Guild Wars 2

I’m just curious what can a thief do in a raids? i guess thiefs could’nt survive an AoE attack? it is the thief dps good enough in raids?

Condi dps with daredevil/trickery/acrobatic is superb. Runes of krait with dire stats with energy sigils for massive bleed stacks and superior survability just spaming death blosson and impaling lotus non endesly

Tora.7214:

Condi dps with daredevil/trickery/acrobatic is superb. Runes of krait with dire stats with energy sigils for massive bleed stacks and superior survability just spaming death blosson and impaling lotus non endesly

or just take a sinister engineer which does way more condi dps?

I haven’t played the raid, but from watching a few attempts, it seems power Shiro revenant is kinda using our spot, but with way more utility than us thanks to glint. =/

I think we’ll have to wait until release to have a better feel of it.

knyy.6427:

Tora.7214:

Condi dps with daredevil/trickery/acrobatic is superb. Runes of krait with dire stats with energy sigils for massive bleed stacks and superior survability just spaming death blosson and impaling lotus non endesly

or just take a sinister engineer which does way more condi dps?

But sinister engineer need to attack to apply his condis, leaving very vulnerable to retribution due sinister stats, remember jumping into a raid with no defensive stats isnt viable anymore. Wharever dire DD apply his by perma evading around the boss with death blosson and lotus training, barely if ever getting hit, taking very little dmg even if hit, and healing back to full instantly due the synergy from traits and death blosson/lotus with SoM

Tora.7214:

Condi dps with daredevil/trickery/Shadow Arts is superb. Runes of krait with dire armor/sinister weps/accessories with energy sigils for massive bleed, torment, poison, etc(depending on venous in use) stacks and superior survability just spaming death blosson and impaling lotus non endesly

Changes in bold, you want to help the party bring a venom share build, your far more useful and benefit more from it (considering we have to give up DA)

Played Condi thief. with daredevil/ latest condi buffs THief condi dps is about as much as Engi condi dps. While Thief has way more survivability/ infinit ports.. Was very usefull for the step in the circle phase.

Also Basi venom share goes through the defiance bar with ease. ( in the raid 1 full venomshare was enaugh to completly remove the defiance bar)

I think thief is in a good state atm Eventhough the condi dps may not be on par with Engi (eventhough I#m not sure on that have not seen latest Dps numbers wiht daredevil/poison buff) I think it can make up for it with stuns/survivability

we can stealth ress ?

SoulSin.5682:

we can stealth ress ?

Can’t scrapper do the same? Assuming if their gyros are fixed.

Scrappers and his team can fight in stealth as long as the sneak gyro is kept alive.

I’m really enjoying the venom share build atm and the buff to poison. We can bring perma poison and weekness, venom share, stealth, dps, and good survivbility. I am not seeing any real need to spec daredevil though.

GodSaw.2675:

Played Condi thief. with daredevil/ latest condi buffs THief condi dps is about as much as Engi condi dps. While Thief has way more survivability/ infinit ports.. Was very usefull for the step in the circle phase.

Also Basi venom share goes through the defiance bar with ease. ( in the raid 1 full venomshare was enaugh to completly remove the defiance bar)

I think thief is in a good state atm Eventhough the condi dps may not be on par with Engi (eventhough I#m not sure on that have not seen latest Dps numbers wiht daredevil/poison buff) I think it can make up for it with stuns/survivability

I’d love to see the dps tables where venom share thieves have the same dps as condi engineers (you contradicted yourself with your first and last statement). You do realise the later outputs 18-19k dps. Most venom share builds are in the 13-14k dps, i.e. below zerker thieves.

Basically, best condition damage builds are Ranger A/T and Engi with a pistol. The Ranger is 15k+ dps. The reason both are high is because burn damage is much better than bleed damage.

Also condi thieves survivability is not that great. Our main defence is escape/ stealth. The d/d set has an evade and the short bow has motility, but running away = 0 dps.

I do agree they can be useful in getting to the orange circles but the bottom line is venom share thieves damage is extremely sub par to other condi builds that they would be much lower down the pecking order.

Break bars aren’t a big deal, revenant staff 5 can do 75% of a break bar by itself.

Overall, current meta team positions are likely:

• 1 DPS/Tank
• 4 Power DPS
• 4 Condi DPS
• 1 Druid

Thieves won’t fill the tank or healer role. When it comes to the zerk role there’s just too much competition. PS War, Chronomancer, Ele’s Power Rev’s are all ahead in the pecking order.

When it comes to condi’s ideally you will want all engineers. Even with 3 engineers, you can maybe drop a condi for another zerk, but because thieves don;t bring as much support, they will still be behind bring a second rev, guardian, ele or war.

So in summary, thieves, right now aren’t in a great position, not terrible, just not great but we’ll have to see.

Edit: I’d also like to mention I don;t know where daredevil dps currently is and that will be a massive influence on whether thieves get raid spots. Right now, the old d/d thieves will struggle/ be a burden on the team.

Edit 2: Also forgot to mention that venom share benefits a lot from Chronomancer’s alacrity, but numbers have to be run to see their dps. It may bring it up close to 16k/s (i.e. their burst venom share dps).

Terra.8571:

Edit: I’d also like to mention I don;t know where daredevil dps currently is and that will be a massive influence on whether thieves get raid spots. Right now, the old d/d thieves will struggle/ be a burden on the team.

D/D is a thing of the past. Weakening Charge hits almost as hard as Backstab without Staff Master and can be used almost consistently, the auto chain is slightly faster than Dagger and hits harder than Sword and the DD line provides a 7% mod, a 10% mod and another 10% mod that’s up for double the duration of the old Evasive Empowerment, thus benefiting more attacks. Daredevil DPS is going to be absolutely killer for raids.

Do people even play a sinister Engi when they came up with statements like thief having similar DPS? Do they even have a higher DPS than sinister Ranger to begin with?

Auesis.7301:

Terra.8571:

Edit: I’d also like to mention I don;t know where daredevil dps currently is and that will be a massive influence on whether thieves get raid spots. Right now, the old d/d thieves will struggle/ be a burden on the team.

D/D is a thing of the past. Weakening Charge hits almost as hard as Backstab without Staff Master and can be used almost consistently, the auto chain is slightly faster than Dagger and hits harder than Sword and the DD line provides a 7% mod, a 10% mod and another 10% mod that’s up for double the duration of the old Evasive Empowerment, thus benefiting more attacks. Daredevil DPS is going to be absolutely killer for raids.

It would still be nice to see some hard numbers. Right now, they need to beat Rev’s or at least be on par with Rev’s 18-19k/s dps.

I see the same thing on the forums for each of my fav classes. Every sub forum for thief ele and necro all have threads of why they will be useless in raids. I think every class will be viable personally. Will some set ups clear faster? Sure.

I know that some classes can pump out higher condi dps then a thief but with the shared venoms traited I think we can really push the conditions over the top. Plus like I said the perma weekness from choking gas seems to be pretty awesome.

Anyway I am looking for a guild to raid with/pve and build a nice guild hall. Hit me up here via PM or in game.

Terra.8571:

It would still be nice to see some hard numbers. Right now, they need to beat Rev’s or at least be on par with Rev’s 18-19k/s dps.

At the current balance numbers nothing can compete with sword heralds and sinister engineers in terms of DPS; they are far and away the highest damage classes by a very wide margin. Until those are nerfed substantially there isn’t a much of a place for anything else in the DPS role – all other classes are simply support for revenants and engineers.

(Elementalist is close enough that if there’s a high premium on staying ranged, and your target doesn’t move (so it takes full damage from Lava Font), then you can consider them as a DPS alternate. Still, elementalists have trouble keeping boons stacked if they are not in melee range, so it’s a pretty big price to pay unless you need dedicated ranged groups)

Stubie.5834:

I see the same thing on the forums for each of my fav classes. Every sub forum for thief ele and necro all have threads of why they will be useless in raids. I think every class will be viable personally. Will some set ups clear faster? Sure.

I know that some classes can pump out higher condi dps then a thief but with the shared venoms traited I think we can really push the conditions over the top. Plus like I said the perma weekness from choking gas seems to be pretty awesome.

Anyway I am looking for a guild to raid with/pve and build a nice guild hall. Hit me up here via PM or in game.

This is the best way to do it.

Necros are in a tricky spot though because their dps isn’t high enough and their group support is lacking. Thieve’s appear to be better placed but I have seen no evidence to show they will definitely get a dps spot.

Also the definition of viable is different when it comes to Raids though. In previous dungeons it was a case of how fast, now it’s a case of just completing.

Can content be completed with a reaper? Absolutely. But, if you replaced 4 zerk dps classes with reaper (they can get 25 might on their own as well as the vuln) and another member provides fury so they have all the buffs, this may not be viable.

This will all depend how tight the enrage timers are but lets take the following example.

The Vale Guardian
Lets replace 4 dps rev’s with 4 reapers. Currently, 4 reapers would have done 4k (amount of dps reaper do lower than revs) * 300 (estimating in combat time to be 5 out of 7 mins i.e. 300 seconds – 7 mins was time it took for first vale kill) * 4 (Amount or reapers). SO 4,000 * 300 * 4 = 4.8 million less dps.

Vale Guardian had 22 million hp. 4.8/22 = 22% less dps by the reapers and with only 1 min left on the clock, they will likely be unable to make up that dps. A failed raid =/= viable. That’s my concern when some people think, I don’t care about meta.

Unlike dungeons, there will be time limits, enrage timers etc. This moves the definition of viable. Viable now = completing the raid. In the above scenario, bring 1 reaper instead of 1 rev would have made the raid still viable. When you start replacing multiple optimal classes, raids viability start to change. That’s my 2 cents on the matter.

Ensign.2189:

Terra.8571:

It would still be nice to see some hard numbers. Right now, they need to beat Rev’s or at least be on par with Rev’s 18-19k/s dps.

At the current balance numbers nothing can compete with sword heralds and sinister engineers in terms of DPS; they are far and away the highest damage classes by a very wide margin. Until those are nerfed substantially there isn’t a much of a place for anything else in the DPS role – all other classes are simply support for revenants and engineers.

(Elementalist is close enough that if there’s a high premium on staying ranged, and your target doesn’t move (so it takes full damage from Lava Font), then you can consider them as a DPS alternate. Still, elementalists have trouble keeping boons stacked if they are not in melee range, so it’s a pretty big price to pay unless you need dedicated ranged groups)

Thanks for that, I was wondering if anyone has current DD dps numbers? Yeah Rev’s and engie’s are outliers. There’s a case that 5 rev’s, 4 engies and 1 druid and you could complete the whole raid lol.

Watch WP’s raid video, he had a pug group, kept wiping after 5-10%. Then he literally changed to rev, bought 2 engie’s from his stream, had 1 druid, 1 chorono and a few other dps. He and the rev duo’d the green guardian and he wasn’t even using Shiro’s quickness properly (a huge dps loss).

I plan on playing rev – long time thief player, but as of yet, DD just hasn’t caught my eye.

@Terra. Very well put. I haven’t raided yet in gw2 so I have no clue what I’m talking about. I would hope they will fine tune it so all classes can enjoy the new raid content. I’m going to start with my little venom thief and see if I can find my place stacking venoms on the condi group and doing flash stealth rezzes when needed. If I find myself with no place in a raid I’ll switch to my ele or necro if they at better off. What I will not do I roll a certain class that I don’t enjoy playing because anet has made them the only viable class to raid with.

Just hit 50 in Wildstar and all of their classes are viable in raids so I can always go there. I’d rather stick with gw2 though!

Terra.8571:

Necros are in a tricky spot though because their dps isn’t high enough and their group support is lacking. Thieve’s appear to be better placed but I have seen no evidence to show they will definitely get a dps spot.

Necro is tricky because a lot of its offensive power is tied up in very strong might and vulnerability self stacking, and it is naturally extremely tanky. While I think it is overshadowed by engineer as a tank at the moment (particularly with a druid full healing the raid), if that ever gets pushed down to something more reasonable Necro should be quite attractive as a tank that still does pretty reasonable DPS with no downtime (you can build full Soldier, or Soldier / Cavalier mix, and still do outstanding damage, as you can get +100% crit chance from traits alone).

Thief…I just don’t know, the 623 patch was not kind to it and over time it has lost much of its combat power for stealth / mobility, which just aren’t valuable in raids. How do you make that workable without making it obnoxious everywhere else?

sam.4681:

I’m just curious what can a thief do in a raids? i guess thiefs could’nt survive an AoE attack? it is the thief dps good enough in raids?

Superb?…

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3nu0ez/pve_venom_share_thief_why_is_it_bad/

Terra.8571:

Thanks for that, I was wondering if anyone has current DD dps numbers?

Daredevil modeling isn’t totally comprehensive and I might be missing something, but with the buffs the numbers from scribbling on a napkin are:

D/D 110010: 14228
D/D 110001: 14803

Remember that damage goes down from losing the night sigil and dungeon potions, but is boosted up by the ferocity from a herald.

Stubie.5834:

@Terra. Very well put. I haven’t raided yet in gw2 so I have no clue what I’m talking about. I would hope they will fine tune it so all classes can enjoy the new raid content. I’m going to start with my little venom thief and see if I can find my place stacking venoms on the condi group and doing flash stealth rezzes when needed. If I find myself with no place in a raid I’ll switch to my ele or necro if they at better off. What I will not do I roll a certain class that I don’t enjoy playing because anet has made them the only viable class to raid with.

Just hit 50 in Wildstar and all of their classes are viable in raids so I can always go there. I’d rather stick with gw2 though!

These are just rumours, but the DnT guys as well as some other prominent end game PvE er’s have mentioned venom share shines a lot more with 1 or even 2 chorono’s in the group. So you might want to try and find a chorono buddy ;p

Ensign.2189:

Terra.8571:

Necros are in a tricky spot though because their dps isn’t high enough and their group support is lacking. Thieve’s appear to be better placed but I have seen no evidence to show they will definitely get a dps spot.

Necro is tricky because a lot of its offensive power is tied up in very strong might and vulnerability self stacking, and it is naturally extremely tanky. While I think it is overshadowed by engineer as a tank at the moment (particularly with a druid full healing the raid), if that ever gets pushed down to something more reasonable Necro should be quite attractive as a tank that still does pretty reasonable DPS with no downtime (you can build full Soldier, or Soldier / Cavalier mix, and still do outstanding damage, as you can get +100% crit chance from traits alone).

Thief…I just don’t know, the 623 patch was not kind to it and over time it has lost much of its combat power for stealth / mobility, which just aren’t valuable in raids. How do you make that workable without making it obnoxious everywhere else?

Thing about Tanky necro’s is, stats wise, they have a minimal dps loss as they can stack toughness for precision because of decimate defences. However, they will struggle to get healed as tank when in RS, will still need some external protection, RS is a dps loss and they have few damage mitigators.

I’ve personally got a sneaky feeling tanky Rev’s could be a good choice. They too can suffer minimal dps loss by exchanging precision for toughness because of the 20% extra crit chance from fury. Rev’s have full protect time, much higher dps that the drop in dps from some tanking stats and boon duration food will probably still put them above Reapers. Not forgetting Rev’s have 2 blocks, a full Glint heal, the most damage mitigators in the game, taunt and the option to spec Jalis if a full on tank is needed. Also it’s a lot easier to tank as a Rev when your dps rotation is 1 1 1 compared to an engie’s complicated one. That’s my gut feeling, we’ll see.

Terra.8571:

I’ve personally got a sneaky feeling tanky Rev’s could be a good choice.

Engineer damage is almost entirely condition based – you lose like 1500 DPS swapping from full Sinister to full Dire, leaving you at around 18k DPS with 23k health and 3500 armor.

With balance as it is, at least for this encounter it’s clear that the best build is 1 warrior + 4 revenant + 4 engineer + 1 druid, or if you want to be super conservative 1 warrior + 3/4 revenant + 3/4 engineer + 2 druids. Anything else is getting cute.

Ensign.2189:

Terra.8571:

I’ve personally got a sneaky feeling tanky Rev’s could be a good choice.

Engineer damage is almost entirely condition based – you lose like 1500 DPS swapping from full Sinister to full Dire, leaving you at around 18k DPS with 23k health and 3500 armor.

With balance as it is, at least for this encounter it’s clear that the best build is 1 warrior + 4 revenant + 4 engineer + 1 druid, or if you want to be super conservative 1 warrior + 3/4 revenant + 3/4 engineer + 2 druids. Anything else is getting cute.

Don’t disagree this is probably optimal/ close to it for a party composition. I was just trying to point out the 1 tank (and you will only need 1 by the looks of it), the choice for who tanks between engie and rev, there’s a strong case for Rev, primarily because of better defences/ mitigation but also it’s easier rotation wise. The engie may lose slightly less dps from taking full rabid but zerker/cavalier rev will lose only 200 or so power points so too won;t lose a huge amount of dps.

I think as a whole, we both agree rev’s, engie’s and 1 druid have roles. It’s a little to early to speculate on the whole team until we see a few more bosses. Anyways, I don;t want to detract this thread away from thieves and raid any more.

I didn’t even think of the alacrity from chrono and venom sharing. See that is what I’m talking about. I think the possibilities of things that can be pulled off are endless. Once again I am looking for a group of folks looking to get into raiding and the higher tier fractals.

I’ve been wondering about thief’s role in raids myself lately. WP mentioned that blinds weren’t quite as useful against the Vale guardian but there was talk about breakbars though so maybe S/P thief would see some use after all? Boon stripping via Steal? Stealth ressing? Thief doesn’t exactly have any viable healing options either so pure dps as always? Or condi perhaps as suggested by others on this thread. Is there even a justification to bring a thief over any other profession? The way I see it, revenant and engineer could fill pure dps and condi roles better than thief :/

knyy.6427:

or just take a sinister engineer which does way more condi dps?

We have to be careful about answering question about what thieves can do in raids with more optimal options for that task. The important question is are thieves good enough to provide the role in question, not if there is something better. If they aren’t good enough, then Arena Net has to be made aware as their stated goal is that all professions can find a role in the soft trinity, just in their unique way.