Guild Wars 2

I was certain that someone would do this as I suspected the DPS of pistol whip wasn’t that much higher than auto to begin with, its quite obvious when using it in pve.

I no longer use a pistol whip build but I did expect this to happen do to the whine.

All it does is reiterate that ANet has such little understanding of the game they made. So that’s the customer service team failing at every hurdle and now the balance team?

pistol whip haste build might be able to do a good amount of burst while keeping him weakened, or sword pistol and just beat on him while standing him in the blinding puddle…. when you go out of init then just evade and run away for a bit before re-engaging or like Incurafy said run a p/d kite build and he will never touch you if he’s melee.

As far as I know norns get the summon ice worm racial, although it doesnt move it tanks really well so that might be a nice utility for you.

good luck

Although I think the balance team in GW2 is pretty awful, I can appreciate it’s difficult to pick out from the whine in every class forum what actually has merit and what is just, well, whine.

None the less small tweaks here and there would be nice to see they are trying to bring everything into line…. if they try something small, it doesn’t work they revert it etc. Although the CSR’s and GM’s have completely inadequate tools I’m guessing there is some good data mining systems built in so they can clearly see that certain classes are under performing or over performing in some areas.

They are going to need to be two things for GW2 to hold its player base, 1 more pro active and 2 very lucky!

Invisible is partially due to a server bug which doesnt render all characters near you, also when you stealth as a thief although it only lasts about 3 seconds on the player screen, it in fact lasts about 4 seconds to everyone else due to the servers and/or coding not being up to scratch.

hence you almost always get a free full second of being on someone before you appear to them. which means its only about 2 seconds before you vanish again.

there are so many posts here about how you may have been bursted down quickly by a thief that I really cant be bothered to explain how it happened if you cant be bothered to take the time to read it.

Also this game is not balanced for WvW so its best not to complain about it, the thief wasn’t the one that took you down in under 5 seconds from the wall, because they only have 900 range on all abilities bar 1 which does awful sustained dps at long range.

I have played it for an equal amount of time.

I value your opinion, and I agree skirmishing is more fun, on any class. However, let me tell you why I feel you missed the point of this thread. As I have said before Every class is supposed to be able to fill every role, If a Thief cant sit back and dps then that is a design flaw with the class.

I have often 1 v 2 or 1 v 3 sometimes bad lowbies in WvW, WvW is not about skill its about gear, orb buffs and food if you want to silly things like that.

Have you done the claw of jormag event? does it annoy you that every other class can hit him from the rocks but we cant? What about any of the indoor dungeon sections where CB just hits the roof instead of the target?

The only change that needs to be made is that assassins signet needs to be reduced to 25% bonus on next hit with a 25 second cool down, the rest is pointless.

Haste works fine for the thief losing all your endurance is horrible its very situational in PvP and PvE, if you are talking about combining it with Pistol whip, well there are hundreds of replies on how to counter pistol whip builds with ease and I cant be bothered to go into it again

By burst you are referring to back stab I assume. And my suggested change would fix that.

In regards to mug it hits mobs for a lot less due to them having toughness, sure if you crit a warrior in frenzy you will get a huge number but that’s a rarity, I’ve been fire grabbed on my thief for 13k before running a glass cannon build… It is not the only skill that’s instant, on a long cooldown and hits hard. Hell I’ve been crit for 3k + by just auto attacks from warriors and guards

ah so you hit a frenzy warrior who was glass cannon specced and you were glass cannon specced using assassins signet + frenzy for +100% damage

20 it was a 12.5k hit on glass cannon vs glass cannon and you had 20 stacks of power buff I assume for an extra 140 power

The answer to this is quite simply No

please post the full screenshot.

WvW is almost a certainty where you outgeared a lower level player building pure glass cannon with several stacks of might, full exotics, crit food, 3 orbs, assassins signet, 30/30/x/x/x build, Sigil of force etc etc…

PvP is not balanced for WvW so dont use examples from it else you could post elementalists doing 70K damage with a single meteor storm, etc

Auron.2657:

In my professional opinion, Warrior, Thief and Guardians are balanced, nothing wrong with them. It’s the other classes that need small buffs, more-so Elems.

Warriors are the best rounded class

they have good range, good mitigation options, good melee, good condition options, good aoe options, good ultility and buff options..

you cannot say the same about any other class in GW2 right now, they all fall down somewhere. Ele has an overpowered water spec that heals for far too much which I expect to get toned down but they need some love in other areas just as Thief and guardian need to have a little review

bwillb.2165:

For many classes this means that we want them to have different builds that are equally viable, and making sure that no single build outshines all others in efficacy.

I think thief is sitting pretty good in that regard. Almost everything is viable, and no one build really outshines others in anything but the lowest brackets of play. The only thing that could use a little work is the Sword/Dagger dual skill. It’s just… well, not good.

I know you post on this forum a lot and do contribute to threads but I couldn’t agree less with this post. (apart from the S/P dual)

There are currently 3 skills which define most thief’s right now,
These are:
Backstab
Pistol Whip
and to a lesser extent Sneak attack

Due to there being so few options for us with weapons I feel there is some need to review the class due to the gimmicky specs. But that’s me, everyone is entitled to their opinions

its assassins signet and its easy to fix

its currently a 50% bonus damage on 45 sec cooldown

make it a 25% bonus damage on a 25 sec cooldown… case closed back stab is fixed and thief DPS remains approximately the same

Pistol whip needs removing and just making a new skill really,

Backstab is only doing good damage due to assassins signet, its easily fixed by changing assassins signet. In general PvE backstab isnt the monster it is in PvP and the dps you lose by moving to the back of mobs in dungeons etc or chasing them around warrents the hits you get as a level 80 thief. I mean I only hit for about 3k average on a level 80 mob in my knights + mf gear + Zerker weapons with 1810 power and 33% bonus crit damage.

much work needs doing on our ranged, and almost all of the duel skills could use a tweak or re design I feel..

Isabis the problem is that thief’s range abilities are a little bit sub par compared to others, spamming CB is good close range and pistol is ok if used with a dagger offhand for the stealth attack bleed stack but that’s pretty much it…. they are short range and don’t do anywhere near as much damage or provide the same team utility as other classes ranged weapons (although CB as a blast finisher is nice)

18,372 – Warrior Necro
15,082 – Engie Ranger Mesmer
10,805 – Ele, Guardian, Thief

The difference between the highest health pool and the lowest is ~59%. Those classes also benefit more per point of vitality if I’m correct and therefor the stat simply scales better for them as they stack more of it they get a larger and larger health pool compared to the lowest tier classes. Also there is a bigger gap between the low to middle tier than from the middle tier to the high tier.

It does scream a little bit of poor game design, but that’s just my feeling, Its not like Precision is any better for a thief than a warrior, but Vit is massively better for a warrior than a thief.

Made my day

Awesome video

Apologise then I suppose im just annoyed with so many people coming here saying the thief is better than this and that and most overpowered pvp class etc. Glad you enjoy it

devastating*

I would argue that our ranged options are not powerful bar using short bow in melee or using pistol dagger to kite, In fact I think you might find that its the general consensus on this forum, It has led to a lot of people asking for a third ranged choice in the rifle.

Ranger melee is great, the Sword + Warhorn can = the burst of a theif over a few seconds. You can still kill the heavy golem in under 4 seconds as a ranger using Melee.

Rangers short bow can do more damage to 1 target than the thiefs to 3 including the pet as listed here https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/WvW-and-events-1200-range/page/2

I had no intensions of trolling but myself and others dont feel the class we have been playing since beta is fine due to having a few gimmicky specs

sorry if it came across hostile

I cant tell if your a troll or not.

Let me explain something to you,

ANets vision for this game is that: All classes should be able to perform all roles

Ie all classes should have ranged and melee condition builds, support builds, damage mitigation builds, ranged and melee nuke builds and ranged and melee AoE builds.

The only bit in your post I agree with is the shadow shot being useful for travelling. Rangers can equal the melee DPS of a thief and do significantly more ranged dps. I did a calculation of shortbow vs shortbow if you want to check the thiefs 1200 range post.

but i’m glad you have found a class you enjoy

well it may be in the future when they realise 42k Karma is a joke and the only people with full sets are the ones who exploited the dolyak reward

the thief hits that hard once every 45 seconds…. that is their main utlity with that build, if the thief gets stunned out of stealth he would die very quickly built totally glass cannon.

that crit is actually a 6000 crit which is achieveable by almost all classes, but its just the signet which has made it so strong.

The server issue is your problem here

liberation dell is still broken after 01 oct patch

if you want to use SB for events then build flat damage as it avoids the bleeding stack and if your close range using cluster bomb you will do good damage, if your long range you will do awful damage…

If your doing explorer mode, just stop, it gets a little easier at 80 when your gear has 3 stats instead of two…..

Learn the boss fights and mob mechanics. A lot of them are not very friendly to melee, so you will have to end up using your ranged abilities on them. Some are, yes the theifs ranged abilities are a little lack luster and boring but you like the rest of us dont have a lot of choice.

Saying that, there are some good options to help you survive…

Ill point you towards 3 traits in particular that might help.
1 – Cloaked in shadow (stealthing blinds nearby foes) great trait if your run a Backstab build else use blinding powder in group pulls

2 – Shadows embrace, usually removes 2 conditions in a full duration stealth, amazing for getting rid of those kitten bleeds and poisons that last about 3 and a half years, else use the 2 skill on the sword alot

3 – Assassins reward, Heals when you spend init. Speaks for its self really.

Also gear knights gear for at least half your slots, the toughness will give you a bit of a chance when your fighting.

you’ re welcome

indeed damage and condition damage are not one and the same…

I think there will be a huge patch at some point to address condition damage with the pathetic limit of 25 stacks for bleed etc but we shall see.

My main issue with condition damage is that divinity runes dont add the stat even though they clearly state 10 to all stats… Its due to condition damage being added late in beta but still.

use P,D

The main reason the pistol is a half decent main hand is due to its bleed stacking, this works better with p,d as you can stealth easily to use the stealth attack which apply’s a lot of bleeds.

using p/p is pretty sub optimal and most people rate it as being a poor weapon set.

if you want to use pistol use a conditions build, unload combined with the auto attack simply doesn’t do enough damage to be a true single target dps build even with zerker gear.

You will hate every second of moving round orr

I would just get a toughness vit set so you can avoid killing mobs as much as possible while you tag nodes.

Orr is horrible to move around, the mobs all have iritating mechanics, large health pools, rediculously short spawn times, huge numbers of random veterans, etc etc…

its just very poorly designed over all.. I did It using knights gear and hated every second of it… PvE was enjoyable up untill Orr however

there are actually a couple of thief posts complaining that toughness makes thiefs too weak in sPvP… go figure

Nope its just a bad skill…

people have called for it to be reworked but its on a long list of things to do for ANet… and patches have slowed down somewhat

Toughness increases the effectiveness of your heals by meaning that your heals fill a larger portion of your health bar as your take less damage from all direct sources

Toughness DOES NOT affect condition damage and you will take the same amount from bleeds etc.

And yes, most of the moaners that come here saying I got backstabbed for 12k+ have less than 1200 toughness and wonder why they get hit so hard

Another person coming on here to moan,

Does your gaurdian have a shred of toughness?

was this in world v world?

I’m bored of these posts, read around there will be hundreds of them all saying the same stuff and explaining as to why it happened.

I also want Engies nades nerfed as they are better in every way to cluster bomb doing more damage at range and in melee, and stacking amazingly with quickness

the fact of the matter is this game is not balanced for WvW… WvW is just some random zergy stuff going on that you can muck about with for a bit of a laugh, all that matters to the proper pvpers and ANet is the tPvP… I mean the seige weapons are hilarious, 2 shotting huge groups of people with the cannons and decimating groups with the arrow carts etc…

I mean to be a commander in the WvW you dont have to have any experience, maturity or merit, all you have to do is make a zerg guild and have a joining fee/tax.

ANet wants this game to be an Esport, Esport will not ever rise from WvW so balance will not be done around it.

you bring lack luster ranged dps is what you do,

Interesting fact, did you know that the rangers short bow hitting from behind can out dps the thiefs shortbow hitting 3 targets?

Thief isnt your traditional stealth class, no single stealth skill lasts longer than 3 seconds untraited. really, there are a couple of exceptions but thats the general rule

I’m unsure of what your asking, your approach to MMOs seems very heavily leaning towards the WoW rogue. In fact I may guess that it was your first proper MMO?

Thief doesnt work like a WoW rogue at all really, in fact thief doesnt have a lot in the way of crowd control. It has immobilize (root’s), snares, daze (silence), and blind (next attack misses) and thats your lot. The thief has 1 stun which is a 1 second cast and stuns for 1 second(such a bad skill), it doesn’t have a knockdown, or any of the cc you might be used to, the thief class relys on agility to survive NOT stealth and not cc

level all the way using what you call a PvE build I would suggest, many people dont really like the PvP in GW2 especially GW1 vets although there are exceptions. Thiefs are also not a great option in WvW apart from for dagger storm and stealing from warriors….

I Hate to burst your bubble, but due to ANets customer service, or lack thereof and lack of true end game content, the player base has already taken a noticeable dip, also the games story in many peoples opinion is pretty terrible due to the main character you follow (Trehearne) being the most uninspiring hero in any game ever.

tl;dr.. play and work things out for yourself, but do yourself a favor and level with sword pistol, it will save you a massive ball ache

Engie nades are smaller aoe I think but their damage is better at range and can apply loads of conditions and do amazing damage in melee, simply they are better at nuking close and long range than the shortbow…

DaedalusDragon.3754:

Wait….. we are the most broken class and we still get nothing. I know these bug fixes were in fact bugs, but the only fixes we ever get generally make us worse. I’m not saying that the bug fixes that let us fire spells behind us or other beneficial things should stay, but could we get bug fixes that actually help us play our profession? What about all of the balancing? Every other class continuously gets lots of fixes and balance changes but we are getting absolutely nothing. ArenaNet, you have to tell us now. Do you want us to stop playing the elementalist? If not, at the very least you MUST tell us what you are going to do to help us out.

I’m issuing a call to action from Anet. Tell us what you are doing. What are you thinking? Should I just give up and stop playing? Are you siding with the minority (even on the forums) and keeping everything as broken as they are? Why aren’t we at least getting bug fixes for these very important skills? I think we deserve a response from you. And to everybody who thinks “you don’t deserve anything”, please remember that we paid for this game. I’m not saying I’m entitled to a lot, just some answers from a company who used to pride themselves on being transparent.

whoa necros are the most broken

but don’t complain when we get something… it is far better than nothing, every class apart from warriors needs a look at right now

the philosophy of every class performing every role is so far from true

mulch.2586:

A grand total of one option for elite underwater. Nuff said.

a 1 second stun with a 1 second cast time…

hardly what id call elite, possibly the worst elite skill in the game

It frustrates me the amount of people who get so upset with the 1200 range.

I find myself consistantly reminding people that it is ANets vison for this game that
EVERY CLASS CAN PERFROM EVERY ROLE.

Ie if your a theif and you want to Ranged dps in WvW then you should have that functionality and do a similar amount of damage to everyone else

just the same as if your a necro and you want to do a significant amount of direct damage or melee damage your should have that facility!

All the classes are meant to be flavors, they are not supposed to force you into certain roles. This was GW2’s big selling point, and it has yet to be realised.

What total Barrage said, in 1 v 1 pve underwater I can solo pretty much anything using the block and evade from the spear.

saying that I avoid underwater like the plague because it limits our skills so much, I mean none of the weapon skills stealth and all the utlities that stealth are disabled “WTF?!”

The harpoon gun is also just bad and boring much like duel pistols

your weapon is just one item its quality is more important than its stats, although Condition damage is ONLY affected by stats and not your weapons power.

still if you want to run a bleed build you would be 10x better off going with pistol mainhand or short bow and spamming CB in melee range, your dps would be significantly higher

It is used as a melee skill only, in general the whole short bow is broken as a ranged weapon and better as a short range melee kiting weapon.

The numbers you have described do seem a little, High, the reason I suggest this is because there is supposed to only be a Minor amount of difference in mitigation between armour types where as toughness is the main tool to reduce the damage you take.

I would be fine with there being a minimum range for the skill but I would also want the arrow to move twice as fast to make it a viable ranged nuke.

also if you detonate the skill it doesn’t finish combos, this is dilberate to try and avoid the spam you are running round doing

Zerker armour Knights accessories

The Whirl wind and dagger storm is generally only good against retreating or bottlenecked enemies…. and still often ends in a repair bill….

I spend much of my instance time stealth rezzing, I dont expect to have to do it all the time in WvW too….. Something just feels a little bit dull with the theif WvW experience unless you get a small group

and as has been mentioned, everyone can cap supply depots, thief is no better at it than anyone else.

Ranzou.7123:

Me.. fishing people on the wall with scorpion wire .. when zerging a keep..

Me.. fishing people on the wall with scorpion wire .. when zerging a keep..you’ll feel like butcher from DotA or scorpion from Mortal Kombat
“get over here..”

even better, get a necro to pull the person of the wall for you as they can do the same thing at 1200 range

faytte.1057:

Its just how balance is made. You are insanely mobile and great in every other aspect of the game. Your 900 range is also very solid to be frank, having you guys at 1200 with your autos I feel is a bit 2 strong.

I’m assuming that you dont play thief… but that is only assumption so please don’t take offense if i’m wrong, and If I am I apologise.

Please try the Claw of Jormag event where you are the only class that has to stand in the dot because you cant hit from the rocks on the side, or perhaps try some of Caudicus manor or the other indoor dungeons where 2 skill (cluster bomb) just hits the ceiling.

how about the 900 auto attack on the short bow doing less damage to 3 targets than the ranger can do to one with the short bow to a single target at 1200 range, I proved this earlier in the post with some testing and results.

I disagree with Quasi gearing Zerker is sub optimal, esp in terms of dungeons, with knights you notice a huge amount of bonus in survivability and when your not dead your doing damage. But it is down to taste

Just dont ever try running round orr with full zerker… its not fun with the broken mob density.

well first its best not to double post

I’m sure you will get flamed in the WvW forum due to the fact that people who main other classes will complain

“yes but you can backstab me for 8k, oh and you can pistol whip spam me for 14k”

sadly people cant focus on anything about this class apart from BS and PW.

Now to the important point, As you have noticed there is a popular post here about the theifs range, Sign it, agree with it and love it. We are the only class in the game without a 1200 auto attack which makes our WvW experience very different to most other peoples…

Although the small skirmishes can be fun on a theif, the general WvW experience is weaker due to us resorting to cluster bomb spam… doing very low damage per second due to it having the arc the size of Jupiter’s orbit.

the AoE from whirlwind steal (warrior) and combined with dagger storm is good at clearing packs but that does mean you have to survive and that is another boring way to play.

necro has a longer range scorpion wire too. The problem is ANet wanted every class to be able to fill every roll, IE Melee dps, Range dps, Damage Mitigation, Melee aoe, Ranged AoE, Support etc, and the theif lacks in the range dps roll hugely. The only way to do good ranged dps is to unload spam or to condition spec using the pistol stealth spam.

just my two cents

EDIT: I’m not saying any other class fills all roles well either apart from the warrior, but we are focusing on purely thief here

Due to our range being the 2nd weakest in the game (only guardians have it worse) we are really pants in the group zerg…

If you want to do something awesome, steal from a warrior, then combine whirl wind and daggerstorm together for lots of AoE kitten and then try and get away…

Only works in PvP or solo PvE

The reason I’m telling you this is to save you deaths in dungeons.

If you use the bp→hs stealth in a dungeon you will rarely get a stealth. The problem is HS doesn’t always leap finish the right combo field and the game doesn’t give you a combo field priority system like it should…

Consequently, A great spec is highly limited due to some lazy mechanics

its not that p/p is terrible its just our other range weapon is only used for its combo finisher and its ability to teleport..

even hitting 3 targets with the auto attack on sb is not great dps, the pistols auto attack is woeful, but the stealth attach and unload are ok… number 2 skill could do with a tweak, spamming some vuln will rarely do more damage that unload spam even in a dungeon… think of it this way

everyone else does 25% more damage for a short while but you do almost none… and have no Init to play with… ugh so much wrong with the pistol and shortbow :/