in on you to C&D, which for backstab builds typically consumes about half of their initiative right there (I’m going to give the example of a 10/30/30/0/0 backstab build for this one). Unfortunately, given their need for stealth, if they miss the C&D, they’ll have to start worrying a bit about initiative for a while. Basically, in my experience, the hyped “OP thieves”, which are typically backstab/GC types, will hit you for insane damage early on, but later experience very laggy damage output, simply because they can’t gain any good initiative.

One other thing- thieves only have one good stealth condition remover, SA IV. Not all builds are going to run it. For instance, most of my stealth-based builds don’t run it; instead, they run SA I and V. I’m a bit of a deviant from the norm, though. Don’t let that give you a reason not to use conditions against stealth-y thieves, though, especially if the conditions are easy to lay down. Things like cripple and chill still hurt when thieves aren’t stealthed, and, when they are and they have to wait a few seconds to remove these conditions, at least you can feel content that they’ve wasted a few precious seconds of their stealth waiting to remove the conditions before closing in.

Bacon Please.8407:

Normal thief gameplay is justifiably godmode unfortunetly. They will be nerfed because of how OP they are. Hell, even begginer thieves can be devestating

oy bacon. do u even play this game? beginner thieves normally SUCK and we already BEEN nerfed lol

Arganthium.5638:

One other thing- thieves only have one good stealth condition remover, SA IV. Not all builds are going to run it. For instance, most of my stealth-based builds don’t run it; instead, they run SA I and V. I’m a bit of a deviant from the norm, though. Don’t let that give you a reason not to use conditions against stealth-y thieves, though, especially if the conditions are easy to lay down. Things like cripple and chill still hurt when thieves aren’t stealthed, and, when they are and they have to wait a few seconds to remove these conditions, at least you can feel content that they’ve wasted a few precious seconds of their stealth waiting to remove the conditions before closing in.

Do you run a sword shadowstep build? I have yet to encounter a thief who ran no stealth cleansing that didn’t fold like a wet paper towel, unless it was a sword thief. Although I could see a rune of melandru and condition reduction food thief be successful, as it’s just about as good as the stealth cleansing.

Longbow. Just saying…

It helps so much to hit them for 5k despite their stealth and when it ends you are ready to jump onto them.

WhiteAndMilky.2514:

Arganthium.5638:

One other thing- thieves only have one good stealth condition remover, SA IV. Not all builds are going to run it. For instance, most of my stealth-based builds don’t run it; instead, they run SA I and V. I’m a bit of a deviant from the norm, though. Don’t let that give you a reason not to use conditions against stealth-y thieves, though, especially if the conditions are easy to lay down. Things like cripple and chill still hurt when thieves aren’t stealthed, and, when they are and they have to wait a few seconds to remove these conditions, at least you can feel content that they’ve wasted a few precious seconds of their stealth waiting to remove the conditions before closing in.

Do you run a sword shadowstep build? I have yet to encounter a thief who ran no stealth cleansing that didn’t fold like a wet paper towel, unless it was a sword thief. Although I could see a rune of melandru and condition reduction food thief be successful, as it’s just about as good as the stealth cleansing.

Actually, I don’t. Here’s my build. It’s D/P. It’s… Well, an oddity.

(btw, before I continue, I agree that sword thieves have the godly advantage of Infiltrator’s Strike/Shadow Return. Unfortunately, I don’t much like any of its other skills.)

I can’t say I’m sure why conditions tend to be something that I can manage with this build. Perhaps it’s because of blinds, or because I can shake off lots of condition builds because of my high(er) health granted by 300 vitality. Maybe it’s because I have a tendency to be very jumpy, meaning that I will evade as often as physically possible. Maybe it’s because I can stealth before I get hit by conditions, or I take special precautions when fighting against condition builds (as there are various ways to fight them that are different from regular DPS builds).

Honestly, I’d think that it was a combination between having good vitality, being able to remove a decent number of conditions via HiS and Shadowstep, and my strategies against condition builds. But, in all fairness, even I don’t really know. :P

EDIT: oh yeah, and I don’t run any of those runes/food, either (I’m a very poor asura :c ). So yeah, I really have no clue.

As a Ranger, use SoS and let the theif blow his initiative doinkittenage to you. When 6 seconds is over, use protect me to deny even more damage.

All this while your swinging away at them with a GS and your Jaguarclawing them to death. Havent lost to a melee class yet on this set up.

12 seconds of damage denial is very powerful.

By the way, to address the topic itself, no, there isn’t. Actually, I’d imagine a few builds (like many P/D ones) were taken off by upset players after the March patch. Outside of that- I stay fairly up-to-date with builds, and I can’t think of any new builds that have been developed recently. At least, mainstream ones. I run “rogue” builds typically, meaning that I run things that are, well… Different. At least, they try to be. So, excluding those, there are no such new builds.

@WhiteAndMilky & @Arganthium

Both of you are pretty spot on, and I think the differences we feel, or experience are probably playstyle, or the variables that exist in game.

While the Thief is powerful in good hands, it is no longer as powerful as many believe. In my opinion the Mesmer surpasses the Thief, though I’m a beast on my Mesmer because people obviously do not put up the big red “target” over a Mesmers head like they should.

When I’m playing my Ranger, and occasionaly get burst out by a one trick pony Thief, I shrug it off and smile, because later when I’m destroying a d/d Elementalist, knowing most classes can’t.

Right now my concern are my Warrior, and my Guardian. For some reason they’re feeling like my weakest classes, and I’m not sure why. Are you two experiencing the same thing?

WhiteAndMilky.2514:

jkctmc.8754:

[all the useful things jkctmc said]

It’s so nice to have someone else with perspective in the thread. The “Fear makes them unstealth” one really made me laugh. Just goes to show how little people know about thieves eh?

The best thing anyone can do if they’re having a problem with a class, is make one, and level it to 80.

jkctmc.8754:

@WhiteAndMilky & @Arganthium

Both of you are pretty spot on, and I think the differences we feel, or experience are probably playstyle, or the variables that exist in game.

While the Thief is powerful in good hands, it is no longer as powerful as many believe. In my opinion the Mesmer surpasses the Thief, though I’m a beast on my Mesmer because people obviously do not put up the big red “target” over a Mesmers head like they should.

When I’m playing my Ranger, and occasionaly get burst out by a one trick pony Thief, I shrug it off and smile, because later when I’m destroying a d/d Elementalist, knowing most classes can’t.

Right now my concern are my Warrior, and my Guardian. For some reason they’re feeling like my weakest classes, and I’m not sure why. Are you two experiencing the same thing?

That is most likely the case.

Though I don’t like mes as much as I did when I first started playing it, it is a very strong class.

As for the warrior and guardian stuff… I’m not sure. One thing I might suspect, for the warrior, is the relative simplicity as compared to the other professions you play. Thieves, mesmers, rangers, and necros are all much more complex than warriors. Not to say that warrs are bad or anything, but for me they’ve been the kind of profession that I learn within a day.

As for guardians, one of the things might be the… Different kind of group support that you get out of a guardian. The fact that you’re adding boons to your allies rather than taking out enemies is probably a bit different from what you might be used to. Another thing is that, kind of like warrs, guardians are extremely symmetrical throughout the entire class; basically, about medium damage with high survivability, and that’s about it, whereas the thief, for example, has all kinds of differences with its weaponsets. For example,
- S/P: Condition removal and burst
- S/D: Condition removal and flank attacks
- D/P: Blinds, good damage, invisibility
- D/D: lots of bleeds, high damage, GC, C&D+Backstab combo
- P/D: lots of bleeding and staying far from your opponent
- P/P: hybrid between condition damage and direct damage
- SB: a general utility weapon

Whereas I feel like a comparing, say, GS and Sword on the Guardian is basically able to be summarized with “one is more defensive and does a little more AoE”.

Outside of this, I find both Guardians and Warriors very boring, whereas my main is a thief and I play mes and ranger as my other toons, which also seem to be the three main toons that you play (from what I’ve heard, anyhow). So, it’s possibly that aspect; when you’re bored, you don’t play as well as when your blood is rushing.

When 9/10 of the community cry about thief it is because they all suck, not because thief is overpowered. Thief being over powered couldn’t possibly be the problem at all. No sir.

Bacon Please.8407:

When 9/10 of the community cry about thief it is because they all suck, not because thief is overpowered. Thief being over powered couldn’t possibly be the problem at all. No sir.

Oh, that’s interesting. Where did you get that statistic from?

And what’s so OP about thieves?

As someone with a Thief, let me say..Thieves are overpowered..

Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

The ability to reset a fight consistently over and over again will always be the most powerful thing in a PvP game.

Xsorus.2507:

As someone with a Thief, let me say..Thieves are overpowered..

Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

The ability to reset a fight consistently over and over again will always be the most powerful thing in a PvP game.

You’re wrong. That in itself doesn’t make something overpowered, for one thing. If you can gain an advantage over a thief by forcing them to retreat, you’ve already won the fight, and, most likely, the point. Power in a PvP game is about more than just DPS, it’s about being able to control the field, and, in that regard, retreating all the time is absolutely disadvantageous, to any profession. Given the squishiness of the thief, there really are only two options for a more power- and crits- based thief: make a build that sacrifices a lot of utility and flexibility for the ability to escape easily, or to dump that ability, making yourself do more damage but have much less survivability. There are D/P builds like my own that focus on survivability and stealth/shadowstep, giving me a long lifespan, but I have nowhere near the amount of damage as a stereotypical thief would have.

I’ve played the thief since September, when I got the game, and I have not swapped, mostly due to my playstyle. However, as a thief myself, I can say that I do die more than often enough to be able to call the thief very well balanced. “Stealth” isn’t a get-out-of-trouble-free card; the way people move in stealth is often extremely predictable. I wrote a whole series of ways earlier to counter stealth, and people who use it offensively. Defensively, it’s much harder, but not impossible. You can still AoE their area of exit for the first couple of seconds. You can keep an eye out for them, or block off potential escapes with traps, pets, or whatever. You can use a pushback like Mesmer GS 5, which is often used quite successfully. You can stack conditions, or- whatever. The ability to retreat, however, is not an “overpowered” advantage; it only gives your enemy the point, although at a slightly lower cost to you than before.

Xsorus.2507:

As someone with a Thief, let me say..Thieves are overpowered..

Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

The ability to reset a fight consistently over and over again will always be the most powerful thing in a PvP game.

This is false in tPvP, the thief may be -the- weakest prof in tPvP for the pure aspect that they are TERRIBLE at contesting a point because their whole strength is getting away… something not so great in tPvP…

That being said, in WvW (and in VERY SPECIFIC tPvP builds) they are really really really powerful and are to be feared if specced and played correctly, but i’d hardly say they’re OP.

@jk thanks for the thief input! I personally knew a lot of the info (not specifics just roughly what you and the others said), but it’s nice to see it with more details than i knew, and i’m sure there’s PLENTY of people on this forum who knew none of it!!

In TPvP you can contest points quite easily on a thief, But the ability to avoid dying (thus having to Res and come back) is incredibly powerful.

As for Argan, you play a D/P thief (one of the easiest specs in the game), and you’ve played one since September, I’ve played a Ranger, and I played a thief afterward..

So I know the advantage of stealth quite easily.

and I stand by what I said, the ability to reset a fight is incredibly powerful, to do it over and over again is Overpowered.