Guild Wars 2

Hey guys, I’m Blurry. I’ve only played as a Thief since the release of the Guild Wars 2 Beta. I’ve never touched any other class as I have SO much fun on Thief

We’re all aware of the recent changed to the trait system and most of us seem rather irate and mad about them. They seem to be forcing us into the meta playstyle of the Thief which at the moment is obviously D/P. I thought I’d share my opinion on what I think the changes have done to D/D and if it’s good or bad.

Pre changes I ran the rather “normal” D/D Thief build. Except I ran it a little squishier running full zerker gear instead of mixing it up with Valk. I’d run Runes of the Eagle as well so I was the embodiment of a glass cannon, BUT I could still win in 1v2 / 1v3 situations. How is that? Well because if you played properly and traited properly as a D/D Thief, you could outskill your opponents. Like everyone else, I ran the Blind on stealth, regen while in stealth, and move faster while in stealth. (I’d swap between some when I felt needed) and this build worked INCREDIBLY well if you knew what you were doing! It wasn’t overpowered since if you got C/C’d you were basically screwed. It didn’t have insane damage (usually needed to land multiple backstabs to kill someone) and it took patience and learning to master. You had to manage your initiative properly, VERY carefully time your dodge rolls, and manage the revealed debuff while doing all that. It was the single most rewarding build and IMO it was the only fun one.
Now what has happened…..

With this update, ArenaNet has taken away the D/D build from us. I’m crushed. They re did the traits without thinking of who it would effect most. The people who were at a disadvantage already running D/D got put even further back, and the D/P Meta thieves now thrive even more. They made us a joke in the WvW roaming / sPvP community. Lets run through some points.

What did we gain?
Well no one can argue the damage of running D/D went up a fair amount. 12-15k backstabs are a normal now. Wow that was a short list of what we gained.

What did we lose?
We lost EVERY piece of survivability we had. We can’t regen in stealth without dropping a VERY important master trait, we can no longer fit Blinding on stealth into our builds successfully, don’t even think about taking the moving faster while in stealth anymore because your damage takes a massive hit if you do.

So what are we left with? A joke. That’s what we are left with D/D thieves where all they can do is steal in, cloak and dagger, backstab, and if we didn’t kill our target, we’re dead. Simple as that. We can’t take on 1v2’s or 1v3’s anymore. Most classes now have an invuln to not die to our burst anyways so we’re left with nothing. They invuln when we go in, they C/C us, and then they kill us. Literally any class can now burst as good as us and with our TINY health pool, we have no chance of surviving. I can’t see the point in playing anymore since the one thing I love is gone now. Classes do better than us in every category and we excel at nothing anymore. Want burst damage? Take a Mesmer! Want stealth? ALSO TAKE A MESMER!!(What sense does that make? Mesmers have more access to and longer stealth than us?), want long range burst? Take a ranger who has an invuln, a knockback, CC and burst. Seriously. Trying to fight a Longbow ranger now is a joke. We go in, they invuln, and then push us back, rapid fire. Since their rapid fire will trace us through S.R. We’re dead.

Please ArenaNet, don’t kill the one thing I’ve loved since release. I want my Thief back

hey
i know exactly how you feel, my D/D thief has 2,2k hours playtime so i think i know what iam talking about.
A Net gave the Thief with the update a higher dmg but taken away some of the survivability.
That is in my opinion not good not bad, BUT only if you see the class for her self, when i now look what the other classes get i want to cry with you, like get more dmg more survivability and more CC its just insane.
Iam still pretty good with my thief and can still, at least fight, every one i meet. The big problem is now, the ones that try to start with thief are so ****** up, because its after the patch even worse that you make one mistake and you are Dead.

To summarize, i dont think Thief (D/D) i to weak but i think they pushed them in the “only for lovers” corner.

and sry for my English i hope you can understand what i mean.

Domme

they ruined a lot of good things with this last patch…but, i will say thief has taken one hell of a blow. coming back to playing my thief (2.7k hours/ engi 1.9k hours) i’ve found that i like a quick play style. D/p does not offer that sadly. D/D does offer that. but D/p is the only way of surviving. i really hope anet changes things for thief but in the long run it’ll just be over powered and nerfed almost right away when people start crying. Just like the assassin before it, this class is doomed for a even longer life of crying and nerfing.

I refuse to bow down to the Anet nerf train on my Thief. I’ve been running S/D for two and a half years and I won’t be moved. Even though they nerfed S/D to the ground with the changes to LS & FS I’ve persisted. I’m waiting in hope for the day when they realise that Thief build variety is non-existent and reduce the ini cost of LS again.

They could even remove the root from pistol whip… all simple ideas that could add a bit more variety, but this is Anet :/

Hitsuke.5304:

I refuse to bow down to the Anet nerf train on my Thief. I’ve been running S/D for two and a half years and I won’t be moved. Even though they nerfed S/D to the ground with the changes to LS & FS I’ve persisted. I’m waiting in hope for the day when they realise that Thief build variety is non-existent and reduce the ini cost of LS again.

They could even remove the root from pistol whip… all simple ideas that could add a bit more variety, but this is Anet :/

I refuse to stop D/Ding. But I don’t refuse to stop playing until this inexcusable mistake is fixed.

I agree 100% with this. I have also played D/D since beta and have been okay with all of the balance changes up until this.

SA used to be very effective prior to this patch. It was a trait line that would allow you to be very slippery during team fights, but take a significant hit to your DPS. Exactly as OP said, with the extremely low health pool thieves have, traiting SA (or acrobatics if s/d) was the only way to play thief without being a simple +1, jump in cnd + backstab, get out theif.

Now that they have made Cloaked in Shadows a GM trait, it has no competition compared to Shadows Rejuvenation. Without Cloaked in Shadows as a master trait, a thief has to make a decision between stealthing, or dodging the next attack. This becomes a problem because other players only need to land 2-4 hits on a thief in order to kill him, and you can only dodge twice before you’re all out of energy.

Which leads me into the next portion – Shadows Embrace. Without SE curing all conditions, such as immobilize or fear, a thief can be easily pinned down and killed since its only primary condition clear for mobility skills also happens to be its healing skill – Withdraw.

Thief is supposed to be a slippery class, high mobility class. They gave every class a big damage buff, but when thieves also received major nerfs to their survivability skills, what did they expect was going to happen? Make Cloaked in Shadow a master trait and revert Shadows Embrace to be able to remove any kind of condition. Thieves will be able to survive long enough to actually maintain skilled game play, with dodges and stealths.

Yeah i think they sort of jumped the gun on SE changes. I mean, all the utility skills that give stealth are all pretty high CD’s as is, and a x/D C&D attempt is expensive on init now and is blockable, dodgable, countered by blind and requires a 130 range.

The whole idea (at least in my mind) of a thief is, just as you say, ‘slippery’. Thief should highlight this idea, otherwise you might as well just play another class. Whether it be through stealth, evasive mobility, or some mix between the 2. It should be played as an evasive kitten to make up for the bottom-tier health pool and the class design to be close range in battle. That’s what make’s thief fun to play.

As a class without any base access to Aegis, Protection, Resistance, Retaliation, etc, all we have is our stealth and endurance, both of which have been crippled. Blind is being used as a crutch now and even then, it’s weak unless you stack a build around it which really limits options as far as survivable builds go.

In my opinion this is what needs to happen.

First. Increase base vitality by a couple thousand HP.

Second. Make CnD Blind on hit.

Third. Make regen while in stealth combined with something else we take.

lol I’m still just praying for D/D #3 skill to actually have some viable use….beside the silly condi cheese people do.

C’mon Anet it’s not that hard. Fix the animation delay and make Death Blossom refund half the initiative on a successful evade. Remove the damage element so we can use it during stealth without breaking it and I’ll be happy

Xvenger.9567:

lol I’m still just praying for D/D #3 skill to actually have some viable use….beside the silly condi cheese people do.

C’mon Anet it’s not that hard. Fix the animation delay and make Death Blossom refund half the initiative on a successful evade. Remove the damage element so we can use it during stealth without breaking it and I’ll be happy

deathblossom is fine. All it needs is the longer evade to 1/2 second. Upper hand should be retuned to return 1 ini on evade with 2 second cooldown. Condition builds are no more cheesy than are power builds. The goal is to kill the enemy using what works it not to follow the meta.

As to removing the damage component , bad idea. Try DB with SOM in a group. Excellent sustain

I run a marauder DA-CS-T d/d thief and I support this thread. Steal in, BAM, and if they die, hey that’s great now go wait to come off cooldown. If they see me coming and pop an invuln or have a passive answer (aegis, decoy, etc) then it’s a gamble to see if my shadowstep port is actually attainable and not blocked by weird terrain geography.

They clearly want to make d/d a hybrid, but then…what, gave up half-way through? Tweak Deathblossom as an evade maneuver and remove the delay.

And, man, do something with dagger #4. As d/d I feel I have to run infiltrators just so I can have a chance of sticking to my target. That weak cripple doesn’t get the job done. I suppose buffing the passive of Infiltrators could be a solution. Sure, I can HS for mobility but then you get QQ about ‘Heartseeker Hero’ and ‘lol 22222’ (that delicious gem of irony came from a ranger when I used precisely one HS to down her).

Same issue here, without CiS D/D thief has taken a major hit,
it really hurt me bad the first week.
but i found a way to turn my dd thief into a semi viable thief.
e.g. i easily 1v4 a group or roamers and defended a tower at the same time, i can zerkdive taking out 8 players when i’m really taking advantage of CnD and get out with about 75% health
due to the SE changes and CiS being non optional i had to mess around with my build a bit and came up with this, we DD thiefs need to be smack in the enemies face for CnD, meaning running full zerk gear would be pathetically dumb. 2 hits from an autoattack and your done for. so i keept all my trinkets and weapons zerker (except for the earring zerk valk) and made my armor valk stats, with the combo of gear traits and runes i run solid 21k health, 2,85k power, about 50% crit rate and sweet 250% crit damage!
This is all the info I’ll give you on my build tho, since i don’t like giving out builds i worked hard for and spent a great amount of gold for, just so others can copy paste it, i hope you’ll find to understand that.
anyhow with this build stuns don’t matter since they just fall off, you have enough sustain to compete in outnumbered fights and dives and have the power to oneshot thiefs, rangers, ele and mesmers if they run a glassy build.
using this build effectivly i managed to take out DP thieves PU mesmers and condi Engis which are as we know, post patch, pretty strong counters to the thief, especially dd.
With this post I’m trying to encurage you all to work on your builds and rely more on your skill then we have before, since we are all pretty nerfed. We all love our dd thieves and i won’t let anet ruin my class, all I’m really missing is CiS and the old SE.
Good luck you all

I am in the exact same situation, been running d/d thief as my main since the start of the game. Now because of the significant damage buff in the overall game, and the nerf of survivability as a D/D thief. It’s really hard to keep up, 1 mistake in your play style and you are doomed to die in PvP. I never really had the idea that D/D was as powerful as other weaponsets of the thief the last year in PvP, but at least you could support and win fights to overthrow the game, and having a good chance on being the top player.
With this patch I really stopped playing my thief until they come with a way to fix D/D.

Vaide don’t stop playing DD, because if we all stop, more ppl will cry about DP bing op —> next nerf incoming, take cover.
besides, we play dd because we love the playstyle, don’t let anet take it from you. keep playing it, improve on it, just think, if you can win outnumbered fights with a nerfed dd thief, what will happen if it’ll ever get buffed again. don’t give up on DD

D/D is fun to play but indeed doesn’t do much damage.
I’m just getting some better lv 80 equipment but I usually get killed pretty fast.
I still enjoy D/D the most though, I wish we cold get a way to make it more viable.

coso.9173:

D/D is fun to play but indeed doesn’t do much damage.
I’m just getting some better lv 80 equipment but I usually get killed pretty fast.
I still enjoy D/D the most though, I wish we cold get a way to make it more viable.

read my post above and rethink your build, i made mine very viable, so can you

I would but you said yourself you didn’t want to give much info on it…

coso.9173:

I would but you said yourself you didn’t want to give much info on it…

because i want players to sit down and think and test things out, you will NEVER be as good as the one you copied the build from, take some time, look at what you got, and look at runes you would never expect usefull, you’ll be surprised what you’ll come up with, don’t just say, well he won’t give me his build, need to look for a new one.
If one fails, it fails, try another one, it took me 2 weeks to perfect mine, and I’m going ham with it, because i know it’s streanghts and weaknesses, since I’m the one who made it.
Give it a try

DHawk.2687:

Vaide don’t stop playing DD, because if we all stop, more ppl will cry about DP bing op —> next nerf incoming, take cover.
besides, we play dd because we love the playstyle, don’t let anet take it from you. keep playing it, improve on it, just think, if you can win outnumbered fights with a nerfed dd thief, what will happen if it’ll ever get buffed again. don’t give up on DD

Thanks for the encouragement, I am definitely not giving up yet. D/D is by far the most rewarding and fun to play. I just hope they fix/buff the issue’s (SE for example).

Vaide.6290:

DHawk.2687:

Vaide don’t stop playing DD, because if we all stop, more ppl will cry about DP bing op —> next nerf incoming, take cover.
besides, we play dd because we love the playstyle, don’t let anet take it from you. keep playing it, improve on it, just think, if you can win outnumbered fights with a nerfed dd thief, what will happen if it’ll ever get buffed again. don’t give up on DD

Thanks for the encouragement, I am definitely not giving up yet. D/D is by far the most rewarding and fun to play. I just hope they fix/buff the issue’s (SE for example).

Now that’s what i love to hear
let me know if you found something that made your build more viable, be happy to know that there’s another DD (semi) enjoying his class ^^

DHawk.2687:

coso.9173:

I would but you said yourself you didn’t want to give much info on it…

because i want players to sit down and think and test things out, you will NEVER be as good as the one you copied the build from, take some time, look at what you got, and look at runes you would never expect usefull, you’ll be surprised what you’ll come up with, don’t just say, well he won’t give me his build, need to look for a new one.
If one fails, it fails, try another one, it took me 2 weeks to perfect mine, and I’m going ham with it, because i know it’s streanghts and weaknesses, since I’m the one who made it.
Give it a try

I will, but I’m still a prety new player and most stuff is pretty much chinese to me XD

coso.9173:

DHawk.2687:

coso.9173:

I would but you said yourself you didn’t want to give much info on it…

because i want players to sit down and think and test things out, you will NEVER be as good as the one you copied the build from, take some time, look at what you got, and look at runes you would never expect usefull, you’ll be surprised what you’ll come up with, don’t just say, well he won’t give me his build, need to look for a new one.
If one fails, it fails, try another one, it took me 2 weeks to perfect mine, and I’m going ham with it, because i know it’s streanghts and weaknesses, since I’m the one who made it.
Give it a try

I will, but I’m still a prety new player and most stuff is pretty much chinese to me XD

yeah and thief, especially DD isn’t actually easy either ^^
when playing dd utilize your CnD (skill #5) as good as you can, it is what will keep you alive, in stealth and prepare your damage spike, e.g. simple engage combo, channel CnD, use steal to shadowstep to target, CnD will trigger at target making you stealth, follow up with a backstab, simple combo that’ll get most of your targets low

DHawk.2687:

We all love our dd thieves and i won’t let anet ruin my class, all I’m really missing is CiS and the old SE.
Good luck you all

^^ very true. If I wanted to play the most effective build, I would totally run d/p all the time. I’m pretty sure anyone who plays d/d thieves is for the play style, and not for its strength.

zzBlurryzz.7492:

Hey guys, I’m Blurry. I’ve only played as a Thief since the release of the Guild Wars 2 Beta. I’ve never touched any other class as I have SO much fun on Thief

We’re all aware …..
….
….

With this update, ArenaNet has taken away the D/D build from us. I’m crushed. They re did the traits without thinking of who it would effect most. The people who were at a disadvantage already running D/D got put even further back, and the D/P Meta thieves now thrive even more. They made us a joke in the WvW roaming / sPvP community. Lets run through some points.

What did we gain?
Well no one can argue the damage of running D/D went up a fair amount. 12-15k backstabs are a normal now. Wow that was a short list of what we gained.

What did we lose?
We lost EVERY piece of survivability we had. We can’t regen in stealth without dropping a VERY important master trait, we can no longer fit Blinding on stealth into our builds successfully, don’t even think about taking the moving faster while in stealth anymore because your damage takes a massive hit if you do.

So what are we left with? A joke. That’s what we are left with D/D thieves where all they can do is steal in, cloak and dagger, backstab, and if we didn’t kill our target, we’re dead. Simple as that. We can’t take on 1v2’s or 1v3’s anymore. Most classes now have an invuln to not die to our burst anyways so we’re left with nothing. They invuln when we go in, they C/C us, and then they kill us. Literally any class can now burst as good as us and with our TINY health pool, we have no chance of surviving. I can’t see the point in playing anymore since the one thing I love is gone now. Classes do better than us in every category and we excel at nothing anymore. Want burst damage? Take a Mesmer! Want stealth? ALSO TAKE A MESMER!!(What sense does that make? Mesmers have more access to and longer stealth than us?), want long range burst? Take a ranger who has an invuln, a knockback, CC and burst. Seriously. Trying to fight a Longbow ranger now is a joke. We go in, they invuln, and then push us back, rapid fire. Since their rapid fire will trace us through S.R. We’re dead.

Please ArenaNet, don’t kill the one thing I’ve loved since release. I want my Thief back

ikr! all this post totally describes how i feel. it’s funny how one of the most skillful class becomes useless. u would think that if you are skillful and an old thief player you would be OP and very hard to deal with. but nope. Anets logic is opposite. “even if you are a skillful beta Thief you’ll get rekt by 1week playing ranger or guardian or w/e”. that’s their logic of putting effort and learning a class. anyway… nothing to add. you are completely right. our class is gone. pre-patch i still managed to find really great builds and barely lost a 1v1. even against a hardcounters either using DD or DP or SD i could always win with a 80% chance (cuz that’s how skillful players r supposed to be like). if u r skillful then u get rewarded. but after patch everythin changed. all fun builds are completely trashed. and we’ve been forced into some DP paper build on which you also die like a pathetic 1st day player.

gl all to you tho (those who are still strugglin to play thieves). i myself have quitted game for good. it’s a pity how best and most fun class gets destroyed by those devs. i guess now all the rangers and guardians are laughing at us and are very happy that we r either re-rolling or quitting game entirely. you got what you wanted QQ’ers! you’ll see a community without thieves. anyway take care and i just suggest forgettin it. i know how frustrating it is to play a thief now and if i were you i’d either give it a half or a year break until they do something. or just completely quit the game and move on. after all games r supposed to be fun. and after patch i had nothing just frustration instead of fun. take care and have fun Thievin in other games !

Don’t expect anything great patch about thieves from Dev.

They suck at balancing and they only listen to those skilless noobs who doesnt even have enough time spending on their own class to vs against thieves.