Guild Wars 2

I never played a thief. Before this patch, I was scared of thieves and their daggerstorm due to their OPness. Cripple, Strong damage, reflect.

Lately, I notice I don’t fear them anymore. I just go up to them and smack them with my axe till they die.

runeblade.7514:

I never played a thief. Before this patch, I was scared of thieves and their daggerstorm due to their OPness. Cripple, Strong damage, reflect.

Lately, I notice I don’t fear them anymore. I just go up to them and smack them with my axe till they die.

No.

People just finally, at least to some extend, learned how to counter thieves, which makes them falling off rapidly in power, since statistically they are probably the weakest profession of all.

Daggerstorm reflects projectiles, and when a 30 man zerg decided to attack the daggerstorm Thief with projectiles… well, it didn’t went well.

Thieves were always about exploiting bad play, while being at a huge disadvantage against good players of other professions.

Asum.4960:

runeblade.7514:

I never played a thief. Before this patch, I was scared of thieves and their daggerstorm due to their OPness. Cripple, Strong damage, reflect.

Lately, I notice I don’t fear them anymore. I just go up to them and smack them with my axe till they die.

No.

People just finally, at least to some extend, learned how to counter thieves, which makes them falling off rapidly in power, since statistically they are probably the weakest profession of all.

Daggerstorm reflects projectiles, and when a 30 man zerg decided to attack the daggerstorm Thief with projectiles… well, it didn’t went well.

Thieves were always about exploiting bad play, while being at a huge disadvantage against good players of other professions.

^ This.

Basically, Thieves aren’t OP, never will be. The problem is that bad players get killed a lot easier by Thieves than most other classes which leads to those bads spreading the belief that Thieves are OP.

As we can see by your post and assumption that Daggerstorm is/was totally OP, you’ve been suckered in by the anti-Thief hype just like everybody else.

runeblade.7514:

I never played a thief. Before this patch, I was scared of thieves and their daggerstorm due to their OPness. Cripple, Strong damage, reflect.

Lately, I notice I don’t fear them anymore. I just go up to them and smack them with my axe till they die.

To my best knowledge, Daggerstorm has not been nerfed during recent patch. Congrats, you have joined the rank of those who know how to play

yup what the others have said, attack that thing with melee and watch how fast a thief shadow steps away or cancels it.

Asum.4960:

runeblade.7514:

I never played a thief. Before this patch, I was scared of thieves and their daggerstorm due to their OPness. Cripple, Strong damage, reflect.

Lately, I notice I don’t fear them anymore. I just go up to them and smack them with my axe till they die.

No.

People just finally, at least to some extend, learned how to counter thieves, which makes them falling off rapidly in power, since statistically they are probably the weakest profession of all.

Daggerstorm reflects projectiles, and when a 30 man zerg decided to attack the daggerstorm Thief with projectiles… well, it didn’t went well.

Thieves were always about exploiting bad play, while being at a huge disadvantage against good players of other professions.

This exactly. Dagger Storm definitely has its uses, but against a single enemy it’s fairly worthless especially if they are smart enough to swap to melee and just beat the thief to death.

And to add to the note of thieves seeming less powerful: The above posters are correct. Thieve’s power has not drastically decreased, it’s just that people are learning what to do when a thief does “X.”

I liken thieves to the Spy from TF2, and not because of the obvious reasons, but because as soon as you are up against a team who plays intelligently and spy checks, watch’s their backs and just generally knows how a spy plays, the class is much less effective. As thieves, we tend to prey on those who don’t understand our mechanics or just panic the second we go invisible. Those numbers are decreasing steadily as time goes on.

Dagger storm is nothing special, yes its fun to go into a zerg and see all the numbers but your pretty much gonna die if your not careful. Its most useful application is really the stability it gives, its the one source of stability we have. Yes the reflect projectile is nice but then its dependent on your opponent. Dagger storm never really was OP it just made a thief very discouraging to go near because people didn’t know the true mechanics, so now you know go kick the thief’s kitten

Yeah, daggerstorm was nerfed as soon as people learned how to press the dodge button.

Basically, thieves are good against bad players, bad geared players, and… hmm… another thieves!

A Daggerstorming thief that is able to do any sort of meaningful damage with it has always been able to be killed by a single melee attacker with at least hybrid damage.

GJ! You finally realized your supposed to melee a thief daggerstorming. BTW it really helps when you read other classes skills and how they work. It helps you become better at PVP.

=)…

This thread is a prime example of the classes weaknesses when so many people think its OP. Daggerstorm is just so Meh now Dagger storm is really good for the cripple and to maybe take out a few enemies on the brink of being down.

Daggerstorm is amazing because there are so many noobs in this game.

I can’t tell you how many people even in 1v1 continue to shoot me after I DS against them.

It’s a very effective skill for thining out clones and reflecting damage while crippling people keeping them off you.

Compared to Basilisk which to me is buggy and I hate the fact as an elite it goes away if you swing and miss. Seems rather useless to me unless you are GC. TG CD is way too long to be useful to me. Also, those thieves are weak. Any AOE will kill them.

The only thing you need to worry about while spinning is that you are weak to melee attacks. So while spinning don’t get close to people using melee. Just tag them with some cripple and spin away from them.

Daggerstorm wasn’t ever overpowered, but it will always be extremely useful in large WvW for thieves.

The appropriate counter, as you’ve discovered, is using anything that’s not a projectile and focusing the thief until he buggers off.

I play a P/D bunker thief in WvW, and my average offensive use of DS goes something like:

Wait for battle to be joined so enemy is distracted
Shadow refuge in quiet to gain the long-stealth
Run to largest concentration of enemy zerg
Caltrops from stealth
Daggerstorm in caltrops

This is the point where the enemy has the opportunity to control how effective I am with daggerstorm. If three or more people melee me, or if some smartypants boon rips me and stuns, I need to cancel and get out to live. If none of the above happens, I can happily twirl for the full duration.

I’ll do this once to open a fight and see what the reaction is. If the “deep twirl” is quickly countered, I won’t go for it again and in stead save the cooldown for something more useful in that situation, like protecting allies from projectiles, messing with other thieves shadow refuges, or as an escape tool.

I’ve found that Daggerstorm is as effective as it has ever been, but that the “deep twirl” maneuver is something I get to put to best effect less and less as time goes on.

I like hitting Stand Your Ground! (area retaliation) when a thief decides to daggerstorm into our group. He practically just….dies instantly.

I feel likes its been AoE capped. I sure don’t see as many numbers when I dagger storm anymore.

runeblade.7514:

I never played a thief. Before this patch, I was scared of thieves and their daggerstorm due to their OPness. Cripple, Strong damage, reflect.

Lately, I notice I don’t fear them anymore. I just go up to them and smack them with my axe till they die.

it reflects ranged not melee.

As a necro, I oftentimes giggle when a thief daggerstorms and expects to live. Plague Signet and Corrupt Boon make it much too easy to melt thieves.

wookie.8934:

As a necro, I oftentimes giggle when a thief daggerstorms and expects to live. Plague Signet and Corrupt Boon make it much too easy to melt thieves.

For sure. Necros don’t often get the proper amount of respect in WvW for their boon mitigating and control abilities. A solidy built necro can all but solo-cancel a portal bomb, protected stomp, or many of the other effective mass combat strategies employed in WvW.

Nothing ruins my day like having my massive bleed stacks thrown back in my face and covered with a bunch of other conditions.