Guild Wars 2

I haven’t tested P/P enough yet, but every other zerker set at least blows donkey balls. S/P got nerfed and it was already not very strong. Steal bug probably won’t get fixed and ruined d/p. For D/D builds #5>steal still works, but D/D is trash for pvp. And S/D is the laughing stock of the Mists right now.

If/when (they haven’t acknowledged it that I know of) they fix steal I think D/P will still be pretty good, but right now Thieves stink.

I’ll be shocked if we ever see a sword mainhand thief in another tournament. Plz someone tell me l2p with inspiring post-patch S/D or S/P gameplay attached. I need hope

The shift away from thieves from tournament teams began several months ago. They no longer play a role that other classes can’t do better. This patch makes them even less valuable.

That said, you’ll still see some thieves in tournaments. The most skilled of thieves will still be valuable to the team. It is just that they will overcome the limitations of the class. There is no easy mode spec.

You can succesfully play S/P with panic strike+improvisation, also common 26006 with S/P and sigil of rage also kick balls.
But steal needs to be fixed ASAP

style.6173:

That said, you’ll still see some thieves in tournaments. The most skilled of thieves will still be valuable to the team. It is just that they will overcome the limitations of the class. There is no easy mode spec.

If they don’t fix the steal bug, I highly doubt it. Or the team that brings one will get pooped on. If they do fix it- my guess is D/P will be the only viable set.

Of course I could be, and hope I’m wrong. Hoping its an L2p issue on my end… anybody got footage of themselves overcoming the thief nerfs and wrecking? Because I was feelin pretty useless yesterday in soloq. LFHope!

nope. warrior, or probly guaridian traditionally, is currently worst class cuz they got nerfed 2 times continuously since april patch. also have real evidence that warrior population in top100 has decreased a lot as compared to era before april patch. Now war anf guardian has lowest population placing top100, it is fact. currently thief on team arena of NA called Magic Toker is top1 in teamq so this topic does not make any sense all. dont estimate and guess based kn flase info or just assumptions, rather, use real evidence and proof like me when you really estimate something. currently ele and necro are the most op class from the data from its population of top100 position. thief is pretty fine right now.

Kitt.2567:

nope. warrior, or probly guaridian traditionally, is currently worst class cuz they got nerfed 2 times continuously since april patch. also have real evidence that warrior population in top100 has decreased a lot as compared to era before april patch. Now war anf guardian has lowest population placing top100, it is fact. currently thief on team arena of NA called Magic Toker is top1 in teamq so this topic does not make any sense all. dont estimate and guess based kn flase info or just assumptions, rather, use real evidence and proof like me when you really estimate something.

I am bad at GW2, but I will destroy any thief in the game 1v1 with my necro right now. (prob any class tho) And of the top 100 is BS, have you seen the W/L records of some of the leaderboard? Where did you find that data for class breakdown of the leaderboard? Leaderboards are account bound not character bound so I don’t even believe you.

Also, did you just suggest that Guardian may be one fo the worst PvP classes?

Kitt.2567:

nope. warrior, or probly guaridian traditionally, is currently worst class cuz they got nerfed 2 times continuously since april patch. also have real evidence that warrior population in top100 has decreased a lot as compared to era before april patch. Now war anf guardian has lowest population placing top100, it is fact. currently thief on team arena of NA called Magic Toker is top1 in teamq so this topic does not make any sense all. dont estimate and guess based kn flase info or just assumptions, rather, use real evidence and proof like me when you really estimate something. currently ele and necro are the most op class from the data from its population of top100 position. thief is pretty fine right now.

Wow 1 whole day post patch and there’s a thief still number 1
! Clearly this is evidence that thief wasn’t nerfed whatsoever!

Toke has been messing with engi last i saw

Lulz at the leader board naming thief in a fine place

Don’t be tricked into trying P/P……..if you play a regular thief build you will not be satisfied playing:

1,1,1,1,1,3,1,1,3,1,1,1,1,3,1,1,1……….

There is no positioning, stealth or serious burst skill use involved. It won’t even feel “Thiefy”.

I tried and tried to make a P/P thief and it just doesn’t feel right at all. I am not talking about since the patch, I mean since the length of the game’s life. It’s always been the same. Extremely boring and defenseless pretty much.

Burst is possible with haste and stealth

Haha, you guys live in the world of SB.
Just take P/P with D/P, or even D/D and you got a whole new gameplay to explore.

dDuff.3860:

Haha, you guys live in the world of SB.
Just take P/P with D/P, or even D/D and you got a whole new gameplay to explore.

HAHAHA you guy live in the world of delusion.

Take any other weapon/combo over P/P and enjoy versatility, power and survivability.

Seriously, you keep clinging to that P/P setup.

time for some sb/sb action

ahahahaha hahahaha heheheahahahah good joke. Thief worst class. Nice try.

Ozie.4176:

ahahahaha hahahaha heheheahahahah good joke. Thief worst class. Nice try.

who’s worse?

ya u guys shud quit thief for a while lets hug the rangers now!

look thief d/p not viable in high rank tpvp now. same to S/D…. so i think anet wants us to play P/D or P/P pew pew unload? LOL id rather play PU mesmer now #1 scepter pew pew torment ftw!! and steal is really buggy. this month is the worst patch for thief really so ima playing ranger right now its fun and easy!

I definitely think thief is still gonna have a spot in top teams. I think they just need to be even more opportunistic than they were before. As it stands, an assassin thief with panic strike can instagib a lot of targets. Especially power ranger.

a t s e.9614:

Yea its even the worst zerker class besides from warrior maybe. Even at doing what they are the best ( killing zerkers) they suck now.

Over nerfed cuz of bads. I cant see the teef wtf please nerf.

I haven’t played with the new patch yet, but if this is true, then the balance in the game is truly kittened.

One of the thief’s purpose was to punish bad positioning and poor reaction times. If their possible over-nerf is true, everyone can just do their damage from 1.5k range away without any thought or care to their positioning. The sad thing is, people are typically so bad at the game that they will charge the warrior on point anyway, then still complain about how they die too easily.

We have independent might stacking, people able to easily achieve 9 stacks of might for 35 second durations just by weapon-swapping and no co-ordination needed. Now we potentially don’t have to worry about our positioning. Well done.

Chicago Jack.5647:

a t s e.9614:

Yea its even the worst zerker class besides from warrior maybe. Even at doing what they are the best ( killing zerkers) they suck now.

Over nerfed cuz of bads. I cant see the teef wtf please nerf.

I haven’t played with the new patch yet

Lol, you’re in for a very rude awakening.

Chicago Jack.5647:

a t s e.9614:

Yea its even the worst zerker class besides from warrior maybe. Even at doing what they are the best ( killing zerkers) they suck now.

Over nerfed cuz of bads. I cant see the teef wtf please nerf.

I haven’t played with the new patch yet, but if this is true, then the balance in the game is truly kittened.

One of the thief’s purpose was to punish bad positioning and poor reaction times. If their possible over-nerf is true, everyone can just do their damage from 1.5k range away without any thought or care to their positioning. The sad thing is, people are typically so bad at the game that they will charge the warrior on point anyway, then still complain about how they die too easily.

We have independent might stacking, people able to easily achieve 9 stacks of might for 35 second durations just by weapon-swapping and no co-ordination needed. Now we potentially don’t have to worry about our positioning. Well done.

Just a bunch of solo q’ers on the forums over reacting to everything as per usual. Move along, thief is still fine, it might not be required anymore now though? But it probably still is.

GOSU.9574:

dDuff.3860:

Haha, you guys live in the world of SB.
Just take P/P with D/P, or even D/D and you got a whole new gameplay to explore.

HAHAHA you guy live in the world of delusion.

Take any other weapon/combo over P/P and enjoy versatility, power and survivability.

Seriously, you keep clinging to that P/P setup.

this . . . much this

I personally think power ranger plays the thieves role better than thieves do. They have good mobility with either GS or S/D to get around the map and can +1 somebody, and their burst comes from 1500 range without real graphical tell, just as backstab would (you can’t see a teeny tiny arrow in the mess of particle effects, just see your health disappear). Not only can they burst in this way in plus-1 situations, but they do so from the safety of very long range. Further, b/c of that range they can position in completely safe areas and engage before actually reaching a point.

I’m not sure why you would take a thief over a ranger anymore. Even in the fight vs. each-other, proper positioning and use of the 12s of invulns available, combined with a single well-placed immob/rapid fire to 1-shot them makes the matchup even. Perhaps thieves can decap slightly better.

12 secs of invulnerability? Please link me those skills because if you’re calling killing your pet and losing 30% of your damage via “protect me” invulnerability you don’t know what that term means. The pet under that should is not attacking, if you die to the ranger’s damage alone you are really bad.

Thief got some hits, but really the only thing affecting them is how buggy steal is at the moment. For S/D I agree it is harder to proc larcenous, and they should have brought back the 2 boon strip if they required flanking strike to land. D/P #5 isn’t that big of a deal, you shouldn’t be hugging your BP, and there are a lot of ways to stomp. I think D/P is the way to go now in high level tiers, and is the most rewarding if played right. Only the bad thieves will suffer more, and the good ones will adapt. The bad ones will be impatient, be out of position, and will use dodges incorrectly. The good ones will be the opposite, patient, in position to burst and decap as needed, and dodge what needs to be dodged. Main reason like I said earlier in this, was that steal is buggy, and some things do not chain. Other than that, thief isn’t too bad at the moment.

It is basically impossible to 1v1 or 2v2 as a d/p because of all this AI and AOE going on that will just kill you instantly. Also now s/d is pretty bad, they should have just redone the build. The black powder nerf was ridiculous. Not to mention d/d is STILL complete kitten and condi thief sucks compared to an engi or necro because of lack of AOE.

Demonts.4593:

It is basically impossible to 1v1 or 2v2 as a d/p because of all this AI and AOE going on that will just kill you instantly. Also now s/d is pretty bad, they should have just redone the build. The black powder nerf was ridiculous. Not to mention d/d is STILL complete kitten and condi thief sucks compared to an engi or necro because of lack of AOE.

If you are trying to play any thief build as a necro or engi you are doing it wrong….

I know that you aren’t supposed to try to brute force people but with the sustain of celestial amulets many teams are just trying to 2v2 on points and win those fights

I haven’t played d/p since the patch, am quite concerned about the heavy nerf to black powder though. How are you guys finding it?

Nah. once steal is fixed D/P is fine

Biggest nerf is that you cant dodge in wari steal skill anymore… hardest dps now useless against hambow. Fml (eventough its rather a fix than a nerf)

Yasha.5963:

I haven’t played d/p since the patch, am quite concerned about the heavy nerf to black powder though. How are you guys finding it?

It’s actually a bigger problem than I thought it would be. I don’t even know why they changed it, I think it was for PvE but did they not think about what changes it would make for PvP.

I’ve been playing a soldier based venom share p/p s/p build.

It’s involved a shift from playing full executioner to playing judge and jury. It’s more about securing the kill or setting the table for allies to get the kill (especially stomps.)

Less hopping onto 1v1s and getting random proc based kills. More jumping into existing fights and stunlocking/8+s immobilizing an enemy with venoms and leaving the stomp to an ally when possible. A good unload channel is delivering almost 5k damage between raw damage and venom procs. If you drop multiple venoms across 2-3 channels you can deal a solid 10k in 5s from range while having 18k hp as a thief, plus all of the healing on yourself.

And don’t forget that your allies get the damage/healing bonuses too.

And maybe more importantly that venoms ignore endure pain. Though on the flipside they’re consumed by blocks/invulns (making bunker guardians a much harder fight.)

This is a knee jerk reaction and should be treated as such, but it seems to me they’ve just taken everything that allowed thief to fill a particular niche, and parted it out to other classes.

Need instantaneous burst? Ele’s got that now, even though it was removed from thief when the BV->CnD->Steal with mug combo had every single step in it nerfed.

Need strong, quick burst with good pressure followup? Ranger’s got that now, without positional requirements(this part I’m actually not 100% sure on, correct me if I’m wrong), from range, with hard CC on the weapon it uses AND a pet to boot.

Even mobility – while thief is still the best at it (which forces every thief spec to run ShBow and SS btw), other classes are catching up to the point where thieves glaring weaknesses are no longer made up for by their access to mobility.

This would be fine if all the classes had similar access to defenses/condition removal/boons/base hp/general sustain/etc…… but they don’t. They’ve given great burst to classes that don’t start with the lowest base HP in the game, that Do have access to protection and stability, that get immune skills, that get hard CC on their weaponsets, and so on.

The point of this isn’t to bash those classes, but to question Anet’s design principles. When you designed thief, you decided they were going to have the lowest base HP. You decided they’d have no practical access to protection/stability/condition removal, poor access to regen with absolutely no reason to take Healing power, and no access to immune skills/blocks. You decided all of thieves defenses would have to be reactive, and then continue to nerf them over and over and over again.

What is it you want thieves to do? Move around the map quickly? What good is that when almost any class can match our burst while exceeding our sustain (which means they’ll win the fight), or just straight up out-sustain our damage, which you keep nerfing, all while buffing other classes damage?

Tl;dr: It just seems like Thieves have lost all the benefits associated with being a squishy class with poor sustain and all active defenses, all while watching most of those benefits go to classes that don’t have the same drawbacks.

Yasha.5963:

I haven’t played d/p since the patch, am quite concerned about the heavy nerf to black powder though. How are you guys finding it?

The black powder nerf is a joke. Anyone can just stand in it and wreck you, because missing 1 swing every 2 seconds won’t help you live through whatever another player is throwing at you. The fact that it still costs 6 init is a slap in the face – it’s good for the blinding shot and stealth access for D/P, and that’s it.

@Dimglow.5489
This sounds as the worst thief build I’ve ever heared or seen. P/P thief(which base is actually ZERK to upscale the dps), with venom share from shadow arts(toughness) and soldier amulet, which doesn’t help the case of your venoms at all or the unload dps.
So I guess having a 19k hp thief sitting somewhere in the nowhere with kittens of dps and kittens of condi venoms is the new meta.

As long as thief has the best mobility, thief will be an essential part of every team, if not the best pvp class.

Stop 1v1 and look at the big picture.

nekretaal.6485:

As long as thief has the best mobility, thief will be an essential part of every team, if not the best pvp class.

Stop 1v1 and look at the big picture.

Because thieves are so strong in team fights – it’s practically where they live!

[/sarcasm]

Mobility is strong, but being less effective then other classes when you get there makes your presence less important.

@Diesel Stelar.3709
Don’t overreact. Things have changed. Ele burst and ranger DPS are now real threats to a glass thief. It’s time to consider options which don’t evaporate when caught out.

The goal of thief has always been to secure kills, and to turn any fight they’re in to their team’s advantage.

Venom share is an option to pursue that. Instead of 5k damage larcenous strikes with procs you do 4-5k damage unloads or pistol whips that also give your teammates thousands more damage. Plus the healing. It still generates surprising spike and also provides healing. Even better it ignores toughness and damage immunities which are even more common as DPS rangers with Signet of Stone show up, beyond the stance warriors still being plentiful.

It’s like spike condition damage that can’t be cleansed.

Meanwhile you apply a ton of control with basilisk venom stuns and more importantly high levels of immobilize lockdown which makes it easy for your team to tunnel targets with venoms.

It’s after a new patch. It is time to experiment. Dismissing new ideas after 2 days is only going to keep the meta stale.

OK so when I made this thread it was during the steal bug. I didn’t think they would fix that because other steal bugs have existed and still exist 2 years later, I thought this was more of the same.

DP is back and feels about as good as ever. BP nerf is fine, mostly use that for stealth anyway, use 3 to blind. I’m glad we’ll have at least 1 viable set.

S/D even feels a little better since the steal bug, but still kinda weak. Lot of people will just dodge the flanking strike + steal so I’ve been opening with CnD instead and geting an early daze/blind. If you get the daze it’s a guaranteed landed FS (almost), so I think this is the new combo now. Takes a lot longer than the old LS+steal burst. What S/D is missing from prepatch is BURST. The dps isn’t horrible, but the burst is few and far in between as you get way less larcenous procs. I don’ think I’ll be using it, but the jury is still out I’m giving it another chance

tl;dr Sword feels weak, rest is fine. Buff sword auto chain so S/P is more viable too