Guild Wars 2

There are 2 things which – depending on your build / playstyle will give you the upper edge in a thief vs thief fight.

A) stealth based builds – be it D/P, D/D, P/D. You must outstealth the other thief and strike when he’s exposed, deny his stealths and setting up your bursts or loading him with condi’s and preventing him from stealth resetting.
B) evasion / mobility builds – be it S/D or S/P with SB. You simply deny other thief any opener / burst, and counter with yours, while staying mobile and spending most time in evade frames (or in black powder if he’s a backstabber).

The binary aspect is relative. Many peeps don’t have the interest to develop their own builds, they pick whatever is mainstream be it S/D variants or D/P ones, watch the build on youtube and try to imitate without actually learning to play the build to it’s powers or understand the core mechanics that make the build work in it’s specific way.

It’s sort of a similar attitude to WoW gladiators giving trends in specs, and players en-mass trying to copy said build expecting to become a top player over night. It ain’t happening.

So it only makes sense to run into a majority of bad players using popular specs (which will also give the impression to an un-experienced player which will win against those builds, that the builds are not really good at all).

It’s like saying you can’t win a p/s triple kit engineer on a thief. If he’s teldo or koroshi, then yes most likely you won’t pull it off, but regarding rest of engineers? Sure you will win more or less depending on their skill level.

You can’t base your conclusion about a spec or a class from random spvp or wvw encounters. Regarding the skill ceiling – is all up to player and the spec they use to make best of it in a given situation.

As long as Trickery is the line buffing and focusing on Steal, I don’t see why a different tree would give benefits to Steal.

GT Steal? No thanks. Peeps don’t stay put in a place, Steal is by far the best gap closer and applies – if you spec for it – daze, poison, steals boons, procs Basilik etc.

Plus what if there are 3 peeps in the place you want to steal, and you NEED that necro fear, but due to rng you get the useless thief stealth?

Steal is more than fine as it is – especially backed up by trickery.

The whole idea is to be able to do each dungeon path with various group compositions. The moment you need to have 2 reflects and 1200 ranged dps to kill one boss, that’s very bad design decision (even if is working as intended and not bugged).

My thief doesn’t have 1200 range on anything, so that means she can’t do this path? I don’t have a problem switching specs / gear / weapon sets to adjust to different encounters, but what if an encounter wasn’t designed to be done with my class?

This is not even close to old CoF p1 farm runs, were you had certain setups best fit for fastest times, you could still do p1 in reasonable time with any sort of party comp.

We had this problem with this boss. The spiders constantly respawn, without anyone in range of the boss (or hitting the boss). We can pull and kill all the spiders back in the tunnel, then the room is full again.

We tried to have someone aggro the spiders and kite / survive, while putting heavy dps on the tree structure. Did not work either, the spiders get the aggro until someone hits the tree, at which point all spiders shoot their poison to the attackers of structure.

We read then here on forums about the do it right from get go. So we gave it a new try after reset. No dice. DPS on tree instagibbed by dozens of spiders spitting venoms despite reflects and what not. We most paths of other dungeons and never had an encounter we couldn’t figure out the mechanics for it to beat it, but this spider tree it simply feels like gimmick / bugged.

Our group composition varies depending on peeps online, but is usually 1 thief, 1 engi, 1 ranger, 1 guardian or warrior, 1 necro or ele (we run whatever peeps enjoy playing).

Thief is not designed to tank damage, hence why there are no thief bunker builds

Our survival comes from avoiding damage as much as possible, via dodges / skills with evade frames / teleports / stealth / condi cleaners / LOS (line of sight).

You really won’t notice a difference in your survival in PvP going full vit / healing / toughness (not to mention your damage will be completely crap). P/D thieves are not bunkers like an engi bunker. They survive good because they kite / avoid damage / stealth, they don’t stay in place and peeps beat on them and they soak the damage while throwing condi’s out

1. S/P + SB
2. 10/30/0/0/30
3. PvE / WvW / Spvp / Tpvp

I’d say Engi is best wingman. He provides everything you lack (knock backs, heavy condition damage, great sustain healing – you both can bomb in a water field to get 1-100% hp in seconds, condi cleanse – elixir gun for static fights, can bomb fire field or smoke fields together for super might / stealth – coupled with your SR you can stay stealthed very long times.

But most important he can tank damage quite fine (most engis run full toughness + condi – rabid), and setup for your burst while he puts aoe condi pressure, making it easier for you to drop someone without becoming exposed. You have safest stomps via stealth, BoB, several smoke fields etc.

But then again , I run this as S/P with SB, I don’t like the idea of being forced to stealth in order to do meaningful damage, plus lack of cleave damage for WvW roaming skirmishes is meh as well for me. It’s so easy to pull peeps away from the zerg and corner tank them like mobs in dungeons with smoke fields (aoe blind) is really hilarious

The way AR works makes it situational good. If you’re 1v1 against a zero power condi dmg class, then it’s very powerful given you can stay alive at >25% hp without healing / regening.
However in a team fight it means absolutely nothing due to cleave + power damage, no engineer in his right mind would try to stay at >25% hp in a team fight just to avoid condi damage.

So to me, a good change direction would be to make it evenly useful for both 1v1 and team fights, without making it OP in either scenario. Something like @25% hp you cleanse all conditions on yourself, and gain 10 seconds (duration changed as seen fit for balance) of immunity to conditions, can’t occur more often than every 30s.

First step in making changes, is fixing bugs and NOT TOUCHING what is working. Then after you do this, you can see how the game plays out, and buff / nerf / replace as needed.

I don’t want to get into a scenario where a fix to D/D, or Shadow Arts, breaks S/P, or Trickery. Leave what’s working as it is, and fix what is not working, which is mainly P/P, because D/D is still the best single target damage in pve, while P/P is really meh….

Thieves are amazing in pve, including high level content, but it all depends on your playstyle. If you don’t enjoy being always on top of your game regarding positioning, awareness, initiative management, knowing when you have to switch to SB and back to melee, then you won’t enjoy playing a thief and getting 1 shot by something you didn’t see coming can get frustrating.

If you go with S/P make sure to practice and learn the evade frame on PW, especially if you played a mesmer before with BF (blurred frenzy). We don’t have same duration on evade nor is it instant as for mesmer, so what you could immune / dodge on mesmer will not work same on thief.

Position is perhaps most important, not moving in the path of another player who is attacked to eat something that wasn’t for you is a great example (for example when you skip trash, try to be first always to not run into the aoe / attacks targeted at players in front of you, they may be able to take the hit, but you most likely won’t).

Why would it break stealth if it doesn’t hit anything? Is not like you’re taking any damage if he ain’t hitting with the BS because he’s not in range etc.

If stealth worked differently than it does currently, like let’s say I enter stealth for 3s and all attack I do during this period keep me stealthed so you can’t see me but you are getting hit by my attacks, then I could understand.

They can’t spam BS. It’s one BS per stealth (aka, as soon as you hit someone with BS or any ability from stealth, stealth breaks and you get the revealed debuff).

Now you’re trying to argue semantics of CD based classes vs initiative. Why are we having this discussion again?

Moral of the thread: peeps want to make thief stealth like an ostrich hiding his head in sand. Everyone can see the ostrich, but the ostrich has the illusion he’s invisible.

If you want more % dmg in acrobatics (be it positional req or not), then you have to put it in the grandmaster tier, otherwise the stacking of dmg % modifiers without spending a single point in the power / atk trait line becomes absurd.

I already have +25% dmg boost with my spec (0 acrobatics) which requires for me to not use too much initiative (aka not spamming skills), and I get 20% more when target is <50% for a total of +45% dmg boost with no might stacks / fury etc.

You misread it. It costs double if you have no target selected. If you have a target selected, no matter if the target is immune, blocks, out of line of sight or range w/e, it costs same.

I personally have no gripe whatsoever with any of the thief weapon sets, it’s obvious some sets simply are far behind their purpose and outside of roleplaying or doing cool flips theres nothing at it. It’s same for other classes in this regard, some MH or OH are underwhelming compared to other sets (or simpler said, they make no sense, because the hybrid condi / power / cdamage / crit chance is a myth with game mechanics / itemization).

I don’t think CnD buffs would be the answer for D/D viability (it will also be potentially an unneeded buff for S/D which is already strong as it is). Same with nerfing D/P hitting on S/P which is one of the most balanced sets currently for a thief (nothing amazing – I WIN – can’t see me while I kill you or can’t hit me while I kill you, but still having good staying power and damage potential).

You could simply tune D/P by making HS cost double initiative when used without hitting a target – that if the 9s stealth field+leap combo is the real problem here (which I don’t find it to be a problem personally, and I don’t play D/P).

For D/D you could make DB steal buffs. And it would work much better than current FS>LS, because you can’t spam DB then still have initiative to land CnD. This would give an option to D/D to get rid of stability / aegis (blocks remain as they are and this is good for planning your CnD instead of just using it without any awareness) but at cost of Dps, unlike FS>LS, as well as making the 3 skill more desirable for power builds.

Thoughts?

As far as I understand it, the bullet part is a non damaging move that applies blind and teleports to target and is unblockable, however the melee hit follow up is not unblockable, thus getting absorbed by blocks / Aegis.

Not sure this would be a good idea, F2+ slots for venoms. It would imply to have several new utility skills added, rework of trait lines etc.

Plus it will only be very good for condi builds, while severely lacking for power builds (ie: you end up with F1 which is decent / great for all builds, and F2-F3-F4 good only for condi builds, sort of too biased here).

Instead of relying on 50% chance, I more easily prefer to steal / shadowstep / Infiltrator strike into black powder, or simply Infiltrator Arrow to aoe blind.

Regarding vigor, you can have 15s vigor our of 21s with trickery and steal (it requires a target to steal from, doesn’t activate with no target like Thrill of the Crime), which is pretty solid given you won’t be instantly stripped of boons

Well it only makes sense to have them queue instead of overwriting each other. Imagine if LS would cancel FS and your evade as well because you press the key twice too fast.

That’s because we have both instant cast / effect abilities as well as cast time ones. Look at Pistol Whip. If I want to chain to PWs (second one starting as soon as last flurry hit from previous one lands) that’s the only way it would work (current implementation). Otherwise I’d most likely end up losing damage by interrupting my first PW prematurely by casting 2nd one (or have to wait until my character goes into AA animation or just sits idle if AA is turned off, to make sure I start my 2nd PW without gutting 1st one).

In practice is all about timing. Some abilities will give you a short delay on withdraw, while others will cancel instantly and allow you to perform the dodge roll & heal.

You don’t need to have a target to swing melee weapons at it, or cast AoE damage etc. Seeing the health of the poor thief would defeat the whole purpose of stealth (which means invisible).

You can already see numbers on your screen if you hit a stealthed character, as well as bleed / poison / burning ticks.

Are you trying to use Withdraw to cancel other skills cast time? Like 3rd strike in sword AA chain, etc.

Personally, as S/P, I always use Shadow Return & Withdraw, then IS back on target (that’s it, when I want to use Withdraw for evade frames but also move farther away from target than what a simple Withdraw roll would do).

“Sword/Pistol has a very high skill floor due to the lack of evades and stealth”.

Usually you have 15s vigor out of 21s (steal with 30 trickery), swiftness, might and fury 10s out of 21s, coupled with IS, PW, Disabling shot on SB and IA (which can be used very good offensively providing you a teleport + aoe blind), with the base evades and Withdraw 15s I think that’s plenty to build on.

Regarding stealth for S/P & SB, my basic slots are Blinding powder, ShadowStep and Shadow Refuge. So I have 2 stealths on demand plus BPs+CB for another aoe stealth (which I can cut short or push to 9s depending on situation). Not counting stealing options.

S/D with SB doesn’t have same staying power / evade frames like double S/D (check Jumper-x), and even then, you are not invulnerable, there are breaks between evade frames when CC / conditions / burst can come in, is really not that hard to land stuff on a S/D if you learn the patterns, but yes is frustrating for spammers / new players to get evaded evaded

Deepkumar you should try the other suggested builds which are more easy to learn and build on – as other posters mentioned, to play the build I play and have success with it you need to be top of your game, but for me – personally – is a very rewarding build to play, since you have so many options to go in and back out, create pressure / burst windows, counterplay, go defensive, kite and not be kited, etc. Is the closest thief build that comes near my engineer triple kit performance and diversity, which works very good for me (ie: if X situation arise, I want to have several options to deal with it instead one or none, even if they are not the best of best).

I don’t care if a D/P can drop someone faster than I can or spend more time in stealth, nor if a P/D can stay out of melee range better and has more sustain, or that S/D has a bit better mobility / evasion and better boon removal (which is a boon steal in fact), I’m happy with what S/P & SB offers me, and I make it work for me

Also is very important to learn what you can steal from other classes, because those abilities are very very good

CB – skill 2 on shortbow, cluster bomb, is a blast finisher (if you don’t spread it).
PW – skill 3 on S/P set, pistol whip.

That’s like saying a d/d thief goes SB on last boss in CoF p1, and he won’t die (unless afk and eats a channel or doesn’t have dodge bound), so his survival is extreme, while he plinks trick shots at boss. Meanwhile another thief backstab rotations on boss, and gets unlucky / lag spike w/e and gets downed at a point. Am pretty sure by that point the damage the melee thief put out on boss won’t be reached by the SB thief even if the boss would be there for another 5 mins.

Ressing is not a problem if your group knows what’s doing (the most hated person turns the boss to face away / kite him from the downed player, instead of running toward him ^^ etc).

Deepkumar just because you don’t play P/D or D/P doesn’t mean you don’t have access to stealth.

As S/P & SB, I have several stealth access abilities: BPs & spam CB from SB for an easy 9s stealth (aoe) without any boon duration. Blinding powder – 3s stealth. Shadow Refuge, 12s stealth. If I really need more stealth I can slot HiS instead of Withdraw, but I really don’t. Am using Blinding powder not for the stealth (as a get away etc) but to land the daze from sword stealth attack – Tactical Strike. You have no idea how devastating is a 2s daze (can’t use skills) followed by an instant immobilize (can’t dodge) – which can be prolonged with another daze & imob, or PW stun etc, basilik if you use that elite. It’s free damage which can’t be evaded, can’t be blocked, can’t be immuned, can’t be reflected etc.

How would you bring d/p to d/d level without affecting S/P which is a completely different set.

Give it a go to 10/30/0/0/30, withdraw, blinding powder, shadowstep, SR, basilik or dagger storm. This gives you very good mobility and evade frames (coupled with SB), good sustained damage and great burst, decent condi removal (you can run lyssa runes obv and go with basilik instead of dagger storm).

PS: for pve if you have to do dredge hearts / DEs / champs etc, go S/D since you obviously will lack the dps to kill them spamming PWs before they kill you.

I think the conclusion we can draw here is that neither set is a counter to other set, and it all comes down to both players skill, who gets the drop on who (since is WvW and not a setup duel in mists), and how good their reaction, awareness, anticipation and executions are.

I suppose you saw jumper-x dueling a D/P thief with his S/D build, and he won most of the games, but did lose 2 (or was it 3 can’t recall been a while) rounds as well. RNG is rng, you can’t play perfect every time, your opponent can surprise you with a different tactic at a point etc. But getting to the point where you are comfortable fighting other weapon sets / builds than yours with a fair chance to win, that’s where it’s at.

Blood put it pretty well, that’s really all there is to it. That’s why there’s no need for a full support character (like a staff ele with full water and group utilities / buffs), because no matter how many boons and boons uptime he can provide for the group, he can’t make up for the lack of dps.

If you compare to WoW for example, where you had the trinity of tank healer dps, with a group of 5 having 3 spots for dps, I can assure you that the said DPS were not speccing / gearing for survival but to maximize dps – that was their sole contribution and role in the group, and the better they performed it, the better the run would be (less damage taken by everyone since stuff died fast, less healing to do, less time spent between pulls to recover resources etc).

Think of it this way: if I can PW (or backstab w/e) one mob to death taking no damage, why would I want to do 2 PW (or backstabs) to kill same mob, just to get a bit more toughness and vit?

So long story short, if I make a video of me killing someone in WvW using only shortbow AA and nothing else, does that make SB or thief OP?

^^

For the sake of lols let me add this: Once the necro gets a fear off, it’s only a matter of … WHAT? You’re a walking dead already haha xD

The thing is for a thief in order to achieve the stats to survive such a hit with 1-2k hp, you are giving up all of your offensive stats, which means pretty much you don’t justify your spot in the group.

There are very few fights where you need to outlast the content and wear it down.

For example let’s look at AC ghostbuster final boss. The difference between downing the boss with 3 or less traps and having to reload the traps several times is huge.

I also don’t recall (please correct me if I am wrong) any encounter where you must have a gear check regarding survival and ability to take that 1 hit which you can’t avoid (ie: scripted attacks which can’t be avoided, blocked, absorbed, interrupted etc).

I would love to have a viable build in pve with more survival as well as having more skill based encounters where different utilities matter and group synergy is more important than stacking X or Y and burning target down asap, but until this changes thief is pretty much limited to D/D for single target where backstab can be used reliable, P/P for ranged only fights, and S/P for any fights involving adds as part of encounter.

First: toughness without protection is no good. Toughness is good vs many attacks that deal low-moderate damage, but against big hitters it really doesn’t help that much (especially when said big hitters are chained over a short time frame). If you really want to GUT a power burst build, you need: A) protection on yourself weakness on your opponent (or substitute both with C) blindness). If toughness alone would be a counter to power builds, then protection + blocks + blindness + weakness would completely neuter and kick out any sort of power builds forever.

Second: No matter how tanky you build, if you don’t use dodges smart, blocks, knockbacks or any other abilities / debuffs / buffs that negate / mitigate / absorb damage you won’t simply last as much as you could (ie: getting your healing interrupted is way worse than mistiming a block / dodge). A S/D ele can burst a heavy target practice golem in 1 second 100-0%, and is not a single large hit, but a sum of moderate attacks (which average 2-4k dmg each in a fast succession ~1-2s all hitting the target).

Third: A guardian with 1/3 of your hp would survive way longer if they use their skills / dodges smart, what does this tell you?

Fourth: Power builds – outside of weakness / blind / blocks / immunities, are meant to deal damage in large chunks, or they wouldn’t justify their purpose (ie: if my BS would crit on you for 2k, why the kitten’s paradise would I spec and gear to use it, when I could go condi and spam AA on several classes and deal way more damage without giving a small kitten about how much toughness you have or protection uptime etc). So yeah, if I hit you 3 times with my AA on sword as a thief, I’d expect to deal ~3-5k dmg as a sum of my hits, same as I would expect my PW landing all hits to do 3-5k damage as well (no protection, no aegis, no weakness or blind on myself etc), otherwise – what’s the point? I’d just go pew pew condi and load you up like a x-mas tree melting you in seconds xD

No is not really. 16-17k hp even with 2.5k toughness means nothing when you take a hit from a boss or several trash mobs (because of pug bad position / spreading out the mobs / not using abilities / skills etc).

Your survival as a thief is all about timing, position, awareness and reaction. That’s why we have so many evades on weapon sets, as well as on whitdraw, roll for initiative, so many stun breakers (and teleports) etc. Not to mention many boss hits knock you down for several seconds, which means even if you can survive the hit, you will still have to use a different skill to teleport to a safe location to not get OHK from next attack – meaning is best always to not get hit at all.

Example: when am doing dungeons on my engi, 18k hp, 2.7k armor, I always avoid getting hit because I have no stunbreakers and no teleports, so even if I theoretically could get a hit without flopping, I better make sure I don’t xD

You can’t change S/D thieves evade frames, because it the only thing that lets them actually see frontline combat. There’s no toughness, no high vit, no IMBA condi removal, no blocks, no invuln etc. They depend on the evade frames (and opponents inability to learn those evade frames to know when they can hit the thief and when they shouldn’t spam skills mindless) in order to stay alive for a short while and deal some damage instead of insta flopping the moment they are noticed. That’s why D/P thieves die a lot more than S/D ones, stealth is really not the answer to defense in tpvp (despite it may give you great results in WvW), and the high burst they can do is so fast offset by their very low survival as soon as they pop out of stealth to land the BS, and they end up spending more time in downstate / waiting ress timer than actively participating in their team effort.

The biggest challenge is to make your own build and fit it with your team comp / strategy instead of: am gonna slot those utilities and ulti, then spam 1 and while doing that am gonna strafe a bit and maybe even jump to give the impression I know what am doing and am top of my game xD

Well it wouldn’t make sense for a stalemate to be considered past 60s mark.

In tpvp you either successfully manage to decap / cap within ~30 seconds, or you move away to not waste time and be more helpful in other parts of the map.

S/D with SB is not a 1on1 spec, it’s a mobile roamer for decaps / caps when there’s nobody on the node. You can’t do with S/D & SB what you can do with double S/D (jumper-x made a video about this btw, explaining why he went for SB version – he loses 1v1 capability but gains more for the team – aoe poison on deman, better roaming / faster access to specific nodes / positions etc).

Try to solo the champion Ooze in metrica province, let me know how it went.

You can’t base anything on WvW encounters. You can kill 5 peeps with D/P? Guess what you can do it with anything, even SB.

All it takes is for 1 single player to be decent (tough luck if you run into someone who’s actually good or insane) to ruin everything you can attempt in your 1vs5 situation.

Personally I run S/P with SB and I have loads of fun, I have very good damage and avoidance, easy access to poison, cleave dmg, decent condi removal, blinds / weakness etc.

Can’t do that when dazed

You can prevent D/P from HSing through BPs, depending on what class / build you play and what abilities you have access to (for example scorpion wire into steal daze then follow up with w/e you want).

Well pmuch my p.berserker can 1 shot full zerker thieves with a single spin, as I run a full zerk setup xD

Actually S/P + SB is amazing for WvW / Tpvp as well. Peeps are just lacking the imagination to try out things and enjoy the game, they just bandwagon on whatever spec is popular after a patch (with the exception of P/P which really needs some adjustments, all weapon set combinations are viable, obviously D/D being highest single target dps).

Am sorry gets nerfed what? He did not cheat nor abuse any bugs. He simply uses his class spec / utilities / weapon set to complete a challenge. Food buffs are allowed so that’s fair game as well.

Why would I hate an ability with such telegraphed animation which poses no treat unless you’re at >25% hp.

I just pull SB out and carve him a new one (because doing one of my S/P steal combos would end the fight too fast, with SB I get more time to see them spamming HS trying so bad to catch up)

Do what I do, go stealth, pop 2 phantasms, make a portal to troll him so he can’t hit you, and when you pop 3rd phantasm is already GG xD