Guild Wars 2

Okay so, earlier today a thief hit me for a 6.49k CnD and an 11.2k Backstab. Now, if I had been playing any other character I would’ve ignored it but, I was on my tanky hammer warrior at the time. I have about 3.4k armor, and I’m kind of wondering how the hell he hit me that high. Exactly how much crit damage and power would he need to do this to me?

Tip:
Don’t stack too much armor, as toughness in this game is a trash and has dimishing returns. 2700-2800 no more

That’s true but this is just the gear I happen to have at the moment. I’ll take that into account when I play around with this build some.

Armor has no diminishing returns.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/A-legitimate-discussion-about-toughness

Thieves with full ascended and using all stackable power buffs from sigils, wvw masteries and whatever (orbs >.<) – hit kitten hard. Because of their stealth mechanism they can go full out damage and still get out of anything. the class has been considered broken for a long time, yet the devs did nothing about it – 4 seconds reveal after attacking is their solution – so you have 4 seconds to kill the thief (while he can dodge / stunbreak at will) or he will reset the fight, its just – great design! The devs totally know what they are doing, thats why there is a very livid competitive scene in gw2. cough cough sorry about the sarcasm, just move on and find your peace in blaming the lamest assassin design a popular game has ever seen in history.

It is actually possible to hit even higher than your screen shot shows against 3.4 armor. It requires the right traits, gear (full ascended berserker + scholar runes), 25 stacks of bloodlust, maximized guard leech WXP trait and lots of might stacks. With the new BL bloodlust stacks things get even more hairy.

I am always shaking my head when people write on forums that thieves are never any problem in WvWvW. That their warrior just shrugs off their damage. They have probably never been facing a true glass cannon full ascended gear thief. Two-three such thieves can burst down almost any character in a game literally in 1 second. Unless you are psychic with the dodge button there is nothing you can do about it. Of course such thief is very squishy and will die also very easily if you manage to hit it back.

Quakeman.9378:

Okay so, earlier today a thief hit me for a 6.49k CnD and an 11.2k Backstab. Now, if I had been playing any other character I would’ve ignored it but, I was on my tanky hammer warrior at the time. I have about 3.4k armor, and I’m kind of wondering how the hell he hit me that high. Exactly how much crit damage and power would he need to do this to me?

Well, first off, from the looks of it you have Thick Skin. That means your actual armor is 3,264.

Second off, a 25/30/x/x/x D/D zerk thief can definitely hit you for that much. That setup can give you

• +10% damage from Serpent’s Touch + Exposed Weakness
• +5% damage from Dagger Training
• +15% damage from Assassin’s Signet
• +20% damage from Executioner
• +10% damage from First Strikes
• + 5/10/15% damage from Sigils (Force/Night/Force + Night)
• +10% damage from Rune of Scholar

For example. this could get 94% crit chance, over 3k power and the aforementioned total of +85% damage. Of course, you can increase the amount of damage significantly by stacking tons of Might, which isn’t that hard to do either. You could just pop 4 signets for 20 stacks.

Base damage formula is (according to wiki):
(Weapon Strength) x Power x (skill-specific coefficient) x (damage multipliers)/ (target’s Armor)

We have to figure out the damage multipliers and the power but, for now, we focus on the data we already know.

Pow = power
DM = damage multipliers

(1000 × 2.4)/3364 x Pow x DM = 0.66 x Pow x DM

Now, we consider the max possible damage amplifier available on backstab, so the traits picked are:

• Exposed Weakness (10%)
• Dagger Training (5%)
• First Strikes (10%)
• Flanking Strikes (5%)
• Executioner (20%)

For a total of 1.6 damage multiplier, which multiplied with 0.66 is approximately 1.

So our formula is now only:
Pow * CritDMG

The max CritDMG possible is approximately 120% (considering also food buffs AND full ruby orbs, which gives the best crit damage amplifier available). That means a 2.7 damage multiplier.

Now let’s add Sigil, some Vulnerability and Assassing Signet:

Sigil of Force + 4xVulnerability + Sigil of the Night + Assassin Signet = 1.05 × 1.04 × 1.1 x 1.15 = 1.38

Let’s add them up:
Pow x 3.72 = 11k => Pow = 2956

That is a situation in which stars align and every possible conditional damage amplifier works.

Olba.5376:

Quakeman.9378:

Okay so, earlier today a thief hit me for a 6.49k CnD and an 11.2k Backstab. Now, if I had been playing any other character I would’ve ignored it but, I was on my tanky hammer warrior at the time. I have about 3.4k armor, and I’m kind of wondering how the hell he hit me that high. Exactly how much crit damage and power would he need to do this to me?

Well, first off, from the looks of it you have Thick Skin. That means your actual armor is 3,264.

Second off, a 25/30/x/x/x D/D zerk thief can definitely hit you for that much. That setup can give you

• +10% damage from Serpent’s Touch + Exposed Weakness
• +5% damage from Dagger Training
• +15% damage from Assassin’s Signet
• +20% damage from Executioner
• +10% damage from First Strikes
• 5/10/15% damage from Sigils (Force/Night/ForceNight)
• +10% damage from Rune of Scholar

For example. this could get 94% crit chance, over 3k power and the aforementioned total of +85% damage. Of course, you can increase the amount of damage significantly by stacking tons of Might, which isn’t that hard to do either. You could just pop 4 signets for 20 stacks.

Alright thanks. Try this I must

sorrow.2364:

Base damage formula is (according to wiki):
(Weapon Strength) x Power x (skill-specific coefficient) x (damage multipliers)/ (target’s Armor)

We have to figure out the damage multipliers and the power but, for now, we focus on the data we already know.

Pow = power
DM = damage multipliers

(1000 × 2.4)/3364 x Pow x DM = 0.66 x Pow x DM

Now, we consider the max possible damage amplifier available on backstab, so the traits picked are:

• Exposed Weakness (10%)
• Dagger Training (5%)
• First Strikes (10%)
• Flanking Strikes (5%)
• Executioner (20%)

For a total of 1.6 damage multiplier, which multiplied with 0.66 is approximately 1.

So our formula is now only:
Pow * CritDMG

The max CritDMG possible is approximately 120% (considering also food buffs AND full ruby orbs, which gives the best crit damage amplifier available). That means a 2.7 damage multiplier.

Now let’s add Sigil and some Vulnerability:

Sigil of Force + 4xVulnerability + Sigil of the Night = 1.05 × 1.04 × 1.1 = 1.2

Let’s add them up:
Pow x 3.24 = 11k => Pow = 3395

That is a situation in which stars align and every possible conditional damage amplifier works.

Your numbers are a bit off:

1. Your multipliers only add to 50%, not 60%.
2. You ignored multipliers from Sigils and Assassin’s Signet. Those can add 15-30%.
3. Ruby Orb loses to Rune of Scholar if you have >90% hp.

So in total, you could be looking at something like 3,000 power base with 120%ish crit damage and +90% damage. That’s gonna yield 11,300 damage on crit. Of course, you could ideally be looking at a much higher figure. The 20 Might stacks I mentioned earlier could bring you up to about 3,500 power and that ends up with 13,200 damage done with the OP’s stats. The unrealistic ceiling would be 25 Might stacks with a banner, Guard Killer, 3 stacks of Borderland Bloodlust and Empowered Allies for just above 4,000 power and thus 15,000 backstab damage on OP.

Steelo.4597:

Thieves with full ascended and using all stackable power buffs from sigils, wvw masteries and whatever (orbs >.<) – hit kitten hard. Because of their stealth mechanism they can go full out damage and still get out of anything. the class has been considered broken for a long time, yet the devs did nothing about it – 4 seconds reveal after attacking is their solution – so you have 4 seconds to kill the thief (while he can dodge / stunbreak at will) or he will reset the fight, its just – great design! The devs totally know what they are doing, thats why there is a very livid competitive scene in gw2. cough cough sorry about the sarcasm, just move on and find your peace in blaming the lamest assassin design a popular game has ever seen in history.

Pretty much this. Actually summed it up very well I think.

Olba.5376:

sorrow.2364:

Now, we consider the max possible damage amplifier available on backstab, so the traits picked are:

• Exposed Weakness (10%)
• Dagger Training (5%)
• First Strikes (10%)
• Flanking Strikes (5%)
• Executioner (20%)

For a total of 1.6 damage multiplier, which multiplied with 0.66 is approximately 1.

Your numbers are a bit off:

1. Your multipliers only add to 50%, not 60%.

1.1×1.05×.1.1x1.05×1.2 = 1.60083
Multipliers are multiplicative, not additive.

I don’t want to hear thief QQ from the most OP class in the game.

Thieves also hit people who wear pink armor harder than other people. It’s like a +15% damage bonus if any piece of your armor is pink.

Oozo.7856:

Thieves also hit people who wear pink armor harder than other people. It’s like a +15% damage bonus if any piece of your armor is pink.

In that case, it’s a very good thing we don’t have ascended armor in the game.

Time to nerf backstab coz armor don’t work. Thieves are OP lmao

Olba.5376:

Your numbers are a bit off:

1. Your multipliers only add to 50%, not 60%.
2. You ignored multipliers from Sigils and Assassin’s Signet. Those can add 15-30%.
3. Ruby Orb loses to Rune of Scholar if you have >90% hp.

So in total, you could be looking at something like 3,000 power base with 120%ish crit damage and +90% damage. That’s gonna yield 11,300 damage on crit. Of course, you could ideally be looking at a much higher figure. The 20 Might stacks I mentioned earlier could bring you up to about 3,500 power and that ends up with 13,200 damage done with the OP’s stats. The unrealistic ceiling would be 25 Might stacks with a banner, Guard Killer, 3 stacks of Borderland Bloodlust and Empowered Allies for just above 4,000 power and thus 15,000 backstab damage on OP.

My numbers are correct.

1. Damage multipliers are moltiplicative, not additive, as Player Character said.
2. I’ve not ignored that. I forgot to add it and modified the post in a later version. Keep in mind that I’ve also considered Executioner, which is an error, but I wanted to consider the most fringe case. Why it is an error? First, most backstab thieves run hidden killer, second because in the OP’s image, you can clearly see that CnD+Mug damage isn’t enough to take the warrior under 50% hp to trigger executioner, that means that my numbers are a bit higher than expected.
3. Has I’ve already said, I’ve considered Executioner, which counterbalance the fact that I’ve considered ruby orbs instead of Scholar.

My bet is he had 25 stacks of bloodlust, Assassin’s Signet+SoS traited (10 might), on top of the boni the others posted.
Much like we can Evis for 15-20k under particular circumstances.

I know, those “hey who stole my entire healthbar?” moments aren’t great but that’s WvW for you.

CnD got you below 90% so -100 toughness. (thick skin)

And yeah, that’s normal for full crit dmg and power main stat dmg combined with a
glass cannon build. He could even reach higher if he used 3-4 signets to gain 15-20 might.

A dodge the moment you saw him loading up CnD from range or Endure pain the moment when Basilisk Venom/CnD hits could have turned the fight. Getting more armor with protection boon can also reduce the backstab dmg to below 5k.

You can study one of these high dmg builds here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onzIWX-AQV8

Excalibur.9748:

I don’t want to hear thief QQ from the most OP class in the game.

I do hope you’re aware that this was just a question and not a QQ thread.

Oozo.7856:

Thieves also hit people who wear pink armor harder than other people. It’s like a +15% damage bonus if any piece of your armor is pink.

I’ll have you know that it’s the funniest looking die I have plus it’s different lmao

kiwituatara.6053:

Time to nerf backstab coz armor don’t work. Thieves are OP lmao

For the love of god stop insinuating that I think thieves are OP because I don’t. Now bugger off to another troll hole.

I think you found one of the few instagibber thief left.
old c&d-steal-bs combo with all damage modifiers precasted.
Too bad you didn’t react fast enough and you are a pink colored warrior.

SmoothHussler.6387:

Steelo.4597:

Thieves with full ascended and using all stackable power buffs from sigils, wvw masteries and whatever (orbs >.<) – hit kitten hard. Because of their stealth mechanism they can go full out damage and still get out of anything. the class has been considered broken for a long time, yet the devs did nothing about it – 4 seconds reveal after attacking is their solution – so you have 4 seconds to kill the thief (while he can dodge / stunbreak at will) or he will reset the fight, its just – great design! The devs totally know what they are doing, thats why there is a very livid competitive scene in gw2. cough cough sorry about the sarcasm, just move on and find your peace in blaming the lamest assassin design a popular game has ever seen in history.

Pretty much this. Actually summed it up very well I think.

Yes, that was beautiful. I’m sick of people giving it that same shhit about how “weak” thieves are when they get hit. All that ever happens when I fight a thief is I get them down to around 25%, then they just go invisible and hide and come back to full HP and then backstab me for massive damage. THe most annoying part is the fact that they don’t have cooldowns on their skills, so they can spam their 2, 2, 2, 2 more times in a row that I can dodge.

Did the Thief also have x5 stacks of Leeching? and how many new orb buffs?

Lol warriros and everything else can hit as hard or sometimes harder if you go all out in DPS. This is not only thieves. In fact warriors can have 2.5k plus armor and hit way harder

Hard to believe a warrior is complaining about a thief… lol. Warrior (with a decent build) should win every time

Cut him some slack. Judging by his gear he might be fairly new to GW2. He probably doesn’t even have his own class down yet, let alone the counters to other classes.

Demonts shouldnt you be posting in thief forum? do you even have a warrior?
and the other guy – this thread is about losing 90% of health with 3.2k+ armor to an instant power combo out of stealth – has very much to do with “having your class down” and stuff.. thanks for your contribution! i know only 1 other thing thats as broken as a instagibber thief and thats that insane mesmer burst with vulnerability stacks. but yeah not worth discussing anything, you just have to give up on the idea WvW will ever be balanced, they outright ignore class balance in WvW and probably have a good laugh every time they add more broken stuff like perplexity runes. not to say the balance is really good in spvp, same broken mechanics, but in WvW the custom stats and all the stackable crap makes some insanely lame stuff possible as this thread documents for all to see.

I agree that the common stats change things but it goes both ways. Im sure that warrior could do a number on the thief as well. I play both classes but more thief i will admit. I really cant see how someone could do that kind of backstab without sacrificing everything. In spvp thieves cant even take 1-4 of a warriors health with a backstab. Thief backstab really isnt great in pvp and in WvW it is still balanced but more inflated. 1 stun and that thief probably would have been dead. Burst is in fact weak in the current tanky/condi meta. I know plenty of good warriors that say they laugh at thieves.

This warrior probbaly didnt even have exotic gear…

In fact im pretty sure he stacked the signets to get 20 stacks of might and used bloodlust. If he did that he had absolutely no armor or utilities. The warrior could have just 1 shotted him at that point lol. In fact he probably did but just went on the forums to complain.

i know plenty of warriors and other classes who laugh at anything on the forums, but when they get asked for a duel they refuse and you never hear of them again. some difference between having a big mouth on the forum because they killed a few noobs in wvw and actually having a clue about whats possible, only lots of experience teaches what kind of broken builds are possible in wvw, you need to fight them first to see it. i dont know man.. you call 17k+ instant damage out of stealth on a 3.2k armor guy balanced? seriously.. if you read through this thread you can see that this kind of damage is still far from the maximum you can do as a thief and 3.2-3.3k armor is about what you get with every piece of exotic gear having toughness stat on it.

btw there is an edit button, you dont have to make a new post everytime you come up with a new thought.

Thats the thing tho. I dont see how you can do 17k damage on a 3.2 armor guy instantly Unless you sacrifice all utilities and everything… even then i think it would be more like 9-10k. Then all the warrior has to do is turn around and hit his burst. Im just sick of hearing about backstab. In the current meta its not even a good skill. Warriors arcing shot does the same damage and is AOE with a 10 second CD and dont get me started on other skills. I would also like to add that a thief using this can only use cloak n dagger which requires him to hit. The warrior should see this coming.

Steelo.4597:

i know plenty of warriors and other classes who laugh at anything on the forums, but when they get asked for a duel they refuse and you never hear of them again. some difference between having a big mouth on the forum because they killed a few noobs in wvw and actually having a clue about whats possible, only lots of experience teaches what kind of broken builds are possible in wvw, you need to fight them first to see it. i dont know man.. you call 17k+ instant damage out of stealth on a 3.2k armor guy balanced? seriously.. if you read through this thread you can see that this kind of damage is still far from the maximum you can do as a thief and 3.2-3.3k armor is about what you get with every piece of exotic gear having toughness stat on it.

btw there is an edit button, you dont have to make a new post everytime you come up with a new thought.

Want to talk about Kill Shot and Eviscerate?
WvWvW has never and will ever be balanced by design. Deal with that.

Exactly ^^ every class in the game can burst… L2P warriros all u have to do is stun once or twice and its GG. Thief is not the only class in the game that can burst. Plus the thieves with high burst cant hardly stealth due to lack of utilities. Warriors must have 20 skills that hit as hard or harder than backstab

yeah right nevermind, was just waiting for the l2p and wvw not balanced comments.. if you are bored and want to argue, find someone else to be your kitten.

I am kinda bored lol. But everything i said was honest

Steelo.4597:

and the other guy – this thread is about losing 90% of health with 3.2k+ armor to an instant power combo out of stealth

This is not correct.
OP lost 20045hp that is more than 100% of his life in a single combo.
The biggest part of the combo can be avoided but you have to be quick.

btw 19k hp on a warrior aren’t enough.

Demont “knows some warriors who laugh at theives” so I gues we’re wrong then. kitten it.

Steelo.4597:

yeah right nevermind, was just waiting for the l2p and wvw not balanced comments.. if you are bored and want to argue, find someone else to be your kitten.

Why? Did you really thought that a gamemode in which you can use all of your PvE gear, food buffs, bloodlust, where you can stack insane amounts of power and crit damage, where you are matched against upleveled character is supposed to be balanced?

sorrow.2364:

Steelo.4597:

yeah right nevermind, was just waiting for the l2p and wvw not balanced comments.. if you are bored and want to argue, find someone else to be your kitten.

Why? Did you really thought that a gamemode in which you can use all of your PvE gear, food buffs, bloodlust, where you can stack insane amounts of power and crit damage, where you are matched against upleveled character is supposed to be balanced?

since everyone can do it, why not ?

LoL.
In the begining people tried to explain how the thief were able do that damage, and the tread was going in a good direction.
Then people started to attack op (dont have any clue what is the class these people play).
There are some good responses here like the one sorrow gives (WvWvW has never and will ever be balanced by design. Deal with that) that fit perfectly to some thieves that QQ on the warrior forums.

Daendur.2357:

since everyone can do it, why not ?

Well, so enjoy your instagibs in WvWvW. Everyone can do that kitten, so it’s balanced.

A well balanced mode where the average encounter lasts about half a second and the outcome is completely decided by a dodge made into the right moment.

Killshot is 1.5 times backstab damage and from range. In a teamfight thieves cant even get a backstab off anyways. Ive played every class in pvp and thief, ele and hgh engineer are by far the hardest. Backstab doesnt even hit that hard. If a warrior woulda done the same thing as the thief with killshot it would been 20k damage instead of 13k.

Demonts.4593:

Killshot is 1.5 times backstab damage and from range. In a teamfight thieves cant even get a backstab off anyways. Ive played every class in pvp and thief, ele and hgh engineer are by far the hardest. Backstab doesnt even hit that hard. If a warrior woulda done the same thing as the thief with killshot it would been 20k damage instead of 13k.

Good thing it takes about 3 hours to cast then and he’s not in stealth when he’s casting it

sorrow.2364:

Daendur.2357:

since everyone can do it, why not ?

Well, so enjoy your instagibs in WvWvW. Everyone can do that kitten, so it’s balanced.

A well balanced mode where the average encounter lasts about half a second and the outcome is completely decided by a dodge made into the right moment.

i was speaking about food, pve stuff etc. etc.
anyway dodge is meant to be done at the right time…
i don’t run an instagib build, but i’ve faced them … you don’t even need to be ultra fast.
a normal reaction time is enough.

kill shot OP!

inb4 L2DodgeNoob

Most instagib thieves start with basilisk venom. SO what you wanna do is when your character gets turned into stone, hit your stunbreak then dodgeroll. It’s actually simple, you don’t need superman reaction speed.

Excalibur.9748:

Most instagib thieves start with basilisk venom. SO what you wanna do is when your character gets turned into stone, hit your stunbreak then dodgeroll. It’s actually simple, you don’t need superman reaction speed.

or simply cast “endure pain” and save a dodge roll.

Excalibur.9748:

Most instagib thieves start with basilisk venom. SO what you wanna do is when your character gets turned into stone, hit your stunbreak then dodgeroll. It’s actually simple, you don’t need superman reaction speed.

So i have to carry stunbreaks now? ; ooo