Guild Wars 2

Because you explicitly mentioned Knight’s gear. If that wasn’t part of “doing crap damage” then why did you mention it as part of that statement?

Mesmer can be tanky … but part of their tankiness is using distortion.
Ranger can be tanky … but part of their tankiness is using their extra dodge rolls built into weapon skills.
… and so on for each class …

Wearing something like Knight’s gear helps you be tanky because the times you are taking damage, you are taking less. This isn’t other MMOs where tankiness is largely damage mitigation from gear.

Your tankiness as a Thief is your ability to dodge roll more than most, stealth, some skills with built in evasion (if you use them), interrupts, and whatever gear you’re wearing.

I don’t see how this is so hard for you to grasp.

Why aren’t thieves in WvWvW balanced as they are in Spvp? It makes no sense that they are much more powerful in WvWvW and can abuse the culling bug to permastealth.

That is not tankiness, You aren’t taking damage how are you tanking anything? We only dodge roll more than other classes if we put 15 points into acrobatics or use signet of agility to get all the endurance back after its depleted. It just doesn’t happen because we want to lol.

Evasion tankiness, tank or anything else associated with that word when it comes to MMO. Evasion is Evasion, interrupts are interrupts.

You aren’t tanky because you avoided damage that doesn’t even make sense lol. So a glass cannon carrion necro is tanky because he dodged a attack?

You just make this up as you go along it looks like to fit your needs.

So now avoidance=tanky. Please point me to a tanky build based on dodge rolls, and damage avoidance? Distortion is a skill you have no matter if you built tanky or not but you have to build tanky to begin with for the build to be considered tanky. Not because you have 1 f4 skill and blurred frenzy lol.

Is a glass cannon warrior tanky because he has endure pain? get real

By your definition, the Thief is only 7% less tanky than a Guardian or Warrior. Back to the 10,000 vs 9,700 damage example.

Tankiness involves all your abilities. Blocking, dodging, regenerating, blinding, etc. all make someone “tanky”.

But, anyways, back to on-topic. It doesn’t matter which definition you go with. It has already been shown that Knight’s gear makes a Thief quite capable of taking hits and doing good damage.

A build that is tanky from dodge rolls and avoidance? Go look in the Ranger subforum at the sword+dagger/shortbow builds.

They have quite a number of ways to gain vigor, the two weapon sets have 5 dodges built in (4 in sword+dagger, 1 in shortbow), ways to gain regeneration, 2 sec prot on dodge, and they take play around in any of the Soldier, Rabid, Apoth, Cleric, Knight’s type gear depending on preferences.

Ok Ill go prepare my black powder, dodge roll tank build because not getting hit is the new definition of tanky rofl.

Vigor=Tanky(next time I am being hit with blurred frenzy I’ll simply pop vigor)
Regen=Tanky(gonna go spec that healing power call it the medic thief)
Dodge=Tanky(nothing to be said here avoidance =tanky)
Blind=tanky definitely against fast multi hit attacks (100 blades? No worries just blind field that)

Ok I got it thanks for the tips on builds lol.

Hey Mr. Straw Man, it’s a combination, not a single boon. Vigor doesn’t make you tanky unless you make good use of having twice as many dodge rolls as usual. Regen doesn’t make you tanky if you just take large quantities of damage quickly.

You can continue to try to nitpick what “tanky” is, but it still stands:

• there are a ton of videos showing good Thief damage using Knight’s gear
• Thief has only 7% less dmg mitigation in full knight’s/cavalier than a heavy armor class in the same. That ~7% is ~147 toughness (going by gw2buildcraft.com).

New build tanky thief build. I have 20k hp all soldier gear. I had 20 points in critical strikes. 30points in Shadow arts, 20 points acro. The trinkets where valkeryie with knights jewels!

skip to 10:26 thats me fighting a warrior notice how effective I am. The amount of damage I am doing is insane. Notice the interrupts(tanky), black powder(tanky) stealth(tanky). At 10:47 I have tanky boons like vigor(vigor on heal), regen(was running pain response and shadow protector)

Note to Sebrent: This was the same thing I was running against these guys here it was the same day that NNK warrior switched to Magumma to scout our servers NNK is on Dragonbrand

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ArWxfaeeYu4

Game set match. The difference between 1 skilled warrior and 3-4 not very good players is astonishing. If you notice at the end of the video I was just standing there because I watched her demolishing people from Maguuma 1v1, 1v2’s

(1) Warrior’s don’t have access to protection, just like Thieves, yet you hold them up as being able to be tanky. I’ve shown that they can get only 7% more mitigation. What is allowing them to be tanky that you can’t do? By your definition, it can’t be Endure Pain (90 sec cooldown btw) which is akin to Mesmer distortion (though inferior!)

(2) Simply having a boon at random times isn’t the same as having near 100% up-time on it.

(3) Having things and not using them correctly proves nothing. Otherwise I could “prove” that Bull’s Charge + Frenzy + Hundred blades “doesn’t do anything scary”.

(4) Soldier’s gear has quite a bit less toughness than Knight’s.

Sebrent.3625:

(1) “Yay”, I can’t wait to see more of you intentionally playing like garbage to try to “prove” a point … but you linked the wrong video

(2) Warrior’s don’t have access to protection, just like Thieves, yet you hold them up as being able to be tanky. I’ve shown that they can get only 7% more mitigation. What is allowing them to be tanky that you can’t do? By your definition, it can’t be Endure Pain (90 sec cooldown btw) which is akin to Mesmer distortion (though inferior!)

(3) Simply having a boon at random times isn’t the same as having near 100% up-time on it.

(4) Having things and not using them correctly proves nothing. Otherwise I could “prove” that Bull’s Charge + Frenzy + Hundred blades “doesn’t do anything scary”.

1) Wasn’t playing like garbage was actually trying to fight that warrior. Notice how my tanky black powder didnt work because she kept swings staying outside of the ring?

3) l2p statement: cause you know theives we don’t have a vigor button, regen button lol I have 20 points in acro I guess I should have gotten 2x water, 2x sanctuary, 2x monk runes for my build huh? rofl

4) guess I should have used knight there for less power that would have been smart.

New build folks if you dont run 2x water, 2x sanctuary, 2x monk you are doing it wrong in your thief builds!! Gotta try to maintain that boon uptime!! thieves all about boon uptime!!

How am I reaching? You show yourself get stomped by a warrior who mainly stayed on you auto-attacking.

I ask how you somehow have less mitigation than a warrior when all the info on the web shows that the warrior can only, at best, have 7% more mitigation if you do Knight’s/Cavalier. If you’re going to go through my statements, don’t skip the ones that you don’t an answer for … you’ve been doing that for almost a week now as you do garbage like nitpick the definition of “tanky”.

What does you getting stomped prove other than that you aren’t good at avoiding damage while stealthed and being chased by a warrior with an axe.

I’m not saying you should strive for all vigor and regen, you aren’t a Ranger and hence not built for that. This is why you have stealth. While ranger is actively dodging attacks from a person that can see them, you are supposed to stealth and stop getting hit (which you failed at vs that warrior).

Gasp you mean to tell me a warrior that knew I take damage in stealth? Im OP I can’t believe it! There is no way that warrior should have known I was going to try to attack her. She should have stood there typing in guild chat or something. I bet if I spammed heartseeker I would have won.

I bet that warrior knows my stealth timer is about 2-3 seconds. I wonder what the odds are she knows how a thief plays. Hmmm

You mean she had no idea where you were while you were stealthed but you could see her so could move away from her? Wow! Novel concept!

I’d have thought you would’ve already “not sucked” at that from being a Mesmer first, but I guess not.

Now how about you talk about those other points … or you still going with that tactic of ignoring the points that prove you wrong?

Its a 1v1 thats what matters right? I can’t leave the area because of the out of bounds we agreed on before we fought. I could have trolled her sure like I did the 4 or 5 people in the other video but actual fight engaged(proving that I was trying) nah man. Gotta try to land those backstabs and do damage. Cause I was tanky build don’t know if it works unless I test it.

I bet if I moved farther away from her the outcome of that video would have been my victory as the damage I was doing was really good. I probably should have switched to S/D that would have really messed her up. Mixing it up with a axe/shield warrior with S/D is definitely the way to go. I would have lost the tanky black powder though.

You mean the points that you twist to fit your own agenda like me saying that a thief with S/P in knights gear is basically a warrior with crappy damage. Is the same as knight gear does no damage?

Nah I’m good I don’t enjoy talking in circles you do though. Thighs backed me up because he can read.

So, because of arbitrary rules you forced yourself to follow, thereby limiting yourself, you weren’t able to get behind her? Out of range of her axe? Okay… lol.

Now, how about that whole only 7% mitigation difference?

Sebrent.3625:

By your definition, the Thief is only 7% less tanky than a Guardian or Warrior. Back to the 10,000 vs 9,700 damage example.

Tankiness involves all your abilities. Blocking, dodging, regenerating, blinding, etc. all make someone “tanky”.

But, anyways, back to on-topic. It doesn’t matter which definition you go with. It has already been shown that Knight’s gear makes a Thief quite capable of taking hits and doing good damage.

<edit>
A build that is tanky from dodge rolls and avoidance? Go look in the Ranger subforum at the sword+dagger/shortbow builds.

They have quite a number of ways to gain vigor, the two weapon sets have 5 dodges built in (4 in sword+dagger, 1 in shortbow), ways to gain regeneration, 2 sec prot on dodge, and they take play around in any of the Soldier, Rabid, Apoth, Cleric, Knight’s type gear depending on preferences.

Why don’t we talk about tankiness using all abilities. My engineer has a 3 second block out of every 16 seconds, access to protection, regen, easier access to vigor, can root opponents for 2/10 seconds untraited, and 2/8 when traited and even longer if I upped condition duration. Not to mention good knockdown in a 15 second cooldown(12 if traited) and decent burst to top it off. Admittedly I am no expert on my engineer as I hot 80 last night, but so far in spvp, thieves are the only class I consistently take down because loss of sight/targeting doesn’t mean much when you know what is going to happen.

To go further into talking about taking everything into account when talking about toughness, my guardian friend is in 3.2k+ armor with virtual perma-protection when using the hammer combined with runes of earth (i believe) with a bunch of cc on it while still packing quite a dedecent punch + condition damage. There’s a whole host of abilities that other classes have access to that thieves don’t which mitigates their light armor or allows them to stack might much better when they have built tanky to make up for their lack of base power (read through the engi forums and you’ll see discussions on maintaining a permanent 10+ stacks and the most efficient way to spike to 25). There are a couple of alright ways to stack might in a thief build, but they are temporary and either require us to blow utilities or dodges detracting from our survivability. So the thief class is forced to choose between survivability and power whereas other classes, while initially starting a battle weaker, gain a huge advantage over thieves if the battle drags out (the reason thieves are balanced around burst and the ability to escape).

I wasn’t able to get behind her because she kept moving and swinging. You know warrior axe has a nice arc to its swing right? Notice how I shadow step heal then shadow step back. She obviously knows how a thief plays because she saw the ring disappear.

Like I said I could have stay outside not trying to attack not attacking her does 2 things allows me to stall so my cooldowns come back up and her cooldowns come back up. There for its a draw no victor. She played it right obviously experienced kept attacking. When I shadow refuged she knew I was there she didn’t run or stand there, she still had the number 5 skill available to block damage she didn’t even pop it and she still had endure pain. She was ahead pretty much the whole fight.

So if I stayed away from her what would have changed? Nothing since she still had a get out jail card in shield 5 and endure pain. The big damage came from bull rush frenzy with auto attack, which she used after I dodge roll 2 times to avoid her auto attack melee.

Now that I see you don’t know how to watch a video either I am done here lol. Well not in this thread just replying to you.

Fox guarding the henhouse IMHO, I can trot out videos showing myself getting destroyed via bad play too.

Columba.9730:

Fox guarding the henhouse IMHO, I can trot out videos showing myself getting destroyed via bad play too.

Or I can post a video of me on my mesmer outnumbered beating people. I can also post a video of me trolling 5 people and you agree its ridiculous and that this is why thieves need a nerf, then a video of that same day playing against a better player using the same build and dying. Oh wait that happened.

So tell me columba in which video am I overpowered hmmm? Guess it depends on agenda for the day. Guess we should just dismiss the video as bad play. That works

This reminds me of Call of Duty montages people think what happens there in a good montage happens all the time. If someone posts them getting killed then they are a bad player. Video editing is a myth.

I should make a montage of my best basketball highlights and post, you 2 would believe I could be in the NBA.

@Maug: I’m not trying to argue that a Thief can place protection, etc. on themselves and block like a madman. I’m saying that they can be tanky through use of something like Knight’s gear, stealth, and evasion (both dodge rolls and weapon skills if applicable). For example, I know several thieves like to take the blind-on-stealth trait to help in this department.

@oZii: If you’re behind and her stuff is not even on cooldown, waiting for your cooldowns doesn’t put you any farther behind. She wasn’t waiting on cooldowns so any time in the fight that you are getting yours back was only in your favor.

Secondly, you shadow stepped back for what reason? Open your eyes and realize shadow stepping into her axe is a bad idea. That’d be like me blinking away on the mesmer only to swap right back next to the warrior when I want to buy some time for cooldowns … doesn’t make much sense.

Third, you’ve often said, duels don’t mean anything, so why are you trying to show yourself failing horribly at a duel to try to prove a point?

Fourth, that axe arc is only in the front 180.

I trust people I know who play thieves. In my guild. They admit that stealth is severely opd. Then again, they’ve been playing mmos for 15 years.

Sebrent.3625:

@Maug: I’m not trying to argue that a Thief can place protection, etc. on themselves and block like a madman. I’m saying that they can be tanky through use of something like Knight’s gear, stealth, and evasion (both dodge rolls and weapon skills if applicable). For example, I know several thieves like to take the blind-on-stealth trait to help in this department.

@oZii: If you’re behind and her stuff is not even on cooldown, waiting for your cooldowns doesn’t put you any farther behind. She wasn’t waiting on cooldowns so any time in the fight that you are getting yours back was only in your favor.

Secondly, you shadow stepped back for what reason? Open your eyes and realize shadow stepping into her axe is a bad idea. That’d be like me blinking away on the mesmer only to swap right back next to the warrior when I want to buy some time for cooldowns … doesn’t make much sense.

Third, you’ve often said, duels don’t mean anything, so why are you trying to show yourself failing horribly at a duel to try to prove a point?

Fourth, that axe arc is only in the front 180.

@Sebrent Last one watch the video get glasses or something she was moving toward where I healed shadow stepping back to behind her is where a thief wants to be. She saw the circle disappear she knew I was around. I don’t know why I explained that to a person that has a thief but ok. I posted the duel because that is what you seem to care about in your post how Thieves can do this vs Other classes but other classes can’t do this. Thats why you compare abilities alot, or say things like a thief can reset but X class can’t. It always boils down to a thief ability vs a mesmer or whatever classes ability to compare. So why not speak your language. I still believe duels don’t matter but I did say I find them fun.

One of your posts was: If a thief is losing he can leave if a ranger is losing he dies.

@columba Ahh the people in your guild say its OP’d that must make it so!

This thread is so entertaining to read.

@Columba:
Yeah, several of the thieves in FTF and PURG have admitted the same thing … though I didn’t stop there … I tested it myself as well … as have a few other guildies.

@Cynical:
(1) If you are unable to keep from getting hit by someone who can’t see you while you can see them, that is a failure on your part. The fact that she knows you are nearby doesn’t really change that much.

(2) The issues with the Thief that I mentioned previously (I gave you a list, it’s very simple) translate from 1v1 to 1vX to small skirmish to large battle. I’ve admitted thieves have trouble in large battles largely because many of you run squishy and stray AOE kills you.

(3) Perhaps you haven’t noticed me say anything about Thief sword being OP despite the fact that it gives a ton of maneuverability for escaping, closing, even stunbreaking. Why don’t I gripe about this? Because I recognize that being good with Thief sword requires skill. How? Because I tried it and wasn’t doing in 5 minutes what I see sword Thieves do. When it comes to the dagger stuff, it took 5 minutes of getting use to an entire class before I was able to do what I’d seen.

It proves that tanky thief doesn’t work, gotta engage don’t know if it works if I just stealth around her. I could do that in other gear. If I was just going to stealth around her and pick my spots I would have ran what I run now. Since I have that tanky stuff like black powder, vigor, dodge rolls, and regen. How do I know how effective I am if I don’t get in there and fight it out with her?

I posted the video to show a tanky thief. If i was to do what you are suggesting then there is not point in rolling tanky thief then I roll with more damage and a bit less survivability.

Which I determined after that day tanky thief isn’t effective. Why I now have full zerker trinkets and backpiece, zerk and valk weapons. So call it what you want to fit the agenda the video was posted to show a tanky thief using your suggestions that it is viable I knew about that video for a while I don’t even know that person I found it actually researching Warrior stuff as I am leveling one. I had everything you suggested except knights armor. This was me not rolling(squishy) it works for trolling but not effective to kill.

So using your suggestion now to tailor fit the argument your saying I should have stayed away stalled, wait for cooldowns do normal thief stuff? Ok so we agree thief is fine as is.

Thanks for playing

You dodge rolled twice for avoid auto-attacks and then got Bull Charged + Frenzied + Axe Auto-attacked … perhaps you should save your dodge rolls for non-auto attacks.

It doesn’t prove anything about whether or not a tanky thief works since you weren’t making good use of your active defenses with your stats. If you hadn’t been wearing that, you’d have died to the frenzy burst. If you had successfully avoided that burst then you’d have had an upper-hand in that fight since she had to pop a 40 sec and 60 sec cooldown.

That fight largely boiled down to proving that it was decided by that one instance as the rest of the fight is you trying to recover from that point but being unable to because the Thief ability to easily escape and reset a fight was removed from you by your agreement with the warrior. Had no agreement been made you simply would’ve reset the fight and combat back … likely before bull’s charge and frenzy were off cooldown.

Sebrent.3625:

@Maug: I’m not trying to argue that a Thief can place protection, etc. on themselves and block like a madman. I’m saying that they can be tanky through use of something like Knight’s gear, stealth, and evasion (both dodge rolls and weapon skills if applicable). For example, I know several thieves like to take the blind-on-stealth trait to help in this department.

@oZii: If you’re behind and her stuff is not even on cooldown, waiting for your cooldowns doesn’t put you any farther behind. She wasn’t waiting on cooldowns so any time in the fight that you are getting yours back was only in your favor.

Secondly, you shadow stepped back for what reason? Open your eyes and realize shadow stepping into her axe is a bad idea. That’d be like me blinking away on the mesmer only to swap right back next to the warrior when I want to buy some time for cooldowns … doesn’t make much sense.

Third, you’ve often said, duels don’t mean anything, so why are you trying to show yourself failing horribly at a duel to try to prove a point?

Fourth, that axe arc is only in the front 180.

But my point was that to build for survivability we sacrifice a good amount of damage without the ability to easily gain the loss in power back. I have a full exotic knights set of armor for my thief ad well as a knights amulet and 2 knights rings. I also have a full zerker set and a full magic find set. I’ve tried everything from total toughness builds to (almost) full glass builds and the added survivability doesn’t justify the loss in power. When I build my 80 warrior and my 80 engineer I don’t need to trade one for the other because they can stack might so easily. I take the blind on stealth trait, but blind isn’t the powerhouse it was in gw1. 1 autoattack with no target clears it, so you’ve protected yourself from 1 hit. The blind field from BPS is small enough that you can actually stand outside of it and still hit the thief inside so you don’t blind yourself. As to your response to ozii, he teleported back after he was seen by the warrior in an attempt to mislead the warrior to take pressure off of himself. The obvious rings though betray where the thief really is and player experienced either fighting with or against thieves will easily see though the deception. As to the 7% damage mitigation argument if the thief is taking a 1000 damage hit, that represents a total of a little over 9% if his base health. For a warrior, the 930 damage hit represents less than 5.4% of his health. It would take 18 hits to down the warrior while it would take only 11 hits to down the thief. This represents an actual increase in the ability to kill the thief almost 40% faster than the warrior. There are other factors that compound this desperity like the fact that channeled abilities will continue to track and hit the thief while the warrior’s/engineer’s block is instantaneous and can actually reflect projectile attacks causing the user to end their assault prematurely.

ensoriki.5789:

This thread is so entertaining to read.

i second that, and all the videos contain max culling
but hey, fixing culling AND getting nerfs in the same time, is the only way to go.

Sebrent.3625:

You dodge rolled twice for avoid auto-attacks and then got Bull Charged + Frenzied + Axe Auto-attacked … perhaps you should save your dodge rolls for non-auto attacks.

It doesn’t prove anything about whether or not a tanky thief works since you weren’t making good use of your active defenses with your stats. If you hadn’t been wearing that, you’d have died to the frenzy burst. If you had successfully avoided that burst then you’d have had an upper-hand in that fight since she had to pop a 40 sec and 60 sec cooldown.

That fight largely boiled down to proving that it was decided by that one instance as the rest of the fight is you trying to recover from that point but being unable to because the Thief ability to easily escape and reset a fight was removed from you by your agreement with the warrior. Had no agreement been made you simply would’ve reset the fight and combat back … likely before bull’s charge and frenzy were off cooldown.

There was no agreement lol. I don’t know her I stayed cause I wanted to. I did no damage and barely tickled her. Do you even know how D/P plays? I used the skills your suppose to in D/P. I am also a robot with faster reflexes than humans so I could have easily dodge rolled the bull charge at point blank range. Thats why I used the stun breaker when I got hit with the bulls charge.

What are you talking about I didn’t make use of my active defenses with my stats? Should I have took the Turtle defense +200 defense trait when under the effects of CC in the defense tree? Or the deny pain when I reach 25% health are those the active defenses your talking about because I used the ones a thief has.

You don’t make sense at all. Black powder, headshot, shadow step, feline grace, stealth all used in that video. It proves that if your rolling thief, tanky is out of the equation(unless you want to troll) because you just can’t mix it up with another class.

@ Maug:
Some good points but…

Blocking doesn’t allow you to completely reposition in a fight. Stealthing does.
Blocking doesn’t allow you to get off a high damage attack with no visual cue. Stealthing does.
They are apples and oranges.

If you want toughness but still berserker damage, take a look at how Osicat does her gear … Berserker’s with Cavalier (same toughness as knight’s) thrown in. Amusingly, SevenMirror does Knight’s with Cavalier. Cavalier seems quite popular :-p

Also, I’m not saying that Thieves should play tanky with Knights, just that they can. I’m only saying that they get the same mitigation from it as Ranger’s & Engineers, 7% more than Mesmers, Elementalists, and Necros, and 7% less than Warrior and Guardians. From there they have to use what they have to further mitigate damage. They don’t just go “poof” into a cloud of red mist when they arent’ stealthed. That 7% is not a large amount.

You are correct through about the % of a warrior’s total hp. The warrior will take more hits before going down because of that hp pool, but that warrior is going to be taking more hits than the thief who is able to stealth (as long as the thief gets away from whatever is hitting it while stealthed, of course).

@DanH
Nah, several pages back I said that I think it’d probably be best to fix culling first and then see, but that there are signs that some changes are likely to still be warranted after the culling fix. Been discussing those signs since.

oZii.2864:

There was no agreement lol. I don’t know her I stayed cause I wanted to.

Really? That’s not what you said earlier …

Its a 1v1 thats what matters right? I can’t leave the area because of the out of bounds we agreed on before we fought.

oZii.2864:

I did no damage and barely tickled her. Do you even know how D/P plays? I used the skills your suppose to in D/P. I am also a robot with faster reflexes than humans so I could have easily dodge rolled the bull charge at point blank range.

Take a look at Osicat play her Mesmer. She blinks out of that combo much quicker than you did. Blink’s teleport works the same as Shadowstep in how the initial teleport works.

Also, if you look at the video, @10:36 she casts bull’s charge and @10:37 is when it ends and you’re on the ground eating damage. I assume a bug in bull’s charge that you didn’t take advantage of because you had already wasted dodge rolls on auto-attacks. You finally shadowstep away @10:39. Perhaps it was late and you were tired but eating 3 seconds of frenzy’d attacks is only the player’s fault, not any limitation of their class.

Sebrent.3625:

oZii.2864:

There was no agreement lol. I don’t know her I stayed cause I wanted to.

Really? That’s not what you said earlier …

Its a 1v1 thats what matters right? I can’t leave the area because of the out of bounds we agreed on before we fought.

oZii.2864:

I did no damage and barely tickled her. Do you even know how D/P plays? I used the skills your suppose to in D/P. I am also a robot with faster reflexes than humans so I could have easily dodge rolled the bull charge at point blank range.

Take a look at Osicat play her Mesmer. She blinks out of that combo much quicker than you did. Blink’s teleport works the same as Shadowstep in how the initial teleport works.

Also, if you look at the video, @10:36 she casts bull’s charge and @10:37 is when it ends and you’re on the ground eating damage. I assume a bug in bull’s charge that you didn’t take advantage of because you had already wasted dodge rolls on auto-attacks. You finally shadowstep away @10:39. Perhaps it was late and you were tired but eating 3 seconds of frenzy’d attacks is only the player’s fault, not any limitation of their class.

We should balance around Osicait Mesmer gameplay in the thief feedback thread. rofl. Please tell us more about Osicait’s mesmer gameplay and her gear so we can build our thieves like that instead of going squishy.

I am all ears.

Yes those 3 seconds of eating frenzied autos made the fight when I still had a heal and I was only at half life. Which proves? Right I don’t know what you were getting at there but ok. What was the point of that part of the post? Nothing thanks for finally paying attention to the video though.

If I didn’t eat those 3 secs of frenzied auto attack I would probably see the light that tanky thief works.

Some blowing 2 long cooldown utilities which you, skill-wise, failed to counter and still only went to half health (that combo usually kills glassy people) and you being unable to recover means that Thief can’t be tanky? Lol.

By the way, what’s with the whole “we made an agreement” followed by the “we didn’t agree on anything”. I’m just curious.

As far as Osicat level … it was comparing reaction times since you said that you’re not a robot in reply to you eating the bull’s charge + frenzy’d auto-attacks. Most of us are out with the stunbreakers in a second or less. It took you 1 second of failing to avoid it and 3 seconds of eating the results before you got away. That was the point being made. It took you 4 seconds to do something.

In that 3-4 second window though, the high damage attack assumes that you can safely postion yourself against you opponent. If you can’t, you would have been better off autoattacking, although that would have provided any defense against the opponent. In addition, while the thief is stealthed, pressure is taken off of the opponent whereas the warrior is able to keep up constant pressure with high damage attacks that have no positional requirements to them. I may look into Cavaliers ascended stuff, but I am not a fan of losing the precision attatched to zerker pieces as the most balanced between survivability and power builds I have come to use are either 0/25/30/15/0 or 0/15/30/25/0 meaning I don’t have the inherant precision that come from one of the builds or hidden killer in either. Nothing more disappointing than hitting a backstab from behind and having it do a whopping 1.9k damage and having the enemy turn around and hit you for double or triple that with no setup.

It is apple’s and oranges though since thieves lack all the other measures to defend themselves that other classes have and are given a skill that may be more effective or less effective than the others depending on your opponents’ skill/luck. As I stated before, I’m not great with the engineer (yet) but thieves are the easiest class to take down because I have over 650 hours on them. Once you know what to expect they become weak compared to other classes (such as duelist mesmers or eles).

My level 74 thief is my first character, and I am super happy about being a Thief! Here are my thoughts.

I find Flanking Strike and the spear’s 2 to be incredibly difficult to actually dodge with, even when I could swear I nailed the timing.

I am disappointed by the fact that there is no benefit to using only one weapon. I would have liked some kind of fringe benefit, like maybe a reason you might want to have sword/empty hand to switch to just in case of a highly specific situation.

I find detonating Cluster Bomb in midair to be kitten useless.

I frequently screw myself over by hammering Death Blossom, whereupon the “queue up your skill casts” mechanic from the first Guild Wars causes me to do one more Death Blossom after I wanted to stop. Same for Flanking Strikes.

@Maug:
The pros/cons of stealth are why I would really like to see Thief moved to be less reliant on it. Keep some of it, but give some of it up for some other stuff that is also helpful. More varied gameplay and more versatility. I think that’d be a win-win.

Also, take a look at gw2buildcraft.com. You can take cavalier in some slots and then via runes, sigils, food, etc. still have 50+ crit chance. It’s well worth it for getting ~30% damage mitigation.

Also, take into account that Knight’s allows you to live longer thus do more damage. I understand how sexy cannon burst is and how it can be quite useful (even necessary) in some situations, but damage mitigation is excellent if you have the skills/abilities to handle conditions. This goes for all classes, not just Thieves, Mesmers, Rangers, etc.

@Kazuhiro
Thank you for the input. I hope the others have noticed there’s no griping about Thief Death Blossom (even though it is an evasion on top of its damage + bleeds), Cluster Bomb, etc.

I hate fighting a good condition thief on my Mesmer (usually runs a bit light on condition cleansing) as you pop out of stealth, evade most of the time and then go back into stealth. It’s mean, but it also takes more skill than heartseeker so I’m not really against it.

Say they put the equivalent of flashing blades at grandmaster in acro or trickery (maybe gain aegis and retaliation on crit with melee and C&D grants protection instead of stealth) I have a feeling there would be more of an outcry than right now because thieves would be able to keep up constant pressure while mitigating damage against themselves not to mention they could still begin the fight with a huge burst. The gw1 assassin could dictate the fight from start to finish with heavy cc, high damage, and a rapid flurry of attacks. The gw2 thief lost some utility and staying power for stealth. I don’t mind. They play differently. As they said though in their live stream when they were talking about nerfing eles, stealth can be hard for new players to deal with, but it appears to me that they are essentially saying its a learn to play issue. We’ll see what happens after they fix culling, but I have a feeling that we’ll continue to see small buffs to thieves.

(P.S. I use that builder quite frequently already)

Maugetarr.6823:

Say they put the equivalent of flashing blades at grandmaster in acro or trickery (maybe gain aegis and retaliation on crit with melee and C&D grants protection instead of stealth) I have a feeling there would be more of an outcry than right now because thieves would be able to keep up constant pressure while mitigating damage against themselves not to mention they could still begin the fight with a huge burst. The gw1 assassin could dictate the fight from start to finish with heavy cc, high damage, and a rapid flurry of attacks. The gw2 thief lost some utility and staying power for stealth. I don’t mind. They play differently. As they said though in their live stream when they were talking about nerfing eles, stealth can be hard for new players to deal with, but it appears to me that they are essentially saying its a learn to play issue. We’ll see what happens after they fix culling, but I have a feeling that we’ll continue to see small buffs to thieves.

(P.S. I use that builder quite frequently already)

Non-Stealth thieves should get protection.

Maugetarr.6823:

Say they put the equivalent of flashing blades at grandmaster in acro or trickery (maybe gain aegis and retaliation on crit with melee and C&D grants protection instead of stealth) I have a feeling there would be more of an outcry than right now because thieves would be able to keep up constant pressure while mitigating damage against themselves not to mention they could still begin the fight with a huge burst. The gw1 assassin could dictate the fight from start to finish with heavy cc, high damage, and a rapid flurry of attacks. The gw2 thief lost some utility and staying power for stealth. I don’t mind. They play differently. As they said though in their live stream when they were talking about nerfing eles, stealth can be hard for new players to deal with, but it appears to me that they are essentially saying its a learn to play issue. We’ll see what happens after they fix culling, but I have a feeling that we’ll continue to see small buffs to thieves.

(P.S. I use that builder quite frequently already)

A laughably optimistic perspective, for sure. I wonder what you might consider a buff – perhaps a little buff to defense in exchange for some stealth nerfs, as mentioned above? I expect and hope we’ll see the thief changed into another type of combatant – something I believe that Arenanet desire also, hence the creation of this thread. Current thief gameplay is a big issue.

Svarty.8019:

A laughably optimistic perspective, for sure. I wonder what you might consider a buff – perhaps a little buff to defense in exchange for some stealth nerfs, as mentioned above? I expect and hope we’ll see the thief changed into another type of combatant – something I believe that Arenanet desire also, hence the creation of this thread. Current thief gameplay is a big issue.

His perspective is more spot on than your assertion that they will change nerf stealth at all even citing the live stream where they said people just aren’t use to stealth. This thread is 3 months old the thief hasn’t received anything but buffs since this thread was created.

Many people asked for buffs to pistols though it isn’t what people wanted they still got 10% damage buff for pistols, and a buff to richochet and ankle shots. Shadow shot buffed. Fleet shadow buff. I could keep going.

This thread is for feedback not a nerf thread cause you don’t like how the class plays or that it has stealth.

Svarty.8019:

A laughably optimistic perspective, for sure. I wonder what you might consider a buff – perhaps a little buff to defense in exchange for some stealth nerfs, as mentioned above? I expect and hope we’ll see the thief changed into another type of combatant – something I believe that Arenanet desire also, hence the creation of this thread. Current thief gameplay is a big issue.

Actually, the facts back him, for sure.

I’m afraid that alone makes you the laughable optimist instead…

DanH.5879:

ensoriki.5789:

This thread is so entertaining to read.

i second that, and all the videos contain max culling
but hey, fixing culling AND getting nerfs in the same time, is the only way to go.

It was entertaining, especially Columba’s posts. But now it’s just sad.

Kyrion.2749:

Svarty.8019:

A laughably optimistic perspective, for sure. I wonder what you might consider a buff – perhaps a little buff to defense in exchange for some stealth nerfs, as mentioned above? I expect and hope we’ll see the thief changed into another type of combatant – something I believe that Arenanet desire also, hence the creation of this thread. Current thief gameplay is a big issue.

Actually, the facts back him, for sure.

I’m afraid that alone makes you the laughable optimist instead…

The dev blog on profession roles and also the profession description on the official site also make it clear that the thief is playing as intended.

Sebrent.3625:

@Kazuhiro
Thank you for the input. I hope the others have noticed there’s no griping about Thief Death Blossom (even though it is an evasion on top of its damage + bleeds), Cluster Bomb, etc.

I hate fighting a good condition thief on my Mesmer (usually runs a bit light on condition cleansing) as you pop out of stealth, evade most of the time and then go back into stealth. It’s mean, but it also takes more skill than heartseeker so I’m not really against it.

Death Blossom’s evade is wonderful and it does so much for me all the time. Like I said, I could swear I nail Flanking Strikes and it doesn’t work.

I hear mixed stuff about Death Blossom, but it sure is working well for me. I think it’s the best there is for stomping trash mobs—aside from maybe the bow—and I get to pull some pretty cool shenanigans because I’m carrying around Shadow Refuge.

One more stupid little complaint, Flanking Strikes and Death Blossom make me accidentally jump off of walkways all the time.

If we keep the complaints coming, anet will have to do something to stealth.

Columba.9730:

If we keep the complaints coming, anet will have to do something to stealth.

i am very sure about that
but i think we should limit ourselves to 1 complaint per day/account so it won’t raise any suspicion
remember, our mission is to make the life of thieves miserable so they roll something else or quit
imo, some ppl are too easy to “influence” via propaganda
when the class will be completely broken, i suggest we move to the guardian or mesmer sub-forum

Kazuhiro.5809:

Death Blossom’s evade is wonderful and it does so much for me all the time. Like I said, I could swear I nail Flanking Strikes and it doesn’t work.

What about Flanking Strike isn’t working? Is it simply not hitting or something else?

Kazuhiro.5809:

I hear mixed stuff about Death Blossom, but it sure is working well for me.

That is because Death Blossom is harder to use well than Heartseeker. It doesn’t hold your hand like Heartseeker does.

Kazuhiro.5809:

I think it’s the best there is for stomping trash mobs—aside from maybe the bow—and I get to pull some pretty cool shenanigans because I’m carrying around Shadow Refuge.

I think some people who focus too much on the bleeds would disagree with you, but they probably havn’t tried it as much as you have. The evasion is definitely nice for helping you survive the plethora of attacks launched your way by a large group of trash mobs and it does have respectable direct damage on top of the bleeds. I think most people get hung up on the 5 initiative cost.

Kazuhiro.5809:

One more stupid little complaint, Flanking Strikes and Death Blossom make me accidentally jump off of walkways all the time.

LMAO! Come talk to Ranger’s using 1H sword sometime. We’ll start a support group :-p

Columba.9730:

If we keep the complaints coming, anet will have to do something to stealth.

Wow. Please stop. You and I are on completely different pages … probably completely different “books”.

@Maug:
I don’t think something like Flashing blades has a place here since there are not that many “unblockable” attacks. Not to mention, because of skills like that and others, Guild Wars 1 became largely “build wars” … I prefer “skill wars”.

When it comes to things to give to the Thief to compensate for being stealthed less, my thoughts are more on active skills. For example, I’ve often wondered why the Thief didn’t have more weapon skills with built in evasion like the Ranger has a plethora of. Additionally, if you look at Thief underwater skills (yes, I know you’re nowhere near as OP underwater as Mesmer) and you’ll see there are block skills. I think Thief would do quite well with these skills. The lower skills level players often don’t see the beauty in the block abilities that then retaliate, but many of the rest of us do. I’d be very interested to see that on land under an initiative system. I think it would also help deter things like a warrior simply spamming their axe auto-attack to kill a thief :-) having your attack do 0 damage and taking twice as much damage in return is a pretty strong deterrent. It’s also a way for a good thief to punish a bad player.

I’m open for other ideas. I simply wish for the Thief to require the same approximate skill level to do the same things others do. That isn’t to say I want them to be just like every other class. I just think a bad player playing a Thief shouldn’t be any more dangerous to others than that bad player playing a non-Thief.

I also think the Thief should be more visible during combat … culling may fix this, but from what I see in sPvP (no culling there), it’s not quite there … especially if you’re a Ranger. Gotta hug my traps cuz you cloak and dagger my pet :-p I shouldn’t have to take traps to be able to kill you … it’s traps or stalemate-at-best cuz I’m too tanky/evasive and you’re barely visible for a tanky class to beat on long enough to kill.

What? No one has any thoughts about the idea of giving Thief more evasion or block skills in their weapon sets?

Well, Sebrent… you just combined the idea of “press one button block everything – then do massive damage” with the idea of “high skill.” I can’t speak for everyone, but I just don’t think we’re on the same page.

In my opinion, playing with stealth does require skill. It’s a mind game that, in my experience, the top players already know how to play/counter very well.
Everyone saying that a thief may not have to press but a few buttons in order to kill something is right, though. Being able to play a thief well depends on lot more than pressing the buttons.