Guild Wars 2

Shortbow is our main utility weapon, and over the years the nerfs its had has taken it from pretty good to just barely worth taking imo. Right now, if it weren’t for #5 nobody would use it. Anyways some buffs that would do it some good:

1. Buff range to 1050. As is SB’s range is just too short.

2. Double clusterbomb flight speed. The damage on this weapon is pretty good, but its rate of fire is so slow that its dps is atrocious. Make it’s explosion radius a bit smaller or increase ini consumption slightly if you have to compensate somewhere but please, speed this thing up. This will also make comboing with #4 more viable at long range.

3. Fix the animation on #3 so it doesn’t do that little backpedaling thing.

4. Up poison time on #4 to 6 seconds per tick. 2 seconds is laughable and it’s not really a damaging ability. It needs to have lasting poison.

Suddenly SB is actually useful for things other than movement and people can’t just ignore the thief plinking on the edge of the fight.

Floplag.4032:

Im pretty sure you need a better understanding of how to beat a DH.

The only way a DD beats a DH is with p/p (more or less unviable) or the DH is terrible.

You forgot the part where DH melts daredevil.

Thief soft counters malyx. Vs Shiro power the fight is slightly in thieves favor, but not much.

Thief is not doing 6k dps auto attacking. First off, going off the numbers posted earlier:

1477+1354+2874+3849 = 9554 damage. it takes about 2.4 seconds to do a full auto chain giving you a little less than 4k dps.

On top of that, these numbers are all crits so they all benefit from the +250 ferocity trait. Which, btw is in the CS tree, which is our highest damage tree.

CS is not taken in pvp. Since damage is literally all it provides and thief can’t afford to not take trickery. so you can subtract 15-20% damage from those numbers.

Devs decided to make thief high risk high reward, we die easily to aoe, but as a trade off we get damage.

Also, thieves, the reason they buffed AA was probably primarily aimed at pve since we don’t bring other utility, devs wanted us to be top dps.

To others, if a thief is getting multiple AA chains on you, it’s because you’re ignoring them. Trust me, you’ll rarely see a full AA chain if they’re your target.

The AA buff was primarily aimed at upping pve damage.

daw.4923:

Hidden Thief: This trait now grants 50% bonus movement speed while in stealth.

They moved it from acro (unused traitline) to shadowarts (also relatively unused) yay now there’s a reason to play both with the buffs?

daw.4923:

Hidden Thief: This trait now grants 50% bonus movement speed while in stealth.

They moved it from acro (unused traitline) to shadowarts (also relatively unused) yay now there’s a reason to play both with the buffs?

What buff to mobility did thief get that wasn’t already available?

Coolguy.8702:

d/d is fine, l2p

which is why i encounter them all over the place and dedicated d/d thieves haven’t dropped it for the objectively superior d/p

oh wait.

It really wouldn’t take much to fix. Here’s what I’d do:

1. Leave the same
2. same damage, return % values to 66% and 33%
3. Up power damage/scaling to be comparable to Shadow Shot.
4. Return this to what it was at release ( 5 sec cripple, 4 ini and about 50% more damage) double projectile speed.
5. reduce ini by 1 and make it instant speed.

In Shadow Arts move CiS to master tier. Done, d/d is now viable as power or vipers.

I’d have used it if they switched precision for ferocity.

Casting bars would make interrupting and dodging more intuitive while also making the game easier to understand for viewers. I’m all for it.

I remember when d/d was meta…. I miss blowing people up I also miss when we were hella survivable in wvw roaming with SA.

I miss that.

Ok for one venomshare is a GM trait in Shadow Arts, so the thief is missing out on damage. Second the radius isn’t that big so you’re probably not going to share with more than one or two others. Three the stun doesn’t stack in duration so if you have 3 people attacking with it it probably won’t last longer than 3 or so seconds. four you can avoid it with stability, blur, dodge, and blind. five if you do get hit just use your stun breaker.

This isn’t some overpowered change, it just makes BV worth taking over Impact Strike in some situations.

wowow 30% is crazy!

now if only they’d buff under performing stuff I’m looking at you off hand dagger.

Gallant Pigeon.5807:

Jana.6831:

Gallant Pigeon.5807:

Jana.6831:

I missed it when using SB in a zerg when I tried to make a build with DrD work <— that failed because I want CiS and need SE.

@ Zero: That was a joke – all good =)

If you are building for WvW zergs…. all I will say is marauders armor and weapons, soldier / cavalier trinkets, double staff, invigorating precision and daredevil runes. The sustain and dps vs grouped enemies is unreal.

Why would I use double staff?

Double energy sigils, quick pockets. Its spammy, sure. But it works horribly well as a brawler.

energy sigil is getting nerfed to only give 5 secs of vigor.

I want to know how big the buff to dagger AA is. I’m guessing 10-15%.

Oh look, basi venom is now worthy of being called an elite. For the longest time Mesmers had a better signet than our “elite”. https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Signet_of_Domination

From my experience CS > DA in terms of damage by a good margin. What hurts is the lack of mug lotus poison and panic strike. It’s basically trading utility and survivability for ~15% or more damage.

As for DP vs staff I prefer DP. I think DP is better single target and for finishing off while staff is more effective in group fights for all around pressure.

He used to main thief too ;-;

Asato.5479:

DragonicTerror.6412:

rchu.8945:

Please dont, Thieves and their stealth abuse disguising as skill play has had it’s golden age, I’m glad we are pass that.

Thief has never been a counter to any class in the META. Thief was always able to be killed by every class. c_c

Don’t lie… they are still good 1v1-ers. Now their problem is … in teamfights, they don’t have sustain & dmg/&utility to be useful, it’s always been like this tbh imo. The in-and-out they could done easily before are now countered by huge massive AoE CC’s … And most classes can manage to stick on them, if focused their HP bar goes 100-down-0 very quickly.

Need buff but carefully :x

lol thief is terrible at 1v1. Hell even the metabattle site lists 1v1 as a weakness. If you lose to a thief 1v1 as a meta build, you’re terrible.

I’m pretty upset about the lack of new ingame attainable skins. I was expecting at least 10 new sets per armor class.

Morwath.9817:

Dirame.8521:

Morwath.9817:

Superior Condi Pressure with Physical Pressure in one Amulet is too much.
Its not that its OP or something, its just better than any -damage- amulet, also it hard counters Druid, which may lead to Ranger extinction for next year again.

I completely disagree. Burst can easily kill anyone running Viper if people actually bothered to focus them.

You disagree that Viper Rev hard counters Druid?

What’s wrong with hard counters? Thieves get hard countered by DH, Scrapper, Tempest, and druid.

So in spvp it seems like thieves are shut down hard by DH. I also have troubles with tempest, scrapper, and druid. My question is what do we counter? I don’t mean a fair fight, what are the fights we shouldn’t lose unless we are heavily out skilled?

Only thing that bothers me about DH is that they counter thieves hard and that their easy to land, low cd true shot hits harder than Backstab.

They nerfed thieves as their balance for this patch.

yeah, it looks fantastic. I still miss the old sound effect.

princode.2750:

thief DD is actually very strong in pvp…I had seen quite a fair number of DD killing ppl in less then 6s….hell I even see a lot of DD able to kill a reaper or DH really fast.

Easy way to spot a liar. Only way a thief is going to beat a DH is if they are brain dead.

Salamander.2504:

I’m not referring to the condi spec, and I’m not saying it carried my team (I’m sure they have, but I’ve also played against teams where their DD won them the match). Bounding dodger DD+signet of agility is plenty of dodges. I’m surprised you’re questioning my claim…is it so hard to believe that there are people out there kicking kitten with Daredevil?

If a thief is kicking kitten , it means the other team is terrible. Any competent player on ele, engi, druid, dh, or chrono should have 0 problems against DD.

Eurantien.4632:

Dakarius.3284:

Eurantien.4632:

ranger, mesmer, ele, warrior, necro

lolololo

Ranger: Why go dps when druid is more powerful and easily beats thief?
Mesmer: Have had a 50/50 win rate against thief ever since the June patch even as dps. With Chrono Mesmer outperforms thief.
Ele: Why go full dps when tempest is so much better and counters thief?
Necro: Power necro is perfectly viable and one of the fights a thief has a fair shot against
Warrior: You think thief is keeping warrior down? lol. try every other class.

Here, lets list what counters thief and what thief counters atm.

Thief currently fully counters nothing. Maybe power rangers (non druid)

Things that hard counter thief: Scrapper, DH, Tempest.
Things that soft counter thief: Chrono, Druid

Ummm

What are these other dps specs that would be oh so viable if not for thief?

So you just said it. Druid can’t go dps, ele can’t go dps, mesmer can go dps 50% of the time, dps necro is viable? (I don’t think so). That seems like thief (and now DH and rev) push these things out of the meta.

Yeah no, those things aren’t meta because either A there are more viable builds (druid, tempest, condi reaper) or B because they get kitten on by all the other builds. There’s not a single build that thief hard counters in the way that thief is hard countered by DH. That’s the most lopsided matchup i’ve ever seen in gw2. And trust me, it’s not DH’s that have made thief unviable, it’s the fact that we can’t 1v1 any more. all we have going for us is mobility. Our survivability is kitten, our single target damage is mediocre and our aoe is meh. Our support is crap.

Eurantien.4632:

ranger, mesmer, ele, warrior, necro

lolololo

Ranger: Why go dps when druid is more powerful and easily beats thief?
Mesmer: Have had a 50/50 win rate against thief ever since the June patch even as dps. With Chrono Mesmer outperforms thief.
Ele: Why go full dps when tempest is so much better and counters thief?
Necro: Power necro is perfectly viable and one of the fights a thief has a fair shot against
Warrior: You think thief is keeping warrior down? lol. try every other class.

Here, lets list what counters thief and what thief counters atm.

Thief currently fully counters nothing. Maybe power rangers (non druid)

Things that hard counter thief: Scrapper, DH, Tempest.
Things that soft counter thief: Chrono, Druid

Eurantien.4632:

It makes 0 sense to try to power creep thief in this way. Thief already shuts down every other dps besides dragon hunter and revenant. Turns out those are the only reasons thief isn’t viable, because dragon hunter and revenants. Sooo maybe we should look to toning things down instead of buffing more things up?

What are these other dps specs that would be oh so viable if not for thief?

Pretty sad how an absolutely terrible DH can easily wreck a thief. I’m honestly surprised you won that one.

There was 1 thief running vanilla sa/da/tr

apex wins 2-1 great games overall

That had me yelling in joy! kitten what a comeback.

According to the pvp forums the problem isn’t our class, its us. Almost everyone that plays thief just sucks. The very few good ones that make it work prove the class is fine.

Yes I’ve seen this exact argument, no they weren’t joking.

I honestly don’t feel it would be terribly hard to make thief relevant again. Base thief needs some small tweaks to make it sustainable in the current meta. Here’s what I’d do:

-make lotus poison and weakening strikes cd per person

-set thief HP to mesmer/engi level

-give thief more access to blind(add blind to CnD revert nerf to /p #5 maybe add a blind on one of the autos)

-up some of the damage coefficients on things like backstab/CnD/shadowshot

I wouldn’t implement all of these changes at once, rather pick two or three of the above. These are some simple things that could be changed to make thief more viable.

brannigan.9831:

Prisoner.2419:

38 out of 40 players in NA’s matches running elite specs, seems balanced.

Ding ding ding. That’s the poof that’s something wrong not the kitten waving and other subjective bull crap. If that’s the way its supposed to be that elites are supposed to be superior all A-net has to do is tell me that and I’ll adapt or quit. Too bad we were sold that this was in “addition” to or another way to play.

Even the different way to play is misleading. All DD is is Acrobatics 2.0 that has been completely balanced with no dead traits. It provides 0 new playstyle.

Thief has been going down in relative effectiveness over the past two years. Thief used to be one of the better 1v1 classes, but now it is advised that thieves avoid 1v1 altogether. Our build diversity has been absolutely gutted, the only thing we were good at after the June patch was the +1 role and decapping.

Then HoT comes. I would say DD is a perfectly well balanced trait line, the problem is the power creep all of the other classes experienced with the June patch and HoT has rendered thieves relatively impotent. DD really didn’t give us anything spectacular we didn’t have before, pre June acro was just as good till it was gutted. We went from a high risk high reward class to a high risk meh reward class. Other classes can deal as much or more damage than us with far less fear of death.

Curunen.8729:

Vieux P.1238:

I really don’t feel sorry for thieves. I remember a time when mesmers wher lunch to the thieves 1 & 2 no skill supremacy. & you had them telling off mesmer players to get some skill’s. How the wheel have turned. Hey thieves, get skill’s!

I also don’t feel too sorry for thieves, remembering the time they used to make life hell for glass mesmers.

But now the tables are reversed, and tbh… it’s satisfying.

They’ll get their fixes eventually.

Having said that I do feel a small amount of remorse when I put down thieves, because it is an unfair fight and that’s a shame. Whatever’s happened in the past, balance is more important than personal prejudice.

yeah 1 spec was countered by thieves vs the entire thief class being countered by scrappers, chrono, and tempests. Oh not to mention the fact that DH hard counters thief. Thief is in a pathetic state atm, but I guess we’re good as +1 pet. I miss being able to compete 1v1.

I love how often stability is touted as something you should use to counter all of the CC’s in pvp. Guess what? thieves don’t get stability.

This game also needs cast bars so that observers can tell what is being cast. Most of the time you can’t figure out what’s happening till a skill actually goes off.

Jayden Ennok.3687:

sb has dps but it’s so kittengly sloooooooooooooooooooooow

step away

no dps

You either have to go into melee to have a chance to hit anyone or burn cd’s.

No, SB has 1 decent damaging ability. As in it does decent damage, but kitten dps. TBH SB has needed a dps buff since launch. Quadruple the speed of #2, double the damage of #3 and increase aa speed by 25-50% then it’d do decent dps.

Maja.6372:

Just use Vault and you are fine

Screenshot is from marauder mesmer (21,5k Health) with no debuffs …
from 100% Health -> direct downstate in under 1 second

GG Anet on completly being sadist and promoting oneshotting people

when will there ever be an ingame report option to report such completly overpowered stuff :-(

Let’s see you’re taking over 7k damage from a skill that normally only crits for 3-4k I think there’s a problem with your build having a lack of toughness. Add to the fact that bound is ridiculously easy to dodge, I’d call that l2p issue. Don’t run full zerker if you don’t have the twitch reflexes for it.

I like the fact that it’s easy to get, it makes it a non status symbol. After the novelty wears off the only ones who will use it will be those using it for its intended purpose.

yeah, you’ve basically outlined what I’ve concluded about the new thief meta. I disagree that escapists absolution is a bad trait, it’s not optimal for 1v1, but is very usable otherwise due to the sheer amount of cleave flying around.

I agree with you 100% on utilities.

edit: Overall how well do you think thief stacks up in 1v1 and in general meta usefulness?

Oh and of course it is touch based so it only effects one player and a thief has to get up close and personal to deliver it. There are entire classes/builds that D/D thieves avoid now.

This is so true. When running d/d here are things I avoid 1v1 because I know I will lose:

-any guardian (especially DH)
-any engi
-condi mesmer
-druid
-any non staff ele

funny thing about DH, I was dueling my wife and she got kittened at me because she simply couldn’t beat me (thief v thief) so she jumped on her Guardian, speced to DH, which she has never played, and proceeded to absolutely wreck my kitten. She’s not good at pvp.