Guild Wars 2

Hey all, Arctu here. I’d just like to share a little misconception that’s been going around recently…

… And that would be the idea that good S/D play is a #3 spam. For the purposes of this thread, I’m going to discuss Jumper’s now-popular S/D build (0/30/0/30/10, both S/D).

So, let’s get started on how not to play the weapon set, as that’s the major point of this post:

How not to play S/D, and why

As the title of this post suggests, spamming #3, FS, is a suboptimal way of playing S/D. Why is that?

Well, for one thing, there are damage coefficients relative to initiative cost. FS has a coefficient of .75, which is fairly low (in comparison, the first and second in the auto-attack chain have coefs of .8). However, FS does maintain evade for its entire duration. However, LS takes half a second to cast and has no evade on it. LS does, however, have a fairly high coefficient of 1.5.

Now, people often maintain that the sword thief has “perma-evade”. However, given that FS had a half second cast, alongside LS, this clearly isn’t true. As a matter of fact, assuming an infinite amount of #3 spam, consecutively, a player will only be evading 50% of the time.

“Only?”

Well, the thing is, as we saw earlier, FS does half the damage that LS does. In fact, you’d be better off simply auto-attacking and chasing your enemies than hitting for the amount of damage FS does ever half second. So, really, #3’s damage comes from LS, not FS. Why does this matter?

Let’s take the economic law of increasing costs: as you increase output, you have to pay increasingly more and more in order to maintain such a rate of output. Now, for builds like Jumper’s (which tend to be the most hated ones), people often argue that evasion is the only method of defense for the build; even Jumper admits to this. Now, given that he attempts to maximize output of evades from FS, as it turns out, he has to sacrifice a lot of other things. In fact, in the case of his build, some of the things he gives up to maintain evades are extreme. For example, he runs no range or AoE, just a single melee set. Furthermore, he has to dedicate 30 trait points directly to maintaining his initiative, and one of the methods of initiative maintenance, in his case, is something I refer to as “active initiative regeneration”, that is, initiative regeneration that requires the player to partake in certain procedures to ensure that it happens. This is opposed to passive regeneration, in which the player doesn’t have to do anything; the method of regeneration simply comes by itself. Obviously, passive regeneration is preferable to active (less to focus on; also, less sacrifices, in practical use). In practicality, the difference ends up being that active tends to recover more, and there are more active skills than passive. Because there simply are not enough passive skills for Jumper to rely on, he ends up also having to take some active regeneration (specifically via Acro XII), some of which I classify as “bad active regeneration” (for reasons unnecessary to explain here).

What else does Jumper give up? Well, due to the strict play style of his build, he lacks flexibility that can often be decisive in tPvP, where positional and tactical play are not given enough credit for how clearly powerful they have proven to be on the battlefield. But there’s one thing I haven’t mentioned yet, and that’s damage. In order to keep up evasion via FS, when he has LS up, he has to pop it as quickly as possible so that he can perform FS again. Because LS has no gap closing on it, a half-second cast, a short range, and a very specific AoE, this often means that Jumper has to sacrifice LS into space just so that he can use FS again, simply because intelligent enemies are always moving and can get out of the way of LS, which, as previously mentioned, is #3’s main source of damage on S/D.

This ends up causing a damage deficiency for Jumper, which has had the unfortunate effect of causing him to boost up his offensive stats greatly. In doing so, he sacrifices defensive stats, forcing him to jump back onto using evasion as his main defense, and ultimately causing a self-reinforcing cycle. And all of this is really because Jumper has a bad #3-spamming habit that is often overlooked by shout casters, thieves, and the common QQ’er. He sacrifices damage, which forces him to give up some defense for damage, which causes him to rely on evade even more, which causes him to spam FS more and reinforce the problem. This doesn’t make Jumper a bad player, but it does explain why #3 spamming is inefficient.

Also, to borrow something else I’ve said (explaining how to hit an evading target using LS/FS, discussing previously mentioned things, etc.):

Arganthium.5638:

cottage.3274:

Med.6150:

cottage.3274:

the fs/ls spam build can do 7 in a row before using roll for initiative and can do it with little time for recovery before you can do it again.

Bold claim that has no factual basis. It’s mathematically impossible to do 7 FS/LS in a full cycle.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQRAsY8YlYmSOHcy7E/5Ex2jdKUe6VgsdP4qVrKA-TwAg0CnIKSVkrITRyisFNoYRx+j5HA

feel free do try it out.
it’s mathematically possible and have factual basis not so hard to test 1 min in the mists will show you.

So, let’s put it this way.

Jumper’s build has virtually 0 range. That means that he pretty much has to run up to enemies to bash them with his sword. That takes time, and given that you have some small degree of tactical and positional knowledge (I guess you don’t from your QQ’ing), that means that you can simply smack the build from a range for a few seconds, and then force Jumper to fight on your own terms. Of course, all of this assumes that he doesn’t start with iStrike, but all that does is cut down the running time; you still get the positional upper hand, should you choose to take it.

Furthermore, because of his limited range, spacing allies out in battles pretty much allows you to destroy him from a range. Because he has virtually no toughness, or for that matter, defensive stats in general, even a single hit on him can be devastating. Furthermore, channeled auto attacks that do damage over time (like an S/D ele’s lightning #1, or spatial surge) are pretty much guaranteed to hit Jumper, due to the nature of the attacks. Also, ranged AoE skills (marks, laid down during the LS animation, which also grant fantastic disabling effects; Chaos Storm, ele Fire Staff #2, Frozen Ground, etc) are also guaranteed hits against Jumper.

And of course, none of this is considering that FS has a low damage coefficient, that Jumper often has to waste LS into space because he’s too far away from enemies, and that LS has a long enough cast to be taken advantage of, horribly easily.

Summary
- FS has a low damage coefficient, making LS the main damage dealer with S/D’s number 3 skill
- FS/LS, alone, can maintain evade only 50% of the time. See above quote from myself to take advantage of this.
- LS must often be wasted into space in order to maintain #3 spam, which causes lowered damage, artificially increasing the benefit of offensive stats being taken, which furthermore cause more dependency on 3-spamming, and so on. Thus, 3-spam often becomes the only method of defense for these thieves. Even if the thief chooses not to take offensive stats, by spamming 3, the player by definition will have to waste LS multiple times just so that they can continue spamming the skill, and they can’t position well if they don’t give themselves time to target LS well.
- in order to allow 3-spamming, a player has to give up increasingly more and more, and, in the case of some builds, this can be extremely lethal to the 3-spammer.

Arctu, signing out.

You appear to be forgetting shadow return and the very large number of dodges in jumpers build as well as the fact that LS can be saved. Hate to say it but your post is so far off base. I’ve played with jumper a LOT. He doesn’t die much at all, even in 2v1s, and can still gibs things like a beast.

A lot of text to argue a mute point. If S/D is a misconceived weapon set and not overly strong then why do 99% of people run S/D in both weapon sets? S/D provides absurd up-time, your evades are endless, and you can easily take out any profession with your endless initiative and gap closers

Dont you feel theres something wrong when “only” 50% evade time comes from spamming a single skill without counting the near infinite dodging that build has?
Besides that i dont really understand..So your point is that using 3 for 100% of the time is not effective. Wow big news.. :P
Its funny crying about it..You know everyone can go in jumpers twitch page and see for themselves what exactly a topplayer can do with it.You should watch him to learn a thing or 2 :P

Also, I think it is irrilevant thatn spamming 3 is not as effective as playing S/D properly when you can get good results also when spamming 3, which is the real issue.

The build loses some of its cheesiness without 3 spam, but S/D was always strong outside bunker killing. It had extremely high sustaine from the auto, which also crippled and applied weakness, and against someone without stability you could stunlock rather successfully.

Shadowstep and stealth are out of control. Those abilities need cooldowns, not initiative use. And quite frankly that utility is also way overbudget. A double stun breaker, teleport, that also cures conditions. A whole host of classes would kill to have heals and utilities half as good as what thieves get.

shhh, don’t tell them not to spam 3… it’s bad enough with just this.

Seriously though, immune to immobilize, immune to stuns, can pretty much avoid all damage due to always having some sort of evade up…

I get a half second window when they’re using their unblockable boon stealing attack, the question is what do I even do with this half second? Lets go over the list…

1) I stun him, he hits 2

2) I immobilize him, he hits 2

3) I use some sort of high damage ability in the middle of the first stage of flanking strike and hope that he is legitimately spamming 3 and doesn’t dodge. This works occasionally, but he can just teleport and reset the fight immediately after the big hit.

4) I spam AoE and hope he’s too dumb to avoid the big red circles.

If somebody could give me a legitimate way to actually kill a s/d thief that isn’t just spamming 3 I’m all ears. All the role questions of this builds viability aside, having a build that’s just unkillable that can also kill you is ridiculous to me (I realize some other classes also have builds of this nature, they shouldn’t exist either).

It’s not just 3 spam.

it’s 2 spam when you get cc’d/need to get away, spam weapon swap to second s/d set on cooldown for the energy sigils, and spam your endless dodges while your initiative regenerates because you get 50% of your endurance back when you dodge (wtf).

With that said it’s not like it’s unbeatable. You can deal with it when you learn it, just like anything else. It’s just a silly play style because the 2 and 3 skills do everything and the other skills don’t do anything for you.

It absolutely obliterates certain things 1v1, but this game is great because you don’t have to put yourself in these situations. In a team environment you can use your team to peel/pressure the s/d thief. It opens up so many options that you have to deal with it.

But yeah, it needs to be changed. Other builds need to as well.

Explain it to me then. I’ve beaten this build, plenty of times really and have a way that I deal with them with each build that I play. These methods however all require them to play poorly however as at any point they can 2 their way out.

Try playing s/d in duels with better pvp players. You will realize its not OP like ppl saying on this forum. That is first thief build wich actually can be a “little” help in tpvp and because of that this s/d should be nerfed?Thief has no decent burst anymore. Pro teams dont wanna have a thief in parties!!

Walk to the white circle, drop a cc after flanking strike hits. Every option he has after that requires him to reposition, or to start blowing huge amounts of initiative or dodges on strikes that don’t get him out of range of your pet/symbols/chaosstorm/whatever.

Not all specs will outlast the initiative and endurance, but you’ll neutralize a lot of his spec’s mitigation and, at the very least, set up teammates who are roaming towards you. Unlike D/P, S/D has a much harder time disengaging from a 2v1.

In team fights, the build’s main weaknesses revolve around how vulnerable the thief is when he attempts to use LS. Many teams aren’t running aggressive 25/30/x spec thieves anymore, but they can swoop into fights and pressure an S/D straight off the guardian nearly instantly, then resume ranged pressure. Additionally, skills like black powder, chaos storm, well of darkness, and any of the movement impairing fields severely lower the pressure that S/D is going to perform on the individuals within the area.

Much like grenade-based condi cleave forced teams to think about projectile mitigating abilities, S/D thieves force teams to think about melee damage mitigation. Which used to be common, but then warriors kinda got removed from the game.

I am aware of counters in a team setting. That was not the question.

Oh dear. Typing walls of text to defend a cheesy build that practically everyone recognises as being too strong, (spam two skills for the take-down,) too frustrating to play against, (Infiltrator’s Strike for 3 Initiative,) and overly-popular, (which tells it’s own story.)

Poor S/D Thieves; always the victim, never the victor. zzzzz

thief need another resource, maby called “exhausted” and all spells give +10 or something like this and max is 100 (per sec this resource lowered by 5)

pressing 2x SAME spell give double pointz (3x triple and so on)

when reach 50% they lower initiative regen by 50%
when 75% they lower initiative regen by 75%
and 100% give 0 initiative regen + slow the thief for 10 sec than the resource reset complete

something like this would fix this brainless spam and would give them a skillcurve with no skillcap

or just higher the initiative cost from most spells^^

Indeed. After 28th June you will say Poor trap Thieves and again Poor venom condi Thieves = never ending story.

Romek.4201:

or just higher the initiative cost from most spells

Et voilà !

pressing 2x SAME spell give double pointz (3x triple and so on)

While this sounds extreme it actually seems like a half decent idea to me in principle (repeatedly using the same skill would increase its initiative cost). Maybe if each time a skill was used it’s initiative cost would increase by 1 for 3s or something of the sort? Just throwing out random numbers, but you get the idea.

Indeed. After 28th June you will say Poor trap Thieves and again Poor venom condi Thieves = never ending story.

Result of a poorly designed system (initiative). Balancing a class with no cooldowns is next to impossible leaving thieves in a constant state of too strong or too weak (though frankly, thieves have enjoyed far more too strong time in comparison to too weak time).

Romek.4201:

thief need another resource, maby called “exhausted” and all spells give +10 or something like this and max is 100 (per sec this resource lowered by 5)

pressing 2x SAME spell give double pointz (3x triple and so on)

when reach 50% they lower initiative regen by 50%
when 75% they lower initiative regen by 75%
and 100% give 0 initiative regen + slow the thief for 10 sec than the resource reset complete

something like this would fix this brainless spam and would give them a skillcurve with no skillcap

or just higher the initiative cost from most spells^^

I like this idea. Consecutive usage of a certain skill increases initiative cost by 1.

Romek.4201:

pressing 2x SAME spell give double pointz (3x triple and so on)

Define “pressing 2x SAME spell”.

PS : are you aware that Flanking Strike spam weaves between two skills which are Flanking Strike => Larcenous Strike => Flanking Strike => Larcenous Strike ?

Jonwar.9205:

*Result of a poorly designed system (initiative). * Balancing a class with no cooldowns is next to impossible leaving thieves in a constant state of too strong or too weak (though frankly, thieves have enjoyed far more too strong time in comparison to too weak time).

I concur.

One thing that makes my blood boil is seeing a Jumper Thief. And they’re in every hotjoin. Don’t tell me the “go play tPVP rather than hotjoin” crap since what I wanted was a fun game both in competitive and hotjoin PVP. Please tell me you enjoy fighting against a jumper using any other class.

Thieves can easily reset a fight thru stealthing and restealthing. They are hard to pin down due to the evades and stealths. When they get revealed, they’re almost fully healed again. They can rinse and repeat the jumping-jumping-stealthing-jumping mode while you blow off your CDs.

(Yes, you’re right, you smell a QQ in this post. You can finally reply L2P noob.)

But they are not that OP. Against thieves, I lose some, I win some. Yes, thieves can be killed. If you can’t pin a revealed thief down, just attack randomly in all directions and lay down AOEs on your feet. Then you might be lucky to see a downed thief.

However, my point is that they are the most frustrating thing to fight against. Second is BM Ranger. And third is Mesmur with any build. IMO.

Either improve the initiative system in any way reasonable (I have no suggestions as of now) or do something about stealthing. (If you’re gonna argue about the uselessness of stealth in capping nodes which is the primary goal of PVP, don’t. Just don’t.)

Honestly a better solution is to remove the initiative system all together. It won’t happen, but the irritating play style of every thief build is not the fault of the players, but rather the class design. The cost of action for a thief is higher than any other class in this game because of the initiative system, and so for maximum effect it necessitates choosing to spam the single most effective combination for the weapon set. If you re-designed to eliminate this dynamic and just gave thieves CD’s like everyone else then the problem would be solved. Of course you would have to completely redesign from the ground up, but they already have to do that with Warrior and Necro anyway, so why not.

Myrmidian Eudoros.4671:

Honestly a better solution is to remove the initiative system all together. It won’t happen, but the irritating play style of every thief build is not the fault of the players, but rather the class design. The cost of action for a thief is higher than any other class in this game because of the initiative system, and so for maximum effect it necessitates choosing to spam the single most effective combination for the weapon set. If you re-designed to eliminate this dynamic and just gave thieves CD’s like everyone else then the problem would be solved. Of course you would have to completely redesign from the ground up, but they already have to do that with Warrior and Necro anyway, so why not.

I tend to agree with this. And while they were at it, they could fix spirits … :’(

Ostricheggs.3742:

You appear to be forgetting shadow return and the very large number of dodges in jumpers build as well as the fact that LS can be saved. Hate to say it but your post is so far off base. I’ve played with jumper a LOT. He doesn’t die much at all, even in 2v1s, and can still gibs things like a beast.

You’re missing the point. First, his number of “pure” dodges turns out not to be much, if any different from other classes, save from Withdraw and the second Acro minor. Furthermore, SRet is a spell that even Jumper professes not to use often, likely because of his lack of range putting him at a tactical disadvantage if he did indeed use the skill more often. And, in either case, Jumper doesn’t deal damage while evading or SRet’ing, so the real issue is with enemy animations, really.

Finally, I realize he doesn’t die much. Partially because of things like a lack of focusing him, which is partially due to his lack of dedication to any particular fight or position in general. Either way, that doesn’t invalidate what I said in my self-quote.

Jonwar.9205:

Result of a poorly designed system (initiative). Balancing a class with no cooldowns is next to impossible leaving thieves in a constant state of too strong or too weak (though frankly, thieves have enjoyed far more too strong time in comparison to too weak time).

Basically this. In classes that have cooldowns, you can balance with cooldowns and skills that are more or less good, but will still be used cause they’re still better than the autoattack.
In the thief’s case, “weak” skills can be ignored and you will just spam the best ones.
And you can’t even simply buff the weak ones – give them damage, and people will use just the best one; give them different effects, and you risk giving too much versatility on top of damage capabilities.

Something like that suggestion of increasing initiative cost when used more than one time in a short timeframe would be fine, imho.

Manuhell.2759:

Something like that suggestion of increasing initiative cost when used more than one time in a short timeframe would be fine, imho.

This would decapitate last viable thief builds in pvp.

Manuhell.2759:

Jonwar.9205:

Result of a poorly designed system (initiative). Balancing a class with no cooldowns is next to impossible leaving thieves in a constant state of too strong or too weak (though frankly, thieves have enjoyed far more too strong time in comparison to too weak time).

Basically this. In classes that have cooldowns, you can balance with cooldowns and skills that are more or less good, but will still be used cause they’re still better than the autoattack.
In the thief’s case, “weak” skills can be ignored and you will just spam the best ones.
And you can’t even simply buff the weak ones – give them damage, and people will use just the best one; give them different effects, and you risk giving too much versatility on top of damage capabilities.

Something like that suggestion of increasing initiative cost when used more than one time in a short timeframe would be fine, imho.

Not all of Thief’s weapon sets feature one button spam. A really good example of a well balanced set is Dagger/Pistol. Every single skill is useful and should be used in a fight. It’s not viable to simply spam any of the skills.

D/P is proof that you can balance the skills in a weapon set to the point where every skill is useful (i.e. spamming one button is not the most optimal way to play)

S/D is not bad either. Considering that #5 is situationally useful and that #2 and #3 are actually two skills each and not exactly spammed as many pretend. You should not constantly chain FS into LS because it’s predictable and it’ll cause you to get dodged out of your most important attack. And spamming #2 itself is a stupid mistake so you have to tactically prepare the first #2 and choose the right time to use the second.

I don’t see much usage for #4 though and for good reason : it’s a kind of chasing tool (applies cripple) but S/D already got #2 and #3 to do that job! Also, the attack is such a slow projectile it’ll inevitable fail against a target that is fleeing because it’ll be out of range by the time it connects.

I agree that d/p is a balanced set but every thief here seems to think that it’s underpowered.

Jonwar.9205:

I agree that d/p is a balanced set but every thief here seems to think that it’s underpowered.

Sub-optimal would be a better characterization. S/D is just superior in so many ways that it is difficult to justify going D/P now. If they reverted the changes on Sword, then all thieves would be playing D/P again, and they would be marginalized to a very niche oriented, not always needed role for teams. The current iteration of S/D has enough flexibility/utility that it is just more useful to a team.

stof.9341:

S/D is not bad either. Considering that #5 is situationally useful and that #2 and #3 are actually two skills each and not exactly spammed as many pretend. You should not constantly chain FS into LS because it’s predictable and it’ll cause you to get dodged out of your most important attack. And spamming #2 itself is a stupid mistake so you have to tactically prepare the first #2 and choose the right time to use the second.

I don’t see much usage for #4 though and for good reason : it’s a kind of chasing tool (applies cripple) but S/D already got #2 and #3 to do that job! Also, the attack is such a slow projectile it’ll inevitable fail against a target that is fleeing because it’ll be out of range by the time it connects.

I agree that you should make use of 4 out of 5 skills on the S/D hot bar but spamming 3 is possible and can score you kills. With D/P you would never score a kill by spamming a single button. It just wouldn’t happen.

It’s similar to the Heartseeker spam we had in the early days of GW2. Sure, the good Thieves would make use of all the skills at their disposal but it’s was possible to get kills by just spamming Heartseeker. We have the same issue with S/D right now.

The fact is, FS/LS is imbalanced right now. It might be a simple fix like lowering the damage OR only removing 1 boon at a time OR increasing the initiative but the spec is just too one dimensional right now.

Sub-optimal would be a better characterization. S/D is just superior in so many ways that it is difficult to justify going D/P now. If they reverted the changes on Sword, then all thieves would be playing D/P again, and they would be marginalized to a very niche oriented, not always needed role for teams. The current iteration of S/D has enough flexibility/utility that it is just more useful to a team.

Personally I think the issue is that d/p is much more difficult to play. When I ran into a s/d thief I immediately jumped on my own thief and ran around hotjoin with it for a bit looking for ways that I could counter it. After hitting max individual score never having played the build or even using the weapon set before I realized something wasn’t quite right.

Anybody believing D/P is harder to play than S/D needs to get themselves hospitalized.

S/D is all about timing, positioning, constant pressuring and survival without stealth. I used to play D/P before D/P was even a consideration and it is, to date, the most complete weapon set for the thief class. There are less than 15 keys to press on pretty much any class in guild wars 2, so that having options like you do with D/P (on demand daze, stealth, blind and gap closers), results in having an advantage over builds that only use 10 keys but simply do not have access to anywhere close to these options).

Stealth is a huge crutch and you only notice it, when you don’t have deliberate access to it. D/P is what I would recommend to any beginning thief, because it is, bar none, the easiest and most effective weapon combination you could choose on a thief.

Anybody telling you differently has an agenda.

^NO just ..no
no

Everything about S/D is spamming 3 and using dodge, you have nearly 70% dodge uptime, until you shadow return and reset the fight, hard as that.
And thieves are a spammy class because initiative system is terrible and you’re forced to spam the same op skill in different situations, like using HS as a gap closer, why not? It’s a joke to recover initiative anyways, between stealth, traits, utilities, dodges, etc.

OP is right.

It’s not all about #3.

You are forgetting the auto attack.XD

I have fought Jumper a few times, interesting build to say the least. He plays it well.

redslion.9675:

OP is right.

It’s not all about #3.

You are forgetting the auto attack.XD

Actually, as it turns out, you’re close. It’s the auto and positioning via IS/SR, all while balancing those out with FS/LS. Sadly, the other two skills (DD and CnD) are near useless.

Anyhow, given the way some people spam 3 on S/D, they would be better off just autoattacking…

Med.6150:

Anybody believing D/P is harder to play than S/D needs to get themselves hospitalized.

S/D is all about timing, positioning, constant pressuring and survival without stealth. I used to play D/P before D/P was even a consideration and it is, to date, the most complete weapon set for the thief class. There are less than 15 keys to press on pretty much any class in guild wars 2, so that having options like you do with D/P (on demand daze, stealth, blind and gap closers), results in having an advantage over builds that only use 10 keys but simply do not have access to anywhere close to these options).

Stealth is a huge crutch and you only notice it, when you don’t have deliberate access to it. D/P is what I would recommend to any beginning thief, because it is, bar none, the easiest and most effective weapon combination you could choose on a thief.

Anybody telling you differently has an agenda.

Quoted for truth, because it is true. In higher level play, unfortunately, stealth can be a major hamper to your team’s ability.

Med.6150:

Anybody believing D/P is harder to play than S/D needs to get themselves hospitalized.

S/D is all about timing, positioning, constant pressuring and survival without stealth. I used to play D/P before D/P was even a consideration and it is, to date, the most complete weapon set for the thief class. There are less than 15 keys to press on pretty much any class in guild wars 2, so that having options like you do with D/P (on demand daze, stealth, blind and gap closers), results in having an advantage over builds that only use 10 keys but simply do not have access to anywhere close to these options).

Stealth is a huge crutch and you only notice it, when you don’t have deliberate access to it. D/P is what I would recommend to any beginning thief, because it is, bar none, the easiest and most effective weapon combination you could choose on a thief.

Anybody telling you differently has an agenda.

You cannot end your statement with, “anyone who disagrees with my opinion has an agenda” and expect to be taken seriously.

Anybody telling you differently, has an agenda…

Saying that S/D is about timing and postitioning when your choices are between skills that dodge, an evade (that is a heat seeking missile), and a teleport/cc break/immobilize is just plain laughable.

dovrak.4376:

Everything about S/D is spamming 3 and using dodge, you have nearly 70% dodge uptime, until you shadow return and reset the fight, hard as that.
And thieves are a spammy class because initiative system is terrible and you’re forced to spam the same op skill in different situations, like using HS as a gap closer, why not? It’s a joke to recover initiative anyways, between stealth, traits, utilities, dodges, etc.

1. Did you read my post? Furthermore, SRet almost never allows fight resets, and when it does, it’s usually because you were massively underutilizing it. Also, please read my reply to Ostrich.

2. Yes, the initiative system is the problem… Because every skill relies on one cool down that we have to dedicate tons of points to amplify just so that we can get some half-decent DPS out. Do you know why it’s extremely difficult to invest in DArts, for example? It’s because it gives no initiative regen. CS provides some limited regen, on the other hand. Furthermore, half our skills suck because they’ve been nerfed into oblivion, just look at Kinjax’s (Eonbon’s) recent post in the sPvP forum. On the other hand, there are some weapon sets, like D/P, where every skill is useful, and is used, and has good return per point of initiative used. Nobody complains about spamming there, except for some people that haven’t learned to counter HS spam yet.

Unlike other classes, we can’t swap weapons to reset cooldowns anyways, so please stop QQ’ing. Init regen is extremely difficult to acquire for the majority of our possible builds, and the things you mentioned (stealth, traits, utilities, dodges) for init regen, are, respectively:

1. Stupid because stealth is often a weakness in sPvP.

2. Stupid because we usually have to put in 20-30 points just to get one half-decent init-regen trait, and they often require disadvantageous “active” recovery skills, some of which I further classify as “Type II Active Regeneration” which can be extremely bad in limiting your utilities, weapons, etc, while diverting your focus from the things that matter.

3. Stupid because we only have two init-recovering utilities that both recover a whopping average of .1 initiative per second, which isn’t much compared to conventional cooldowns. Furthermore, of these two, one of them falls under the aforementioned “Type II Active” regeneration, as it sacrifices a utility skill only for the ability to recover initiative (the dodge roll is practically negligible) and furthermore requires manual activation in order to work. Any other utilities that recover initiative are going to only do so via traits, which, as I mentioned before, often require other large sacrifices.

4. Incredibly stupid because you can’t recover init by dodge-rolling.

Your argument is invalid.

Pyriall.5027:

Med.6150:

Anybody believing D/P is harder to play than S/D needs to get themselves hospitalized.

S/D is all about timing, positioning, constant pressuring and survival without stealth. I used to play D/P before D/P was even a consideration and it is, to date, the most complete weapon set for the thief class. There are less than 15 keys to press on pretty much any class in guild wars 2, so that having options like you do with D/P (on demand daze, stealth, blind and gap closers), results in having an advantage over builds that only use 10 keys but simply do not have access to anywhere close to these options).

Stealth is a huge crutch and you only notice it, when you don’t have deliberate access to it. D/P is what I would recommend to any beginning thief, because it is, bar none, the easiest and most effective weapon combination you could choose on a thief.

Anybody telling you differently has an agenda.

You cannot end your statement with, “anyone who disagrees with my opinion has an agenda” and expect to be taken seriously.

Anybody telling you differently, has an agenda…

…(^ he has an agenda!)

Arganthium.5638:

Pyriall.5027:

Med.6150:

Anybody believing D/P is harder to play than S/D needs to get themselves hospitalized.

S/D is all about timing, positioning, constant pressuring and survival without stealth. I used to play D/P before D/P was even a consideration and it is, to date, the most complete weapon set for the thief class. There are less than 15 keys to press on pretty much any class in guild wars 2, so that having options like you do with D/P (on demand daze, stealth, blind and gap closers), results in having an advantage over builds that only use 10 keys but simply do not have access to anywhere close to these options).

Stealth is a huge crutch and you only notice it, when you don’t have deliberate access to it. D/P is what I would recommend to any beginning thief, because it is, bar none, the easiest and most effective weapon combination you could choose on a thief.

Anybody telling you differently has an agenda.

You cannot end your statement with, “anyone who disagrees with my opinion has an agenda” and expect to be taken seriously.

Anybody telling you differently, has an agenda…

…(^ he has an agenda!)

…(^ so does this guy!)

Pyriall.5027:

Arganthium.5638:

Pyriall.5027:

Med.6150:

Anybody believing D/P is harder to play than S/D needs to get themselves hospitalized.

S/D is all about timing, positioning, constant pressuring and survival without stealth. I used to play D/P before D/P was even a consideration and it is, to date, the most complete weapon set for the thief class. There are less than 15 keys to press on pretty much any class in guild wars 2, so that having options like you do with D/P (on demand daze, stealth, blind and gap closers), results in having an advantage over builds that only use 10 keys but simply do not have access to anywhere close to these options).

Stealth is a huge crutch and you only notice it, when you don’t have deliberate access to it. D/P is what I would recommend to any beginning thief, because it is, bar none, the easiest and most effective weapon combination you could choose on a thief.

Anybody telling you differently has an agenda.

You cannot end your statement with, “anyone who disagrees with my opinion has an agenda” and expect to be taken seriously.

Anybody telling you differently, has an agenda…

…(^ he has an agenda!)

…(^ so does this guy!)

Agenda-ception!

Just play something other than thief/ele mesmer and tell me thieves have it rough. Please.

Play a necro or engineer for once. If you mess up, you die. On the thief, just shadow return/stealth.

Zenith.7301:

Just play something other than thief/ele mesmer and tell me thieves have it rough. Please.

Play a necro or engineer for once. If you mess up, you die. On the thief, just shadow return/stealth.

My goodness.

Stealth is detrimental to team strategy, and is thus almost never used, making access to it limited.

SRet only allows for escaping if you use it so rarely that you become highly inefficient. And you think we can afford to mess up? Why don’t we see you say that when you get 3-hitted by any other profession because the majority of our builds simply can’t have defense, apparently. I’ve also played both of those classes, and they’re perfectly fine, jesus. What do you run, a power necro and a rifle burst engi?

Zenith.7301:

Just play something other than thief/ele mesmer and tell me thieves have it rough. Please.

Play a necro or engineer for once. If you mess up, you die. On the thief, just shadow return/stealth.

To add some more context to this. You cannot run any other berserker/glass cannon professions because of thief and mesmer berserker/glass cannon. Ele, necro, guardian, engi, or ranger? All…nope. Warrior? Maybe.

Pyriall.5027:

Zenith.7301:

Just play something other than thief/ele mesmer and tell me thieves have it rough. Please.

Play a necro or engineer for once. If you mess up, you die. On the thief, just shadow return/stealth.

To add some more context to this. You cannot run any other berserker/glass cannon professions because of thief and mesmer berserker/glass cannon. Ele, necro, guardian, engi, or ranger? All…nope. Warrior? Maybe.

And if you run GC at all, you’ll die after being beat in the head with a stick.

Is it really that difficult to kill a GC, guys? Is that the problem?

Arganthium.5638:

Pyriall.5027:

Zenith.7301:

Just play something other than thief/ele mesmer and tell me thieves have it rough. Please.

Play a necro or engineer for once. If you mess up, you die. On the thief, just shadow return/stealth.

To add some more context to this. You cannot run any other berserker/glass cannon professions because of thief and mesmer berserker/glass cannon. Ele, necro, guardian, engi, or ranger? All…nope. Warrior? Maybe.

And if you run GC at all, you’ll die after being beat in the head with a stick.

Is it really that difficult to kill a GC, guys? Is that the problem?

What? You don’t find it a bit absurd that the limiting factor in being able to run other GC builds are two profession’s gc builds?