Guild Wars 2

I must say my original post on the changes “My eval of changes after 24hrs”https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/My-eval-of-changes-after-24hrs/first#post5213191 was pretty spot on. I’ve noticed that i’ve gravitated towards s/d DA,Acro,Trck for PvP. The passive procs of the line are actually very helpful in surviving and fighting. I’ve noticed I can break down and kill bad players on OP builds.

There still remains the problem tho that the power creep of the rest of the classes has passed the thief. It seems like the devs in charge of the thief changes were very responsible when making changes in regards to overall game balance….unfortunately the devs in charge of all the other classes failed to get this memo, and we are stuck with fighting an insane power creep on a nerfed class.

If Anet refuses to revert some of the power creep in the other classes then thieves will need, at minimum, old feline grace, old SE, and some old nerfs reverted. This will give the thief an even playing field when fighting the other classes, because thieves in general are arguably the weakest class in the game atm.

Now please understand I’m not talking about some lame trapper condi build or something like that, but I am discussing real PvP builds that can be used.

As always /discuss or /disagree but please if you disagree PLEASE adhere to these guidelines:

1. Yes thieves have great burst, but so does every class in the game right now. The ONLY absolutely insane omgwtfqqfaceonforums burst a thief has is a full signet YOLO build. Yes you can get great damage but you die if you miss…..the other burst builds like it from other classes do not suffer like a thief in this regard.

2. Yes thieves have stealth but in meta pvp mesmer stealth >>> thief stealth

3. Thief has no advantage 1v1 vs any profession anymore

thx

1) Yep. Tried out the burst. It hits hard, but after the first few times laughing at the ridiculous numbers, I prefer something that can sustain better.
2)Mesmers can keep up damage while in stealth. I’m not claiming that the AI does the work, but overall they can keep up very sustained pressure even while being pushed off of their target or hiding.
3) Yep . This feels really apparent when playing on mesmer and ele (my favorite alts). First, in terms of dodging, my ele has more dodges than my acro thief. In terms of endurance regen the acro line tops out at 8.75(Edit: this doesn’t include endurance from other sources, just FG+ES), but can’t even keep up permanent vigor by itself. Eles can keep up permanent vigor with a single trait (7.5 endurance regen ), but the kicker is that the playstyle promotes constant attunment (weapon) swapping. With a sigil of energy, this means they top out at ~13 endurance regen a second, putting ours to shame. I don’t think this needs to be nerfed with all the damage flying around, our endurance regen when traited for it needs to be brought back up. It’s like they nerfed it based on the old vigor, then decided to nerf vigor but didn’t revisit the thief acro balance changes after.

Mesmers feel great to play right now even with the nerfs (corrections) to their damage. They don’t have quite as high of a burst and it requires a little more of a set up, but done properly it feels like it lands more reliably because it can be set up using stuns (lots of them). The damage feels more sustained while setting it up as well and overall I feel like I have more utility in combat and more tricks up my sleeve. I don’t have quite the mobility, but it feels like a minor trade off.

Conclusion: I agree with you that we have great damage now and I can’t complain about it. I want acrobatics to be revisited though because the line is relatively weak for the damage lost while taking it. Basically it has some auto procs that allow you to make mistakes or shrug off an instant cast burst, but the line doesn’t do enough to help with sustained combat.

Yeah I have no clue what in the hell was going through their mind with some of these changes. Just seems to totally bassackwards. PVE is a ton of fun still, but spvp (I don’t WvW anymore) you have to do 10x the work of other classes to secure the kill if you’re initial engage combo didn’t 1-2 shot.

T raw.4658:

I’ve noticed that i’ve gravitated towards s/d DA,Acro,Trck for PvP. The passive procs of the line are actually very helpful in surviving and fighting. I’ve noticed I can break down and kill bad players on OP builds.

I’ve been using that build as well for the same reason and though I’ve felt a hit to my stopping power I feel like I’m getting more kills on a normal WvW day than before. I suppose it could just be a matter of me being able to stick within ground zero of the zerg nukes for a split second to lock someone down more often or get that last boon rip or whatever. The one thing giving me some trouble is making sure that when I’m floating around a fight I position each move to conserve Flanking Strikes for when I really need it to proc.

Dev: “Thief is just fine, there are some amazing build out there that NONE has found yet, not even us, but they are there and once found thief will be incredibly OP!”

So L2P you noob thief wannabes. Devs say were OP so we are OP!

I didn’t explicitly say it in my post before, but I think the biggest problem with acro now is that a lot of it revolves around getting hit instead of avoiding getting hit now. For example: Pain Response, HtC, and Don’t Stop all revolve around mitigating the effects of getting hit. While this is helpful, it’s just not that fun to play really (imo). If I wanted to soak a bunch of hits, I would play a class that is built around that. The attraction of the thief has been weaving through the big hits for the most part, and that’s what they changed about how acrobatics functions. I understand that they thought we were just spamming dodges, but without access to blocks, protection, and numerous heals, dodges and blinds were our source of survival. There’s a happy middle ground somewhere between where we were and where we are now.

Discussing here and please understand I’ve only put in about 1.2k matches in PvP and have only played about a year so I’m straight up saying I’m not some super pro player but I do have experience PvPing and have a scientist mindset in that I test and will toss out builds if they prove to not be viable. My way of theory-crafting and testing is that video recording + combat log + unranked matches is my friend. Smacking a combat dummy is not a very good way of testing. With a video recording with a chat window dedicated to the combat log I can watch afterwards and view my combat log results. I don’t find hot join is a very good way to test and I don’t care if people get salty about losing in unranked so I do it there.

Deadly Arts is now one of the best trait lines we have overall imo. It may not be perfect for every build but the range of things it offers can’t be denied. The minors are all great, especially now that any condition on the target gives a 10% boost to damage. The reduced cooldown on Lotus Poison is great for keeping weakness on a target for about 40% of the time. (Yes, for you literalists, I know it is not exactly 40% but 4 seconds every 10 seconds you apply poison is a nice estimation.) Mug of course is Mug, no more is needed to be said. Dagger Training, despite the complaints about losing 5% damage looks to me like an extra sigil proc. Besides if 5% damage was that amazing people would be using Sigil’s of Force more or it would have been part of the meta pre-patch. A 1/3 chance to apply poison with any dagger strike seems more useful with the right build. Deadly Trapper and knowing how to use traps smartly can be very nifty. (Lame condi trap builds don’t work. Venoms are far better for condi builds.) Improvisation with a 1/5 chance to reset your heal is insanely awesome. Being able to have Executioner and Panic Strike now, what more can be said?

Critical Strikes is pretty much what it says, the burst damage line. With the nerf to stats this is the line that can give you the added burst you need as a thief. Pure condi builds on a thief in sPvP just pale compare to classes that can stack burning, imo (unless you want to reinvent the Unicorn build and make it actually work). You need some added burst damage for them I feel. Unrelenting Strikes and No Quarter make Fury easy to keep an uptime on now. People that have complained about the loss of Vitality on Practiced Tolerance really just need to l2p because giving that boost to Ferocity is much more in keeping with what the line is meant to do and does much more for thieves than a bumb to Vitality. Overall I find this line is perfect if you want a boost to your burst damage.

Shadow Arts is just what the Devs called it, a support line. Merciful Ambush is awesomesauce when it comes to helping downed teammates. I have countless times since the patch saved a teammate at the last second on a stomp just from SB 5 + Res to stealth them from getting stomped. The extra res time is very helpful as well. Also, Venomous Aura > Shadow’s Rejuventation. Unless you are stealth camping from Shadow Refuge the healing and initiative regeneration I feel is just weak compared the the support from sharing Basilisk Venom with your team in team fights.

I haven’t really tried Acrobatics so I can’t add anything here.

Trickery is on par with Deadly Arts in overall greatness I feel. If you’re going with conditions then this line has some nice additions with Uncatchable, Pressure Striking and Bewildering Ambush. If you are going for burst damage then Flanking Strikes and Trickery for the Quickness and condi-removal on a 36 second cool down + a reduced CD and extra condition cleansed on Withdraw is pretty good too.

Part 2 since character limit:

With all of the new stuff flying around and even Acrobatics being said to not be as bad as people originally thought, even if it needs some loving on the endurance regeneration, I would say to all you thieves out there to not be afraid to theory craft. Maybe the devs were right and their is some OPness out there hidden like a sneaky thief or maybe not. Either way they were good enough at game design to get the job while we just post on the forums so give them a little credit. Recently I discovered how to get a little bit of a hybrid trap build going with DA/CS/Trck by using the ferocity bump from CS and stacking Shadow Trap and Needle Trap on each other to get that immobilize and then Shadow Step to them for a 15 Might + Fury + 10 Vulnerability backstab. I still have reasonably close to the same burst from Marauder Amulet and my conditions don’t just tickle anymore. 4-5k crit backstabs and 200-400 avg ticks on conditions. Sure it may not be the crazy 10k backstab YOLO build but when I’m dropping SB 4 on a team fight from a ridge it’s not just a glorified heal reducer either.

This new meta is new. Don’t be afraid to try new things and test them. Every meta build was just somebody’s theory before it became meta. I may not be right about everything. Again as I said I am still noobish to this game but I am willing to put in the effort to try new things and I’m not looking for an e-sports career either. If I’m wrong and you want to point it out (and it’s not just flaming) I will happily listen to your points and adjust and learn from it.

Shadow.1345:

Part 2 since character limit:

With all of the new stuff flying around and even Acrobatics being said to not be as bad as people originally thought, even if it needs some loving on the endurance regeneration, I would say to all you thieves out there to not be afraid to theory craft. Maybe the devs were right and their is some OPness out there hidden like a sneaky thief or maybe not. Either way they were good enough at game design to get the job while we just post on the forums so give them a little credit. Recently I discovered how to get a little bit of a hybrid trap build going with DA/CS/Trck by using the ferocity bump from CS and stacking Shadow Trap and Needle Trap on each other to get that immobilize and then Shadow Step to them for a 15 Might + Fury + 10 Vulnerability backstab. I still have reasonably close to the same burst from Marauder Amulet and my conditions don’t just tickle anymore. 4-5k crit backstabs and 200-400 avg ticks on conditions. Sure it may not be the crazy 10k backstab YOLO build but when I’m dropping SB 4 on a team fight from a ridge it’s not just a glorified heal reducer either.

This new meta is new. Don’t be afraid to try new things and test them. Every meta build was just somebody’s theory before it became meta. I may not be right about everything. Again as I said I am still noobish to this game but I am willing to put in the effort to try new things and I’m not looking for an e-sports career either. If I’m wrong and you want to point it out (and it’s not just flaming) I will happily listen to your points and adjust and learn from it.

Yes I really think it far to early to dismiss things like Condition builds or p/P or S/p and the like until we test them. I am having a lot of fun with the new builds I am refining at the moment so have not even begun to test others.

P/P condi build works very good as a pure build. I am sure there a way to make it into a very effective hybrid.

Improv is just a beautiful skill and the double steal opens up so many tactical options. That new F1 , F2 took some getting used to but makes it so much easier to tell at a glance the status of your next steal.

DA/CS/trickery traitlines are the best overall that they have ever been. Some individual traits can use tweaks but there a reason to take virtually every skill.

Added to that there a pile of Rune sets we had never considered before that have yet to be tested that I think can work very well. I suspect most people still use a lot of the stuff that they were used to.