Guild Wars 2

Not to be outdone by Jumper, I created a decent guide explaining my build and the ideas behind it over here. Check it out, if you’d like to see it.

I’ll give this a shot some time. You should know that you selected assassin’s retreat rather than vigorous recovery though. Watching one of your videos it was pretty clear you didn’t have the dps to take down a guardian, that’s definitely a down side. This seems tankier and more meant for team fights.

Btw, your little public quarrel w/ jumper isn’t interesting to the rest of us.

Hype.8032:

I’ll give this a shot some time. You should know that you selected assassin’s retreat rather than vigorous recovery though. Watching one of your videos it was pretty clear you didn’t have the dps to take down a guardian, that’s definitely a down side. This seems tankier and more meant for team fights.

Btw, your little public quarrel w/ jumper isn’t interesting to the rest of us.

First, thank you for reminding me of that trait. I had seen it and promised to change it, but I ended up forgetting after I didn’t know how to edit builds originally.

I find your other comments highly interesting. Of course, if we’re talking specifically about a bunker guardian, then it is true that it is difficult for me to take down that guard. That being said, the truth of the matter is that, at low levels, the marginal benefit of offensive stats tends to outweigh that of defensive stats. Bunkers are flawed in that they take so many defensive stats. However, they also make the opponent take more defensive stats than might otherwise be preferable as well, which gives them the slight advantage of essentially rendering your defensive stats useless. This is why zerker thieves are going to be better at taking down guards. This build is more designed to keep points contested, hold out until reinforcements arrive, or assist allies. This is not necessarily a soloist’s build, and I don’t personally believe that soloists are very good for team strategy. If that’s what you’re looking for, good for you; just swap the amulet and you’re set. Otherwise, though, know what you’re talking about before you speak.

And I didn’t mention anything about my quarrel with Jumper, and, as you said, what “quarrel” there is is minor. I made a joke relating to Jumper creating his own build guide, and your attempt to flame me for it is somewhat rude, to be quite frank. Not to mention quite childish and immature.

I think Arganthium is trying to start a friendly rivalry with jumper – which makes sense because he’s proposing a radically different take on S/D.

I read through your stuff – seems interesting, and I might give it a shot in WvW (where I have played around with similar stat spreads in condition builds – obviously not S/D). I tend to agree with you that the best traits are in acrobatics and trickery…it’s a shame that the stats they buff can be sort of mediocre in many builds.

I’m not sure I completely followed your arguments about offensive power and your comparison to jumper’s dps. Maybe you could walk us through it a bit slower?
I also think it’s complex as your build is going to clearly have advantages when it comes to things like boon ripping (which S/D already does so well anyway).

Along those lines, I wonder about taking both Bountiful Theft and Vigorous Recovery together. Aren’t you sort of over-killing the vigor? With either of those you’d have like 90% up-time on vigor – with both, you only lose vigor if someone kills your boons. Instead you could be taking power of inertia, initial strike (since you seem to be fond of auto-attacks), flanking strikes (for another flat damage boost – on top of your 15%) or even uncatchable. Although Bountiful theft does combo well to rip a lot of boons at once with larcenous strike – how often do you actually pull that off? How often do you need to rip 4 boons, and couldn’t do it with larcenous strike alone? Is it enough to justify the trait? Meanwhile, there are some other great traits that you could be taking that would synergize great with this build.

Anyway, interesting ideas, and I’m excited to give it a try.

Edit: I realized that part of the goal of your build is team battles – so perhaps bountiful theft is worth it for the team benefits? So that leaves you with maybe 60-70% vigor up-time (not including random boons from those lyssa runes). I think power of inertia may then be worth it over vigorous recovery. That’s an extra 4-5 might stacks most of the time in a build like this.

Hey bob, thanks for understanding what our “quarrel” really is.

So basically, when I evaluate different builds mathematically, I always compare them to some type of baseline. Coming from a thief background, that tends to be the amount of damage that a thief does when he/she is wearing full armor but has zero additional stats from runes, sigils, traits, etc. Then, I tweak the traits here and there, and, basically, my little mathematical GW2 machine pumps out numbers saying by how much I’m increasing my damage, relative to the original thief with full armor but zero additional stats. At one point, I stated that the amount of damage this build does, over the course of its lifetime, is equal to about 5.47 times the amount of damage a thief with full armor but no additional stat points (for the sake of simplicity, I’ll just call it a “base thief” for the rest of this comment), assuming that stats are the only things that change, and not enemy reactions, player reactions, etc, etc. Basically, I’m measuring the effects of changes in different stats, ceteris paribus (if you know what that means :P).

Following from that, my build turns out to amplify the amount of damage I can take by 2.38 times, and the amount that I can deal by 2.3 times. Multiply those together, and you get damage over lifetime, relative to the base thief. This value is 5.47, or 547% of the damage of the base thief. On a similar string of though, Jumper’s build increases lifetime damage by a factor of 526.8% relative to that same base thief.

Of course, this is just discussing stat points. This does not take into account whatsoever other factors like healing, init regeneration, boonstealing, etc. I prefer to write about that kind of stuff in other places, as things like those can sometimes be subject to some degree of bias, which it is my goal to eliminate. Hopefully that explains what I meant to you well enough. I know that I can be bad at explaining things sometimes. xD

Anywho, my original 10/0/0/30/30 build did actually run Inertia (you can see a few vids of me with it here. The thing about it is, for a lot of classes, applied vigor doesn’t often last particularly long, so it’s often hard to steal a significant enough amount of vigor to really do you any good. Also, because I have to be very specific about when I want to heal, I usually don’t keep up particularly good vigor uptime just from boonsteal and Bountiful Theft (btw, on a side note, Bountiful Theft is good because of the vigor, and all-around team boonsteal, and is especially good against boon-heavy builds- just check out my quadruple boonsteal combination). I mean, when I practice against golems, I’ve been able to increase my vigor uptime by a significant amount of time (hit about 1 min 45 secs when I was training on golems before a tourney today), but in practicality, you’ll typically not have vigor even nearly that long because of the timing on your heals. Personally, I’ve found that the evades are really good for holding points, which is my main objective. However, I’ll take your idea into consideration and try PoI a bit more soon. c:

Oh, and btw- quadruple boonsteal is far more common than you might think. Especially against HGH engineers and Shout Guardians. In their situations, the quadruple boonsteal combo is just… Absolutely godly, but it’s also necessary because- for example, with HGH- additional boons flowing in “buffer” the more important boons for you to steal, like Might, meaning that an opponent could potentially generate boons fast enough for you to be unable to steal the boons you really need to steal. BT, however, is a much safer boonsteal (insta-cast) that also provides team support, and allows you to get around the boon-buffering problem.

Arganthium.5638:

Hype.8032:

I’ll give this a shot some time. You should know that you selected assassin’s retreat rather than vigorous recovery though. Watching one of your videos it was pretty clear you didn’t have the dps to take down a guardian, that’s definitely a down side. This seems tankier and more meant for team fights.

Btw, your little public quarrel w/ jumper isn’t interesting to the rest of us.

First, thank you for reminding me of that trait. I had seen it and promised to change it, but I ended up forgetting after I didn’t know how to edit builds originally.

I find your other comments highly interesting. Of course, if we’re talking specifically about a bunker guardian, then it is true that it is difficult for me to take down that guard. That being said, the truth of the matter is that, at low levels, the marginal benefit of offensive stats tends to outweigh that of defensive stats. Bunkers are flawed in that they take so many defensive stats. However, they also make the opponent take more defensive stats than might otherwise be preferable as well, which gives them the slight advantage of essentially rendering your defensive stats useless. This is why zerker thieves are going to be better at taking down guards. This build is more designed to keep points contested, hold out until reinforcements arrive, or assist allies. This is not necessarily a soloist’s build, and I don’t personally believe that soloists are very good for team strategy. If that’s what you’re looking for, good for you; just swap the amulet and you’re set. Otherwise, though, know what you’re talking about before you speak.

And I didn’t mention anything about my quarrel with Jumper, and, as you said, what “quarrel” there is is minor. I made a joke relating to Jumper creating his own build guide, and your attempt to flame me for it is somewhat rude, to be quite frank. Not to mention quite childish and immature.

If this was the only time you were hitting below the belt I might agree with you. I’m sure you remember the thread where you called him out however. I’ve found it distasteful and lacking tact. I, and I’m sure others, have taken you less seriously because of it. However, you’ve been made aware (assuming you didn’t already know) so I’m done talking about it.

I’ll take build threads over nerf threads any day. I remember questioning how this trait/stat layout could put out any damage at all when you mentioned it earlier so I’m glad you put this together.

The thing I dislike about investing so heavily in trickery, is that power based builds give up so much potential raw damage and pressure, for team utility. Utility that is easily brought by other means, or other classes with less detriment to damage output.

If you want to refill your allies’ endurance, Signet of Agility does that, instantly, on a very low CD, although comes with the caveat of not knowing their endurance and guessing.

I think the fact that you can steal 4 boons is wonderful, but you’re also allowing your target to live longer, indirectly giving them more opportunity to reapply those boons anyway. Currently, the most powerful boon to be stolen, Might, doesn’t steal the full no. of stacks last I checked.

Furthermore, many classes bring their own fury/vigor/swiftness close to 50-100% uptime, and the sharing radius is not huge. Building all this utility into steal also makes you think twice about using it on CD, despite it being only 21s-ish. Do you open with it at 100% HP and waste the majority of the Mug potential? Do you use it to chase/finish someone and/or stay alive but miss out on boonsharing because there’s no one near you?

Every second you keep it off CD though, you’re wasting all those trait points which are reducing its CD. I guess what I’m saying is, you mention that Critical Strikes traits are useless/wasted/avoided, and I feel like that applies to many traits for all classes.

I really like the build though, I’ll give it some real-life practice, I think it’s overall pretty cool, thanks for the write-up.

Hype.8032:

Arganthium.5638:

Hype.8032:

I’ll give this a shot some time. You should know that you selected assassin’s retreat rather than vigorous recovery though. Watching one of your videos it was pretty clear you didn’t have the dps to take down a guardian, that’s definitely a down side. This seems tankier and more meant for team fights.

Btw, your little public quarrel w/ jumper isn’t interesting to the rest of us.

First, thank you for reminding me of that trait. I had seen it and promised to change it, but I ended up forgetting after I didn’t know how to edit builds originally.

I find your other comments highly interesting. Of course, if we’re talking specifically about a bunker guardian, then it is true that it is difficult for me to take down that guard. That being said, the truth of the matter is that, at low levels, the marginal benefit of offensive stats tends to outweigh that of defensive stats. Bunkers are flawed in that they take so many defensive stats. However, they also make the opponent take more defensive stats than might otherwise be preferable as well, which gives them the slight advantage of essentially rendering your defensive stats useless. This is why zerker thieves are going to be better at taking down guards. This build is more designed to keep points contested, hold out until reinforcements arrive, or assist allies. This is not necessarily a soloist’s build, and I don’t personally believe that soloists are very good for team strategy. If that’s what you’re looking for, good for you; just swap the amulet and you’re set. Otherwise, though, know what you’re talking about before you speak.

And I didn’t mention anything about my quarrel with Jumper, and, as you said, what “quarrel” there is is minor. I made a joke relating to Jumper creating his own build guide, and your attempt to flame me for it is somewhat rude, to be quite frank. Not to mention quite childish and immature.

If this was the only time you were hitting below the belt I might agree with you. I’m sure you remember the thread where you called him out however. I’ve found it distasteful and lacking tact. I, and I’m sure others, have taken you less seriously because of it. However, you’ve been made aware (assuming you didn’t already know) so I’m done talking about it.

I’ll take build threads over nerf threads any day. I remember questioning how this trait/stat layout could put out any damage at all when you mentioned it earlier so I’m glad you put this together.

I’ll take what you’ve said into consideration.

id take something between jumpers and your build. like a 10 30 0 0 30 maybe. i like the extra stun in this build. really helps s/d have a good finishing chance since it doesnt have that HS ability.

Ray.3780:

The thing I dislike about investing so heavily in trickery, is that power based builds give up so much potential raw damage and pressure, for team utility. Utility that is easily brought by other means, or other classes with less detriment to damage output.

If you want to refill your allies’ endurance, Signet of Agility does that, instantly, on a very low CD, although comes with the caveat of not knowing their endurance and guessing.

I think the fact that you can steal 4 boons is wonderful, but you’re also allowing your target to live longer, indirectly giving them more opportunity to reapply those boons anyway. Currently, the most powerful boon to be stolen, Might, doesn’t steal the full no. of stacks last I checked.

Furthermore, many classes bring their own fury/vigor/swiftness close to 50-100% uptime, and the sharing radius is not huge. Building all this utility into steal also makes you think twice about using it on CD, despite it being only 21s-ish. Do you open with it at 100% HP and waste the majority of the Mug potential? Do you use it to chase/finish someone and/or stay alive but miss out on boonsharing because there’s no one near you?

Every second you keep it off CD though, you’re wasting all those trait points which are reducing its CD. I guess what I’m saying is, you mention that Critical Strikes traits are useless/wasted/avoided, and I feel like that applies to many traits for all classes.

I really like the build though, I’ll give it some real-life practice, I think it’s overall pretty cool, thanks for the write-up.

While I might agree with you about the lack of damage potential from not using DA or CS by instead investing heavily into Trix, the other thing you have to remember is attacking rate. I’ve tried out builds before that only invested heavily into those stat points that mathematically did the most for my build; all of them failed miserably. The truth of the matter is, every trait in Trix (well, that we use in this build, anyways) is good, and the only thing that’s a real shame about it is that it builds up condition damage. That’s the real reason to invest so heavily in to Trickery; while the direct advantages are somewhat lacking, it provides absolutely excellent initiative regeneration as well as a large number of boons (and the quadruple boonsteal, which is incredibly useful against certain builds). IMO, the offensive advantages granted by investing into Trickery thereby is greater than the offensive advantages granted by investing as heavily into DA or CS. Neither of those trait lines provide particularly good initiative regeneration options.

Also, you’re missing out the point behind Steal. It’s an all-around class counter. It doesn’t matter if opening with it sacrifices some Mug potential if the total damage that I deal as a result of using the steal early on as opposed to later is greater than the healing I would have gotten from it later on. Also, remember that when you aren’t using steal, that it’s not on CD. That’s much more important than you may think; the ability to keep up large amounts of fury, might, swiftness, and vigor uptime is huge. Either way, stealing is a very powerful countering weapon, and every single part of it is useful, even if not all parts are used together simultaneously.

And, like you said, it is true that, for many classes, the traits taken are often quite lackluster, as is true for CS. The thing is, however, that this shouldn’t have any effect on our build crafting; we don’t need to build crappier builds because our opponents are building crappier builds. We should aim to make our builds powerful relative to all builds, and that’s why I don’t approve of CS; one, maybe two of the traits are useful whatsoever. This build aims to get rid of as many such unnecessary traits as possible in its trait choices.

Also, Signet of Agility is a perfectly viable option, but I don’t take it because of the relatively short radius, the fact that it doesn’t stun break, and the utility otherwise granted by other utilities that I already use. But if you want to try playing with it, go ahead.

Arganthium, I’d be curious to hear more of your logic behind your build crafting. I understand what you said about calculating a value to determine a build’s effectiveness. Do you start with any minimums? Say for example, if you want to be a far node assaulter then you’ll need X dps over time to be likely able to win that 1v1 or as a bunker do you need X defense to be successful in that role?

I like dps, I make no effort to hide it. Typically when I’m picking a build I start with a minimum level of offense and then figure out how to make the best of remaining defensive capabilities. That’s why I like 10/30/0/0/30 for d/p + sb rather than the old 25/30/0/0/15. I calculated (with assumptions everywhere) that they had pretty similiar offensive output but the former had more utility/survivability.

I don’t doubt you when you say this build has a higher multiplier than the 0/30/0/30/10 s/d build but that isn’t proof of being superior. We have to define what role we’re comparing the builds against. I mentioned a fight with a guardian before but I also saw you participating in drawn out team fights where you held your own; it’s obvious you’re a good player and this build has potential.

Hope this wasn’t too long winded.

Looks familiar ^.^ …. anyway good summary.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/The-Evasive-Invader-Support-Bunker

That lifetime damage potential is an interesting stat…but I’m not sure it always maps on well to battles, especially for a class like thief. For example, Jumper’s build, (when played by Jumper) takes damage so infrequently that defensive stats really don’t factor largely into the builds survivability. Meanwhile, offense does – since it potentially shortens the battle and reduces the likelihood of an opponent joining in.

On the other hand being able to take a few hits may mean that you get to stay put and hit more often than another build that needs to spend more time dodging / stealthing. The result may be more overall dps but less burst. The lack of burst may be the difference between finishing a fight in 20seconds or 20 minutes. Then again, if you screw up often (like I do), it may end in 20seconds with a glass build – as a loss.

You’re not looking at this the right way.
Imagine, this same argument on a LoL carry, let’s say Tryndamere.
Sure, you can spec Bloodthirster GA and do infinitely more damage relative to your personal defense. But then you turn around and see that your entire team is dead because the amount of pressure you put out for your team is >300% (estimate) less than the enemy Tryndamere running Phantom Dancer Infinity Edge 2-shotting your teammates. The same concept can be said for a ranged ad carry for an even more extreme example, if you can imagine. The one exception being Urgot because he is basically a ranged AD Caster and doesn’t scale the same as other ranged ad carries.

I play a 5v5 game. Not 1v5.

And PS: It’s rare that I get myself killed more than once per match.

Shinobi.3240:

Looks familiar ^.^ …. anyway good summary.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/The-Evasive-Invader-Support-Bunker

Haha yeah, I remember this build. the soldier’s amulet w/ cleric’s jewel used to be the same thing I ran, actually, although I later realized how crappy healing power is…

Hype.8032:

Arganthium, I’d be curious to hear more of your logic behind your build crafting. I understand what you said about calculating a value to determine a build’s effectiveness. Do you start with any minimums? Say for example, if you want to be a far node assaulter then you’ll need X dps over time to be likely able to win that 1v1 or as a bunker do you need X defense to be successful in that role?

I like dps, I make no effort to hide it. Typically when I’m picking a build I start with a minimum level of offense and then figure out how to make the best of remaining defensive capabilities. That’s why I like 10/30/0/0/30 for d/p + sb rather than the old 25/30/0/0/15. I calculated (with assumptions everywhere) that they had pretty similiar offensive output but the former had more utility/survivability.

I don’t doubt you when you say this build has a higher multiplier than the 0/30/0/30/10 s/d build but that isn’t proof of being superior. We have to define what role we’re comparing the builds against. I mentioned a fight with a guardian before but I also saw you participating in drawn out team fights where you held your own; it’s obvious you’re a good player and this build has potential.

Hope this wasn’t too long winded.

Ugh. I wrote a good response to this earlier, but then my wi-fi got all crappy on me and somewhere along the way the response got deleted, so I’ll try to make this as short as possible.

Basically, unless I am running a very specific counter-strategy, no, I do not start with any minimums. I do, however, build with objectives in mind. For example, for a bunker guard, I might ask “how can I increase survivability as much as possible, in exchange for offensive potential?”, or, for a counter-bunker, I might ask “how can I increase damage versus bunkers as much as possible, in exchange for defensive potential?”. However, for a far-point assaulter, neither of these is necessarily the case (unless we’re using a GC to counter a far point that has a bunker on it). With my build, I try to keep a point contested as long as possible in the early game, which means that I need to maximize overall DPS in the long run, not just offensive potential or defensive potential. Make no mistake, defense does have its effects on DPS; just look at the lifetime damage stat. Thus, maximizing long-run DPS (or lifetime damage) is not the same as maximizing offensive capability (which means dealing more damage in the short run but less in the long run). So, to answer your question: no, you don’t necessarily need to have some kind of bare minimum to be successful in your role. Simply put, you need to play the stats to your advantage. With bunker guards, this happens by increasing defensive amplification greatly, while offense sucks. This means that the guard deals less real damage overall, but he/she’s basically making the opponent waste their having any defensive stats whatsoever. As long as healing and defense keep up with DPS dealt by enemy, then the bunker build will be good. I suppose that, if there is a bare minimum, then this would be it.

And, of course, this build is only superior in its role, not overall. The metagame tends to dictate its overall success. Against an all-bunker team (heavens forbid), for example, this build would be pretty awful. Against a team where you’re going to be fighting standard DPS characters, however, then this build is fantastic. So, it really depends on how you define your role, like you said. If you’re going to go against bunkers, I suggest putting on a zerker amulet (with either a zerker or a soldier’s jewel). This is the real difference between my build and Jumper’s. His is better for going against bunkers. Our builds seem about even in going against condi builds. Mine is better for going against pretty much everything else, simply due to the mathematics and strategy behind the build.

So really, it depends on your role.

bobross.5034:

That lifetime damage potential is an interesting stat…but I’m not sure it always maps on well to battles, especially for a class like thief. For example, Jumper’s build, (when played by Jumper) takes damage so infrequently that defensive stats really don’t factor largely into the builds survivability. Meanwhile, offense does – since it potentially shortens the battle and reduces the likelihood of an opponent joining in.

On the other hand being able to take a few hits may mean that you get to stay put and hit more often than another build that needs to spend more time dodging / stealthing. The result may be more overall dps but less burst. The lack of burst may be the difference between finishing a fight in 20seconds or 20 minutes. Then again, if you screw up often (like I do), it may end in 20seconds with a glass build – as a loss.

I do realize what you mean, and, if I could convince myself that this was entirely true, I might agree with you. However, there is something that you have to realize, and that’s that there are counters to Jumper’s build, just as there are counters to any player’s build. When I say counters, I don’t even necessarily mean other builds; I just mean ways that you can tweak your playstyle to counter dual S/D builds. I know that in the thread that Hype mentioned, whether or not I displayed any sort of grace there, I did write some counters to Jumper’s playstyle and build. Some of them are very specific, and others of them are difficult for other non-S/D builds to use. However, I’ve used all of the tactics I described in that thread, and while I haven’t played against Jumper himself playing his own S/D build, I have played against other people who have been running his build, typically with very good success. The truth of the matter is that the reason why Jumper doesn’t take much damage is because he’s learned how to counter other people’s builds, and other people have yet to figure out how to counter his. Once they do, things will become tougher for him, I have no doubt, as I’m sure they will for me. But they are figuring it out, and I’ve been able to tell it from others’ playstyles.

But, apart from that, assuming that people are basically clueless about how to counter you, then, you’re right, there’s no reason to take defensive stats. If I could always guarantee that people didn’t know how to counter me or other S/D thieves, then I would almost certainly go with zerker gear for additional DPS.

So in reality, you are correct, to some extent. The real debate is about how well people have figured out how to counter S/D builds.

Jumper.9482:

You’re not looking at this the right way.
Imagine, this same argument on a LoL carry, let’s say Tryndamere.
Sure, you can spec Bloodthirster GA and do infinitely more damage relative to your personal defense. But then you turn around and see that your entire team is dead because the amount of pressure you put out for your team is >300% (estimate) less than the enemy Tryndamere running Phantom Dancer Infinity Edge 2-shotting your teammates. The same concept can be said for a ranged ad carry for an even more extreme example, if you can imagine. The one exception being Urgot because he is basically a ranged AD Caster and doesn’t scale the same as other ranged ad carries.

I play a 5v5 game. Not 1v5.

And PS: It’s rare that I get myself killed more than once per match.

I wasn’t going to turn this into an aggressive thread, and I’m still trying not to. However, what I am going to ask is- how is my build, as you might describe it, a 1v5 build? After all, I do have more boonsteal and boonshare. I can get into the thick of battle easier, and help ease the burden of others taking DPS themselves. I can go from battle to battle quickly via Shadowstep and Shortbow. In fact, the situation you described above, from what I understood of it (I’m not an LoL player), actually better describes you than it does myself. I don’t compare my DPS to my defense, I compare my DPS to a baseline- in this case, the “baseline thief” that I use in my guide. I compare your DPS to that same baseline as well, so that we can get an accurate comparison between the builds. However, if I was comparing my DPS to my defense, then I would say that my offensive amplification is 101.173% of my defensive amplification, just looking at stats. On the other hand, your offensive amplification relative to base is 210.493% of your defensive amplification, relative to base. In other words, my offensive and defensive amplification are nearly equal; your offensive amplification, relative to base, is over twice that of your defensive amplification. So, in all honesty, this whole “offense relative to defense” stuff that you stated applies better to you than it does to me.

So now, I’m wondering… How is it that I’m playing a 1v5 build?

And I could make a very snide remark about why you don’t die in tPvP, but I’ll hold off from that…

I don’t die because I maximize the efficiency of aftercast and evasion frames in conjunction predicting and outplaying each burst from my opponents.

“The Soldier’s Amulet [+Zerk Jewel] is going to increase your lifetime damage amplification the most”
…It gives 15% less critical dmg and 28% less crit chance.

Nowhere throughout all of your semi-meaningless calculations do you compare the straight up damage potential of each build with Zerks and the 14% crit chance and 30% critdmg loss from 30CS resulting in a total of 42% less critical chance and 45% critical damage.

Your post is incredibly misleading for newer players, claiming that “my build does more damage cause I’m tankier!” when clearly you deal roughly half the damage on average as a thief with Zerker and 30 in CS and as such, you are potentially half as useful to your team.
Not to mention, not taking Shadow Refuge is EXTREMELY selfish especially due to the fact you are bringing half as much as a 30CS/Zerk thief is.

Jumper.9482:

I don’t die because I maximize the efficiency of aftercast and evasion frames in conjunction predicting and outplaying each burst from my opponents.

“The Soldier’s Amulet [+Zerk Jewel] is going to increase your lifetime damage amplification the most”
…It gives 15% less critical dmg and 28% less crit chance.

Nowhere throughout all of your pointless calculations do you compare the straight up damage potential of each build with Zerks and the 14% crit chance and 30% critdmg loss from 30CS resulting in a total of 42% less critical chance and 45% critical damage.

Your post is incredibly misleading for newer players, claiming that “my build does more damage cause I’m tankier!” when clearly you deal roughly half the damage on average as a thief with Zerker and 30 in CS and as such, you are potentially half as useful to your team.

Cool. So does everybody else.

As for your next part…

This is just wrong, and this is why I completely and utterly disagree with virtually everything you say.

Actually, my calculations do compare our damage potential after the zerker amulet and all of that. Now, before I go into my equations, you need to know the following:
-These calculations only apply to raw stats, i.e. power, precision, vitality, etc.
-We are comparing builds from a base line. For both of us, that baseline is going to be a thief that has full armor but no additional stat points, and 0 precision points. The reasoning behind the 0 precision points is that it makes it easier to calculate the denominator for the offense equation. Either way, since these are all relative measurements, even if we did factor in the beginning 916 precision, then dividing your build’s lifetime damage by mine (or vice versa) would still result in the same ratios as before.
-There are multiple ways to do these equations, but they all add up to the same numbers either way. This is a more convoluted and complex-looking process than I use, but it gets us to the end calculation faster and probably more clearly for the less… Mathematically inclined of us.

Now, for the equation:

Relative Offensive Amplification = (Power*(1-CritChance)Power*(CritChance)(CritDamage)) / (BasePower*(1-BaseCritChance)BasePower*(BaseCritChance)(BaseCritDamage))

Or, in other words,

Power and precision bonuses/what you had in the first place, assuming you had no precision.

For you, this roughly equals

(1839*.35+1839*(.65)(2))/916

Which is equivalent to RelOffAmp(Jumper)=3.31

For me, going through the same equation (I won’t do the calculations here, too annoying, but you can do them yourself), my amplifier is equal to roughly 2.29.

Now, looking at defense, our equation is

(Armor+Toughness)/(Armor+BaseToughness)*(Health)/(Base Health)

Or, how much more damage, relatively, you can take from attacks times your health, relative to base.

For you, this equals about 1.582. For me, it equals about 2.376.

So, so far, we have your amplifiers at 3.31 and 1.58, while mine are at 2.29 and 2.38 (doing a bit of rounding). Now- remember that we’re operating under ceteris paribus assumptions (if you bothered to read what I wrote whatsoever…). This means that all we are doing is changing stats, and not play style, initiative regeneration, etc.

Now, if you live 1.58 times longer than you otherwise would have done at base level, and you’re dealing 3.31 times as much damage as you were dealing at base level, then you’re overall dealing 1.58*3.31= 5.23 (or 523%) (rounding up) times more damage within your lifetime than you would otherwise have been doing, just looking at your stats.

On the other hand, I would be dealing 5.45 (or 545%) (rounding down) times more damage than I was dealing at base level, within the expanse of my lifetime. Therefore, roughly speaking, relative to base, I am dealing 5.kitten .23= 22% more damage than you are, relative to base.

Granted, what these stats do not account for is healing effectiveness change; however, as it turns out, my heal is only 3.63% less effective than yours is, relative to base, which doesn’t even get close to spanning the 22% gap aforementioned, and doesn’t account for the fact that I use Assassin’s Reward, anyways (by the way, this gap is even larger if we include my force rune- specifically, the difference widens to 47.4% by my calculations, relative to base). So, the truth is, Jumper, that I do indeed deal more lifetime damage than you do.

The issue goes back to the problem of biases. You’re just too old-fashioned, and have been overly influenced by everybody else’s style of thinking:

“We need 30 CS and zerker gear, and there’s no question about it.”

But that’s wrong. As I displayed in my calculations in the guide, 30 CS is only marginally better than 10 DA, stat-wise. The difference? While you’re still alive, you’ll deal 331% of base damage to your opponents, but you’ll die only 58% slower. On the other hand, I deal 229% of base damage (and approximately 242% with force rune) to my enemies, while dying about 138% slower than base (or, you could say that I die at a rate of 238% of what base dies at). This gives you the illusion that you’re dealing more damage, when, quite frankly, you’re actually having to hinder your own abilities by running away from fights more often that you need to. And this is why I’m not “potentially half as useful to my team”. As you said earlier in your LoL example, just because you deal more damage, does not mean that your allies are going to be better off for it. In fact, they often may be worse off. You’re committing a hypocrisy that goes against your own philosophy of helping your allies over dealing more damage as a soloist, and I’m really quite annoyed by this.

If you’re going to insult others, tell them that their months of buildcrafting and theorizing are worthless, at least know what you’re talking about.

I think I follow both arguments, but Arganthium – I think you need to recognize that if a thief has the skill to consistently maintain offensive pressure and avoid damage entirely, then defensive stats mean less and less. As jumper mentioned, he dies maybe once in a fight.

If that is the case, and as long as he can maintain that as the case for himself – he should be maximizing his team utility and damage potential. Ending fights quicker so he can move on and be useful to his team.

I think the traditional wisdom for thieves is to start with a mix of dps and survivability and then trim down the survivability+buff dps to suit your playstyle/ability.
The paradoxical thing for thieves is that if you find yourself dying – you can often boost your survivability by boosting your dps. This works in two ways – 1) it puts opponents on the defensive quicker, so they are spending less time/effort landing solid hits against you, and more time/effort dodging and healing. And 2) it ends fights quicker. If a fight ends after kittens, it doesn’t matter how long you could have survived…

I personally am horrible using jumper’s build, so I don’t run it, and I attribute it mostly to my lack of skill, and my playstyle. So for a player like me, your build may be an option, and may work well. I also think it may serve as ok training wheels while moving toward a glassier build. And I think that it can do well in specific roles, and have some long-term viability even for pros. But I don’t think it has any advantages that outweight jumper’s and I don’t think that your stats prove any advantage over his build…those sorts of things can only really be demonstrated through play.

Regarding the stats: your statistics assume that we are simply trading blows with our enemies. However as thieves this is often a recipe for disaster. Our goal should always be to avoid damage, because if we trade blows, we lose. Therefore, as we get better at avoiding damage, we can push toward more damage / less defensive stats. If we’re still not dying a lot, then it makes sense to continue to push in that direction (or find a way to take on more opponents in 1vX, depending on the build’s objective). This is why, it is so important to note that Jumper only dies once in a battle…so your stats don’t apply to him, especially the defense that he sacrifices to marginally increase his offense. That is actually a worthwhile trade for him. It may not be for others, and I think it’s worth noting – for their benefit, but if someone can play jumper’s build and rarely die, then it will be marginally more effective than yours, since they wind up with de-facto similar survivability, but different DPS.

Bob: the truth of the matter is, eventually, we are just trading blows. I mean, we don’t deal damage when we evade, right? And the one attack where we more or less do, we can time our animations to hit our enemies just as FS hits. Just as there are counters to enemy DPS (ie dodging, range, etc), those same counters apply to you. This just results in what is honestly just a trade of damage, and that’s why it’s so important to learn the advantages to using a soldier’s ammie.

The real problem with the argument is assuming that, as you get better, your opponents don’t. If this was true, then of course it would be preferable to get additional DPS. However, in practice, this isn’t true. Also, the reason Jumper hardly dies in battle, from what I’ve seen, is related to when he engages/disengages battle… But that’s just my opinion.

I mean, your argument is completely valid, don’t get me wrong; it’s just that, in reality, it doesn’t apply to real-life situations that well.

I have to agree with Jumper on this one, for the fact that you’re gimping your damage so much to have a support build when another class would fit that goal better. Sure your build will do more damage over time since you will survive longer, (also giving your opponent plenty of breathing room to pop their heal, re-cover boons, and call for backup) but I don’t see the point when you could invest in CS and have the burst damage that can down someone at 50% hp almost instantly.

10/30/0/0/30 S/D + SB full zerk is the build I use, same boon steal abilities but will hit like a truck, it can absolutely ruin a bunkers day, letting you cap that point that much faster and potentially winning the match. Sorry to be biased but for me CS is just too good not to take for competitive play.

But hey, if you can make it work, more power to ya!

I don’t really care about calculations and all this crap. I’ll make an initial critique because this wasn’t in your opening post nor was it even really in the first half of your build explanation and it bugged me.
You don’t really say what your purpose is. When I looked at your traits I knew immediately but before that Im skimming through trying to figure out wtf you feel you’re bring to the table and that irked me. Please put a more clear cliff of purpose in the opening, just makes it a lot easier to go into it at the beginning.

Anyways. My personal opinion on looking at it? Feels weird I remember tweaking a couple builds for the purpose of FS + Bountiful before the FS april patch and found that ineffective now you steal more boons, and bountiful is always handy but everything just seems so….unnecessary?

You say you have success with this and I’m sure you’ve managed to find it working for you, do what works for you without doubt but eh. I mean if I just wanted to go to far and cause havoc temporarily before jumping to mid I’m trying to picture the charm. It reminds me (for whatever reason of a 30 SA 30 acro build Cruuk did with his S/P, D/P as sort of an inbetween at that, but I’d say the damage is probably even lower though there is more straightforward trait util, but in exchange without SR your utilities themself aren’t as directly team supportive as his were.

Backing off is a fair point, but I know in my own play, if I assault far I’ll do it in zerkers 90% of the time and don’t really need to spend much time backing off. I suppose it’s something you can only really see in practice, but for the maybe 6s if that, that I have to back off are you surpassing the damage? Presumably you too eventually need to push away.

As if I do say 12k dmg in my zerkers in 10s and then back off (low-balling) at what point do you put out 12k damage or support teammates enough for that to make up that damage and if that time is longer than 10s for instance then is that a trade-off that should be made when you need immediate results over a sustained approach?

I’ll sample it probably tuesday night but these are my initial thoughts.
Also you seem really bitter at Jumper in this guide. I get that he has rubbed some people off in the wrong way, but probably should leave that out of the guide.

Crimes.5317:

I have to agree with Jumper on this one, for the fact that your gimping your damage so much to have a support build when another class would fit that goal better. Sure you’re build will do more damage over time since you will survive longer, (also giving you’re opponent plenty of breathing room to pop their heal and re-cover boons) but whats the point when you could invest in CS and have the burst damage that can down someone almost instantly. Conquest pvp is all about time, the more time you waste, the more points you’re enemy can accumulate.

Someone said it earlier, 10/30/0/0/30 is the build I use, same boon steal abilities but will actually do respectable damage, it can absolutely ruin a bunkers day, letting you cap that point that much faster and potentially winning the match. Sorry to be biased but CS is just too good not to take for competitive play.

I’ve boldened all of your problems.

Support is not defined by the number of builds you give to your allies; it is measured by the amount by which you can increase overall DPS dealt by your team over the amount done to your team. If thieves are really good at single-target DPS, then they can pursue that goal as a team supporter. That’s the whole idea behind Caed’s build, of course, except that this build allows you to just jump into the fight, not fight from afar for the majority of it. I don’t think that any other prof has such good single-target DPS, and since it’s essential for team play, developing a thief that can deal as much of it as possible is absolutely necessary.

Your second problem is the “invest 30 in CS to burst somebody down” issue. Typically, this only happens when you’re fighting with another teammate… Which defeats the purpose of your later comment about trying to waste as little time as possible. 2v1’s are undesirable if you’re the team with the 2. Otherwise, though, the sheer badness of CS tends to overcome any defensive abilities that you might otherwise have (if you don’t think it’s that bad, just go over my DA vs CS calculations again). By going into burst, you’re sacrificing tons of defense, and the truth of the matter is that higher-level players are going to be able to counter your burst and you’ll be dead almost instantly. It’s an unnecessarily risky gambit with an easy counter.

Also, while it is true that you don’t want to waste time, remember that you’re also wasting your opponents’ time when you’re dueling them. Furthermore, the only team that’s wasting time when you’re dead is your team. As I showed with my calculations, because of the long-term DPS, my thief should, stats-wise, be able to beat a GC/burst thief any day of the week. When you’re downed like that, the only team that’s going to be wasting time is your own. It doesn’t matter if you spend a minute fighting if you make your enemy spend a minute fighting and then an additional 20-30 seconds in downed state or res’ing or whatever. In fact, it’s actually better for your team for that to happen.

And finally, again, even you recognize your own bias. I can tell you that I’ve never had the same bias towards CS. The stats suck, and so do most of the traits. Executioner is easily countered. It’s just flat-out not worth it, whatsoever.

ensoriki.5789:

[snip]

Okay.

The first thing you have to realize is that these “calculations and crap” turn out to be the exact factors that go into fights, not just some random numbers that I pulled out of my kitten. But I guess you were never much of a math wiz, so you wouldn’t understand. Which is a shame, because people have made millions, even billions off of the subject after having applied it to real life.

Secondly, I clearly state that my purpose is a far-point assaulter in the opening, and then a team support DPS character for the rest of the match. It confuses me how you don’t understand this after I fairly explicitly wrote it in my guide.

Thirdly, just read some of the stuff I wrote about why quadruple boonsteals are so excellent. Especially against HGH, which would otherwise kill my team.

Fourth, if I went to far just so that I could die, that would defeat the entire purpose of going far: to keep it neutral, cap home, gain a small lead, then escape the battle. If I died because I was running a build like Cruuk’s, then not only would I give the enemy an important 5 points, but I’d give them the time wasted for my team by my being dead. Also, the utilities are perfectly swappable, but even without SR you seem to be missing the grand picture of what “team support” actually is.

Fifth, you again miss the point of going far. It’s not to deal damage (and I’m pretty sure, as my calculations showed, relatively more would be done to you anyways), but rather to keep the point neutral. If you have to spend all the time just getting to that point to only keep it contested for, say, six seconds, then that’s bad.

Sixth, if you’re even playing half-competent opponents, they’ll target you and you’ll die instantaneously. Simple as that. Standard team strat. Oh, and since I’m guessing you haven’t tried this build… 12k damage (perhaps over a period longer than 6 seconds, granted) is easily achievable. And at least I won’t be dead.

Finally, about Jumper… You’re right that I’m not exactly pleased with him. Partially because he basically took the opportunity to insult months of research into the game as being “useless” in a couple of sentences. Partially because he came onto this thread trying to insult me, and of course I’m the one getting grilled by everybody else for it. But I didn’t put Jumper in the guide to be bitter about him, I put him in the guide to give people a build to compare my build to. I made it his build, too, because, of course, his build is extremely popular.

Since some people don’t seem to understand this concept…

Let’s say player A has an offensive amplification of 2, and a defensive amplification of 1. Let’s say player B has an offensive amplification of 1.5, and a defensive amplification of 1.5.

Therefore, Player A is going to be able to kill Player B 2/1.5 = 1.33 times faster than he would have otherwise been able to do if he was at base levels of stats. However, Player B will be able to kill Player A 1.5/1 = 1.5 times faster than he would have been able to do from base. The result? Since one player can kill the other faster, Player B wins, assuming equal skill level and ceteris paribus.

Arganthium.5638:

Since some people don’t seem to understand this concept…

Let’s say player A has an offensive amplification of 2, and a defensive amplification of 1. Let’s say player B has an offensive amplification of 1.5, and a defensive amplification of 1.5.

Therefore, Player A is going to be able to kill Player B 2/1.5 = 1.33 times faster than he would have otherwise been able to do if he was at base levels of stats. However, Player B will be able to kill Player A 1.5/1 = 1.5 times faster than he would have been able to do from base. The result? Since one player can kill the other faster, Player B wins, assuming equal skill level and ceteris paribus.

right, but this assumes that both are trading blows on a 1:1 basis – this may be true if we’re talking about 2 s/d builds – which may make PVT a counter to an equivalent zerker build. If they are different builds where one is better at avoiding blows, absorbing them, amplifying own dps, bursting, preventing healing, whatever…then the equation becomes much more complex.

So taking all that into consideration – lets put S/D into context against other builds – whether it’s your version or jumpers – S/D thief is –
1) better at avoiding damage than most other builds
2) more mobile and more reliant on mobility than most other builds
3) better at boon stripping than most other builds
4) Less able to take a hit than most other builds (yours may be able to tank better than jumper’s, but you’re still probably just tankier than a glassy necro).
5) ok dps (this is probably true for both builds) both spend a lot of time avoiding damage, so dps is probably mediocre in both, when taken over a long period of time
6) ok burst (probably true for both builds)

The difference between your builds is not how long you can survive – both can survive a long time. It is:
1) how long you can survive while making mistakes / cc’d
2) how quickly you can end a fight.

bobross.5034:

Arganthium.5638:

Since some people don’t seem to understand this concept…

Let’s say player A has an offensive amplification of 2, and a defensive amplification of 1. Let’s say player B has an offensive amplification of 1.5, and a defensive amplification of 1.5.

Therefore, Player A is going to be able to kill Player B 2/1.5 = 1.33 times faster than he would have otherwise been able to do if he was at base levels of stats. However, Player B will be able to kill Player A 1.5/1 = 1.5 times faster than he would have been able to do from base. The result? Since one player can kill the other faster, Player B wins, assuming equal skill level and ceteris paribus.

right, but this assumes that both are trading blows on a 1:1 basis – this may be true if we’re talking about 2 s/d builds – which may make PVT a counter to an equivalent zerker build. If they are different builds where one is better at avoiding blows, absorbing them, amplifying own dps, bursting, preventing healing, whatever…then the equation becomes much more complex.

So taking all that into consideration – lets put S/D into context against other builds – whether it’s your version or jumpers – S/D thief is –
1) better at avoiding damage than most other builds
2) more mobile and more reliant on mobility than most other builds
3) better at boon stripping than most other builds
4) Less able to take a hit than most other builds (yours may be able to tank better than jumper’s, but you’re still probably just tankier than a glassy necro).
5) ok dps (this is probably true for both builds) both spend a lot of time avoiding damage, so dps is probably mediocre in both, when taken over a long period of time
6) ok burst (probably true for both builds)

The difference between your builds is not how long you can survive – both can survive a long time. It is:
1) how long you can survive while making mistakes / cc’d
2) how quickly you can end a fight.

No, it doesn’t. It assumes the exact same conditions as beforehand, just that the stats have changed. That’s what ceteris paribus means.

Even if the ration if 5:1, Thief A is still going to be dealing 1.33 times more damage with these new stats relative to base (and relative to his previous ceteris paribus 5:1 ratio), and Thief B is still going to be dealing 1.5 times more damage relative to base. The only difference is that we could convert this to a 1:1 ratio, but since it’s 5:1, relative to that previous 1:1 ratio, Thief A is actually going to be deal 6.67 times more damage. But, as always, we’re assuming ceteris paribus.

Arganthium.5638:

No, it doesn’t. It assumes the exact same conditions as beforehand, just that the stats have changed. That’s what ceteris paribus means.

Even if the ration if 5:1, Thief A is still going to be dealing 1.33 times more damage with these new stats relative to base (and relative to his previous ceteris paribus 5:1 ratio), and Thief B is still going to be dealing 1.5 times more damage relative to base. The only difference is that we could convert this to a 1:1 ratio, but since it’s 5:1, relative to that previous 1:1 ratio, Thief A is actually going to be deal 6.67 times more damage. But, as always, we’re assuming ceteris paribus.

Ok, so then in a realistic scenario – Let’s say we have a thief vs a warrior. And lets say the base thief needs 12 hits to kill the warrior, and the warrior needs 4 hits to kill the thief, and the thief gets hit 1 out of every 4 attacks and the warrior gets hit 1 out of every 2 attacks. Now lets also say that they each attack 1x/second, and that they each heal 1x/15 seconds for half their health. Now we’re choosing between 2x offense / 1x defense vs 1.5/1.5.

So thief A now needs 6 hits to win, the warrior still needs 4, the warrior will take 16 seconds to kill thief A if he doesn’t heal, but since he can heal, the warrior takes 24 seconds to kill the thief. The thief meanwhile hits 6 times in 12 seconds, and wins the battle (or after 10 seconds, the warrior heals, so the thief wins in 18 seconds).

Thief B now needs 8 hits to win, and can eat 6 hits. The thief still only heals 2 hits worth of damage (I know, technically toughness adds a small buff to effective healing – lets up this to 2.5). So the warrior will take 24 seconds to kill the thief if he doesn’t heal, since the thief does heal, it will take 42 seconds. Meanwhile the thief will kill the warrior in 16 seconds with no heal, but the warrior gets to heal so it really takes 24 seconds.

In this case, the math worked out such that you could interpret it two ways -
1) Thief A and Thief B both win, but Thief A wins quicker
2) Thief B would take a lot longer to lose.

Now these numbers are arbitrary – but just used as an example for how complex this stuff can be. And they’re still oversimplified – because they don’t take into account the way that playstyle and skill will differentially affect each build. Being able to eat more hits may make you more offensively aggressive, which may increase your hit rate, but also the number of hits taken. Alternatively, spiking the opponent harder and earlier, may put them on the defensive, allowing the player to continue to push harder, thereby increasing hit rate and defense. A 6 second difference in this fudged numbers hypothetical scenario may seem worth it for a larger defensive cushion – and that may be true, but if the actual numbers work out differently, the opponent’s heals may outpace the dps of thief B, and not thief A, which means that rather than just a time difference, thief B may be unable to make a dent in the opponent. That short time difference, in a real scenario may also be the difference between ending a fight just in time to start another duel, or having to deal with a 2v1. It also may be the difference between capping a point and not capping a point. Or killing an opponent and not killing them. The defensive advantages may also be the difference between a thief dying and not dying.

My point is just that this game is very complex, and an overly simplified offensive power/defensive power mathematical model is not enough to effectively compare builds. That takes testing – and even testing won’t account for differences in playstyle. The build is out there, so if people give it a shot and like it, we’ll see how it does in teams soon enough:).

What Bobross tried to get across is exactly the kind thing I wanted to say. This isn’t a text-based RPG against fixed enemies with predetermined actions. There too many variables.

You have your build that you’re comfortable with, you play well with it, you’re proud of it and the maths you generated to come to it. And you know what, I have maths that I play around with for my builds too.

I think what people have become upset by, is the potential to mislead new people. You will find it difficult to enforce your mathematical model on people who have a different way of thinking about the game. I’m not saying you are, I think you were just trying to up-play aspects of the build that you believe to be true and wanted to back it up.

It’s always better to put up a build in much more simple terms, and leave out any personal theorycrafting which is based on personal views about game mechanics and I think it avoids debate like this, which, while interesting, is abit abrasive and upsetting for all parties concerned.

The entire point of theorycrafting is to get over any personal biases one might have and instead focus on models that actually represent the game. I didn’t just decide “oh, let’s put this little number in this equation so that it looks good for me!”. I’ve even shown the math, yet people still choose not to believe me. I’ve literally given the same arguments over and over and over again, and yet there’s some part of everybody here that wants to stay holed up in their sad little zone of thought and not believe that maybe, just maybe, they were wrong about something all along.

Let’s look at the example Bob just gave. Basically, he throws out a large number of arbitrary numbers, and then says that because there are so many numbers, the game is too complex too understand. I’m guessing he doesn’t have a degree in science or any other such field, because the point of scientific fields is to change one variable, keeping everything else the same, and measure the effects. But anyhow, because, supposedly, the game is so complex, it’s impossible to model. But this is incorrect; everything in the example he provided is able to be modeled. For example, the maximum heal efficiency per second. The attack rate’s effects on DPS. Am I upset about all of this? Of course, but the reason is that we get people like Jumper coming in, playing one good match, and then suddenly being up in the spotlights as one of the most famous GW2 players out there, who eventually develops a guide based on subjective reasoning that has no basis in reality and is more of a “well, I personally think that X, Y and Z are true” type of guide. Of course, everybody loves the guide. Then we have people that have put months and months of effort into developing very simple yet logical models of the game, then taking videos of them to show their effectiveness, and yet is being criticized for inputting bias into his equations, that his equations don’t mean anything, and that formulas as simple as (Additional Power + Base Power)/(Base Power) mean nothing, even though that’s the relative amplification for power relative to base that I showed right there, and makes perfect sense.

Yes, of course I’m upset. I don’t get to play in PAX, so I can’t show anybody my build in the tournament. I’ve messaged people in-game or talked to people on the forums, asking if they were interested in everything I’ve developed. None of them have responded. I’ve been kicked out of teams multiple times now because of ridiculous biases against players like me which bear no real significance in reality. After creating a Twitch stream and then this guide, I was hoping that maybe, just maybe, my months of effort around the thief community and around the GW2 community in general (I just checked, I’ve made over a thousand posts just on these forums), putting in little notes here and there, might create some kind of positive response within the thief community, maybe even help to shift the meta. Instead, I get everybody crying out that my math sucks, that the game is far too complicated for their brains to possibly understand.

That was my little rant for the night. I’m just… Horrifically disappointed by some of you guys right now.

Arganthium.5638:

I’m guessing he doesn’t have a degree in science or any other such field, because the point of scientific fields is to change one variable, keeping everything else the same, and measure the effects.

Woah – what’s with the personal attacks, guy? I’m not angry at all – in fact I’m excited to try your build – I’ve been collecting PvT gear all day, and I just had an issue with your logic, and was trying to debate it. I don’t have a beef with you or anyone else on here.

Also – I’m about 6 months away from a PhD in clinical psychology – my dissertation even uses scientific methods as well as advanced statistical modeling…But let’s get out of the personal realm.

You said it yourself – science is about changing one variable and then measuring the effects. In the arbitrary thought experiment example I just gave, I showed how changing the single variable that you described would impact an otherwise equivalent matchup. Now in a scientific model – that would have been better researched (using exact numbers, rather than made-up ones) and it would have served as a hypothesis, that then would have been tested (having various people play the game with both sets of armor on otherwise equivalent builds vs various opponents, etc.).

My entire point was that a simplistic model of a complex system only gets you so far…and eventually you wind up having to test it. That is what science is all about. You are the one who tried to boil the whole game down into two statistics and then waved them around like they were absolute facts – rather than well-reasoned conjecture. And conjecture is fine – but a scientist should know the difference between a fact and a hunch, and they make it clear in their language (lots of maybes). Because despite all the work that you put into deriving a formula – you probably haven’t done the testing required to establish that your formula actually maps on to the game – and I only assume this, because the amount of testing required would be ridiculous.

Ok – now I am sorry for this, because this really was just a “check out my build” post, and I did not want it to turn into some sort of heated debate. And personally – I’m not really heated about anything, so I hope I haven’t deeply offended anyone here. And I hope we can just get back to trying the build out and saying how we like it.

You mention people having a science degree (I do), actually in scientific academia, this is exactly what happens. People will defend the outcomes of their own experiments and models to the very bitter end vs. something new. New theories, however eloquently developed, are not always swallowed happily immediately.

This is good and bad. Bad, because if the new theory is right, everyone’s time is being wasted chasing incorrect assumptions/views, but good, because it puts a significant hurdle for the newcomer to overcome, so that we don’t have a situation where the meta’s thinking is changing too often for us to be effective as a community.

I feel bad reading through your rant, but you know, people have recognised your effort and skill as a player in this thread, and I think that’s something you can take home. I don’t think that it was anyone’s intention to offend or belittle your efforts in this thread, most of us just want a little more convincing, but maybe that’s unfair.

This is probably the best thread on this entire forum.

Arganthium.5638:

and yet there’s some part of everybody here that wants to stay holed up in their sad little zone of thought and not believe that maybe, just maybe, they were wrong about something all along.

Wizard’s First Rule.

I think it can sometimes be hard to read intent and emotion in text. There is a lot of wiggle room for uncareful remarks to be taken as insults. Anyway, I apologize if any of mine have come out that way.

Judicious usage of emoticons can alleviate this at times.

It just doesn’t look very professional.

“My build finally explained”. Yeah, finally! As if anyone had been waiting for that. As if anyone “owned” builds.

The level of pompous, gratuitous and foundationless self-glorification displayed by Arganthium here is off the charts. Why this thread is given any attention at all is beyond me, though calling out a better, actually known, player may be quite the original way of finding a brief spotlight.

Technobabble. This is how I’d qualify this entire… thing. Lots for words, lots of veiling pseudo-maths, lots of unfounded assumptions. How does it feel to hit like a wet noodle, by the way?

I mean, the guy runs sigil of air without any critical hit chance for crying outloud. Oh, but oxy, I have like 15% lol! Snap, you got me.

So I played it for a few hours, point for point as described with very minor changes (swapped out Sigil of Air, and tried Quick Pockets over Quick Recovery on/off). It’s fun. It definitely has more staying power and is more friendly to S/D players worried about making mistakes, you can eat most burst abilities from a single player and still continue on to win the fight.

But when I was playing my A-game, however, and largely mitigating by dodging, I definitely missed the 40-50% greater damage from a more offensive spec/gear set.

I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t notice team fights feeling smoother, and that boon removal/daze pressure wasn’t really cool and made up for the reduced damage in a big way. However, I did hit walls several times, sometimes with allies around even, and that was no fun.

A missed Steal is also really bad, which smart players began to anticipate. Whether it puts it on the 5s interrupt or 21s whole CD, it can really suck.

Bountiful Theft doesn’t steal full Might stacks, and misses when Steal misses, also, boon steal comes before daze on the priority list. This matters because it lets kinda cool things like stealing a Dagger Storming Thief’s stability, and interrupting him to happen.

I tried Berserker Amulet with the spec and it didn’t work too well, too middlish or something. But maybe it was just a bad round.

I don’t wont to sound to harsh but take a look at Arganthium.5638 twitch videos.

He is a clicker, and thus maybe does not know that a S/D build like jumpers can evade most of the damage if played right.

For his playstyle his build is superior but for a thief that knows how to play S/D right 30 points in CS are just to valuable to give up.

Even a 10/30/0/0/30 build would be better presure than 10/0/0/30/30 ..

Oxygen.5918:

“My build finally explained”. Yeah, finally! As if anyone had been waiting for that. As if anyone “owned” builds.

The level of pompous, gratuitous and foundationless self-glorification displayed by Arganthium here is off the charts. Why this thread is given any attention at all is beyond me, though calling out a better, actually known, player may be quite the original way of finding a brief spotlight.

Technobabble. This is how I’d qualify this entire… thing. Lots for words, lots of veiling pseudo-maths, lots of unfounded assumptions. How does it feel to hit like a wet noodle, by the way?

I mean, the guy runs sigil of air without any critical hit chance for crying outloud. Oh, but oxy, I have like 15% lol! Snap, you got me.

Lol’d so hard! Thanks man!

As for Ag. This build is only viable if your goal is to rip boons and troll and /laugh. This build has no point. You can’t kill anyone in under 5 minutes and by then there is already backup while makes you useless. Jumper barely dies once a game if that; so what would be the point of having less damage and not being able to train/down opponents. Don’t forget that for you to “possibly” kill one bunker will take 5-10 minutes and matches are 15 minutes long. Show us a video of it being useful and then we’ll see. Theory does not equal practical. Till then keep practicing and maybe you’ll advance from clicking to play.

I have no horse in this race, and I really don’t post much, but I understand where Arganthium is coming from. We’ll have to liken this to real life to make sense:

Arganthium’s build is based on maths and while math can be strictly correct in its theory, it’s practical application can greatly vary when human variables are added.

See, Jumper is a high level GW2 pvper. So for examples sake, let’s take Michael Jordan. In terms of math, a standard jumpshot will be more accurate and effective than a fade-away jumpshot. Because to successfully sink a fade-away you have to calculate your mass vs the balls mass while you travel in opposite directions with an alternating trajectory . . . etc.

The error being made here on both ends; is that players see Jumper’s build and his success and think that the build is inherently good because Jumper is good so they believe that they can reproduce that playstyle themselves (and hey, some might).

Whereas Arganthium sees his build as mathematically good, but the game is not played on paper, and players discount the build because it doesn’t have a “pro” championing it despite that this build might actually be better for them as they don’t have jumper’s skills.

I personally have not tried either build, but I’m sure both are feasible with a person who knows what they’re doing behind them.

If games could be played by maths, then they wouldn’t need players/athletes. No offense Arganthium.

Quantius.3156:

The error being made here on both ends; is that players see Jumper’s build and his success and think that the build is inherently good because Jumper is good so they believe that they can reproduce that playstyle themselves (and hey, some might).

Whereas Arganthium sees his build as mathematically good, but the game is not played on paper, and players discount the build because it doesn’t have a “pro” championing it despite that this build might actually be better for them as they don’t have jumper’s skills.

This to everything in this thread.

personally this is how I chose the berserker amulet over the soldier amulet (no complicated maths).

I just used the berserker amulet and killed some dummies, then swapped to soldier amulet and killed some dummies. what i found that i had an easier time killing them with the berserker amulet, despite the lower defenses. So I concluded that for MY build, berserker amulet is better.

i think choice of amulet depends on your build.

bobross.5034:

Arganthium.5638:

I’m guessing he doesn’t have a degree in science or any other such field, because the point of scientific fields is to change one variable, keeping everything else the same, and measure the effects.

Woah – what’s with the personal attacks, guy? I’m not angry at all – in fact I’m excited to try your build – I’ve been collecting PvT gear all day, and I just had an issue with your logic, and was trying to debate it. I don’t have a beef with you or anyone else on here.

Also – I’m about 6 months away from a PhD in clinical psychology – my dissertation even uses scientific methods as well as advanced statistical modeling…But let’s get out of the personal realm.

You said it yourself – science is about changing one variable and then measuring the effects. In the arbitrary thought experiment example I just gave, I showed how changing the single variable that you described would impact an otherwise equivalent matchup. Now in a scientific model – that would have been better researched (using exact numbers, rather than made-up ones) and it would have served as a hypothesis, that then would have been tested (having various people play the game with both sets of armor on otherwise equivalent builds vs various opponents, etc.).

My entire point was that a simplistic model of a complex system only gets you so far…and eventually you wind up having to test it. That is what science is all about. You are the one who tried to boil the whole game down into two statistics and then waved them around like they were absolute facts – rather than well-reasoned conjecture. And conjecture is fine – but a scientist should know the difference between a fact and a hunch, and they make it clear in their language (lots of maybes). Because despite all the work that you put into deriving a formula – you probably haven’t done the testing required to establish that your formula actually maps on to the game – and I only assume this, because the amount of testing required would be ridiculous.

Ok – now I am sorry for this, because this really was just a “check out my build” post, and I did not want it to turn into some sort of heated debate. And personally – I’m not really heated about anything, so I hope I haven’t deeply offended anyone here. And I hope we can just get back to trying the build out and saying how we like it.

My apologies. I’m just overall angry about this whole shenanigan, but as Ray implied (although I don’t fully agree with everything he says), I should’ve expected this in the first place. Ah well.

Ok my head hurts after reading all these. One fact remains true. I am not willing to sacrifice my 25pts DA and 30pt CS, the other 15 can vary though.

Good read thanks.

Side note: I agree with Jumper and the Lol Tryndamere reference. I get it right away. thumbsup

@OP. I like that you posted your build and your reasoning behind it. Clearly there is a lot of thought around it. I think the issue is comparing it to Jumper’s build right from the start. It doesn’t matter.

The truth is that neither build is the best build for everyone. The best build is one that matches the way an individual plays. Guides like yours or Jumper’s are great to give new ideas or to learn new techniques.

To learn the truth you must first accept that there is no truth.

But I like your math and stuff, but as ppl pointed out math cannot predict everything (though some scientist might disagree).
And though stronger on the paper it all depends on playstyle and how you react and adept.

I am a rubbish thief that is why I run s/d & sb harash build.. Just to steal boons and pull ppl with a magnet&scorpionwire combo i wvw.

But hats of for the great effort you did with explaining and so, but you must accept ppl opinion, even thought it goes against math and numbers. And the they might respect your view