If you're playing condi thief in ranked
Ah yeah that was it.
Ok, now I can provide some feedback.
That thief lacked mobility enough that he basically just ran around and avoided a number of attacks.
The ele was condi cleansing repeatedly. Not sure why you think he wasn’t? Condis fully disappeared from his bar multiple times. I suspect, not being an ele, that he was traited to clear condi when he applied regeneration? Or he is using another clear method I’m not familiar with.
Ah yeah that was it.
Ok, now I can provide some feedback.
That thief lacked mobility enough that he basically just ran around and avoided a number of attacks.
The ele was condi cleansing repeatedly. Not sure why you think he wasn’t? Condis fully disappeared from his bar multiple times. I suspect, not being an ele, that he was traited to clear condi when he applied regeneration? Or he is using another clear method I’m not familiar with.
Actually you’re correct, he does have some condi clear, I forgot about weapon skill condi clears. Earth 4 clears 3 condis, Fire 3 clears 1. Those are both on 20s CDs and locked behind attunements. He doesn’t have any traits which clear condis. You can find his build on metabattle, it’s the Fresh Air ele build, he does not use Diamond Skin. But those condi clears are infrequent, and not sufficient to combat a build like Condi Chronomancer. But D/D condi? Absolutely. If you watch Phanta’s stream (which I highly recommend) you’ll see that he’s very weak to condi and has to run from most condi users in a 1v1 situation.
Pistol MH condi thief would do equally poorly against his build due to Air focus 4 and Earth focus 4 providing projectile hate.
Well I agree that his condi clear wasn’t exceptional. The main thing that wrecked the condi thief was a lack of closing ability. Most of their attacks were wastes of initiative.
Against this guy using P/D you would have projectile hate, but you could probably spike torment on him with Shadow Strike and with venoms he would die quite quickly enough. Another would be using D/P and just interrupting him for torment and spiking condis through a few other abilities. Probably a hybrid with carrion would be most effective in that case.
Well I agree that his condi clear wasn’t exceptional. The main thing that wrecked the condi thief was a lack of closing ability. Most of their attacks were wastes of initiative.
Against this guy using P/D you would have projectile hate, but you could probably spike torment on him with Shadow Strike and with venoms he would die quite quickly enough. Another would be using D/P and just interrupting him for torment and spiking condis through a few other abilities. Probably a hybrid with carrion would be most effective in that case.
So long as you wait out his projectile hate, blocks, and invuln, and dodge his 2 CCs (both 900 range) you would win. But that’s just a specific case, most builds on every class have more readily accessible counters to condi than his, power rev being the noticeable exception.
Shadow Strike isn’t a projectile, and the block/invuln issue isn’t unique to condi. Also, with basi-venom the first burst is unblockable.
Resistance also isn’t much of a barrier as long as you bring some boonstripping. At a certain point the counters aren’t impossible to overcome.
Shadow Strike isn’t a projectile, and the block/invuln issue isn’t unique to condi. Also, with basi-venom the first burst is unblockable.
Resistance also isn’t much of a barrier as long as you bring some boonstripping. At a certain point the counters aren’t impossible to overcome.
Could you post your P/D build? I can see Mender’s ele, power rev, GS/Mace Burst warr, other thieves, power mes not running Inspiration, core engi and, some varieties of guardian (no contemplation of purity, not running Valor) could possibly be beat by a P/D venom build.
Problem is that putting a venom in the utility slot means that you’re forgoing a defensive utility, so you’re highly dependent on your first burst being high-damage. The rest of the duel requires your enemy to fail to capitalize on your lack of active defenses and general glassiness, the problem with condi bursts is that they can be cleared before they do a bunch of damage, so your enemy can mitigate with a clear and go on the offensive.
Shadow Strike isn’t a projectile, and the block/invuln issue isn’t unique to condi. Also, with basi-venom the first burst is unblockable.
Resistance also isn’t much of a barrier as long as you bring some boonstripping. At a certain point the counters aren’t impossible to overcome.
Could you post your P/D build? I can see Mender’s ele, power rev, GS/Mace Burst warr, other thieves, power mes not running Inspiration, core engi and, some varieties of guardian (no contemplation of purity, not running Valor) could possibly be beat by a P/D venom build.
Problem is that putting a venom in the utility slot means that you’re forgoing a defensive utility, so you’re highly dependent on your first burst being high-damage. The rest of the duel requires your enemy to fail to capitalize on your lack of active defenses and general glassiness, the problem with condi bursts is that they can be cleared before they do a bunch of damage, so your enemy can mitigate with a clear and go on the offensive.
Click the link in his tag line and he has a build there. if you go the the link in comments he links his wvw version.
(edited by babazhook.6805)
Problem is that putting a venom in the utility slot means that you’re forgoing a defensive utility, so you’re highly dependent on your first burst being high-damage. The rest of the duel requires your enemy to fail to capitalize on your lack of active defenses and general glassiness, the problem with condi bursts is that they can be cleared before they do a bunch of damage, so your enemy can mitigate with a clear and go on the offensive.
That’s why you don’t use a venom in your first burst, as it will probably be cleared. I tend to save the venoms for second burst, after I’ve forced the opponent to burn their resistance/condi clears.
Keep in mind Saerni also uses BT and RS in some form for boon theft. This also adds defensive utility. Stealing protection and Resistance in particular is very useful.
Obviously one of his major forms of defense is stealth and there a great deal of damage mitigated while in stealth with 3+k armor , the 10 percent mitigation off his dash , the 25 percent mitigation off reslience along with 33 percent you might get if you steal protection. Then you get the target drop and ability to relocate on the battlefied with the combo of hidden thief/dash.
in my own similar build the thing to avoid is stuns.
I hadn’t really thought about using rabid amulet in sPvP, I probably would’ve used Viper. How long would a build like this take to kill, for example, a GS/Mace Burst warr? Let’s assume you start the engagement with a successful Sneak Attack.
This version that I’ve been testing in PvP and which uses the Deadshot Amulet (much more glassy than I run in WvW) and the latest iteration of my boontheft variation (before RS came out I was running Cloaked in Shadow both for the vertical mobility advantage in WvW and the AoE blind against multiple opponents in WvW).
In WvW I use trailblazer’s and dire with dire/rabid trinkets to achieve a mix of small crit chance and sustainability. In PvP the amulets are much less tanky and taking a defensive approach can be less useful for a thief (less sustain ele/druid/dh on point fighting in wvw and the thief’s ultimate stats scale better—my wvw Sneak Attack does nearly 6k for example). The crit on Deadshot makes Sigil of Torment work quite well to add additional damage more consistently as a cover condition.
A fight against a warrior for me depends on whether Adrenal Health is active. I can easily outdo the healing but it adds time to the fight. Pulsing resistance also adds to the fight because I need to get another steal or sneak attack off to strip it.
If I come into a fight where the warrior is mostly full HP and doesn’t notice me/doesn’t have his cooldown ready for his stance…I can 90-0 him in roughly 5-10 seconds. It also helps to have a partner in the attack, if I can venom share to someone who is already beating on him (usually I time it to share all three venoms at the same time) then he will die in under 3 seconds. I try not to solo warriors if I can so this is the more common +1 scenario (where the warrior is sustaining against a couple of my teammates and I run in and suddenly the warrior is dead. The same works well against a guardian with the right timing because it will burst his hp down before he can use a big cleanse.
Running venoms should force you to always be sharing venoms and calling targets. As long as your teamwork is good, a venom thief can be highly effective. Note that in a 3 v x situation a venom share to both teammates, rare though that can be, will have 18 stacks of poison and 12 stacks of torment. If your team is 4 v xing that becomes 24 and 16, which should be enough to burst anyone down.
thief misplay using his steal on inv do not get 1.5 dodge refund it what killed him i am pretty sure he could of won that fight.
Saerni in your PvP build linked you use sigil of torment and a sigil to extend bleed duration.
With the Crit rate what it is would not Sigil of Earth be better then either one of those as in replace the longer bleeding duration or torment.
The reason is it on a shorter cooldown than is torment. It not AOE but with bleeds extended you should be able to stack three off these relatively easily in a 10 second period.
Since virtually all your bleeds off the P auto you llose less then a second if you drop the agony and I think having 3 more bleeds on at all times will do more damge then extended said bleeds by fractions of a second.
It’s worth testing…but the torment covers the bleeds so in practice it might be a wash depending on the cleansing situation.
I’m visiting family for a few more days so I’ll have to test it when I get back.
There’s a D/D condi build on Metabattle right now, and it’s perfect.
For mobility, spam heartseeker. You move really quickly.
With the meta build you can keep spamming Lotus Blossom and dodges over and over again. You also have two stunbreakers including a block.
There are enough condition covers to stack bleeds with. It’s priceless. You literally spam dagger 3 over and over again to the point where you win the 1v1.
There’s a D/D condi build on Metabattle right now, and it’s perfect.
For mobility, spam heartseeker. You move really quickly.
With the meta build you can keep spamming Lotus Blossom and dodges over and over again. You also have two stunbreakers including a block.
There are enough condition covers to stack bleeds with. It’s priceless. You literally spam dagger 3 over and over again to the point where you win the 1v1.
This is cute. Yes, the D/D condi build works fine in fractals (where it’s categorized) due to the fact that monsters don’t really dodge or block all that much. In sPvP the reality is different; thief has medium armor and is in the lowest health pool, yet you’re relying on a build with obvious tells, little use of stealth, and which requires you to constantly be at melee range to win. If you choose Viper or Sinister amulet to make the CnD → Backstab combo powerful (I.e. make stealth useful) you lose pretty much all survivability. It’s a fail against a DH who can manage their condi clears, any meta druid, engi, or ele, all warriors who can time their CCs correctly, staff sw/sh mesmers, and who’s left really? It’s a great 1v1 build when you’re fighting a potato, not so much when it’s a moving target with dodges, blocks, condi clears, and/or ranged weapons. There is a reason that build isn’t listed under Conquest, that section is for builds that work at all levels of sPvP, not just bronze/silver.
I like how a top 250 and 4x legend condi thief gives you his opinions and thoughts on the class on page 2 and yall gold players just ignore it
It is far inferior to D/P in teamplay and it takes way too long to 1v1 somebody. And in fact many builds (any ele, meta scrapper, Meditrapper and symbolic DH, condi necro, condi mesmer, any warrior, condi rev, probably others) directly counter condi thief and cannot be beaten by it.
So I had an interesting experience related to this thread and thought back to it. I’ve played Thief for a long time but was dissatisfied with the class so switched to Guardian for the past few ranked seasons. I haven’t played in a while though and I haven’t nearly mastered Guardian yet, so take this with a grain of salt. But I just encountered a formidable condi evade thief earlier today that I simply could not beat.
We duelled 3 times throughout the match and I lost each time. Each match took a while, though, but not that long.
The thing is that meditrapper is not a direct counter to evade thief. At all. There are a few cc’s and they are all evadable. Spear of Justice and Chains of Light just whiff as they dodge. I didn’t know what else to do (was running S/F and Sw/Sh). Just kept seeing “Evaded” “evaded” “evaded” over and over. To say it was frustrating would be an understatement. I did not mash my keyboard but attempted to approach the challenge methodically.
Yes I know git gud but I wonder – as a power based build what can be done? I was thinking the only way I could counter this guy would have been to spec specifically for condi cleanse, condi delivery, and perhaps look for more cc’s elsewhere. But it speaks volumes IMO that I would even have to think about spec’ing JUST to counter condi evade thieves.
It was funny to see the counterpoint after I decided to stop duelling this guy. Next target was a ranger capping a point. He went down in seconds with my build. So the difference spoke volumes.
So in the end regarding OP’s point, I think condi evade thieves certainly have a place in most ranked play that is not super high level where everyone knows what they’re doing and are communicating together by voice chat. I agree condi evade is more nuisance than anything and I was downed more because I forced myself to duel with him rather than disengage. But I could probably have walked away too if I wanted. The point is that condi evade is a very effective harassment build that is great for +1 and also for mentally disrupting the opposing players since if they take the bait and are undisciplined they will exhaust themselves fighting the thief.
OP’s total dismissal is not warranted in my mind, although I can see where he’s coming from since a bad condi thief that is not playing objectives right and rotating their +1 will not be contributing much, just annoying people. But it’s not a kitten build and in the right hands (which does not take much skill really) it can be used very effectively perhaps.
(edited by alccode.1297)
If you’re playing P/D. Just don’t, the meta isn’t even meta anymore.
Plz get funky with your builds XD
Jhadir the Charr Thief (ET) EradonTerrace
All the dodge!
All the dodge!
It is far inferior to D/P in teamplay and it takes way too long to 1v1 somebody. And in fact many builds (any ele, meta scrapper, Meditrapper and symbolic DH, condi necro, condi mesmer, any warrior, condi rev, probably others) directly counter condi thief and cannot be beaten by it.
So I had an interesting experience related to this thread and thought back to it. I’ve played Thief for a long time but was dissatisfied with the class so switched to Guardian for the past few ranked seasons. I haven’t played in a while though and I haven’t nearly mastered Guardian yet, so take this with a grain of salt. But I just encountered a formidable condi evade thief earlier today that I simply could not beat.
We duelled 3 times throughout the match and I lost each time. Each match took a while, though, but not that long. . .
I play a d/d evade build, and you are correct, especially about the harassment part. It’s fairly easy to do things like take home, bounce through and bomb out condis on mid, then go far, decap, then tie down two respawning enemies between far and mid, slowing things down, etc. . .
Unfortunately, you are also right about it probably not being good above a certain skill level, judging by the times I’ve run into high-tier players in unranked between seasons and been utterly destroyed.
My hardest counters IMO are trapper guards and condi mesmers.
Warriors, engis, and eles seem to be about even, fight could go either way.
Necros and rangers can be a kitten, because of condi output and range respectively, but are beatable.
I hard counter power revs and thieves.
(edited by JonnyForgotten.4276)