Guild Wars 2

Ruggan.4102:

Its 4 seconds of damage mitigation while continuing to attack… while a dodge is 1 dodge 1 attack and no attacking… so yes, it does make that much of a difference.
Lets do the math… lets say your dps and the thief dps is matched at say 100 dmg per second. And lets say you are fighting each other. You start attacking the thief, he dodges. If he is quick on the keyboard, he dodges about 90% of your attacks… so he still takes 10% of it. You, however, because the thief has dodged the entire time, have taken nothing. After taking 10% of your dmg, the thief decides to attack instead of dodge… so you hit your 4second dmg mitigation. Now, thief does no dmg but takes 100% of your attacks. Thief uses a heal… you still have taken no dmg…. thief has now used a bunch of end, a heal, and is probably still down on HP if only a little. Thief comes in to attack.. you dont have your 4s mitigation up… but you have full HP and a heal still in reserve. But you decide to dodge an attack because by now, you have about 15 seconds left on your dmg mititgation thingy. so you dodge, thief is back to full hp from regen and full endurance due to vigor. You come in for your attacks. Thief dodges until end is out… now he is a sitting duck, dead in seconds… you barely took any damage at all and all of this is because you can still do dmg while taking little to none. So yea, 4 seconds is a big deal in fights that last only a few seconds anyhow.

Yeah, this is a great example of poor Thief gameplay.
No wonder you rolled a ranger and found yourself more effective.

A goed thief still applies poison and bleeds if the target can’t get hit buy direct damage. And a thief has a lot of skills to evade dmg and still deal dmg (Flanking strike, Disabeling Shot, Death Blossem, etc).

Ruggan.4102:

And lets not forget the fact that I have never had to change the build of my ranger while the thief, due to nerfs

Either lies or really bad ranger.

Also, LOL at OP asking for nerfs on other classes in order to make his look better. What the hell is wrong with you people.

From what I’ve played, I don’t have a problem running a thief in a dungeon party. For dungeons, I currently use full zerker in a 25/30/0/10/5 build, specced almost completely for damage.

It’s actually really easy. I use S/P, spam a blind field, and then me and the whole group can face tank the perma-blinded group. The auto attack also causes permanent weakness and cripple, so they’re slower and do 25% less damage overall when they finally get a hit off. I have an utter craptoon of damage boosts:

10% if they have a condition (which is always)
10% with a bundle (which is almost always, since I like to hold on to one until steal recharges)
20% when under 50% health (which is half the time, so it is 10%)
10% with high initiative
5% with Sigil of Force

So out of the gate I’m doing 54% more damage before a single stack of might is applied. The bosses can be harder to fight, though…

I say can because if I switch to a dagger off-hand, I can dodge half of the bosses attacks indefinitely without ever having to worry about endurance gain or dodging or even losing offense. This is quite hard to do, but it is nonetheless possible. If you pull it off, free boons. Worst case scenario I have to use the shortbow, and just spam blast finishers inside of fields to buff/heal everyone.

@ blood

You don’t know how improv works. It should work as you described but the 10% extra damage is only when you pick up those planks and metal bars. The only time that trait is useful is if you’re using ele weapons. You also can’t count executioner at 10% at the start b/c it’s 0%. Saying it’s 10% at the start is misleading. And how do you maintain the 10% damage bonus from 6+ ini when you are at 6 ini (8-9 after the 1st pistol whip finishes) and less after 1 blind field or a 2nd whip?

Out of the gate you’re actually doing a bonus 25% damage with the sigil.

Ruggan.4102:

Ranger: Better range, better dmg (because of pet), better heals, same amount of dodge capability, better utility skills, better synergy than thief. And lets not forget the fact that I have never had to change the build of my ranger while the thief, due to nerfs, has had to change build every single patch.

Noone needs range since you can AND SHOULD melee everything. NO ranger has a better DPS then a well played thief
Please, please, please… learn to play… you are the reason why people still think rangers, necros and ingis are worth.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Ranger-DPS-in-Dungeons
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/CoF-with-2-Eles-and-3-Rangers-in-7-45
Think about it, read it and think again. If you still think rangers have better dps then it is useless to discuss with you

sorrow.2364:

frans.8092:

Your posts are the only thing ridiculous in this thread. While the condition removal on shadow return is a nice side-effect, no thief would use up the combos for condition removal. So no, they aren’t condition removals.

So, because you don’t use them as condition removals, they aren’t condition removals.
Who is ridiculous here?

You, obviously. They are positioning tools, not condition removals. You don’t Shadow Return away from your target in the middle of an attack chain and break it to remove a condition, you use Shadow Return to reposition yourself. Cleansing a condition is a side effect, no matter how useful that is is, it is generally not the reason to use it. Putting Shadow Step and Shadow Return on cooldown to cleanse conditions is wasting a tactical tool for it’s side effect. If you don’t realize the importance of their primary use, positioning, you don’t understand much of the Thief.

You want to facetank, even if you didn’t mentioned it. It is obvious.

Now, who’s talking ridiculous. You know little of thief, but you know even less about me. Don’t even try to make statements about what I want.

frans.8092:

It’s good for what it’s supposed to do, which isn’t supplementing Black Powder.

You said the recharge is too long. It isn’t. It is an amazing support skill in dungeon.

No, I didn’t, I said the recharge was too long to supplement Black Powder to overcome it’s weakness in fighting mixed mobs.

frans.8092:

You, obviously. They are positioning tools, not condition removals. You don’t Shadow Return away from your target in the middle of an attack chain and break it to remove a condition, you use Shadow Return to reposition yourself. Cleansing a condition is a side effect, no matter how useful that is is, it is generally not the reason to use it. Putting Shadow Step and Shadow Return on cooldown to cleanse conditions is wasting a tactical tool for it’s side effect. If you don’t realize the importance of their primary use, positioning, you don’t understand much of the Thief.

I didn’t know I was talking to a Thief pro. Funny thing is that you are complaining about thieves being weak in dungeons and, in the same topic, you are claiming to know the thief well. Those two things can’t stand together.

If you need to cleanse your conditions, you should use your Shadow Return as condition cleanse. If you need to reposition yourself, you should use IS/SS as mobility skill. Condition removal isn’t a “side effect”. It is an effect, period.
Depending on the situations, the condition removal is far more useful than the repositioning fact, in other situations both are useful.
If you don’t undestand that, then you probably don’t understand the Thief, not me.

frans.8092:

Now, who’s talking ridiculous. You know little of thief, but you know even less about me. Don’t even try to make statements about what I want.

Man, each post you made in this topic yells “I want protection on Thief”.
Even what you want to do, which is attacking while mitigating damage is facetanking.
You can’t say in every post that the fact thieves can’t attack while mitigating damage (which I proved it is false: PW) is an issue and then pretending you don’t want to facetank. This is just stupid.

frans.8092:

No, I didn’t, I said the recharge was too long to supplement Black Powder to overcome it’s weakness in fighting mixed mobs.

So what?
I really don’t know what you want.
Smoke Screen is an amazing utility which most professions envy to thief. What’s your problem with that skill?

If you need to tank melee mobs, use Black Powder. If you need to tank ranged mobs, use Smoke Screen, but you haven’t the 100% uptime, as every profession can’t block every projectile 100% of the time.

sorrow.2364:

frans.8092:

You, obviously. They are positioning tools, not condition removals. You don’t Shadow Return away from your target in the middle of an attack chain and break it to remove a condition, you use Shadow Return to reposition yourself. Cleansing a condition is a side effect, no matter how useful that is is, it is generally not the reason to use it. Putting Shadow Step and Shadow Return on cooldown to cleanse conditions is wasting a tactical tool for it’s side effect. If you don’t realize the importance of their primary use, positioning, you don’t understand much of the Thief.

I didn’t know I was talking to a Thief pro. Funny thing is that you are complaining about thieves being weak in dungeons and, in the same topic, you are claiming to know the thief well. Those two things can’t stand together.

I never complained, I was discussing the relative merits of various forms of damage mitigation available, with others, when you barged in and derailed the thread. So far you’ve not posted anything relevant to the original topic post or it’s immediate reactions, you have only been arguing and only with me.

If you need to cleanse your conditions, you should use your Shadow Return as condition cleanse.

The only time I use it to cleanse conditions is to speed up getting out of combat after a fight, until then it is used exclusively for positioning and the side-effect is very welcome. If you regularly find yourself in need of condition cleansing you should bring a utility for it, or, if possible trait it in something you use, but not a weaponset.

If you need to reposition yourself, you should use IS/SS as mobility skill. Condition removal isn’t a “side effect”.

You don’t trigger them to remove a condition, you use them to blink around the battlefield at the appropriate time, condition cleansing is a useful side-effect. And because it’s usually used frequently conditions don’t tend to become problematic.

frans.8092:

Now, who’s talking ridiculous. You know little of thief, but you know even less about me. Don’t even try to make statements about what I want.

Man, each post you made in this topic yells “I want protection on Thief”.

Find one post where I say that.

You can’t say in every post that the fact thieves can’t attack while mitigating damage

I didn’t say that, I said you can’t attack while dodging, which was said in response to a line of reasoning that claimed thief has good defence through, amongst others, their endurance regeneration.

No, I didn’t, I said the recharge was too long to supplement Black Powder to overcome it’s weakness in fighting mixed mobs.

So what?
I really don’t know what you want.

If you had actually followed the thread you would have understood. I’ve even tried to brief you on it, but you seem to prefer to ignore that and repeat your mantras.

frans.8092:

I never complained, I was discussing the relative merits of various forms of damage mitigation available, with others, when you barged in and derailed the thread. So far you’ve not posted anything relevant to the original topic post or it’s immediate reactions, you have only been arguing and only with me.

Damage mitigation that doesn’t require you to stop attacking is better then damage mitigation that forces you to stop attacking.

That is something you said in this thread.
You’re not discussing the merits of various forms of damage mitigation available, you’re just saying that Thief damage mitigation is worse compared to other damage mitigations.
So you point is either that Thief defenses are weak or you’re just arguing for the sake of arguing.
In both cases, you’re wrong.

The only time I use it to cleanse conditions is to speed up getting out of combat after a fight, until then it is used exclusively for positioning and the side-effect is very welcome. If you regularly find yourself in need of condition cleansing you should bring a utility for it, or, if possible trait it in something you use, but not a weaponset.

That was my point.
Shadowstep is more than enough as condition cleansing in PvE because conditions aren’t that much.

You don’t trigger them to remove a condition, you use them to blink around the battlefield at the appropriate time, condition cleansing is a useful side-effect. And because it’s usually used frequently conditions don’t tend to become problematic.

The fact that you see the condition removal as a side-effect doesn’t mean that it is a side-effect. You can use the skill as condition removal as much as you want to use it as a teleport.

Find one post where I say that.

It’s the logical conclusion someone gets to after reading your posts.
You said the whole thread that you think that Thieves defenses are not good because they forces you to stop attacking.
I’ve said that PW doesn’t force you to stop attacking and, also, other professions doesn’t usually attack when defending.

When I’ve asked you to give me an example of skills that doesn’t force you to stop attacking while mitigating damage, you named some skills whose most part were skills giving protection.

The implicit message of your posts is that you think that a profession to be on par with other professions in PvE needs passive damage mitigations (thus, protection), so a thief, to be considered viable and wanted, needs those abilities.

I didn’t say that, I said you can’t attack while dodging, which was said in response to a line of reasoning that claimed thief has good defence through, amongst others, their endurance regeneration.

Read above.

If you had actually followed the thread you would have understood. I’ve even tried to brief you on it, but you seem to prefer to ignore that and repeat your mantras.

What? WHAT?
I’ve said that Black Powder is a great damage mitigation skill.
You said it doesn’t work against mixed mobs.
Stooperdale said “That’s why Smoke Screen is so good” and you answered “The cooldown is really too long for that”. I’ve then showed you how similiar skills have even longer cooldown and don’t even mitigate the damage of melee mobs.
What’s your point, really?

randomfightfan.4091:

@ blood

You don’t know how improv works. It should work as you described but the 10% extra damage is only when you pick up those planks and metal bars. The only time that trait is useful is if you’re using ele weapons. You also can’t count executioner at 10% at the start b/c it’s 0%. Saying it’s 10% at the start is misleading. And how do you maintain the 10% damage bonus from 6+ ini when you are at 6 ini (8-9 after the 1st pistol whip finishes) and less after 1 blind field or a 2nd whip?

Out of the gate you’re actually doing a bonus 25% damage with the sigil.

Ah, so the trait is bugged. Also, you can count executioner as 10% overall through something call averages. You see, if you have a 20% damage bonus, but for half the time, then this means that you have an average of a 10% damage bonus in uptime. This is fairly common practice in science to take the overall sum and divide it by the overall time to get the overall rate. Of course, you are misunderstanding what is meant by “off the bat”. This doesn’t mean that I have this damage boost when I first attack the enemy. It means I have this damage boost as a function of my build before there is any additional bonuses through might or fury.

With First Strikes, it is actually quite easy to maintain. In my own build I use steal to give me a quick boost to initiative, and with a combination of Opportunist and Signet Use initiative can be regained very quickly, allowing me to stay at nigh initiative almost indefinitely, while also stacking might to boot. Combine this with Smoke Screen for a blind field, and you can reserve initiative for pistol whip I usually only blow all my initiative on pistol whip once my enemies are at 50% health to get executioner.

Late to the discussion, so I guess it’s either make the thieves players better or make Anet make thief OP.

Jzl.8715:

or make Anet make thief OP.

that will never happen, a-net hates thieves…

@DanH,

Perhaps you took it too literally.