Guild Wars 2

First half covers thieves. Second half covers warriors with a warrior versus thief duel at the end.

I thought you might be interested in seeing the fight from the other side and it also has some relevance when talking about balance which has been a hot topic as of late.

IMO, thieves need to be dangerous. Fighting thieves is my favorite fight because of the threat they pose, so I really need to be paying attention and play well or I’ll get face-planted by a good thief and this is something I appreciate since I play these games for the challenge.

So, I really don’t think the damage thieves do is a major balance issue. Every player should make sure that they have defensive measures in their build to counter burst. Yes, I get stomped by thieves when all of my defensive CDs are down but that is the nature of a game with cooldowns. Thieves also do equally poorly when their defensive CDs are down.

Do I think that thieves are perfectly fine? No. But, again, it’s not the damage that is a problem. I see two problems. Certain thief builds have too much mobility which removes too much risk versus reward from their gameplay.

The other thing I think needs to be looked into are the 1115 pistol/dagger thieves that save all of their initiative for cloak and dagger and just autoattack people to death over time. It’s cheese. It’s not skillful. It is far too effective. And, trust me, it will remain that way even after rendering is fixed.

Ranged damage mixed with stealth has always been an issue in MMOs. What keeps a melee thief that heavily uses stealth in check are AoEs. But, AoEs are not effective against pistol/dagger. If they are built for stealth and survival they can regularly suceed in 1vNs as we’ve seen in several thief movies. Some of those thieves are legitimatally good, but some are not and are being carried by cheese mechanics.

The real culprit here is cloak and dagger. This ability needs to be adjusted or changed to prevent 1115 cheese and something else needs to done to compensate for melee/backstab thieves who are more dependent on stealth.

This is how I see things because I fear that Anet might be looking at the wrong things based on player feedback, which isn’t always (heh) accurate.

Wow, you are seriously a good player. I applaud your video.

I also agree that Pistol/Dagger is actually a lot more powerful than Dagger/Dagger Backstab builds on Thieves. However they’ll probably still generate a lot less QQ since you can’t near instant-gib people with Pistol/Dagger.

On the other hand you can come out on top of a 3v1…something that is very hard to do with a Backstab build.

gz to the one that played necro. instead of complaining (like most of the r kitten who can’t play their class properly), they learnt how a thief can be countered. i really liked the video. thank you OP

Indeed, Pistol/Dagger is amazingly powerful. Stealth + Range damage is just crazy good.

Great vid, you’re pro as hell.
Question: what do you think about the CnD+steal combo?

Yea you kinda lost credibility when you said P/D (IE Condition thief build) is easy, and needs to get looked at.
1. ALL weapon sets lack even the slightest synergy, so every build you are going to see spamming 1-2 attacks, even more so considering the initiative system.

2. Every class gets a condition removal ability, INCLUDING necro and some get multiple, and if you as a necro lose to a condition thief (which I have beaten on my cond thief) you are very bad because you are one of the few classes that can not only dump all those bleeds back onto the thief but are better at conditions from the get-go.

3. Front loaded damagethat 1-6 shots a person if anything, requires less skill because you do not have to stay in the fray to make your target dead, which means less damage you are taking, which also means less chance your target’s buddies to arrive. This is why good condition thieves will build as tanky as possible.

4. If anything the amount of damaging conditions a thief can apply vs the initiative cost is underpowered. All they have is bleeding, since poison is lackluster and venoms are next to worthless. That is not even taking into consideration the amount of condition cleansing in the game, so furthering my point. A condition thief will actually end up using 3-5x the amount of initiative to kill a target then a burst thief as well.

Jefzor.7145:

Great vid, you’re pro as hell.
Question: what do you think about the CnD+steal combo?

I have no problem with it’s end effect, but I think something has to be done to keep pistol thieves from having access to the CnD stealthing. However, if stealth is removed from CnD then melee/backstab thieves get screwed.

Something I was thinking of was removing stealth from CnD and giving it some other kind of useful effect. I’d shorten the cooldown of steal and let it stealth you without being traited. I’d reduce the effectiveness of stolen abilities until balanced.

Or perhaps something else. I haven’t put a tremendous amount of thought into it since it isn’t my job to do so.

John Lucier.5486:

Yea you kinda lost credibility when you said P/D (IE Condition thief build) is easy, and needs to get looked at.

You lost all credibility when you said I lost credibility. SWIDT?

1. ALL weapon sets lack even the slightest synergy, so every build you are going to see spamming 1-2 attacks, even more so considering the initiative system.

And that makes 1115111151111511115ing with pistol and dagger okay exactly how? Saying something is broken isn’t the same thing as saying everything else isn’t.

2. Every class gets a condition removal ability, INCLUDING necro and some get multiple, and if you as a necro lose to a condition thief (which I have beaten on my cond thief) you are very bad because you are one of the few classes that can not only dump all those bleeds back onto the thief but are better at conditions from the get-go.

3. Front loaded damagethat 1-6 shots a person if anything, requires less skill because you do not have to stay in the fray to make your target dead, which means less damage you are taking, which also means less chance your target’s buddies to arrive. This is why good condition thieves will build as tanky as possible.

4. If anything the amount of damaging conditions a thief can apply vs the initiative cost is underpowered. All they have is bleeding, since poison is lackluster and venoms are next to worthless. That is not even taking into consideration the amount of condition cleansing in the game, so furthering my point. A condition thief will actually end up using 3-5x the amount of initiative to kill a target then a burst thief as well.

Almost all of this is a strawman argument since nowhere did I even mention conditions or complain about them. The problem is ranged damage and stealth, not the type of damage involved.

BTW, I’m a power necro. I don’t transfer conditions.

Why pick on P/D Thieves now? It’s the only gd build left that has any use at all. It kills people over 5 minutes and survives because it has more endurance to roll and avoid more damage than most other Thief builds. They don’t need to do jack to P/D or CnD because if I want to stealth with CnD I have to go into melee range to do it which leaves me wide open to crowd control and AoEs the same as any other Thief. Besides that, you know there’s only ONE reason for me to ever get close to you on purpose, and that’s CnD, so why not avoid it by rolling and render me low on initiative? Again, it’s the players that whine that give the Thief the bad name. So now with spike damage being nerfed into uselessness, you want to nerf the damage we do over a long period of time too? It doesn’t matter if it’s cheesy or boring, it’s the whiners that keep pushing the Thief into using more tanky, condition based builds because they don’t like dying to cake walk BS Thieves, and now it seems people don’t like dying to a 5 minute Thief.

If anything, P/D should gain strength to, 2, and 3’s kills since P/D has almost no use for any of them. Skill 1 should bleed longer and do more damage, 2 should last longer, and 3 should hit much harder on both parts of the skill and apply some sort of useful effect. I think all of the attacks should at least apply bleeding but for a boring spec to work so well, it shows just how bad a lot of players are. P/D is easy as hell to counter, just like any Thief, but people are so used to going Thief=BS=Squishy that they never seem to recover from the shock in time to actually fight me.

“The other thing I think needs to be looked into are the 1115 pistol/dagger thieves that save all of their initiative for cloak and dagger and just autoattack people to death over time. It’s cheese. It’s not skillful. It is far too effective. And, trust me, it will remain that way even after rendering is fixed.”

The reason you see the “1” spam is because they’re waiting for defensive or knockdown CDs to be blown before wasting the initiative on heartseeker… only to be interrupted.

P/D requires a certain amount of skill, you need to stay alive so your cond. dmg owns the opponent. With that being said it’s pretty straight forward.

Step 1 get in close with a shadow step/steal
Step 2 CnD
Step 3 press 1
Step 5 cloak as needed with Hide in Shadows or Shadow Refuge
Step 6 press 1
Rinse, lather repeat until target is down, CnD them, stealth stomp.

Repeat all steps on next target.

All I can say is go watch the videos of Wild Bill. He’s P/D and generally takes on multiple people at once. Yes the spec is somewhat “easy” to get into, but try it and you’ll find out really quick if you don’t know the other classes and what to expect, you’ll die in seconds no matter what weapons you’re using. It’s not like other Thief types don’t have “easy” specs:

D/D or D/P: Signet>CnD>Mug>BS>HS
S/P: BV>Mug>Haste>PWx2~3
SB: Signet>BV>Mug>Caltrops>Spam 2
P/P: Signet>Haste>Spam 3
P/D: Lots of auto attack>rolls>CnD>1>evasion tactics for 5 minutes

They’re all easy and they’re all useful in some way or another. You’re not bursting anybody down with anything outside of D/D’s combo (which is dying on the 15th) or maybe P/P. The other specs are tanky specs that only have auto attacks and bleeds to do their damage for them. In any case, wait until the 15th to see where Anet forces the Thief to go next. Most likely auto attack damage will go up as they keep nerfing the useful skills down (look at Pistol Whip of course). Maybe not, but I’m not holding my breath. Nice video though, always nice to see a good Necro.

You are my new necro hero I wanna be like you when I grow up xD lol, beautiful vid

Oozo.7856:

John Lucier.5486:

Yea you kinda lost credibility when you said P/D (IE Condition thief build) is easy, and needs to get looked at.

You lost all credibility when you said I lost credibility. SWIDT?

1. ALL weapon sets lack even the slightest synergy, so every build you are going to see spamming 1-2 attacks, even more so considering the initiative system.

And that makes 1115111151111511115ing with pistol and dagger okay exactly how? Saying something is broken isn’t the same thing as saying everything else isn’t.

2. Every class gets a condition removal ability, INCLUDING necro and some get multiple, and if you as a necro lose to a condition thief (which I have beaten on my cond thief) you are very bad because you are one of the few classes that can not only dump all those bleeds back onto the thief but are better at conditions from the get-go.

3. Front loaded damagethat 1-6 shots a person if anything, requires less skill because you do not have to stay in the fray to make your target dead, which means less damage you are taking, which also means less chance your target’s buddies to arrive. This is why good condition thieves will build as tanky as possible.

4. If anything the amount of damaging conditions a thief can apply vs the initiative cost is underpowered. All they have is bleeding, since poison is lackluster and venoms are next to worthless. That is not even taking into consideration the amount of condition cleansing in the game, so furthering my point. A condition thief will actually end up using 3-5x the amount of initiative to kill a target then a burst thief as well.

Almost all of this is a strawman argument since nowhere did I even mention conditions or complain about them. The problem is ranged damage and stealth, not the type of damage involved.

BTW, I’m a power necro. I don’t transfer conditions.

If you don’t even know what you posted in the OP that isnt my fault, the posters above me already took care of the quoting of you saying that.
So, according to you, just because you build completely out of being able to transfer or remove conditions, another classes build based on conditions should be nerfed, and you come at ME saying I am using a strawman argument?? aaahahahah

I don’t think that Pistol/Dagger is overpowered, at least not compared to mesmers and heartseeker. Seriously, shatter-mesmer deal such an incredible amount of damage, while having stealth, a teleport, 3(!) stunbreaker and 2323 clones. While downed the rogue-phantasm crits squishes for 6k. Also, unlike thieves, mesmer have (or can switch to) amazing team utilities: Quickness without disadvantage, Null Field (Best condition and boon-remover in the game btw), portal, an AE projectile-reflection and AE stealth. Thieves have poison for the group and AE-stealth.

Heartseeker is just baddly designed imo, having a gapcloser on a finisher is just meh. I wish they would add the gapcloser to a reworked version of Dagger/Dagger. Who the hell plays condition-dagger/dagger anyway, such a boring and stupid specc.

John Lucier.5486

So, according to you, just because you build completely out of being able to transfer or remove conditions, another classes build based on conditions should be nerfed, and you come at ME saying I am using a strawman argument?? aaahahahah

How hard is it for you to understand that it doesn’t matter whether the damage is condition based or power based, the mixture of stealth and range is allowing people to win 1v3s, 1v4s, 1v5s, 1v6s.

And yes, you are using a strawman argument since I never complained about conditions. It’s not about conditions. You just pulled that out of your kitten to help make some kind of illogical and emotional argument.

Not really, 1v6 rofl ;D

You can win 1v3 against terrible players but you are really exaggerating. Why are you so butthurt against Pistol/Dagger-thieves? Necro is our #1 enemy (guardian and bunker-ele the next, they both have so many condition removals.)

Pistol/Dagger has tons of counters and the fix to culling will greatly reduce the strength of it, so no need for a nerf here. If you think that only the combo of range + stealth is overpowered, why aren’t you whining about mesmers? I just think that you got killed a couple of times by such a thief. You have to remember that Power-necromancer is kinda bad compared to other classes in this game and that you play far from perfect (at least from what I saw in the vid).

Teabaker.9524:

Not really, 1v6 rofl ;D

You can win 1v3 against terrible players but you are really exaggerating. Why are you so butthurt against Pistol/Dagger-thieves? Necro is our #1 enemy (guardian and bunker-ele the next, they both have so many condition removals.)

Pistol/Dagger has tons of counters and the fix to culling will greatly reduce the strength of it, so no need for a nerf here. If you think that only the combo of range + stealth is overpowered, why aren’t you whining about mesmers? I just think that you got killed a couple of times by such a thief. You have to remember that Power-necromancer is kinda bad compared to other classes in this game and that you play far from perfect (at least from what I saw in the vid).

Fear a thief and tactics like this found below.

The reason P/D thieves go 1115 is because most (by far) of their damage comes from their stealth attack. As P/D I can sit there in range firing off SLOW AS auto attacks with zero power/crit damage an get few short lasting bleed stacks. P/D needs stealth to do any threatening damage whatsoever. Even as it is, P/D is a bunker build that takes a while to kill many classes, especially classes like eles with several condition cleansers. As it is, any class that can kite/block/dodge the cloak and daggers (these will be obvious since its the only melee move they’ll do) completely counters most of their damage. Waste their ini by doing this twice and they’re relying completely on abilities. Also P/D is countered by superior ranged damage.

The issue is certainly a thorny one since C&D is such a keystone to so many builds. Liked the video anyway dude. Thank you for initiating this discussion so constructively. You have my respect.

The movie that gamefreak linked is what I was referring to. And that thief mouseclicks his utilities and mouseclicks weaponswap. Of course, it’s much easier doing that in WvW because of the critters running around to get free stealths off of. It’s a problem, IMO. I honestly can’t see how people can defend that, but whatever.

BTW, I have not fought a thief like this 1v1, so please stop with the assumptions. My concerns are based off of the movies I’ve seen.

Valid point on the DPS loss if you lose frenquency of stealth attacks. That could be balanced by improving the non-stealth attack, though.

Dude, you are basing your nerf-opinion only on videos? You haven’t even fought such a thief? You can’t be serious. Seriously, how the hell can you start talking about balance without even having fought one? Who the hell do you think you are? You only made an “okay” necromancer vid. I’m not trying to sound rude but I honestly don’t know how to answer in a polite way.

Also the vid has a few bots in it. There was a vid of a necro killing 10+ bots so I guess nerf necro then.

http://i.imgur.com/yYBHz.jpg

Nice vid and your pretty good but that war in the end sucked. He healed to make the fight go on longer when he could have finished the knockeddown thief. Also he seemed lost most the time in that 1v1 and the downed state is not OP as clearly the thief went down first and the war got some hits in before going down. Idk what that war was doin but he got lucky.

Oozo.7856:

The other thing I think needs to be looked into are the 1115 pistol/dagger thieves that save all of their initiative for cloak and dagger and just autoattack people to death over time. It’s cheese. It’s not skillful. It is far too effective. And, trust me, it will remain that way even after rendering is fixed.

First, look at the weaponset before opening your mouth. Find me something… anything…. to use as an init dump that doesn’t put me out of the fight and I’ll gladly start using it. You say “cheese” I say put your money where your mouth is. All P/D has for staple damage is CnD, Sneak Attack & auto.

As a player who has been messing around with my P/D thief for about a month now, all I really use is Cloak and Dagger, auto-attack, and the occasional Dancing Dagger. With my utilities, it’s very easy not to die. Every thief builds seems to rely on one particular tactic because that’s the direction our traits point us. There isn’t much way around it with the limited or lacking weapon sets.

Very nice video too. I’ve been noticing more Necromancers fearing me out of Shadow Refuge along with a few other tactics you’ve demonstrated as well.

Oozo.7856:

John Lucier.5486

So, according to you, just because you build completely out of being able to transfer or remove conditions, another classes build based on conditions should be nerfed, and you come at ME saying I am using a strawman argument?? aaahahahah

How hard is it for you to understand that it doesn’t matter whether the damage is condition based or power based, the mixture of stealth and range is allowing people to win 1v3s, 1v4s, 1v5s, 1v6s.

And yes, you are using a strawman argument since I never complained about conditions. It’s not about conditions. You just pulled that out of your kitten to help make some kind of illogical and emotional argument.

I guess it is pretty hard for me to understand that someone like yourself can somehow type english and full sentences but does not know how to read words. Let me repeat, people have quoted you multiple times in this EXACT thread from things you said in the OP about how condition P/D is overpowered. Are you really that blind? I hear lenscrafter is having a 40% off sale, check it out.

Also you might want to learn what strawman argument means before you use it, you are just making yourself look worse, and while I find it amusing the clear lack of self esteem that is usually the basis for insulting one-self, I pity you instead.

Oozo.7856:

Of course, it’s much easier doing that in WvW because of the critters running around to get free stealths off of. It’s a problem, IMO. I honestly can’t see how people can defend that, but whatever.

BTW, I have not fought a thief like this 1v1, so please stop with the assumptions. My concerns are based off of the movies I’ve seen.

Valid point on the DPS loss if you lose frenquency of stealth attacks. That could be balanced by improving the non-stealth attack, though.

So, just because as you already said, it’s easier to pull off in WvW because of the mobs/randoms running around it needs to be nerfed? try to PvP where there are no mobs maybe?

Now, I didn’t watched the video, but I feel like I’m playing a similiar build. It relies on the condition damage of the pistol (both auto and stealth attack) meanwhile I heal up and remove conditions when I hide.
In order to do that, I indeed need to land CnD, and this is where you need to counter. If I can’t land CnD I can’t hide, if I can’t hide I can’t heal nor remove my conditions.

Of course, there is always Shadow Refuge, but that has a CD and can be countered by AoEs.

This is by far one of our strongest 1v1 build, because as you might have noticed, once you learn to counter a backstab thief there is nothing much he can do but run away and re-try his combo (by the way, I never got killed by a backstab thief when I had my stun-break ready in a 1v1).

Now, with the already announced upcoming and totally not needed backstab/burst nerf (just because baddies complained about it), I don’t think that touching our others “competitive” builds would be fair, even because they can be countered and are not really viable in most tournaments.

Bravo OP, /clap. That was fun to watch. I have a 80 Necro that was my first character and I’m nowhere near as skilled as that with the class. Good job!

Now this is what makes me want to go back to pvp, just to meet these kind of people.
Really outstanding work both in game and with movie. Fearsome necro, hope we will meet someday.

John Lucier.5486:

Oozo.7856:

John Lucier.5486

So, according to you, just because you build completely out of being able to transfer or remove conditions, another classes build based on conditions should be nerfed, and you come at ME saying I am using a strawman argument?? aaahahahah

How hard is it for you to understand that it doesn’t matter whether the damage is condition based or power based, the mixture of stealth and range is allowing people to win 1v3s, 1v4s, 1v5s, 1v6s.

And yes, you are using a strawman argument since I never complained about conditions. It’s not about conditions. You just pulled that out of your kitten to help make some kind of illogical and emotional argument.

I guess it is pretty hard for me to understand that someone like yourself can somehow type english and full sentences but does not know how to read words. Let me repeat, people have quoted you multiple times in this EXACT thread from things you said in the OP about how condition P/D is overpowered. Are you really that blind? I hear lenscrafter is having a 40% off sale, check it out.

Also you might want to learn what strawman argument means before you use it, you are just making yourself look worse, and while I find it amusing the clear lack of self esteem that is usually the basis for insulting one-self, I pity you instead.

Read my original post and quote me the part where I said or even implied that pistol/dagger was OP because of conditions.

If you can do that, then we will continue. If you can’t, then you will be put on ignore status.

Teabaker.9524:

Dude, you are basing your nerf-opinion only on videos? You haven’t even fought such a thief? You can’t be serious. Seriously, how the hell can you start talking about balance without even having fought one? Who the hell do you think you are? You only made an “okay” necromancer vid. I’m not trying to sound rude but I honestly don’t know how to answer in a polite way.

Also the vid has a few bots in it. There was a vid of a necro killing 10+ bots so I guess nerf necro then.

http://i.imgur.com/yYBHz.jpg

Multiple videos of multiple thieves doing the same exact thing over and over and over and winning multiple 1vNs. The closest thing to this are some 1vN elementalist movies, but at least those required skill.

Some people seem to get really emotional when they think someone is going to take their candy away.

rickshaw.5279:

Oozo.7856:

The other thing I think needs to be looked into are the 1115 pistol/dagger thieves that save all of their initiative for cloak and dagger and just autoattack people to death over time. It’s cheese. It’s not skillful. It is far too effective. And, trust me, it will remain that way even after rendering is fixed.

First, look at the weaponset before opening your mouth. Find me something… anything…. to use as an init dump that doesn’t put me out of the fight and I’ll gladly start using it. You say “cheese” I say put your money where your mouth is. All P/D has for staple damage is CnD, Sneak Attack & auto.

Glad to see that you agree that the weaponset is broken and needs to be fixed. Any time when the best way to play is to practically ignore 3 out of 5 of it’s ability that means it’s broken.

Oozo.7856:

Teabaker.9524:

Dude, you are basing your nerf-opinion only on videos? You haven’t even fought such a thief? You can’t be serious. Seriously, how the hell can you start talking about balance without even having fought one? Who the hell do you think you are? You only made an “okay” necromancer vid. I’m not trying to sound rude but I honestly don’t know how to answer in a polite way.

Also the vid has a few bots in it. There was a vid of a necro killing 10+ bots so I guess nerf necro then.

http://i.imgur.com/yYBHz.jpg

Multiple videos of multiple thieves doing the same exact thing over and over and over and winning multiple 1vNs. The closest thing to this are some 1vN elementalist movies, but at least those required skill.

Some people seem to get really emotional when they think someone is going to take their candy away.

yes, but all those thieves are good players, and everyone they kill is a bad player.

also 100b is exactly like bs because it does not root you in place for 3.5 seconds, and warriors can also turn invisible to avoid retaliation, or teleport across the map when things are not going their way.

thieves fit perfectly into the low risk-high reward model and do not need adjusting.

you must be new here.

Oozo.7856:

Teabaker.9524:

Dude, you are basing your nerf-opinion only on videos? You haven’t even fought such a thief? You can’t be serious. Seriously, how the hell can you start talking about balance without even having fought one? Who the hell do you think you are? You only made an “okay” necromancer vid. I’m not trying to sound rude but I honestly don’t know how to answer in a polite way.

Also the vid has a few bots in it. There was a vid of a necro killing 10+ bots so I guess nerf necro then.

http://i.imgur.com/yYBHz.jpg

Multiple videos of multiple thieves doing the same exact thing over and over and over and winning multiple 1vNs. The closest thing to this are some 1vN elementalist movies, but at least those required skill.

Some people seem to get really emotional when they think someone is going to take their candy away.

Yes, because videos totally shows the reality, specially WvW ones (where they kill lower level/undergeared people/people that can only zerg/people that can’t even see them because of the rendering issue).

Get real, they won’t be able 1vX anyone half decent simply because of the downing system.
As in, killing “good” people in a 1vX fight requires more skills than you might think.

Reworking CnD, or not allowing us to “hide on demand”, will totally make useless most of our shadow arts trait, hence your suggestion doesn’t really work, since for the most part our class is designed around CnD.

Wolfen.5708:

This is by far one of our strongest 1v1 build, because as you might have noticed, once you learn to counter a backstab thief there is nothing much he can do but run away and re-try his combo (by the way, I never got killed by a backstab thief when I had my stun-break ready in a 1v1).

Now, with the already announced upcoming and totally not needed backstab/burst nerf (just because baddies complained about it), I don’t think that touching our others “competitive” builds would be fair, even because they can be countered and are not really viable in most tournaments.

There is nothing wrong with strong 1v1 builds. There might be a problem when something is too strong at 1vNs.

Philosophy:

It should require skill to win a 1v1 against a skilled player.

It should require skill to win a 1v2 against two good players.

It should require skill to win a 1v3 against three or more bad players.

Wolfen.5708

Get real, they won’t be able 1vX anyone half decent simply because of the downing system.

Stealth stomp?

Not everyone has the tools to stop a stealth stomp and even if you do they will often be on cooldown. On the other hand all a thief needs to stealth stomp is initiative which a pistol/dagger thief will typically have in ample supply since they save their initiative for CnD.

TLDR: The frequency at which a thief can stealth stomp is greater than the frequency at which other people can stop it.

Reworking CnD, or not allowing us to “hide on demand”, will totally make useless most of our shadow arts trait, hence your suggestion doesn’t really work, since for the most part our class is designed around CnD.

Yes, Anet really stuck their foot in it on this one. The cancer is deeply embedded, so I’m not sure it can be removed. But you never know, sometimes people come up with some really clever solutions to problems.

Oozo.7856:

There is nothing wrong with strong 1v1 builds. There might be a problem when something is too strong at 1vNs.

Philosophy:

It should require skill to win a 1v1 against a skilled player.

It should require skill to win a 1v2 against two good players.

It should require skill to win a 1v3 against three or more bad players.

This build damage is kinda “low” and based on conditions, on top of that, in order to apply a considerable amount of conditions you must attack from hide, which will give you the “revealed” debuff.

Now, since there still is the redering issue and people are too stupid to press tab, this build is able to do fairly well against two or more players, but you won’t kill (or better, you won’t stomp) anyone half decent in a two or three vs one, and now I will try to explain why.

Oozo.7856:

Stealth stomp?
Not everyone has the tools to stop a stealth stomp and even if you do they will often be on cooldown. On the other hand all a thief needs to stealth stomp is initiative which a pistol/dagger thief will typically have in ample supply since they save their initiative for CnD.

TLDR: The frequency at which a thief can stealth stomp is greater than the frequency at which other people can stop it.

Stealth stomp won’t work against anyone half decent because the time you need to stomp someone is higher than the time his team mates needs to ress him, I explain myself better:

If I down someone in a 2v1 and his team mate instantly start to ress him, the time I need to cast stealth (giving that I don’t have the revealed debuff from the fight) and do the stomp animation is longer than the time his team mate needs to ress him.

Sure, I can always poison him in order to give me some more time, but if I switch to the shortbow then I can’t stealth stomp.
And I can’t use utilities to stealth myself because I need them in order to win a 2 or 3v1.

In a 3v1 scenario it’s totally impossible, since not even the poison would give enough time.

Oozo.7856:

Yes, Anet really stuck their foot in it on this one. The cancer is deeply embedded, so I’m not sure it can be removed. But you never know, sometimes people come up with some really clever solutions to problems.

I sure hope so, but if they start blindy nerf backstab/conditions/hide without giving us anything back, then they might aswell remove our class.

Loved the video, very skillful Necro play (which is a class I’ve come to really enjoy playing ). But what’s the issue with P/D condition Thieves? I run a condition P/D build with my Thief and I am only dangerous if my opponents don’t bring a decent amount of condition removal.

Against anyone with a decent condition removal (bunker Guardians and Eles especially) there isn’t much I can do but go on my way, since neither of us will be able to kill each other. It’s definitely a strong 1v1+ class for sure, but I only win fights against more than an individual player (or more) if they aren’t as skilled as I (or because of culling).

I personally feel Backstab Thief is far cheesier since the initial spike is so easy to pull off, and even if you fail the Basilisk + CnD + Steal + Backstab combo your damage output is so high it’s extremely easy to retreat with Shortbow or continue the engagement. I find the Thief class cheesy in general though, after experiencing how broken stealth is atm from the perspective of different classes. Hopefully with the culling issue potentially gone after the patch on the 15th certain issues are resolved with regard to Thieves.

I would agree that stealth stomping needs to go if things such Stability stomping/Mist Form stomping and the like weren’t far better. I kind of agree that P/D Thieves are broken, but that’s moreover because they don’t have much use for the majority of their weapon set. They CnD and autoattack because they apply conditions. Using anything else (save for Dancing Dagger for kiting melee/fleeing opponents) is a waste of initiative).

Pretty awesome vid. Any chance you’re an EU player and open for some sparring duels?

I love to see how you was playing hard, timing your dodges and using all your skills into the right time and, still, you was put in difficulties by people who clearly were using their skills at random.

I also love to see also how your skills crit for an huge 1,6k (or 4k when channeled) when you were getting 6k+ damage from any thief critical.

Good video and nice gameplay, but it is a proof of the imbalance this game has.

Wait, he’s dominating BS thieves using all the different means of utility he got. How is that proof of the game’s imbalance? I don’t know why you’re bringing up raw dmg numbers here. If the thief hits a 6k Crit every 5s while the necro hits ~1.5k every second the necro’s overall damage done respectively DPS is significantly higher. (those numbers are just made up to make my point clear)
It’s a pity this vid hasn’t been done earlier. I would’ve posted it on every single QQ thread about BS thieves telling people to get better and play like this.

Malicious.6742:

Wait, he’s dominating BS thieves using all the different means of utility he got. How is that proof of the game’s imbalance? I don’t know why you’re bringing up raw dmg numbers here. If the thief hits a 6k Crit every 5s while the necro hits ~1.5k every second the necro’s overall damage done respectively DPS is significantly higher. (those numbers are just made up to make my point clear)
It’s a pity this vid hasn’t been done earlier. I would’ve posted it on every single QQ thread about BS thieves telling people to get better and play like this.

Just pay attention also to the enemy, not only to the op.
Op is actually good, but he risked to be downed many times in that video (just notice how many times he had his hp at less than 3k) by people who were actually throwing their skill and dodges (if there were some) randomly.

Oozo.7856:

Ranged damage mixed with stealth has always been an issue in MMOs.

Cloak and Dagger is a melee skill, thief has to be within melee range to use it to go to stealth. Fixing the rendering issue will also mean they’re visible longer, their CnD becomes easier to avoid/dodge and at the same time the thief is forced to stay closer to melee range.

Oozo.7856:

The other thing I think needs to be looked into are the 1115 pistol/dagger thieves that save all of their initiative for cloak and dagger and just autoattack people to death over time. It’s cheese. It’s not skillful. It is far too effective. And, trust me, it will remain that way even after rendering is fixed.

Ranged damage mixed with stealth has always been an issue in MMOs. What keeps a melee thief that heavily uses stealth in check are AoEs. But, AoEs are not effective against pistol/dagger. If they are built for stealth and survival they can regularly suceed in 1vNs as we’ve seen in several thief movies. Some of those thieves are legitimatally good, but some are not and are being carried by cheese mechanics.

You make some great points here, and (unlike some other in this forum) I’d like to discuss this.

For one thing, I think you’re slightly overstating the P/D thief’s ability to be effective at range. At range, they really can’t do anything except autoattack (body shot actually lowers DPS) and cripple to deal damage. Any class with actual ranged damage will beat a P/D thief in a range v range fight.

For P/D to be truly effective, they have to stealth frequently. They can do this a couple of times using slot skills, but that means they’ve taken very little utility. After that, they have to go into melee to stealth. This means that you can still use AoEs against them.

However, although I disagree with how serious you make it sound, I agree overall. A D/D or S/D thief has to stay in melee at all times to deal damage. A P/D thief can get into melee, stealth, get out of melee, and attack. By dancing in and out of melee, they can avoid a large portion of the AoEs that would otherwise counter them.

I think that this playstyle is good, and worth keeping. We shouldn’t get rid of the melee/ranged mix with stealth. It’s a really fun, fluid way to play, and very thief-like. I think it’s worth keeping, but it definitely needs rebalancing.

In my eyes, the unbalanced part is the pistol’s stealth attack. It’s really strong, and it’s ranged. With a ranged stealth attack, the thief is able to stealth in melee, open up a wide gap, and then resume ranged attacks. Against a melee opponent, this is a devastating anti-kite ability. The moment the melee enemy gets within range of the thief, the thief can stealth and open a gap, and then follow with a very powerful attack.

I think that changing Sneak Attack would really balance P/D. My personal suggestion would be to change it to Backblast. Backblast has a 300. It does the same direct damage as Sneak Attack, but only applies the bleeding if you’re behind the target.

This will prevent a lot of the problems with P/D as it is now. The thief will be able to open a gap with stealth, but they’ll sacrifice their powerful stealth opener to do so. If they want to do optimal damage, they have to stay in semi-melee range. This still allows them high melee/range flexibilty, but you should be able to counter their stealth with well-placed AoEs. This would still give them the option of auto-attacking if they want to stay out of traps/wells/etc, although they’d do less damage than in melee range.

Finally, I think all thieves can agree that Body Shot needs to be changed. Right now, it’s a worthless ability to use while solo (actually hurts your DPS, and costs initiative). It’s only worth using in group boss fights, but in that case the target usually has plenty of vulnerability on them already. If Body Shot was changed to something a thief would actually use in a solo fight, then you’d see far less 1115-spamming. As it stands now, our P/D skills are:

1) Damage.
2) Useless solo.
3) Buggy gap opener.
4) Ranged cripple.
5) Stealth, huge damage.

This means that unless the thief is struggling to kite you, there’s no real reason to use #3 or #4. With their stealth and ranged stealth attack, they’re rarely going to have a hard time kiting anybody. By changing up Body Shot (and a change to #4 would also be nice), we’ll cause thieves to use their other skills more often.

Good video, I like this kind of stuff because it allows me to know what other professions will use to counter me, and then try to adapt to it with the knowledge.

But about P/D, I don’t think it is as easy to play as you think. It allows for a lot of survival (relatively), but needs time to kill someone, and using CnD means putting your neck close to that Warrior axe. Against very powerful melee players, I end up spamming Dancing Dagger to snare them as I prefer it rather than risking being stunned and eviscerated to death. Yes, the set is good, but you really need to play it to understand it on different enviroments and at first you will realize how your mistakes kill you, your main damage resource is a melee skill on a ranged set that depletes your initiative.

You said stealth+ranged is a problem, but it isn’t really stealth+ranged, it is stealth+melee that you can then use at a distance before returning to melee.

Dacromir.6207:

In my eyes, the unbalanced part is the pistol’s stealth attack.

Actually, I disagree. It isn’t that sneak attack is too powerful, its that everything else on the bar is incapable of pushing damage.

As for the concept of “just using two skills over and over” Isn’t that the point of the entire initiative system? Thieves are the only class that has the option to repeat their non-autoattack skills, and every weapon skill has been designed around that concept. That’s why thieves have skill bars that usually look like 2 solid damage skills and 3 solid utilities/situational damage, because the entire design of initiative is built around needing to balance initiative used for damage, and initiative saved for defense.

As for the complaints about the P/D bunker, as a whole, I think people really only complain about it versus other common bunker setups because they feel like they spend a lot of time unable to whittle away at the bunker due to stealth. nevermind the fact that, while effective, the P/D bunker takes the longest amount of time to actually kill a target, and has less raw survivability versus direct burst damage.

In short, I feel like the build itself is just as counterable as other similar builds and stands a similar chance of success or failure. The fact that it uses 1115 “cheese” is systemic of the design of the entire thief resource system, in the same manner that backstab burst or pistol whip builds are as well.

If other classes used initiative, you’d be seeing similar behavior for every other build, 2 main damage abilities and the occasional utility tool. The only reason non-thief classes use a large number of their skills for damage is largely because cooldowns force them to do so by design.

Dacromir.6207:

Oozo.7856:

The other thing I think needs to be looked into are the 1115 pistol/dagger thieves that save all of their initiative for cloak and dagger and just autoattack people to death over time. It’s cheese. It’s not skillful. It is far too effective. And, trust me, it will remain that way even after rendering is fixed.

Ranged damage mixed with stealth has always been an issue in MMOs. What keeps a melee thief that heavily uses stealth in check are AoEs. But, AoEs are not effective against pistol/dagger. If they are built for stealth and survival they can regularly suceed in 1vNs as we’ve seen in several thief movies. Some of those thieves are legitimatally good, but some are not and are being carried by cheese mechanics.

You make some great points here, and (unlike some other in this forum) I’d like to discuss this.

For one thing, I think you’re slightly overstating the P/D thief’s ability to be effective at range. At range, they really can’t do anything except autoattack (body shot actually lowers DPS) and cripple to deal damage. Any class with actual ranged damage will beat a P/D thief in a range v range fight.

For P/D to be truly effective, they have to stealth frequently. They can do this a couple of times using slot skills, but that means they’ve taken very little utility. After that, they have to go into melee to stealth. This means that you can still use AoEs against them.

However, although I disagree with how serious you make it sound, I agree overall. A D/D or S/D thief has to stay in melee at all times to deal damage. A P/D thief can get into melee, stealth, get out of melee, and attack. By dancing in and out of melee, they can avoid a large portion of the AoEs that would otherwise counter them.

I think that this playstyle is good, and worth keeping. We shouldn’t get rid of the melee/ranged mix with stealth. It’s a really fun, fluid way to play, and very thief-like. I think it’s worth keeping, but it definitely needs rebalancing.

In my eyes, the unbalanced part is the pistol’s stealth attack. It’s really strong, and it’s ranged. With a ranged stealth attack, the thief is able to stealth in melee, open up a wide gap, and then resume ranged attacks. Against a melee opponent, this is a devastating anti-kite ability. The moment the melee enemy gets within range of the thief, the thief can stealth and open a gap, and then follow with a very powerful attack.

I think that changing Sneak Attack would really balance P/D. My personal suggestion would be to change it to Backblast. Backblast has a 300. It does the same direct damage as Sneak Attack, but only applies the bleeding if you’re behind the target.

This will prevent a lot of the problems with P/D as it is now. The thief will be able to open a gap with stealth, but they’ll sacrifice their powerful stealth opener to do so. If they want to do optimal damage, they have to stay in semi-melee range. This still allows them high melee/range flexibilty, but you should be able to counter their stealth with well-placed AoEs. This would still give them the option of auto-attacking if they want to stay out of traps/wells/etc, although they’d do less damage than in melee range.

Finally, I think all thieves can agree that Body Shot needs to be changed. Right now, it’s a worthless ability to use while solo (actually hurts your DPS, and costs initiative). It’s only worth using in group boss fights, but in that case the target usually has plenty of vulnerability on them already. If Body Shot was changed to something a thief would actually use in a solo fight, then you’d see far less 1115-spamming. As it stands now, our P/D skills are:

1) Damage.
2) Useless solo.
3) Buggy gap opener.
4) Ranged cripple.
5) Stealth, huge damage.

This means that unless the thief is struggling to kite you, there’s no real reason to use #3 or #4. With their stealth and ranged stealth attack, they’re rarely going to have a hard time kiting anybody. By changing up Body Shot (and a change to #4 would also be nice), we’ll cause thieves to use their other skills more often.

You lost ALL credibility when you said sneak attack was too strong. If anything ALL thief attacks that apply bleed are underpowered given the amount of condition removal in the game, and bleed is the only viable condition damage they have since poison is also next to worthless. Also you exaggerate just like all the nerf thief posts, only in a masked version, saying its some super ranged set. Try 900, every OTHER class in the game gets a 1200/+ ranged weapon. Not to mention the skill required to actually kill an opponent or opponents with all of the condition removals in the game AND the fact they have sooo much time to just have even more buddies show up.

Judas.5432:

Why do people keep saying anyone in here has lost ALL credibility(!!!!1!!111!!!ONE!!!)? It’s an idiotic statement and it should stop.

As for the OP, I love seeing stuff like this. Nicely played. Hopefully more and more people will start posting videos like these so the people who can’t handle us Thieves realize that it really is mostly them, not us, causing the problem ;-)

It isn’t idiotic, however what is idiotic is letting people get away with posting blatantly false information (AKA Misinformation), which is the exact reason why thief is targeted for nerfs in the first place, much less misplaced ones.

But keep thinking that is how things should roll, Ignorance is bliss I guess.

The only thing imbalanced about P/D is the 100% combo finisher on each shot of the 1 stealth ability. I would kill for a useful 2 and 3 ability as well.

No idea why people are complaining about the build though, it is super vulnerable to condi removal / control skills. Taken alone you can only keep up bleed, with a venom build you can keep up bleed + poison + weakness. Compared to an engi which has almost 100% uptime on bleed, burn and poison, along with good uptime of confusion and chilling, it just seems pretty lackluster, especially since none of the P/D thief’s condi applications are aoe.

Its decently survivable, yea, but that is pretty worthless as you have no point presence due to stealth.

The fact that it is being mentioned over D/D LDB + caltrop spam is amusing in my eyes, as that applies the bleeds faster and as an aoe, and actually has a point presence due to not relying on stealth. Not that I feel it is overpowered, but it is certainly stronger than P/D imo.

Zauric.2981:

The fact that it is being mentioned over D/D LDB + caltrop spam is amusing in my eyes, as that applies the bleeds faster and as an aoe, and actually has a point presence due to not relying on stealth.

I’ll also add that the bleeds inflicted by Death’s Blossom are twice as long than pistol bleeds (4.5 seconds vs almost 10 seconds I believe, though feel free to correct me with the exact numbers)

Also, people have expressed how they feel the pistol auto attack is overpowered. Lets break it down with your typical low power, 4% crit chance bleed build:

There are two components, the physical damage and the bleed damage.
Physical Damage is significantly less than 1000. In my playtime with the build I most frequently got around 700 damage.
You apply 5 stacks of bleeds which, if stacking bleed duration runes, sigils and food, may tick 7-8 times (my build does 7 but lets go with 8 as that’s the cap for P/D.) Lets also say that each tick hits for 110 damage (Mine range from 100-120).

So that’s 700 physical damage
and 4100 bleed damage (5×8×110)
= 5100 damage per sneak attack

That sounds like a lot right?

Wrong. This damage is spread out over around 10 seconds (8 seconds for the bleeds + a few seconds for the sneak attack itself). Also don’t forget that by far the largest portion of this damage can be instantly cleansed to zero. Finally (almost exclusively for PvE), there’s the bleed cap.

So I think it’s fair to say that a single sneak attack will dish out between 700-5100 damage over 10 seconds. Compared to a 5000-10,000+ backstab (I’ve never tried the build, I only hear about it…constantly) which supplies instant damage, I’d say it’s a more than fair tradeoff for P/D’s range advantage.

Finally, the OP made the point that any build spamming the same 2-3 skills was evidence that those skills were over-powered. Well, we appreciate that you are an experienced necro, but you mentioned that you had never fought a P/D thief yourself, only making that judgement by watching the posted video. I encourage you to roll a thief and check out the P/D weapon set. Not only does initiative encourage a ‘spamming’ playstyle, as others have mentioned, but most weapon sets (P/D included) only have one or two skills that grant efficient damage for bleed-based condition builds. With P/D it’s the auto attack (1) and the stealth attack (1 from stealth) that grants bleeding. That’s it. That’s why a good P/D thief has a 11151115 attack pattern. It uses the only three skills that supply the condition damage he built for.

I mean, if your build hinged on condition damage, why waste initiative on anything else, right? Where Dancing Dagger (4 initiative or one third of a regular thief’s ini bar) is supreme damage in a crit build, it might only hit for say 600-800 in a condition build. With D/D, the only bleed damage given is from Death’s Blossom (3), hence the spam of that skill.

TLDR:
Pistol stealth attack is not OP
Spamming a skill is not evidence that the skill is overpowered

Awesome video, instead of complaining OP used skills/tactics to counter thieves.