Guild Wars 2

So after much time of hating thieves.. dying.. lots of dying.. i tried to counter them. (dont tell me how to counter them, just dont waste your time replying), and i literally cannot counter good thieves with whatever build i use. i shouldnt say counter, i mean, beat a thief. i get his life low, he just runs. alright, whatever. but that same thief will keep harassing me, ill get his life low, rinse and repeat. alright so i guess thieves are meant to be able to do that. its okay, its an intended class mechanic. i understand that. but.. every single thief i have ever ran into runs full berzerker gear. (or the %5 exception of condition thieves). Wow, when i started to think about that, it finally clicked. THIEVES CANT DO ANYTHING OTHER THAN THAT TO BE RELIABLE!!!!!!!!
why are theives forced into always going full berszerker?? because no thief can be a bunker build. Its not about dodging that makes you bunker, so dont tell me “yeah, thieves can tank if they dodge”, not at all. when a theif takes damage, it is pretty high no matter what. they can run the most toughness possible and still take 5k from somone. (which is half of their life pool almost) So, arenanet, if you will, rework the thief so that other thief builds will become reliable. so tha ti dont have to always run into a berszerker thief. its okay to run into a full berszerker build here and there for some classes, because, frankly %100 of any other class is much much more diverted into different stat usage. The thief? mostly every thief is berszerker. Can we agree on that? can arena net please make the thief more reliable with other builds so that i can finally fight a bunker thief, or more condition thieves, (ect). The same old berserker thief is (A)annoying if theyre good or (B)boring if theyre bad.

Let me ask you a question: other than condition builds, why would anyone run anything other than berserker?

Bunker Thieves aren’t bunkers because they wear Soldier’s or Clerics, it just depends on the play style – such is the nature of the class. With stealth I don’t need high vitality or toughness, but am still able to avoid lots of damage.

My Thief is wearing Berserker + Cavaliers (since it can be bought with Karma) and she has a lot of sustainability with high sustained damage, simply because of how I play and trait (D/P)

It’s like asking why people wear berserker gear for CoF speed runs – if you are able not to die with berserker gear, why wear anything else?

Edit: Evidently the solution is to nerf stealth and buff other forms of defenses. With stealth around there is absolutely 0 reason to build tanky. But yes, I agree that most Thieves are berserker, in the same way that most CoF P1 farming warriors are berserker too. There’s just no reason not to.

This^

Couldn’t have said it any better myself man.

The truest thief problem is the issue of build diversity, or in this case the lack thereof.

The s/d and signet buffs were a step in a right direction. We just need more mobility on p/p , maybe a clean up of certain utilities, by which I mean bring them up so they can bring as much as our other ones ( refuge, shadow step, etc)

And make some traits offer more to certain skills (traps, tricks, etc)

berserker gear is squishy thief and high dmg
PVT gear is a squishy thief and low dmg
carrion gear is a squishy thief and low dmg
valkyrie gear is a squishy thief and good/high dmg
soldiers gear is a squishy thief and low dmg
clerics gear is a squishy thief and low dmg
rampagers gear is squishy thief and good/high dmg

i play a bunkerish build in spvp and berserker gear type thief in wvw. have videos to show each if need.

DAMAGE AVOIDANCE:
d/p is about 50% stealth 50% blinds
s/d is 20 % stealth 80% dodge
p/d is 20% gear 80% stealth

anyone can be hit in stealth but no player in stealth can attack another making it a neutral state at best (unless condi build)……granted you manage to dodge all the opponents continued attack or lucky post stealth attacks.

i notice the higher the lvl of talent in opponents it matters greatly what is used. thieves if making 1 mistake should die or close to it when wearing berserkers … excluding 1 v 1 scenarios bc those are irrelevant to most if not all areas of pvp.

i actually ran a test in comparing (on video and posted) a thief with a 30 30 0 0 10 build and another thief with a 0 0 30 10 30 build and both with full zerk gear/accs. the 2nd build(more defensive) produces hits that average 715dmg per hit (used coyotes as a control) and the 1st (more offensive) build produces and average hit of 1545dmg per hit. thats a 55% difference in average hit. that is a total of 8300 dmg over 10 hits (about 8 seconds) aka an average of 1037dmg per second you are doing less just according to build.

This leaves you 3 choices:
1) Forced into Offensive traits + Berserker gear to keep dmg really high
2) Forced into Defensive traits + Carrion gear to go full condi/hp
3) Accept the 55% in dmg cut and pray you dont run into large groups and/or have enough juice to finish every class.

Disclaimer : All the above is opinion other than the stats which are from a video that was a controlled experiment . Also keep in mind that the thieves generally like high dmg to match the low defense low hp and low/no boons and no invulnerbility and no blocks and the medium armor facets of their class. if they had good/decent hp/defense then they could afford to tone down dps.

The Game Slayer.7632:

why are theives forced into always going full berszerker??

Thief defenses are skill based, not stat based, so you shouldn’t be surprised when stats fail to help thief defenses.

God, I sure do hope Arenanet doesn’t read all the silly suggestions posted by people like the OP. My gear is a mixture of Berserk, Valkyrie, and Cavalier. Giving me 1350 toughness, 108% crit damage, and 45% critical chance (+5% if health > 90%, +7% if side or behind). The rest falls on how good you use your skills. If you are a thief getting harrased by another thief, you can simply use shadow refuge and run away if you don’t like it, as simple as that -_-.

I run valk armor, zerk everything else

@OP full zerker d/d thieves are super easy to kill. I can’t even think of an easier class and build to take down. You’re making false claims about thief without ever trying the class or build options. And yea, I’m going to tell you how to counter them because your method is all wrong. Beating a thief is like beating a mesmer. Your build is less important than your understanding of the class (which you clearly have none). You have to know it’s escape skills and the big cooldowns.

Once you know these, and you’re watching what the thief you’re fighting has used, after they have used certain high CD skills, you can know with 100% certainty, that if you catch them with X skill, and they don’t dodge, they will have no options left except to die. And that’s how you counter a thief: understand the class.

Regarding gear, there are gear choices other than full zerker that are actually better for the weapon set… Even D/D and D/P can run full valk with a huge boost in survivablity and get almost the same damage relying entirely on 100% BS crits (with Hidden Killer).

Unfortunately I ran full zerker gear the first week or 2 playing a thief. Every other build I’ve tried since then was so much stronger because there’s such a huge increase in EHP by going even a little more defensive. It’s relevant to note I don’t run D/D though.

Travlane.5948:

i actually ran a test in comparing (on video and posted) a thief with a 30 30 0 0 10 build and another thief with a 0 0 30 10 30 build and both with full zerk gear/accs. the 2nd build(more defensive) produces hits that average 715dmg per hit (used coyotes as a control) and the 1st (more offensive) build produces and average hit of 1545dmg per hit. thats a 55% difference in average hit. that is a total of 8300 dmg over 10 hits (about 8 seconds) aka an average of 1037dmg per second you are doing less just according to build.

This leaves you 3 choices:
1) Forced into Offensive traits + Berserker gear to keep dmg really high
2) Forced into Defensive traits + Carrion gear to go full condi/hp
3) Accept the 55% in dmg cut and pray you dont run into large groups and/or have enough juice to finish every class.

Wat? That doesn’t follow at all. You tested that offensive thief traits make a huge difference in damage (I assume for D/D because that’s the only case where I can imagine those percentages are true). Then somehow you conclude that, offensive stats are identical in importance to offensive traits?…

That doesn’t follow at all: the stats are the least important part of the trait tree. The only case where you need super heavy offensive traits and gear is D/D because it’s all burst and if burst fails or you get caught, its down in 1 combo. D/P can’t even do full offensive traits because it needs initiative for it’s offense.

Just switching a mix of knights and valk gear (keeping zerker earrings) gives roughly a 45% increase in effective HP to a thief. Again, the damage decrease will depend on the weapon choice but for S/D, for example, it’s very small. Investing in some vit and toughness, you will always get more % increase in ‘effective HP’ than loss in damage, unless of course its a gear choice that doesn’t have power as the main stat… (except for crit procs, power is almost twice as strong for increasing damage as precision, even for high crit damage). Obviously condition thieves have to go carrion because that’s their only legitimate choice so I won’t even go into that.

It’s true that most of a thief’s defense is not from stats and rather, from skills+traits but maxing full offense is very inefficient stat-wise (in terms of effective HP gain vs damage lost).

@zephyrus, you are not reading anything i am saying. at the end i said this exactly “The same old berserker thief is (A)annoying if theyre good or (B)boring if theyre bad.” They are boring because theyre so easy to kill, or they run away when they cant do anything. Im sorry you couldnt make that assumption, i thought that was pretty obvious, my bad. Yes, while many thieves will run a mix of things to help their hp and what not, the end result will always be high crit damage and crit %. That is the goal of almost every thief when it comes to armor.

Tulisin.6945:

The Game Slayer.7632:

why are theives forced into always going full berszerker??

Thief defenses are skill based, not stat based, so you shouldn’t be surprised when stats fail to help thief defenses.

Exactly, why should it be that way? isnt that kind of counterintuitive??

The Game Slayer.7632:

Tulisin.6945:

The Game Slayer.7632:

why are theives forced into always going full berszerker??

Thief defenses are skill based, not stat based, so you shouldn’t be surprised when stats fail to help thief defenses.

Exactly, why should it be that way? isnt that kind of counterintuitive??

It’s not really that stats don’t help you survive more – they do but it’s not really a lot. Stealth is just so good that you don’t need anything else.

Let’s look at another class – the D/D elementalist. Why do so many of them build bunker stats? Surely running 3 cantrips and having lots of heals is enough? It’s certainly more heals than any Thief, and more stun breakers than any Thief. They even have on-demand protection from Earth attunement. Yet there are very few berserker D/D elementalists, and lots of berserker Thieves.

The answer is that stealth is just too good. I can run berserker because in small fights, it is a guaranteed target drop – why chase that Thief that may or may not be there, when you can just hit that (whatever other class). In 1v1s it lets me control what happens – if my health is low, I just don’t attack until the 30 point stealth trait gets it back up. D/D elementalists don’t have this luxury so you see all of them build tanky. It’s become even more pronounced because the one thing that could rival stealth’s all-encompassing defense – their mobility – was cut by a lot with the RTL nerf.

As long as we have such easy access to stealth or stealth works the way it currently does, there will never be any reason to build anything that is not berserker. None at all. By the way, you kind of see this with Mesmers too.

*Condition damage is an exception, of course.

Edit: Actually a little toughness and vitality isn’t too bad, since you’re bound to get in bad situations and it might help. However stacking large amounts of them is pointless.

They QQ cuz they’re Baaawwhhhhd.

Zephyrus.9680

Travlane.5948:

i actually ran a test in comparing (on video and posted) a thief with a 30 30 0 0 10 build and another thief with a 0 0 30 10 30 build and both with full zerk gear/accs. the 2nd build(more defensive) produces hits that average 715dmg per hit (used coyotes as a control) and the 1st (more offensive) build produces and average hit of 1545dmg per hit. thats a 55% difference in average hit. that is a total of 8300 dmg over 10 hits (about 8 seconds) aka an average of 1037dmg per second you are doing less just according to build.

This leaves you 3 choices:
1) Forced into Offensive traits + Berserker gear to keep dmg really high
2) Forced into Defensive traits + Carrion gear to go full condi/hp
3) Accept the 55% in dmg cut and pray you dont run into large groups and/or have enough juice to finish every class.

Wat? That doesn’t follow at all. You tested that offensive thief traits make a huge difference in damage (I assume for D/D because that’s the only case where I can imagine those percentages are true). Then somehow you conclude that, offensive stats are identical in importance to offensive traits?…

That doesn’t follow at all: the stats are the least important part of the trait tree. The only case where you need super heavy offensive traits and gear is D/D because it’s all burst and if burst fails or you get caught, its down in 1 combo. D/P can’t even do full offensive traits because it needs initiative for it’s offense.

Just switching a mix of knights and valk gear (keeping zerker earrings) gives roughly a 45% increase in effective HP to a thief. Again, the damage decrease will depend on the weapon choice but for S/D, for example, it’s very small. Investing in some vit and toughness, you will always get more % increase in ‘effective HP’ than loss in damage, unless of course its a gear choice that doesn’t have power as the main stat… (except for crit procs, power is almost twice as strong for increasing damage as precision, even for high crit damage). Obviously condition thieves have to go carrion because that’s their only legitimate choice so I won’t even go into that.

It’s true that most of a thief’s defense is not from stats and rather, from skills+traits but maxing full offense is very inefficient stat-wise (in terms of effective HP gain vs damage lost).[/quote]

i had 14.8k with my zerk gear (some HP in there so technically it wasnt true zerk. if it were the % wouldnt be 55 it would be somewhere around 70% less damage) my point is everything is soooo important with thief when dealing dmg…..no matter if u use soldiers armor and 30 in SA…ur still squishy. i could test that to prove it if you like :P but i hope my word is just taken at this point. took so long to do that first video. ok so the next step would be to test soldiers gear and a more “defensive” set of traitlines. im willing to bet theres an 75-80% difference in damage to full zerker and only about 11-12% less damage incoming. so if you hit for 1800 every hit in zerker with full offensive trait lines and take 1000 incoming dmg with that armor per hit……then if you compare it to soldiers with a defensive setup which should be donig about 80%less dmg = 3kittenage outgoing per hit now with the toughness formula im guessing its a total of aroun 12% less incoming dmg which isnt bad but its equal to 880 incoming dmg instead of 1000. and since soldiers has the same hp….its a net difference of 120 dmg per hit of 1200 per 10 hits.

so whats all this mumbo jumbo mean?

it means if you wear soldiers with defnsive setup you are losing 1440 dmg per hit and only gaining -120 incoming damage as the trade off. question is…. is THAT amount of outgoing damage worth THAT amount of dropped incoming damage?

Sunflowers.1729:

The Game Slayer.7632:

Tulisin.6945:

The Game Slayer.7632:

why are theives forced into always going full berszerker??

Thief defenses are skill based, not stat based, so you shouldn’t be surprised when stats fail to help thief defenses.

Exactly, why should it be that way? isnt that kind of counterintuitive??

It’s not really that stats don’t help you survive more – they do but it’s not really a lot. Stealth is just so good that you don’t need anything else.

Let’s look at another class – the D/D elementalist. Why do so many of them build bunker stats? Surely running 3 cantrips and having lots of heals is enough? It’s certainly more heals than any Thief, and more stun breakers than any Thief. They even have on-demand protection from Earth attunement. Yet there are very few berserker D/D elementalists, and lots of berserker Thieves.

The answer is that stealth is just too good. I can run berserker because in small fights, it is a guaranteed target drop – why chase that Thief that may or may not be there, when you can just hit that (whatever other class). In 1v1s it lets me control what happens – if my health is low, I just don’t attack until the 30 point stealth trait gets it back up. D/D elementalists don’t have this luxury so you see all of them build tanky. It’s become even more pronounced because the one thing that could rival stealth’s all-encompassing defense – their mobility – was cut by a lot with the RTL nerf.

As long as we have such easy access to stealth or stealth works the way it currently does, there will never be any reason to build anything that is not berserker. None at all. By the way, you kind of see this with Mesmers too.

*Condition damage is an exception, of course.

Edit: Actually a little toughness and vitality isn’t too bad, since you’re bound to get in bad situations and it might help. However stacking large amounts of them is pointless.

i pretty much agree here. but i have one small perception different. i think the change in total defense/decrease in dmg from stats IS SOOOOO BAD that it makes stealth more worthwhile ….not the other way around. only defensive trait worth investing for thieves is HP. well you could mix a lil toughness in spvp MAYBE bc of the huge across the board drop in dmg for all classes but generally not worth it. just hp.

Travlane.5948:

i had 14.8k with my zerk gear (some HP in there so technically it wasnt true zerk. if it were the % wouldnt be 55 it would be somewhere around 70% less damage) my point is everything is soooo important with thief when dealing dmg…..no matter if u use soldiers armor and 30 in SA…ur still squishy. i could test that to prove it if you like :P but i hope my word is just taken at this point. took so long to do that first video. ok so the next step would be to test soldiers gear and a more “defensive” set of traitlines. im willing to bet theres an 75-80% difference in damage to full zerker and only about 11-12% less damage incoming. so if you hit for 1800 every hit in zerker with full offensive trait lines and take 1000 incoming dmg with that armor per hit……then if you compare it to soldiers with a defensive setup which should be donig about 80%less dmg = 3kittenage outgoing per hit now with the toughness formula im guessing its a total of aroun 12% less incoming dmg which isnt bad but its equal to 880 incoming dmg instead of 1000. and since soldiers has the same hp….its a net difference of 120 dmg per hit of 1200 per 10 hits.

so whats all this mumbo jumbo mean?

it means if you wear soldiers with defnsive setup you are losing 1440 dmg per hit and only gaining -120 incoming damage as the trade off. question is…. is THAT amount of outgoing damage worth THAT amount of dropped incoming damage?

I’m not sure how you’re testing but it’s numerically impossible that you could lose 75-80% damage between zerker and PVT gear… You don’t need any testing, just compare the stat screen on two screenshots. Power is the main stat on both armors and the difference is you’re losing on crit power and crit rate (precision). These don’t account for 75-80% of your damage. You just need to look at the exact crit % and critical power % to see how much you lose.

You’re also quoting specific damage numbers and damage reduction numbers which is meaningless. The way armor works is if you double your current level, you take half the damage. In theory, if you could double both your armor and HP, you would have 400% more “effective HP”. Of course you don’t actually want to double them but the idea is, the lower defense you have, the more each additional point does for you. You’re saying it’s the opposite which is just not true.

Thieves that go full zerker and 30 30 x x x are bad (and only D/D or maybe P/P would do that). Not necessarily because they lack skill but because their build greatly limits what they can do (mostly 1v1 other zerkers). I think you can ask any experienced thief who has actually tried other builds and is at least semi-good. Just because a build happens to be the most common doesn’t mean it’s the best setup.

Unlike the OP, I enjoy fighting glass thieves though. Specially D/D.

My thief always does WvW naked. I get a +2 second stun from all attackers as they sit there and do a “WTF?” moment behind their comps.

That short amount of time is all I need to, destroy them…

;)

the only gripe i have with thief’s is the build (which i think is signet based?) can literally two shot people having said that i think the thief as a whole is fine and in a pretty good spot, sure annoying to catch but it can defiantly be done.

any thief worth there salt though, no matter the spec will give you trouble, and rightly so, what good or fun would it be if they didn’t?!

FinalPatriot you got a +1 for making me laugh.

I don’t know about you guys, but I like to do different kind of contents without needing different gear stats. Having less than 1200 toughness will make any pve content annoying, especially dungeons and fractals. I seriously hate the feeling when I get one shotted for missing a dodge, but with a 1350 toughness, I have second chances

The Game Slayer.7632:

@zephyrus, you are not reading anything i am saying. at the end i said this exactly “The same old berserker thief is (A)annoying if theyre good or (B)boring if theyre bad.” They are boring because theyre so easy to kill, or they run away when they cant do anything. Im sorry you couldnt make that assumption, i thought that was pretty obvious, my bad. Yes, while many thieves will run a mix of things to help their hp and what not, the end result will always be high crit damage and crit %. That is the goal of almost every thief when it comes to armor.

Actually I responded to your claim that all thieves run full zerker except for condition.

Here’s a thief that does not run what you’re saying (from a week of clips):

It’s all knight and valk gear, prioritizing armor over HP. I actually improved on the defense and offense in the build after that point with divinity runes, ascended accessories, and a few gear switches. I haven’t even tried this build since the sword #3 boon stealing buff since I’ve been running conditions in the last few weeks. It’s not bunker-status armor and definitely not HP but it’s a bruser of a thief that can survive any class’s spike damage as well as prolonged 1v2 and 1v3 (1vX) engagements but with enough damage to get work done.

You’re only right that thief can’t legitimately go full PvT/clerics or a 2/3s defense stat gear. It’s because they don’t have the support or team healing skills to justify it. But that’s why there’s warrior right? 40k HP with massive armor and condition immunity? Check.

Zephyrus.9680:

The Game Slayer.7632:

@zephyrus, you are not reading anything i am saying. at the end i said this exactly “The same old berserker thief is (A)annoying if theyre good or (B)boring if theyre bad.” They are boring because theyre so easy to kill, or they run away when they cant do anything. Im sorry you couldnt make that assumption, i thought that was pretty obvious, my bad. Yes, while many thieves will run a mix of things to help their hp and what not, the end result will always be high crit damage and crit %. That is the goal of almost every thief when it comes to armor.

Actually I responded to your claim that all thieves run full zerker except for condition.

Here’s a thief that does not run what you’re saying (from a week of clips):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Bs3Q65jFLk

It’s all knight and valk gear, prioritizing armor over HP. I actually improved on the defense and offense in the build after that point with divinity runes, ascended accessories, and a few gear switches. I haven’t even tried this build since the sword #3 boon stealing buff since I’ve been running conditions in the last few weeks. It’s not bunker-status armor and definitely not HP but it’s a bruser of a thief that can survive any class’s spike damage as well as prolonged 1v2 and 1v3 (1vX) engagements but with enough damage to get work done.

You’re only right that thief can’t legitimately go full PvT/clerics or a 2/3s defense stat gear. It’s because they don’t have the support or team healing skills to justify it. But that’s why there’s warrior right? 40k HP with massive armor and condition immunity? Check.

I am fumbling on my words, i am sorry. i shouldve said “the goal of every thief (except condi) is to have high burst to get their opponent down.”

QQ isn’t about thief too strong; it’s about them not being as fun to fight against as other professions.

The reason people QQ thieves (and mesmers as well) is because they punish new players the most for not understanding those classes. To a new player the thief instantly teleported to them, vanished, then downed him quickly. His friends see this and go to help him… but the thief vanishes again only to appear once he’s been spiked.

To a vet the thief used steal + c&d… the vet responds by blinding/blocking… or failing that prepares to counter the backstab. He knows what’s coming next and how to deal with that situation. Say the thief manages to down him and stealths… his vet friends see this and use knockbacks to counter the incoming spike and res their friend.

Etc etc etc.