Well PvE, WvW and tPvP are quite different to one another and different builds are more suited to one area than another. The d/p perma-stealth builds you might see in WvW for example are great because you can take your time and heal up when needed, but in tPvP you generally can’t be waiting around in stealth to heal while your opponents cap points.
If you’re going for a direct damage build for WvW or PvP then d/p and s/d are the two main weapon sets. s/d can strip opponents of their boons and give them to you, making them good against professions that have a lot of boons such as elementalists or guardians, and uses evades and high mobility as the main source of damage mitigation. S/D builds go with something like 0/30/0/30/10 for traits and beserker gear for pvp. Armor sets for wvw are a matter of preference.
d/p offers stealth and blinds for avoiding damage and uses heartseekers and backstabs for spike damage. Pistol off hand can be particularly effective in dealing with opponents using melee weapons due to the smoke field provided by black powder. D/P builds usually use 25/30/0/0/15 with zerker gear for pvp or 10/30/30/0/0 with zerker and possibly a mixture of soldier and valkyrie for wvw.
For PvE just about every weapon set has a use but d/d is often used against bosses as it offers the highest single target dps while s/p is often used to deal with trash mobs. 25/30/10/0/5 with d/d is the highest sustained dps build for thief I believe, but for PvE you can use just about anything.
Yes backstabs do a lot of damage and yes they can be done regularly, but you’re still assuming this puts a thief’s damage ahead of a warriors without real evidence to support it. Looking at the burst damage between professions is not a valid way to compare their average dps.
If you want to prove a thief does more damage then show the math to support this or pick a target with enough hp that a fight lasts a reasonable amount of time and see how long it takes a warrior and thief to kill it, followed by numerous repeats and work out an average for each. Until then you haven’t proved anything.
A few clips of a thief dealing high burst damage proves nothing more than thieves can deal high burst damage. It shows nothing of a thief’s average damage in protracted encounters such as a boss fights.
There are lots of factors to take into account that can affect dps but there is a reason most speed runs go with 1 mesmer and 4 warriors.
I use the following for maximum damage (the runes offer the highest direct damage combination mathematically when combined with the traits and sigils):
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAoYVlUm6NHdy5E/5Ex2jdKUe6fgs6MoZLB-TsAg0CnIqRxljLDXSuscNKYZxkCA
Sometimes I’ll swap to D/P, depends on the mood, but both work well as long as you know the combos.
I think ogre runes offer higher dps than 5 scholar and 1 divinity.
The only real benefit of D/D for a direct damage build is the slightly higher burst damage it offers, which is why most D/D are glass cannons. D/D simply doesn’t offer much in the way of mobility or skills to help you survive.
Since you’re only playing casually, and I assume in hotjoin, just run whatever you’re comfortable with. Going 10/30/30/0/0 for example will still give you decent dps with increased survivability from shadow arts. I would advise you to try D/P for example though; D/D is really just an inferior version of it in many cases.
You will see slightly higher backstabs with 30/30/10 for example, but the lower than expected dps is probably because you don’t have exotic or ascended trinkets.
That was an organised speed run; don’t expect your average farm of CoF to be like that :P
I’d personally go with something like 30/30/10/0/0 and pick up infusion of shadow since most fights are going to be longer than shown in the video. As the video shows though, sword is really only used in the first room of path 1 and d/d is used everywhere else since you only need to deal single target damage.
I think he’s suggesting something like F1 is your steal ability, but instead of the stolen item replacing F1 it takes up your F2 slot. If you steal again without using the F2 ability the new stolen item takes up your F3 slot and so on. This way you can use steal again without having to use the stolen item first and you gather a selection of items to use as needed.
Do damage numbers appear in your combat log if you hit someone in stealth?
Well obviously soldier is going to offer the most protection but if you don’t want to sacrifice that much damage I would go with valkyrie. The extra hp to a thief’s small hp pool will probably save your life more often than some more toughness will.
No one enjoys a RNG system to getting items, especially items available for a limited time. Just make them available for purchase through gems as well and everybody is happy.
In terms of adding some prestige to items, I think a simple recoloured version should be available for those who grind rather than pay for items. Give a golden version of the dragon wings who those who obtain it through jorbreakers for example. You have something worth persuing if you really want the aesthetic item that you can work towards and obtain if you put enough effort into it but you don’t have to put up with a RNG system that means you can invest twice the effort and money into getting an item as someone else who got it but not get it yourself.
Shadow Arts is lacking
AHahahhahahahahhahahaHWHWHAHWHHhawhawhawhawhwhahawhwahawhawhawhawhawhawhawhawhawhwhhawahw XD
Dude, as long as you have that line there nobody is going to bother reading that wall of text.
The trait line requires you to stay in stealth to benefit. This is major drawback in tPvP and PvE where you want to be putting out as much damage as possible and not hiding while you heal up.
I think abilities like shadow rejuvenation should give an upfront amount of healing when entering stealth so players are encouraged to come in and out of stealth to benefit the most. I feel this would also go some way to fix the d/p builds in wvw as well.
Rather than making infusion of shadow prevent you from stacking stealth I think they could just make the initiative return only apply when entering stealth and do nothing if you’re already in stealth and are just stacking it.
I dislike the ability to attain perma-stealth with dagger/pistol… but if they’re in stealth there’s little you can do to stop them from ‘abusing’ the game mechanics to stay in stealth and heal up.
Try standing in their b/p, one HS in and they are revealed.
Well a half decent thief wouldn’t use heart seeker if you’re in the way, so it should still work on most people in WvW :P
But if a thief wants to stealth he can just move out of sight and spam blackpowder & heartseeker. Unless they’ve used all their utility skills and are in a dire position, a thief is able to heal up or run away if they want to with very little you can do to stop them.
The profession isn’t very forgiving and if you go full zerker then you’ll pay a high price for any mistakes you make. With that said, it’s PvE so it’s entirely possible to into high level fractals with a glass cannon build and never be downed; it comes down to how well you play and know how to deal with particular encounters.
In terms of damage it depends really. A dagger/dagger build should do slightly more damage than a warrior if they have the same buffs, but warriors generally have more might stacks and fury uptime if your group isn’t providing them. Thieves offer competitive damage but warriors will probably offer higher dps in most cases for the majority of players. A zerker warrior can take significantly more damage than a zerker thief too.
For level 80 builds it also depends on what you’re going for. For PvE content you can get away with just about anything. For WvW and sPvP there are really only a few viable builds.
I dislike the ability to attain perma-stealth with dagger/pistol and I don’t think it’s what the developers had intended, but even without it the weapon set offers the best all round selection of skills imo and there is skill involved in using it effectively.
I well timed stun/knockback can be used to prevent them from entering stealth through heartseeker through blackpowder, but if they’re in stealth there’s little you can do to stop them from ‘abusing’ the game mechanics to stay in stealth and heal up.
T3 human armor has underboob… I think this settles the matter :P
Stop saying warriors out-DPS thieves, it’s not true. We have the strongest single target DPS in the game. It is your fault if you are not able to reach it.
They do? From my experience it doesn’t feel like that is true and groups doing speed runs will use zerker warriors over thieves.
try 30-30-10-0-0
and @CoF http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCdnhkdHXYg
As I understand it a thief offers the highest potential single target dps, but this relies on 25 stacks of might, 100% fury uptime etc. In a group that can maintain these conditions, a thief may offer higher dps, although I doubt it would be a significant increase.
If it was a zerker thief and a zerker warrior without group buffs then i think the warrior offers higher dps. With this in mind, I would imagine that only a small section of the community would see an increase in the groups total dps with a thief over a warrior, and a relatively minor one at that.
Stop saying warriors out-DPS thieves, it’s not true. We have the strongest single target DPS in the game. It is your fault if you are not able to reach it.
They do? From my experience it doesn’t feel like that is true and groups doing speed runs will use zerker warriors over thieves.
I think it depends on what you mean by survivability. A thief can easily be the last guy standing, but that’s because he’s invisible. If we’re looking for a class with the most staying power that be focused on and deal damage at the same time, i.e. not be in stealth, then it’s near the bottom of the list.
Its evade skills and mobility could be very strong, but input lag and delays due to animation and the queue system can make it difficult to time these skills reliably to avoid damage. There’s little room for error and playing as a thief isn’t very forgiving. The profession is in need of some refining to be more viable in pvp and pve imo.
That skill is broken. Being able to spam it with perma-evade the whole time is not fun to fight against or play. You can just stay outside the range of the skill and wait for the thief to run out of initiative and there are a few underwater skills that seem to ignore the evade too.
It is broken but it’s not ridiculously OP either. The thief’s underwater skills I find lacking otherwise though, but then it is underwater combat so who really cares?
Have you tried a pistol/dagger build? I would go with condition damage if you’re trying to make a ‘bunker’ build.
People often do speed runs of cof1; surviving the path isn’t usually considered to be an issue and no one should go down in a decent group.
Zerker warriors are more effective because they do more damage and can finish the path more quickly.
Just to add further to unnecessary maths, signet of malice does seem to benefit a lot from healing power, relative to its base healing, compared to just about any other heal in the game and you will see a significant increase in its effectiveness by stacking it.
However, if we’re comparing healing power to toughness when considering signet of malice, then you also have to account for the highly variable nature of the healing it provides. While you could be healing for 50% or more from the passive heal by stacking healing power, if you’re fighting a single target for example and not getting many attacks in, then 50% more healing may not be much overall. In these situations toughness is more likely to keep you alive, although you probably shouldn’t be using signet of malice here anyway.
If you’re fighting groups of mobs and placing down caltrops and choking gas to receive a huge amount of healing, then more healing power here is going to be very effective and probably more so than toughness.
In general though, toughness is going to be the more reliable stat to increase your ability to stay alive and beneficial in all situations. As lokhiet said, healing power is generally only worth investing in if you already have a lot of toughness and want to increase your staying power further.
That all follows a basic lack of knowledge on the function and purpose of each attribute, though. Toughness improves self healing far more effectively than Healing Power.
Is this true for signet of malice though? 1000 more healing power can increase the passive healing effect by about 50% while 1000 more toughness can reduce the damage you take by about 30% right?
edit: although i suppose this really depends on how much healing you’re receiving from the signet and whether healing power or toughness is more beneficial depends on the situation.
(edited by Alex.6940)
Is there a small delay or is it just affected by the skill queue system?
I wish we had a way to toggle which abilities we want to enter the queue system or have them interrupt whatever we’re doing at that moment anyway. It would make a few skills much more reliable to use as a way of avoiding damage.
There is no reason a group of competent players can’t kill a single thief. Deny the thief access to stealth and their dead, unfortunately many players just don’t know how to counter it.
Secondly i think thieves should move away from stealth, or at least as their main form of defence. Healing in stealth is a powerful trait, but it also means a thief has to stay in stealth to heal. When they get low they have to leave combat and stay in stealth for as long as possible to heal, meaning they can’t keep pressure on people and also gives the opponent time to recover as well. This also makes for a frustrating experience for the person fighting the thief; no one enjoys fighting an enemy that’s invisible most of the time.
Stealth is an amazing way to avoid damage, but it also means you can’t damage anyone while you’re in it. With really no other way to mitigate incoming damage, this just causes thieves to come out of stealth, deal as much burst damage they can then stealth again. The skill available to the profession simply don’t support another play style.
Traits aren’t that important tbh and you’ll end up using whatever is most useful at that point in time since you can’t access the full trait line for most of your time spent levelling.
For weapon sets i find the most useful to be either a direct damage build using sword/pistol. This just involves using black powder to blind any mobs standing inside and using your auto attack to kill them. This makes any melee enemies without the unshakable buff trivial for the most part, you just have to watch out for opponents that attack more than once a second as your blind field doesn’t work as quickly. If you’re facing more than 1 ranged opponent this can be an issue though.
The other option is a condition build that spams leaping death blossom with dagger/dagger or using short bow. You can apply bleeds to groups of enemies while evading most of the time. Caltrops is very effective here but I would use them on any build while levelling tbh. They also work very well in tandem with signet of malice as they proc the heal whenever they apply a bleed to any any enemy within them. You may also find pistol/dagger using the auto attack and stealth attack to apply bleeds effective at dealing with one opponent relatively safely due to the range and stealth from this weapon set. In general i would experiment though since almost everything has some situational use, although some skills are frankly useless :P
but i think stealth will trigger even if HS is interrupted, because it triggers when you cast it and not when it lands.
I think the stealth is triggered when it lands, otherwise you’d enter stealth when it’s activated and break stealth when the heart seeker lands. Interrupting heartseeker will waste the initiative spent on both the black powder and heartseeker.
My ideal weapon set for dealing with them is probably D/P and S/P. One of the strongest counters to D/P is interrupting their heartseeker through black powder, causing them to waste a lot of initiative and prevent them from stealthing. They avoid most damage through being in stealth or blinds so if you can CC them, such as sword 2 or stealth attack with short bow, and you can land most for attacks. Just be cautious not to stand in the black powder if you’re in melee range, although pistol whip can still deal most of it’s damage here. Scorpion can also be used to close gaps or pull thieves out of black powder, but it’s not something i would normally run with.
Using black powder or predicting their movement and using pistolwhip can be used to avoid their backstabs as well.
There’s really no content that playing a thief will prevent you from completing, although playing them can certainly be more difficult than playing a guardian doing the same thing for example. Any profession can do high level fractals and contribute in WvW, some at just better or easier to play when doing them.
Whether the enjoyment from playing a thief makes up for their disadvantages in some content is up to you.
As said, always be aware of the pet and try to avoid getting hit by them. However, the main issue with trying to kill a BM ranger is just getting enough damage in to overcome their healing. Ideally keep poison on them to reduce healing by 33%, although they have good condition removal as well, and time your burst damage.
I try to wear them down then apply poison as they heal. Wait for the heal to expire then hit them with as much damage as you can before their heal is off CD again. With the fear from their pet, lots of evading and skills to create a gap between you though, a good ranger can just avoid a lot of damage and kill time until they can heal again and you’re back at square one.
It’s really more the build than how they play imo, similar to how the dapheonix ele build suddenly seemed to make elementalists very strong 1v1. With the high self healing and defence, it doesn’t take much to outlast your opponent.
My advice for trying to kill them is to mainly time your burst damage. I would wait until troll unguent has expired then try to burst them down to give you the most time before they start their insane health regen again. Poison can also be very useful as they have regeneration up almost constantly and it will also reduce the healing from their heal. Depending on your build, you may find a good ranger is virtually impossible to kill on your own though.
The beastmaster build is fairly common in spvp. You need a good amount of dps just to overcome their health regeneration and is one of the strongest builds in 1v1 situations.
Why would thieves have highest single target dps? Where is the logic here, does this feel enjoyable for pvp to you?
Highest burst would be fine but highest sustainable single target dps?
Are they supposed to lose duels?
Have you ever faced a war as thief?
Do you often lose?
I think most thieves beat wars in open combat (at least I do in wvw, spvp can be very different).
Now a good war can beat a good thief but in my experience thieves usually win. Giving them a damage boost would create too big of an imbalance in pvp.
The d/d auto attack could be buffed a bit but not to do more damage than a war.
Does any class often lose to a warrior in a duel? Warriors are not balanced in pvp imo and shouldn’t be used a measure of balance. You could argue any profession is OP by that standard.
If we look at the pve side of things then warrior is very strong, possibly too strong. They generally offer the best dps while also having good staying power with options for good group support. Thieves have lower armor, health and less access to abilities to mitigate incoming damage. All professions should have something to bring to the group that they are one of the best at, yet thieves currently have nothing to offer really.
If they’re playing a tanky spec, and they’re good at it, then you can’t really kill them. Perhaps with some lucky crits and mistakes on their part, but it’s very difficult to get enough damage in to kill them before they heal through it. You can build your thief to stay in the fight with them, but this will just turn into a similar situation as a bunker vs bunker where neither has the damage to overcome the other’s healing.
If they’re playing builds that are more damage oriented then you can certainly kill them, but it still isn’t easy. Their inherent armour and self healing/ high hp pool means even the glassy builds can take a good amount of damage before they go down. As said already, just use your evade, stealth and blinds to avoid damage while dealing your own at the opportune times. You have less health and armour while also having to deal more damage to them if you want to kill them, so you really have to use these abilities to your advantage.
Cleansing condition in stealth relies on being in stealth. If they’re running sword dagger then they need to use cloak and dagger to stealth. Watch out for this and evade, interrupt it to reduce their self healing, if they have shadow’s rejuvenation, and their condition removal.
You still need to deal with their heal and condition removal with sword 2, but using fear at the right moments will allow your conditions to damage them. It’s not the easiest build to kill with conditions, but it can be done.
Stop driving towards balance and ending up making all the professions level and equal
I almost spit out my coffee when I read this line.
So basically what you are saying is that it was fun being overpowered, but now that you are closer to balanced that its not fun for you anymore? seriously?
btw, the ability to turn invisible and reset fights is what I would consider survivability.
Do I really need to post another video of a thief just strolling along next to a zerg of enemies because he gets to be invisible?
Whether you consider the profession more balanced now is a matter of opinion, but I think it’s important to understand what’s meant by survivability.
Is the profession good at avoiding damage to run away? Yes, they’re one of the best for escaping a zerg for example. Do they have good staying power while trying to kill someone? No, not really. They can stealth and not recieve much damage as you can’t target them, but you if they’re trying to kill someone then they’re out of stealth and within range of their opponents attacks with few ways to mitigate incoming damage.
A guardian wouldn’t last as long following a zerg of people, but I’d still prefer them tanking than a thief.
People’s complaints are valid. There is a reason why the majority of people play high burst, glass cannon builds. Thieves provide good burst damage and.. er… well that’s about it. With the nerf to mug they have also nerfed arguable the most effective thief build. Many would gladly swap the 2k heal for the ability to crit with mug again.
Now i’m not against this change. I understand why Anet want to move away from high burst damage and create more interesting gameplay with thieves, but you need to offer a viable replacement to glass cannon build.While there are some more balanced, survivable thief builds, these come with drawbacks and limitations and I would have trouble justifying playing a thief to fulfill this role over an elemnetalist for example. For it to be balanced the profession should be on par or superior to other professions in this aspect, which i don’t think it is yet.
I run a 10/30/30/0/0 build and don’t have a problem soloing them. I swap to sword/pistol and use SoM as my heal with blinding powder in case i need an emergency stealth with dagger storm as my elite.
Try aggro everything, lead them around a wall and use black powder so everything should be blind and auto attack. Dagger storm is also a whirl finisher so you can use it inside a blackpowder for additional blinds while healing up from all the attacks. Quick and simple.
If you get accused of hacking, playing an OP build or just being a noob in general when you kill other players, I take it as a compliment and it means your playing the profession properly :P
Using heart seeker once through a smoke field to achieve a 3/4 second stealth feels fine and balanced to me. It’s when this mechanic is abused that i have an issue with it.
I don’t think being able to achieve practically perm-stealth is what the developers had intended. Abuse of this mechanic can feel cheap and is very powerful on some builds, but i’m not sure how you wold fix it. Ideally i’d like to see it so that you can’t use a leap finisher to stealth if you’re already in stealth, but that sounds like a fair amount of work to code and an odd exception to how every other combo field works.
A high rank doesn’t necessarily mean they are skilled. Using shadow refuge when his reveal debuff hadn’t expired was a pretty big mistake and lost him a lot of healing and time in stealth. There wasn’t much counter play either, just black powder, heart seeker then try to land backstab and repeat for the most part.
I don’t mind them moving away from the very high burst damage we have atm, but they need to replace it with a viable alternative. If a thief’s burst damage isn’t going to be as effective anymore, why bring one?
Their sustained dps is quite mediocre and their survivability is practically non-existent in most builds. I understand the 2k heal is meant to help in this area, but it’s not nearly enough to justify bringing a thief over a warrior for example.
They want thieves to still offer the best burst of the professions, just not for it to be as good as it is now.
They want to move away from burst builds that can just Instagib people and extend fights out. The problem is that thieves can’t last very long as they are atm, and if our burst can’t quickly finish someone then just about any other profession brings more to the table.
I like this move away from the burst/bunker set up we have atm, but a 2k heal with steal is not enough to support thieves in achieving this. Hopefully we see more changes to the profession in the future and more buffs in our survivability. This is shift in what they want from the profession isn’t going to sit well with everyone, as you would expect, but i think the dev’s have a good idea of how to balance the professions, they’re just very slow in doing it.
I hope there are more changes to the thief than this. A 2k heal every 45 seconds is nothing on a glass cannon thief, while the burst damage is also reduced. Since thieves really just rely on high burst to finish someone, they’re going to fail to quickly their target quickly more often and a 2k heal isn’t going to make up for the extra damage you take if your targets survives longer, assuming you don’t open with mug in the first place.
I don’t really like the reliance on your target using boons to boost our survivability either. It’s not going to do much in pve for the most part, and there’s only a few classes in pvp this will be effective on.
The evade will stay in.
edit: The boon stealing portion will be named Larcenous Strike, and will steal the whole stack of whatever boon is stolen, so if you steal might from a warrior, you will get all of it.
They are also improving the animation and tracking of Flanking Strike so it performs better.
They are also considering in a later patch to add a trait that will share stolen boons with team mates, and if steal is used with no target, it will shadowstep you forward, but they didn’t make any diehard promises on either.
Nothing about the dmg or animation speed?
Assuming dmg nerf.
They said they improved the evade animation so it tracks your target better and should be easier to land. I’d like to see how true this actually is against a real player though.
How exactly does this work? You use flanking strike then your 3rd ability will change to larcenous strike for a few seconds before returning to flanking strike?
Did they increase survivability for any other weapon set either? If you’re not running sword/dagger this sounds like a nerf for any direct damage thief build.
They all have a use and i use all of them depending on the situation. I generally run around with SoM though, but withdraw offers reliable and high self healing that’s also very good at kiting, just remember to switch out this skill if you need to heal while doing a jumping puzzle :P
SoM can offer the most self healing, but this also relies on actively attacking the target to proc the signet. If you’re fighting a single enemy that is difficult to continuously attack then the healing from this skill may be worse available to you.
Hide in shadows sacrifices some healing for the ability to stealth and remove conditions. This is probably your best all-round heal, but there are situations where the other two skills can be more beneficial.
What build did you use?
I ran a full valk D/P thief with 100% crit damage in stealth.7K Backstab average + full healing in stealth + Cure conditions + two initiative everytime I stealth. It more or less becomes a CnD in terms of initiative cost.
10/30/30.18K HP, 2250+ armor, 104% crit damage, 100% crit chance on backstabs.
All of you guys are getting defensive in this thread for no reason. Read my post history if you want. I’m all for defending thieves and against baseless QQs. This is what I believe, however. I don’t think any class should not have a viable counter.
Also like to note
Immobilize does not work in preventing stealth, it just keeps them in place over the blind field. They can still combo leap and get stealth
Stuns/Daze/Knockback/knockdown/pull
Only work at range. The blind field at the feet of the thief negates the ability to do a melee CC. Most classes that have this have the skill with a large cooldown, not nearly enough to shutdown a properly built D/P thief.
Also, please unnerf pistol whip. It’s horrible in WvW.
You don’t need to shut down a D/P thief. The heartseeker through black powder combo can be countered and this can be all you need to finish the thief off. How well you time it and how effectively you use this interrupt is a matter of skill, just as it is when dealing with any other profession, and i don’t see why it is op tbh.
It is certainly more difficult to counter than a D/D thief, but you also place the thief at a much greater disadvantage if you do. The attack range of most melee skills will allow you to hit a thief standing in the centre of a black powder field also.