Guild Wars 2

bound actually helps s/p be a really strong weapon set atm (especially after auto buff)
id actually like to see stealth have a max of 6 seconds or less having huge durations of stealth doesn’t feel very guildwarsy

All of these builds are viable right now imo ( other than condi :P) but the dagger/ staff auto attack is just too strong. d/p is probably the strongest but staff is a very close second. staff takes a little more effort to stick to some one with the 3 jump cancel the roll for perma cripple. but honestly thief is so strong now that I have been doing fine as a one dagger thief. you can just auto attack trade with almost any class. The burst of bound steal auto is so high probably not worth backstabbing anymore tbh.

So far it has been pretty good tbh. With staff i have been able to carry team fights as well as get the decaps im used to. last night I went 6/1!

Although saying that thief is sometimes really frustrating because i will get killed for free from triple dh traps somewhere random in between points and i’m left just like … why are those there :‘( and dying instantly vs a lot of other classes because I messed up one dodge but it is totally fine that I hit all of my dmg combos and they are still alive because of #passivedefence and huge health pools. Then get called a vault spammer (which usually is not the best option to do) but sometimes its like well, wtf do you want from me !? you have so much god kitten health and if I’m not in an evade always you 2 shot me! Sure ofc i use the other abilities on staff but when you need to put some safe pressure on the enemy vault is one of the best options. 2 is risky as all hell, 3 is a good cripple which you can jump cancel the rollback, 4 is a great blind but does not make your follow up safe for sure 4+5 is good because they cannot punish your non evade part of vault and you know if they never ever punish your vault, kitten it! Spam it on them all day.

If you land a throw in a fighting game and they do not tech it, you go for it again and again and again until they die. There is no column for cheap or spam there is only win or loss and with thieves the way they are right now I will do anything for the win!

opticaldelusion, d/d condi hasn’t been viable since they nerfed caltrop trait as well as evade nerf on d/d 3 which makes it very easy to line up your burst on a d/d thief thus not good in “high” level play. P/P has never been viable because of its terrible auto attack and no defensive capability :’( unload is strong but can get shutdown by d/p thief using headshot or staff thief jumping on you mid unload. looking at the meta right now us pvpers have no trouble using things that are boring and take no skill to get wins (2 munkers, 2 condi revs and a tempest/druid.) It is not because people have not tried to run these other builds. stuck up would be not using 2 munkers and 2 condi revs <3

I feel this as a thief too no matter how godlike you play, no matter how hard i have tried to carry by getting fast decaps and killing people in a team fight. THE PEOPLE will always use you as the excuse as for why they lost, and it feels bad :‘(. or you get some idiot reaper telling you you spam 5 on staff when you are trying to evade all there kitten that will one/two shot you when you only hit him for tiny dmg compared to what he does to you. Honestly i’m doing well on my thief but it makes when i do lose suck even more :’(.

yeah in February we will get a complete balance update it is called playing street fighter 5.

Im going to agree with countless here I think those are actually pretty good ideas for nerfing this bunker monster. Also kitten you countless for showing me AND THE PEOPLE that this was possible :P the first time I saw this build was actually with countless here very early days of xpac, short form of the story is he carried Ransack and I through a bunch of games, Ransack was too busy seeing green (rip his lungs) and I was kittening around on rev. All aboard the well train baby no skill is required.

these runes are actually so good im taking them over dmg runes on my thief >.<. I mean that’s just weird, BUT the survivability it gives feels like it is too good not to take (it allows me to do more dmg because i can ride some, one smacking them with my shaft for longer)

id just like to say the floating crystal idea is amazing and would require little work to implement using textures that are already in game with some color changes. The ground art doesn’t bother me too much but it looks very weird now that people have been mentioning it. Like it honestly makes very little since why we have projectors built into our armor to shine on the ground also if the effect is triggering peoples migraines at least add a way to turn it off for those people. Again i do not dislike the ground art hugely i just think some one actually offered up a brilliant solution to something a lot of players do not enjoy.

I think what people find with thieves right now is not that they do not find success in matches. Thieves are infact very good still in spvp BUT our role is primarily 1v0 and #prayicanrezthisdudethroughcleave. We cannot fight any other class 1v1 because they % times that we win in an equal skill matchup is not higher than 50% thus it is always better to run and find a node where we can 100% 1v0 the node. THIS IS NOT FUN. Thieves are primarily complaining about the state of thief because it is NOT FUN to play. we were never kings at 1v1 nor should we BUT the part of thief i used to enjoy was if i was better than the opponent i had ways to edge out a victory. Now even if i blind/dodge/headshot all my opponents core abilities their sustain dmg is enough to force me off of them and play defensively. As well as it is frustrating to see classes not even built for burst hitting harder than us who are only built for dmg. right now a mistake as a thief or hell our stealth condi removal not removing burn fast enough means we die or are out of the fight for a long time while we regen fighting no one. Again this is not fun it is stressful. Just to recap i do not think the thief class is weak, what i do believe is that it is very discouraging and unfun to play right now.

unfortunatly my impression on daredevil as a long time thief player are not great. let me first say i think it is pretty good and with a few buffs could be viable alongside the other specs. My main complaint is it really really does feel like i’m just playing acrobatics pre nerf again with a longer dodge or warrior minor trait for the bound trait and less dodges. It does not feel like something new and i wish it did i love thief and may even still play thief. Daredevil just does not change thief in a way that makes it feel different. The next unfortunate part is it puts even more reliance on landing steal! with our endurance Regen being directly related to landing steal it is even more critical we land every steal we use. lets list all the thing steal does and why if we land it we are going to lose the fight.
dmg/heal
endurance regen
boon rip
poison/weakness
cd reset
might/fury/swiftness/vigor
daze
2init
landing this skill in a fight as a thief is literally do or die and i was really hoping we could move past having to stack all our traits into one skill because the other trait choices suck. SO with thief being the way it is it is the most punishing class if you do something wrong as small as miss count the opponents dodges which is really hard with energy sigil procs + vigor. I got off topic but my point is daredevil DOES feel like old acrobatics with a little bit of powdered sugar on top to make it look different and i am sad about it ._.

The big problem i think players are having right now on thief is not actually that it is bad in pvp( because it is not) BUT, it is not fun at all to play in pvp anymore. Most of the match you spend 1v0 or running from everyone. Your sick ganks consist of seeing some one at 25 % hp and pressing f1 1 for the gank. This as other classes have argued is why we are not able to fight anything anymore. Which is total bullkitten even when we were able to fight 1v1 only one of us was taken for the reason we can not fight on points WHICH IS FINE i do not think any thief thinks we should be a point fighter class. People argue that we put builds out of meta, with the current state of thieves it is not thief holding other dps classes back anymore. Now look at the meta builds people run oh only thief and mesmer wow where are all the other zerk classes you were going to play when thief got nerfed so hard that they have to play 1v0. The truth is thief is not bad just an awful experience to play currently.

daredevil class mechanic is = 1 energy sigil proc to really put it into perspective. and as for our grand master traits warrior gets the damage one on a minor trait. I was hoping with how unfun i have being finding thief to play in pvp that the spec will renew my interest in the class (thief is not bad in pvp but not fun at all as you play 1v0 most the game and f1 1 some one at 25 % hp for those sick thief plays) i was really hoping the specialization would make me go aww yeah thief time bb but after 5k games on thief through multiple teams in the past through all the nerfs im almost ready to quit it as i am having no fun on it anymore.

Thief all around is in a frustrating place right now in pvp. Acro does not have enough dmg and dodges, d/p is OK if you play perfectly shadow shotting and head shotting everything but still has trash condi clear so if you get condi bombed you either die in the 3 seconds it takes for your condi clear to activate after you go into stealth or you are in stealth for 10+ seconds while your team rethinks having a thief on the team. while other classes are kitten ing around on their keyboard and winning because oh man the thief should have headshotted that one ability and now he is dead, or for acro man he dodged and didn’t take dmg the whole fight until he got hit by one thing becasue he ran out of endurance because every attack incomming is high impact to the thief (this however is not the case for the thief’s attacks on other classes) and now is dead. I guess i’m just uspet but its also the reason i love thief is because you have to try so much more god kitten hard and be better than every one else on this class to do the same ting as all the other classes are doing by just slamming their face into the keyboard as a side note if i hear another person say d/d ele takes skill i’m going to jump off a cliff :P

I am looking to play thief on a team. My past experience has been in the paid Tournaments way back playing on teams like Enguard, Pretty Princess squad, [XXX].

these nerfs need to happen <3 not because I think turrets are op or underpowered, I do not care for that argument. Turret engis are just amazingly not fun to fight, especially for new players.
I know so many players that tried pvp walked into a few teams that had turret engis on them and do you know what they said ? They said man meow this I’m done its not fun to get beaten by ai. If you get beaten by a better player that’s fine often you get to see some swanky stuff they are pulling to beat you and the reaction is actually positive in your head. Getting beaten by ai is nothing but frustrating. I’m sure some one (if any one replies to my post) will say but rotations! That beats turret engis.
I am only talking about the new pvper experience here. This build fundamentally makes that experience less fun and thus we lose potential members of our pvp community :’(.

I do not actually care if turret engi’s are op or not there are good arguments on both sides. The reason I care is that they are always frustrating to play against even if you are beating the team that has a turret engi on it and not even fun to play as. Players are only playing turret engi’s because they can get easy wins. That is the part that is messed up. It is also the number 1 class I hear new people to pvp complain about and even though you may say its a l2p issue which to be fair there is an element of l2p with fightign turret engis . It is still a very toxic build to the community and deters new players because they are not even getting outplayed by a better player they are getting beaten by AI which is a lot more frustrating to be defeated by.

6/0/2/0/6 is pretty kitten good for roaming and spvp.

d/p, shortbow 6/0/2/0/6 is a good build to use in. improv is super good the ability to reset one of your utility skills is amazing and opens up a lot more options through out the fight and adds some unpredictability while fighting you. But because all of your utilities are basically always useful it doesn’t feel like an unpredictable trait to take. the damage bonus does not matter stop thinking about it…

improvisation is a sexy trait <3 cd reset every 21 seconds is pretty awesome.

PvP is always toxic it is something unfortunately, because it is competitive. I just wish people made an effort to be more positive <3. Though a bit of bm is always a bit fun.

literally people are making this match up way to hard for themselves. just blind and headshot appropriate abilities (eg. if you see them start a rapid fire press 4 and it will cancel rapid fire completely. if they block use your unblockable blind.) this matchup is heavily weighted in the thief’s favor. ) Quick recap any cast time ability the ranger uses headshot it, for everything else there is shadow shot. oh and just auto attack to do damage or do the backstab combo if you want to be super esports and know they do not have their knockback up.

well d/d in fight mobility is pretty terrible since the distance of hs gets shortened if you have crip or chill on you :P

I think most people’s problem with stealth really stems from the shadow arts tree and its ability in modes like wvw to heal to full hp very quickly with 0 counter play to it. This trait really should be changed to something that rewards the thief for smart play rather than sucking, getting bopped and stealthing away to then try to re engage 5 seconds later at full hp. As for spvp people just need to stop complaining about stealth lol :P.

#forumrez
as a 6/0/2/0/6 d/p thief i gotta honestly agree with cruuk here ( as well as just knowing cruuk is a good player because of playing vs him in paid tourneys way back in the mists of time.) The bp nerf was unneeded and while it did not make me non viable it is a constant p*ss off that even finishing some one on thief is harder than it is on other classes. currently if i want to finish some one quickly i usually just cant I have to resort to cleaving the body. with the old BP i could at least negate some of the enemies downed abilities. I felt this was agreeable because if any one looks at me funny and i don’t have a blind dodge or teleport ready, I die. In terms of combat use if you are standing in the black powder you deserved to die… i mean srsly… it’s not that hard to move out of. Currently the s/d meta build is very dull and boring still punishing because you are zerker but will still rewards you even while playing sloppy because of having a million and two ways to escape. Where the d/p builds are super glassy you have to spend time to get into good a position and then burn cds to avoid mindless cleave from the 2 main cele classes. and then you backstab for not enough damage to make the ele worried. and don’t have a good bp to negate the damage about to hit you. In fact you have to hope ( HOPE) they use something with a cast time so you can headshot and gtfo or something without an evade attached to it so you can shadow shot and blind AN attack. I guess this is just me ranting and not all this may be fact or true because this is just an emotional rant but again this is just a thief frustrated with rando nerfs and buffs to things that will never be useful and having to outplay other classes to have an even fight.

this all reminds me of when PZ was unstoppable … EGO WARS 2 !

i think peoples problem is with glass the risk is huge if you get caught out at all you will die. where condition classes can almost burst as hard or harder and still have descent toughness/hp pools. while burst can still be effective it is a higher risk for not much more reward. Also aoe cleave meta is very boring to watch and to play in my eyes and in many peoples eyes.

hahaha find out what is wrong with pistol/ pistol hahahahahaha

Degoking We are looking for people for our team and would love to hear from you later tonight and ill talk it over with Ranko but i would love to have you on our team because i have played against you many times and you are a very skilled player.

Hey kpop we have a team of 3 for sure right now Ranko, Blood Gulom, and I. We would love to play with a warrior like you that has tonnes of experience. The 3 of us are ex Enguard players and have experience playing against the top teams.

still looking for a team

its very strong still but i can always change to suit a teams needs just s/d is very boring but i will still do it if i have to

its ok well for any one else viewing this post we are still looking for a team.

hello i am Kura as Ranko as said i am a thief its what i am best at by far. my play times are pretty similar to Ranko’s times. we are definitely looking to be competitive again soon as we have been in the past in the guild Enguard. I look forward to talking more in-depth in-game.

same as above poster i am on mac client and cannot buy gems

hey caed its kurayamikara or kura tree just want to say im so happy you are putting up a guide to get some new thieves at least on the right track ! keep it up id love to see more thieves up near the top.

spirit watch please i never had so much fun on a map.

<Team looking for a player(es)>
Team name: pretty princess squad <men>
Region: na
Amount of members: looking for 1 member.
Practice Times: Evenings not tuesdays and thursday. We are fine if you take days out for having too much home work or have to take some night shifts
Class(es) you are looking for: ele, ranger, warrior, necro, engi.
Other (Anything else that you would like to add): we are chill and like to have fun experimenting with different things But are also striving to be a top team na.

i just want to input something from a not top player but i like to think i’m not awful :P . the way the paid tourney is (the 8 team tourney) is very disheartening. You que in knowing you can beat most meh teams but you hit tp/pz/dtc/alfa in the first round get kitten and then you have to wait for the next round of paids. or if not first round you have a good chance to get them second round. Getting kitten by these teams does nothing to help learning. you never got an edge the whole game to know where to improve on you just come away going well we just need to be better in every way. Which is true, But this does not allow for a smooth learning curve and for players to enjoy getting better. Right now we have to smash our heads against a brick wall in hope that some how someday many paid tickets later we will get a win against a team that has been playing together for far longer than we have. I’m not saying we should win I’m saying we need to go against teams our level and get better gradually rather than having to fight a titan first time and get smashed.

i know this has been frustrating me it would be nice and would take not very long to implement, please arena net! this game is barbie dress up let me give her some pretty daggers :P

please no leave paids to be competitive other wise good teams are stuck playing pugs for the off chance to fight a real team like it is right now in this week

i know this seems like a silly thing but it has been bugging me that daggers only get the encrusted option and not the orrian option for skin in spvp. It would just be nice to get an orrian dagger option for spvp. (and greatsword because they only get the encrusted option too.

as the title explains i am a thief with 46 qualifying points looking for a competitive team that runs paids lots and tries to improve on skills.

i am looking for one more for my team need a player willing to lose and learn from that loss and get better. pref class would be either a mesmer, bunker guard or bunker ele. but if we think another class might work we will give it a try

dank i play thief main but keep doing this until they learn they cannot hs spam people to death anymore <3

http://www.gw2db.com/skills/calc/thief#3|10|2642|3361|2786|8743|4485|0|0|0|0|30|1195|1190|1196|30|2199|2198|751|10|727|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0| this is my build if you can see it i run with 5 scholar 1 divinity and berserker necklace 5% dmg on dagger bloodlust on pistol, fire on shortbow. if you cannot see it its
i/iii/xii
iv/v/xi
vi

thieves are very powerful in paids. We bring burst and very reliable resurrects as long as your teammate doesn’t attack when you cloak them. we can turn the tied by killing specific targets and pressuring people so that they cannot put out there full damage. The standard build is 25/30/0/0/15 dagger dagger short bow. i cant remember each trait number off the top of my head but all of the trait choices will make sense to do maximum dmg. You can also run this build with dagger/pistol. I run a deferent build with dagger pistol shown in my signature. Message me in game if you want the full trait setup. i will always try to help people in game. I am not on the forum too much.

i definitely want them to read this. I’m really happy you are making an effort Sataarcoeny. I think if more top players start posting constructive ideas in the forums it will definitely help move this game forward. if you ever want to bounce ideas off just message me in game or here. they can ignore maybe one or 2 but if most of the top players start posting / agreeing with others they will probably be more inclined to actually implement the ideas.

the spvp rooms and tournys are likely not as full because it holiday time and people are either away or spending tie with family. To expect them to be as full as 2 months ago is just silly. Spvp is not dying its just the majority of people on the forums are only hear to complain about how they got owned and cant be bothered to think about a way to defend against it. Which means they will always be beaten by players that try to figure out things and learn how and when to use all of there abilities. if you look at most good players not even top players in top 10 teams but teams that do well in frees, these players you will never see them complain about classes being op because they have found ways around them through teamwork/ own abilities.

I really like this idea sataarcoeny This would help guilds like ENG a lot because right now, we just cant get in enough games vs people like you. So we can’t work on recovery strats. We either have a chance to win at the start if we win the initial fights, or we lose. We really want to improve but with the current state of things we run out of tickets before we can really hammer in lots of games to work out some kinks in our strategies. I feel that there are a lot of teams in the same spot we are in that frees are too easy but when we go into paids we will get destroyed by the very top teams.

tl dr: i don’t mind getting beaten by much better players, I just want a way to hammer my head into the wall enough times that I can break through it ,and start giving all of you guys really good games. Your idea would give me a way to do that