So I have as little as 300 hours on my thief and loving it! I use my thief for all aspects of the game although i have not yet tried spvp but anyway, I am just starting to get the ang of it now and also starting to win more fights day after day. But reading the forums lately I keep seeing “SA is a troll trait line” “SA is a no briner” “You shouldn’t use SA” what is the problem with that trait line? i personally run 0/30/20/0/20 the 20 in SA is for the condi removal in stealth and the extra 200 armour. so can any one please explain why SA is considered troll/cheesy because i don’t understand what the issue is with it.
Fat Disgrace (banned) Man Flu Survivor – war/The Cabbage -Thief (gunners hold / [TaG])
In my opinion I think its because its associated with high stealth uptime builds and a lot of people despise stealth. Then there are those who have used itfor the better part of a year and grew bored and wanted to try something different.
That being said I dont find anything wrong with shadow arts. I believe in using whatever advantage (advantage being arguable) available to win those outnumbered fights. some people think its easy mode idk.
You’re thinking of it the wrong way. You’re a thief. Steal every single chance you have to get an advantage (pun intended). If you’re trying to find a way to fight honorably as a thief, you’re stuck, its not gonna happen It’s in the class design (and its awesome).
@ OP, you picked the class that gets the most hate period. They even call sb overpowered and cheesy, its just the community we have here. No body cares to play the game and help one another, they just wana press 1 button and win, and talk kitten if that doesn’t work.
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Stealth is already a strong mechanic, but they combinate it with a short cd and strong traits. I don’t know, why they do this, but that is the problem. -.-’
What people don’t understand is that, in order to fight someone heavily invested in stealth uptime (PU mesmers, SA thieves), you have to swap to an extremely aggressive playstyle. Stealth is an offensive mechanic, meant to put your opponent on edge and keep the upper hand in order to control the fight. When facing an aggressive opponent however, they will use any and all channeled bursts, AoEs, and cleaves to make sure you go down. If I’m casually roaming on my no-stealth build and find a PU mesmer, I’ll let them blow their cooldowns, get some distance, and chain shadowsteps back in order to lock them down, swapping to SB when they stealth to shotgun cluster bomb. If you let a stealther control the fight rather than controlling them, you’re not going to win – plain and simple. People just don’t get that.
All that being said, I personally find Shadow’s Rejuvination too powerful for what trait line it’s in. I feel that swapping the healing power out for the condition damage in Trickery would be a much more balanced choice rather than straight nerfing it, because for what it does, the free 300 healing does it too much justice, and perhaps synergizes with the trait line too well in WvW 1v1 situations. When I’m running havoc with my group, however, the first thing we do is focus the thief. He generally goes down instantly when we drop the deeps on him.
Well, Fat Disgrace, putting 30p in the Shadow Arts-traitline makes your build more forgiving. With 30 points in the SA-line you may gain a good amount of sustain, a really good condition removal and blind on stealth, it overall makes you hard to take down for an average player if you use it correctly, and all of it works in a passive manner which is quite frown upon these days (healing signet for instance).
However, in sPvP every extra second spent in stealth for no strategic or team-serving purpose is wasted time, this could cause your team to see you as a troll.
Also you sacrifice damage, mobility and a lot of other utilities to gain these stealth passives, which in some cases might make it both difficult for you to take your opponents down and for your opponents to take you down, combine that with spending a lot of time in stealth and not even being able contest points while in a fight and you’re quite a troll.
However 0/30/20/0/20 looks like a quite decent and balanced build to practice with and as long as you enjoy it and you don’t wish to have more damage or mobility you don’t really have any reason to not stick with it.
Basically to summarize:
A lot if people hate stealth since they don’t know how to deal with it and refuse to learn how. thieves hands down have the most access to stealth AND SA buffs the stealth we so abuse. Now because if this a lot of people believe this class to be even easier than the warrior class (lol) so other thieves sometimes go on pride runs to use builds that don’t use stealth to prove they don’t need it, but then they are usually heavily evasive and people still complain anyway. In summary, the ones who hate SA are usually the ones who hate thieves period…..or stealth
As a bonus note, many and I mean many people dont realize most thieves use stealth 80% jut to do damage, not even to annoy or disorient. If a guardians invulnerable elite skill was spammable and had to be used before the guardian could do any meaningful damage, the same would apply here, they aren’t going invulnerable to annoy you, that’s one of the only ways they can get meaningful hits out
SA is not considered cheesy or troll — but those who put 30pts into SA are meant to cheese/troll.
For each point you spent in SA, you are significantly reducing your damage output because those point can be spent to improve damage, that’s why in most builds, 10 pts into SA is enough — 15pts in SA to get an extra second in stealth is not worth it unless you go all the way to 30pts for Shadow’s Rejuvie.
Not only that 30pts in SA reduces your damage output, it also encourages you to hide in stealth for sustain — meaning, you’re not dealing damage nor participating in fights while hiding in stealth. If you’re not dealing damage nor participating — then you’re trolling.
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This article has to be one of the most misused articles to be posted. If the general complaint were people refusing to play stealth characters and whining about losing, then it would have more merit.
However, the argument is wither stealth classes are balanced and in need of changes. Sorry, but an article about players putting themselves at a disadvantage due to personal in game morals means Jack all for balance issues.
Ask thieves in this thread how they feel about Prismatic Understanding (mesmer GM trait). In their responses, replace the word “mesmer” with “thief” and the words “Prismatic Understanding” with “Shadow Arts”.
Ask thieves in this thread how they feel about Prismatic Understanding (mesmer GM trait). In their responses, replace the word “mesmer” with “thief” and the words “Prismatic Understanding” with “Shadow Arts”.
That’s your answer.
I’m sure any thief would swap PU with SR in a heartbeat…..
Ask thieves in this thread how they feel about Prismatic Understanding (mesmer GM trait). In their responses, replace the word “mesmer” with “thief” and the words “Prismatic Understanding” with “Shadow Arts”.
That’s your answer.
I’m sure any thief would swap PU with SR in a heartbeat…..
I’m sure you would but he said SA not SR.,,
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Ask thieves in this thread how they feel about Prismatic Understanding (mesmer GM trait). In their responses, replace the word “mesmer” with “thief” and the words “Prismatic Understanding” with “Shadow Arts”.
That’s your answer.
I’m sure any thief would swap PU with SR in a heartbeat…..
I’m sure you would but he said SA not SR.,,
GM trait for GM trait….you wanna swap lines is different story
Ask thieves in this thread how they feel about Prismatic Understanding (mesmer GM trait). In their responses, replace the word “mesmer” with “thief” and the words “Prismatic Understanding” with “Shadow Arts”.
That’s your answer.
I’m sure any thief would swap PU with SR in a heartbeat…..
I’m sure you would but he said SA not SR.,,
GM trait for GM trait….you wanna swap lines is different story
I know you were just trying to be cute, but it’s important to consider build concepts as a whole. Regardless of which traits provide which mechanics, the playstyles of a Shadow Arts thief and a Prismatic Understanding mesmer are quite similar.
What people don’t understand is that, in order to fight someone heavily invested in stealth uptime (PU mesmers, SA thieves), you have to swap to an extremely aggressive playstyle. Stealth is an offensive mechanic, meant to put your opponent on edge and keep the upper hand in order to control the fight. When facing an aggressive opponent however, they will use any and all channeled bursts, AoEs, and cleaves to make sure you go down. If I’m casually roaming on my no-stealth build and find a PU mesmer, I’ll let them blow their cooldowns, get some distance, and chain shadowsteps back in order to lock them down, swapping to SB when they stealth to shotgun cluster bomb. If you let a stealther control the fight rather than controlling them, you’re not going to win – plain and simple. People just don’t get that.
Your PU mesmer example is perfect the bold is perfect!
This same thinking applies to fighting condition builds.
This article has to be one of the most misused articles to be posted. If the general complaint were people refusing to play stealth characters and whining about losing, then it would have more merit.
However, the argument is wither stealth classes are balanced and in need of changes. Sorry, but an article about players putting themselves at a disadvantage due to personal in game morals means Jack all for balance issues.
I use Sirlin references because the thief QQ usually follows a specific template:
OP: OMFG THEEF KIL ME N 2 HITZ NERF STELF!!!1!!one
Thief 1: You can easily survive and counter that by doing X, Y and Z.
OP: BUT HEALING/CONDITION REMOVAL/CAN’T TARGET/BLINDSPAM/PERMASTEALTH!!!
Thief 1: Yes but in reality > educated response.
Thief 2: If thieves are so overly powerful, why are you not playing one?
Fail Troll: I have 5 thiefs and I don’t permastelf.
For pvp SA can be a very bad traitlline, becaue with a long stealt uptime you are useless. You can argue, that you are not dying, but I think you can also log out, that prevents dying too, and some players are that useful.
In pve SA is useless in most cases expect sometimes 10 points for condi remove.
In wvw i think SA is one of the best traitlines to take outnumbered fights. While I like d/p trickery I often fail to win against 2 medium skilled players with that.
First of you should never concern yourself with not useing stuff in a game just beause some people call that stuff cheese or whatever.
The problem with SA is that it actually works, the traits there synergize meaningfully and offer options other that do X more damage. A lot of people do not like that because they do not understand how to capitalize on that and are affraid other players might.
Generally SA is associated with shadow’s rejuvination and thieves coming back from stealth wih full health all the time or reseting the fight if pressured, people do not like that because frankly they expect their opponents to stand there and take their hits and die after one succesful combo, you can not blame them for that the game educated them that way (just start leveling a warrior and you will know what I mean).
Also humans fail at realistically judgeing their abilities and their understanding of their enviroment (even in games), so if something scratches their view of themselves as being in control and challanges them and their way of action based on that, they do not revise adequatley and failing to do so produces frustration, which will be vented by insulting and badmouthing anything and anyone associated with their failure but themselves.
For his basic introdution to human nature I charge you only 100g special offer only today.
Ask thieves in this thread how they feel about Prismatic Understanding (mesmer GM trait). In their responses, replace the word “mesmer” with “thief” and the words “Prismatic Understanding” with “Shadow Arts”.
That’s your answer.
I’m sure any thief would swap PU with SR in a heartbeat…..
I’m sure you would but he said SA not SR.,,
GM trait for GM trait….you wanna swap lines is different story
I know you were just trying to be cute, but it’s important to consider build concepts as a whole. Regardless of which traits provide which mechanics, the playstyles of a Shadow Arts thief and a Prismatic Understanding mesmer are quite similar.
So what you’re saying is you have no point???
Yet my statement still stands. Everyone complains about in healing in stealth but seem to forget that there are traits like PU that kitten all over SR
Generally SA is associated with shadow’s rejuvination and thieves coming back from stealth wih full health all the time or reseting the fight if pressured, people do not like that because frankly they expect their opponents to stand there and take their hits and die after one succesful combo, you can not blame them for that the game educated them that way (just start leveling a warrior and you will know what I mean).
Very true. It always makes me think that people just don’t understand the class when you hear that sort of complaint, since the reason the thief comes back at full health is usually because they stealth and then use their heal skill before they reappear. So are people really upset with the stealth, or the fact that we have a heal skill and know when to use it… o.O
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This article has to be one of the most misused articles to be posted. If the general complaint were people refusing to play stealth characters and whining about losing, then it would have more merit.
However, the argument is wither stealth classes are balanced and in need of changes. Sorry, but an article about players putting themselves at a disadvantage due to personal in game morals means Jack all for balance issues.
I use Sirlin references because the thief QQ usually follows a specific template:
OP: OMFG THEEF KIL ME N 2 HITZ NERF STELF!!!1!!one
Thief 1: You can easily survive and counter that by doing X, Y and Z.
OP: BUT HEALING/CONDITION REMOVAL/CAN’T TARGET/BLINDSPAM/PERMASTEALTH!!!
Thief 1: Yes but in reality > educated response.
Thief 2: If thieves are so overly powerful, why are you not playing one?
Fail Troll: I have 5 thiefs and I don’t permastelf.
Random player 1: Someone else thinks thefz are OP. Therefore they are OP.
Random player 2: Thieves are free kills for me. Lol.
Everyone repeats themselves with ignorant hearsay and grammatically subpar flaming.
So yeah it is very relevant.
Loved it. Also, SA is the only option to sustain yourself in 1vX. 10/30/0/30/0 SD and 10/30/0/0/30 DP (or many other non-SA specs) are amazing in 1v1s but give hardly any sustain when where there are plethora of random cleaves or AoE.
Any MMO -or online game for that matter- has Elitists. They like to try and prove they are better than everyone else. If you’re using something that’s easier than what they are using, you’re automatically “bad”.
Play what you like, someone saying “you shouldn’t play X” is beyond stupid. It’s in the game, it’s intended to be used. If you want to use it, then use it.
Don’t let people like that bother you, if anything you should pity them for being so self obsessed.
Ask thieves in this thread how they feel about Prismatic Understanding (mesmer GM trait). In their responses, replace the word “mesmer” with “thief” and the words “Prismatic Understanding” with “Shadow Arts”.
That’s your answer.
I’m sure any thief would swap PU with SR in a heartbeat…..
I’m sure you would but he said SA not SR.,,
GM trait for GM trait….you wanna swap lines is different story
I know you were just trying to be cute, but it’s important to consider build concepts as a whole. Regardless of which traits provide which mechanics, the playstyles of a Shadow Arts thief and a Prismatic Understanding mesmer are quite similar.
So what you’re saying is you have no point???
Yet my statement still stands. Everyone complains about in healing in stealth but seem to forget that there are traits like PU that kitten all over SR
I think you’re the one without a point. I was trying to answer the OP’s question. You tried to make this a balance discussion between PU and SR. No one asked for that. (In fact your initial comment even confused someone in the thread because it was so off topic.)
The OP wants to know why the gw2 community considers Shadow Arts builds cheesy. I advised him to ask thieves how they feel about Prismatic Understanding. This makes sense because the two playstyles are quite similar, but thieves generally have a stronger opinion about PU than they do SA.
Shadow Arts is considered Cheese? Really?
Sure you get an extra second of stealth, a stealth on low health, aoe blind, cleanses and heals which allows us to swing momentum for a crucial backstab, init regen and might stacks but I’d hardly call it that – it’s just that it Synergizes well with the Stealth Mechanic which you have to admit is annoying by Design. In comparison to Shadow rejuv in Acro you have assassins reward which is no where near as powerful a heal!
I refuse to put points in it if I can help it unless I use Venom Share otherwise I prefer to use points elsewhere.
Scrubio
Plays completely opposite professions to his main Teef.
It’s considered cheesy because with a full 30 points into the traitline, you can remove conditions in stealth, heal while in stealth, and can even gain back initiative while in stealth. Any thief who plans on going into stealth often (D/P stealth spammers) will take the full points because they’re going into stealth so often that those traits give them massive sustain everytime they re-enter it. It’s very easy for a D/P thief with 30 in SA to completely dominate the fight just because it’s incredibly hard to deny them the stealth and thus that sustain.
[hS]
PvE Main – Zar Poisonclaw – Daredevil
WvW Main – Ghost Mistcaller – Herald
It’s considered cheesy because with a full 30 points into the traitline, you can remove conditions in stealth, heal while in stealth, and can even gain back initiative while in stealth. Any thief who plans on going into stealth often (D/P stealth spammers) will take the full points because they’re going into stealth so often that those traits give them massive sustain everytime they re-enter it. It’s very easy for a D/P thief with 30 in SA to completely dominate the fight just because it’s incredibly hard to deny them the stealth and thus that sustain.
This in a nutshell. Hell, I just took 5 minutes to throw together a P/D condition bunker build, and I can already tell this would be amazingly easy to play and win with.
Short of your opponent mapping every condition cleanse they own on their skill bars, there really is no stopping you from peppering your opponent with conditions, hanging out in stealth while you regan all your HP, and have your opponent bleed/torment to death. This is just one reason stealth is broken as hell.
It’s considered cheesy because with a full 30 points into the traitline, you can remove conditions in stealth, heal while in stealth, and can even gain back initiative while in stealth. Any thief who plans on going into stealth often (D/P stealth spammers) will take the full points because they’re going into stealth so often that those traits give them massive sustain everytime they re-enter it. It’s very easy for a D/P thief with 30 in SA to completely dominate the fight just because it’s incredibly hard to deny them the stealth and thus that sustain.
So it’s OP because they get healed for a measly 300 a second and utilize the ONLY condi clear? No D/P thief is running gain more initiative in stealth as their 3rd trait.
It’s easy to deny D/P thieves stealth and I do it quite often.
I find 30 trick builds much more OP than any SA build. Sorry but your crusade against SA thieves is baseless. The only thing you are proving is your in ability to counter your own class….which is mind boggling until you read your guild tag.
High health regeneration outside of a healing skill, which other classes can also get but because it’s thief, it’s cheesy
Seen as a crutch because thieves are expected to be assassins and it’s a defensive line: toughness, healing power, regeneration, condition removal
Used to be recognised as the trait line for permanent stealth
The justified reasons:
While investing into shadow arts will allow the easy kill of a squishy player, it makes killing a more tanky player more difficult because your damage is less than if those 30 points (or 25 of them) were in deadly arts
Entering stealth to heal means not pressing the attack, and your opponent can heal and cooldown while you do, losing you the advantage you had, and any you gain through shadow’s rejuvination
Can very often result in a stale-mate against good players, where you can’t kill them and they can’t kill you because you vanish and hide for a few seconds when they get close
In PvP, it doesn’t benefit your team at all like trickery for buffs or deadly arts for faster killing. Your team would rather you back-stabbed for 7-9k and put someone on the defensive before finishing them off, than back-stabbed for 4.5k, got ht back and went into hiding.
Azukas, D/P thieves are the only thieves I cannot counter easily, every other weaponset I have a counter prepared for.
Than you need to learn how to play instead of going on this nerf D/P crusade. Pick it up for a few weeks and I bet you’ll find out quickly how to counter one.
Though you’ll have to leave the blob to achieve this
Azukas, D/P thieves are the only thieves I cannot counter easily, every other weaponset I have a counter prepared for.
Than you need to learn how to play instead of going on this nerf D/P crusade. Pick it up for a few weeks and I bet you’ll find out quickly how to counter one.
Though you’ll have to leave the blob to achieve this
This brought to mind something…you keep saying there’s counters, but I’ve never seen you give them. Please put a video here showing some of the Thief versus thief counters against D/P, that way I can see what I’m doing wrong. Of course, if you can’t…it COULD mean you’re just whiteknighting when you know there’s no counter to it. But that would be foolish.
[hS]
PvE Main – Zar Poisonclaw – Daredevil
WvW Main – Ghost Mistcaller – Herald
so can any one please explain why SA is considered troll/cheesy because i don’t understand what the issue is with it.
because other classes believe that thief should be a free kill, and fast to add. And SA gives you some nice traits, like Stealth on Steal(range self pull +stealth) and 1 sec more stealth on every upkeep(SR instead of basic 10sec will give you 15sec)
one way or another, there is always something they complain about.
Full DA is baddie because BS hits like a truck – me no liek
Full Trickery is a baddie because condi eats so gut – me no liek
20/full SA is a baddie because me struggle moar – me no liek
etc etc etc.
I recommend to ignore those mad nabs and roll however you want.
Developers gave a possibility to every player to roll their own class however they want.
If you want, go strip yourself of traits or gear and run only with weapons.
100% there will be mad people soon enough.
Azukas, D/P thieves are the only thieves I cannot counter easily, every other weaponset I have a counter prepared for.
Than you need to learn how to play instead of going on this nerf D/P crusade. Pick it up for a few weeks and I bet you’ll find out quickly how to counter one.
Though you’ll have to leave the blob to achieve this
This brought to mind something…you keep saying there’s counters, but I’ve never seen you give them. Please put a video here showing some of the Thief versus thief counters against D/P, that way I can see what I’m doing wrong. Of course, if you can’t…it COULD mean you’re just whiteknighting when you know there’s no counter to it. But that would be foolish.
For starters, don’t shoot out dazes just because. All daze skills are really quick to cast and have a better use than being on cooldown just because. If the thief is dazed they can’t HS in their field. If they back off and “perma stealth” that means the duration in which they are stealthed, they are not attacking you. So common sense, spend that time to recover and prepare for an ambush of sorts.
Another little tip, ground targeted traps like marks, traps, etc will tell you where the thief is once they trigger it. If you’re a guardian, aegis will show in big letters “BLOCK”, obviously the thief is behind you, so start throwing down dps on your spot or dodge out. Skills like binding blades, Necro DS #4, etc don’t need a target to seek out enemies. Invisible =/= invincible. You should know how your profession’s skills behave before calling someone else’s OP. Shortly after you will come across a lot of counters to the various stealth abusers and realize, not all counters say “Reveal” on them.
“I’m waiting for the staff to get off their lunch
break. I feel like they should be back by now..”
Azukas, D/P thieves are the only thieves I cannot counter easily, every other weaponset I have a counter prepared for.
Than you need to learn how to play instead of going on this nerf D/P crusade. Pick it up for a few weeks and I bet you’ll find out quickly how to counter one.
Though you’ll have to leave the blob to achieve this
This brought to mind something…you keep saying there’s counters, but I’ve never seen you give them. Please put a video here showing some of the Thief versus thief counters against D/P, that way I can see what I’m doing wrong. Of course, if you can’t…it COULD mean you’re just whiteknighting when you know there’s no counter to it. But that would be foolish.
Sure thing doc. Use x/P yourself and interrupt their HS through BP.
Well you have to admit… The thief, at it’s core, is fundamentally different that the rest of the classes, being built off of initiative and no cooldowns.
In fact they had a good thing going with the design of the thief. I wonder why they didn’t do something similar with the rest of the classes….
It’s in the class design
(and its awesome).