Guild Wars 2

Discussion over. This spec is meta for a reason. It’s absolutely broken and thieves have nothing to complain about as long as they play this build. Why else is arenanet trying to nerf stealth builds so much?

Because d/p.

Yeah dp is soooo OP, your only role in pvp as dp consist of avoiding fights and afking at empty points.

Shadowstep.6049:

Yeah dp is soooo OP, your only role in pvp as dp consist of avoiding fights and afking at empty points.

True its weak, Bs does way to little damage considering the effort to actually land one. My crits usually do between 2- 5K, that’s autos on my necro… So considering all the set up a Backstab requires its far enough rewarding.
And then its the stealth debuff making you vulnerable. Makes it no room for mistakes and RNG to land a high crit. Long Crit if any and 1 miss on your defense and your gone.

I want better damage and more survivability!

D/P is also the reason for all of the complaining about reveal. Any sword main doesn’t care about all the reveal that other classes are getting, because it doesn’t effect them at all.

yeah let’s forget dd exists and only viable defensive trait line in pvp is SA…

i know s/d thieves don’t like dp but we really shouldn’t be trying to get each other destroyed…. given current state of thieve

MrKahwk.9524:

Discussion over. This spec is meta for a reason. It’s absolutely broken and thieves have nothing to complain about as long as they play this build. Why else is arenanet trying to nerf stealth builds so much?

Because d/p.

actually you are wrong. d/p is not particular strong. its not bad. but the only thing which keeps the thief in meta is shortbow #5 – nothing else.

I play S/D in PvP. I find it much more rewarding the playing D/P. I live longer, I still do enough burst to targets for them to be afraid of me. On top of that, my sustained damage is pretty good. Honestly speaking, I’ve found that I’m able to carry my team in Solo Queue much more playing S/D simply because I can outplay people more on S/D (as well as not die as often).

S/D is very weak compared to D/P now. You may live longer, but you contribute even less to a team fight due to a huge dps loss when taking acrobatics. If you are not taking acrobatics, you may as well just play a dagger spec since you will have bad sustain regardless of your weaponsets.

You can outplay people all day on an acrobatics S/D build – but you won’t kill them, while they will slowly kill you.

Honestly, I understand your point in competitive PvP where team fights are much more important and players are skilled enough that every bit of DPS matters. However, in solo queue where the skill levels are not always so high, my ability to kill people is not affected by S/D’s lower DPS at all. My point is that while the meta might be the theoretically “optimal” way to play, there are other specs that can be more than successful.

I find that the trick to playing S/D properly at higher levels is to land the Larcenous Strike+Steal Mug combo with Thrill of the Crime. With crit, I’ve had it drop several enemies below half which I can then proceed to cleave down with AA.

I feel S/D is still pretty good but regardless Thief is still meant to roam and backcap and that’s where our strength and role lies in PvP. However after the nerfs to Ele and Mesmer, it’s actually possible to 1v1 on points against these two so I actually find myself being more useful. Every other class besides minion master necro is pretty much beatable now too if you play right. Burn guards are a bit of an issue but skillful dodges usually win me those fights too.

Yea, I’m curious how significant the nerfs were to the other classes today. Are the nerfs on the other classes strong enough to the point where Thief can actually 1v1 them? Specifically Ele, Mesmer?

Or is a Mesmer still basically a better thief?

Showbiz.9725:

Yea, I’m curious how significant the nerfs were to the other classes today. Are the nerfs on the other classes strong enough to the point where Thief can actually 1v1 them? Specifically Ele, Mesmer?

Or is a Mesmer still basically a better thief?

Nope. PU mesmers got the hammer. They’re about as strong as they were before the buff. Other mes builds are mostly untouched, but the invisible super-boon mesmers are now a thing of the past.

I couldn’t tell you how significant exactly the Ele nerfs were because I don’t play one, but I personally went into PvP earlier with my D/P and had a significantly easier time 1v1ing D/D ele. Won a few, lost a few, but it feels like the gap (although still there) is a little smaller now. It’s still tough, just not so absurdly tough that I’ll completely discount engaging a D/D ele on point 1v1 altogether.
PU mesmer isn’t as frightening to 1v1 now, either (Though condi builds are still annoying as kitten).

TheDarkSoul.1938:

I couldn’t tell you how significant exactly the Ele nerfs were because I don’t play one, but I personally went into PvP earlier with my D/P and had a significantly easier time 1v1ing D/D ele. Won a few, lost a few, but it feels like the gap (although still there) is a little smaller now. It’s still tough, just not so absurdly tough that I’ll completely discount engaging a D/D ele on point 1v1 altogether.
PU mesmer isn’t as frightening to 1v1 now, either (Though condi builds are still annoying as kitten).

The meta D/D ele lost a significant chunk of might stacking, burn damage, and passive blind spam. This means they are putting out far less damage overall for being so tanky. That gap has been significantly shrunk as you observed.

D/P op? Not really, backstabs do same damage as Necro dagger autos or Warrior GS 3 or idk almost anything, only reason why thief is still thing is because Shortbow #5 porting to run faster between points and then coming in with backstab for spike damage. Literally no other reasons, oh wait there is, Shadow Refuge to res downed people. Broken class nerf pls

Petoox.6570:

oh wait there is, Shadow Refuge to res downed people.

Also 70% of the time in unranked/ranked when you start ressing someone while they’re in stealth they keep mindlessly pressing 1 in the downed state, thus making them revealed

But tbh about mesmers, I still find them quite hard to fight against. Their spikes hit so much harder and they have so much easier access to stealth than thieves. If you don’t manage to dodge their spike from stealth (even thought the pink flying blade is semi-easy to spot) you might aswell bail already

Gallant Pigeon.5807:

S/D is very weak compared to D/P now. You may live longer, but you contribute even less to a team fight due to a huge dps loss when taking acrobatics. If you are not taking acrobatics, you may as well just play a dagger spec since you will have bad sustain regardless of your weaponsets.

You can outplay people all day on an acrobatics S/D build – but you won’t kill them, while they will slowly kill you.

Dude acrobatics is life