Guild Wars 2

A suggestion: drop deadly for daredevil and run CS / trickery / Daredevil with furious strikes, flanking strikes and trickster with withdraw. The damage buffs from DA are finicky there’s a good chance your opponent will have neither condis nor be below 50%.

Heck, executioner is effectively less than a 10% damage boost, as any hard hitting skills are going to do far more than the required damage when opponents are below 50% effectively wasting dps. Mug is nice, but its a long CD. Panic strike is also nice, but effectively useless after its first use and against certain builds.

Pulmonary impact, quickness access and bound will give much better effective DPS.

Bound by quite a margin for staff and D/P. I honestly think dash is overused by the thief pvp community, sure it helps you run faster, but do you need more than shortbow for that?

Bound gives allows better dps upkeep as it allows you to dodge and remain in melee range. Blackpowder → bound → backstab also feels more responsive than Blackpowder → heartseeker→ backstab due to a lack of aftercast.

I suspect a lot of dash’s popularity is to at least provide some condi clear.

This nerf might have fair for d/p and pistol main. But what about every other thief set? Its yet another nerf to sword mainhand and d/d. The balance is all over the shop.

Standardising it would be a huge nerf to thieves. Thieves are arguably the only class that does not overly benefit from taking lots of toughness or vitality. My point is you should see much more than 1k or 2k damage pulmonary impacts when running zerk. I often see 5k+ in wvw, 2-3k vs heavy armor and toughness.

Pulmonary impact in its current form is why D/P is preferable over staff for PvP for a lot of thieves.

Staff is a better brawler alternative to s/d. Slightly less mobility, but a lot more damage. Staff struggles 1v1 vs good players though. It lacks CC and is highly telegraphed. d/p is the best +1 set atm.

You could play d/p + s/d. You can jump cancel s/d #2, making it almost like shortbow.

In regards to that thread, stealth was never really a thief problem. It was specifically D/P being the one thief set that grants unlimited and easy access. Its the same with stealth gyro on scrapper in pvp: easy and low CD stealth access.

Heck there is a thread calling for a D/P nerf now in the thief forum and I completely agree with it – despite being a thief main. D/P could do with a direct nerf so that other weapon set options can be brought up to par, un-nerfing D/P in the process.

Don’t remind me of perplexity engineers. Will give me nightmares. Literally every 4th WvW roamer rerolled to perp engi before they introduced the rune ICD.

The real problem with celestial producing OP builds was having a much higher total of allocated stats. Never really understood the justification behind this.

The HoT tank meta wasn’t directly caused by celestial – it was elite spec traits and skills scaling too well with toughness / vitality. However, the only guaranteed way to stop the tanky meta was to remove the defensive amulets. Otherwise season 2 still ran the risk of being another boring tank meta.

The extra vitality would benefit guardian / ele / thief the most since they would see the greatest % increase in HP. 560 might be a bit extreme tho. Maybe something like 360.

The problem with the 11.6k base HP it means you can be near insta wiped by even tanky builds post HoT. The zerker trinket offers only around 10-15% more dps over marauders at the expense of dropping 30% of your HP.

Coloxeus.3480:

thief still good bro believe me. just avoid get into a clash without enough endurance to dodge and without breakstun breakstun and avoid Dragon hunter trapper they’re aids against thieves especially a good DH trapper. but don’t worry we will get a really good damage buff soon!

Thieves aren’t good in this meta. You cannot carry a bad/mediocre team in pvp at all. A good thief can tip the scales when the other 4 players know what they are doing – hence why they are used in some premade comps.

In regards to DH trapper, you should not being dying to them. In fact, running staff + short bow you should win against them regularly 1v1. Traps are predictable and can be dodged. Shortbow can use elevation and line of sight DPS to force the a DH off point in many instances.

The only thing I’ve seen DHs excel at is securing downs + zerging points (2 DH + bunker can easily sweep points)

Highlie.7641:

Not to mention that at one time there was this thing called bunker guardians. While most thieves at the time where complaining, the select few could tell you that sword 1 daze + Mace crack (guardian stolen ability) Would break there rotations enough to 1vs1 them. (this also worked vs RTL Eles with ice spike)

There are lot’s of other uses, but well who cares.

Completely agree. S/D stealth #1 + bas venom + sleight of hand was a very nice set up. Playing S/D well wasn’t just about evades, it was the timed CC chains with boon strip that made the set really hurt.

Unfortunately the June specializations patch really screwed with S/D. It wasn’t just acro being gutted, forcing S/D to choose between a decent heal or boon rip in trickery was poorly thought out.

Heartseeker could really do with reverting the leap distance. It was one of the many nerfs that helped consign d/d to the weapon set graveyard.

So long as we have long 3-4 month balance cycles, there cannot be any real balancing. Oversights can mean entire classes being meta or trash tier for an entire league season. Coefficient and cool down tweaks should really happen mid season. Better to shave than gut. Same is true for buffs.

In the current meta thief is only strong vs necro / warrior / other thieves. Even then, some thief builds really struggle vs necros due to a lack of condi removal – not all of them have easy chill / poison removal.

Thief can rarely wins vs reveneant, druid or chronomancer. You will never win vs a scrapper, bunker ele or non braindead dragonhunter.

I still think this is a great change, people might think twice about spamming boons. Necros are gonna get double focused now, and they are already susceptible to this. Consequently a necro heavy comps will not be an easy win, things will have to be mixed up.

If you are running pulmonary impact, would definitely consider taking impact strike over basilisk venom. The gap close and lack of cast time are both very useful in themselves on impact strike.

However, the basilisk venom buff will probably make it the better choice for non pulmonary impact builds, especially vs bunkers. Though its also noting that the venom will only proc twice, so it might not be so useful on p/p or s/p.

Urejt.5648:

I don’t want to ride this stupid balance seesaw. 6 months of OP isnt worth 6 months of being useless, because for the whole year we get complaints of varying nature (that would not bother me if they did not possess a shred of credence.)

I think thief is uniquely hard to balance due to its ability to spam weapon skills. As such, an over buff makes the class OP – especially with a good player. This might be why Arena net haven’t said anything about touching the other weapon skills.

Can see there being 2 to 3 bunkers per team to hold points. But any more sounds like a liability due to the sustain nerf + necro boon hate 2.0.

I tend to find d/p thief counters necros, so stacking more than 2 is dangerous. Equally, I can still see dps engineers and guards countering thieves. Should be a nice mix up of the meta.

Genuinely didn’t expect them to buff dagger as high as 30%. Sword was in desperate need of that speed buff tho – landing a full AA chain in pvp was nigh impossible

5 attacks? No it will be 10. 2 charges x5 = 10. But you are delusional if you think any spec should be allowed to bunker vs 5 people.

2v1 is doable vs venomshare, but guess what? You need to play skillfully :O. Its also worth noting that 1 dodge will usually consume all the venom charges due to multi hit attacks. This means either 2 dodges, or 1 dodge and a stun break.

quickness is genuinely useful again \o/

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.

Ithilwen.1529:

OH I forgot to mention, venomous aura shares the unblockable attack with nearby teammates.

Time to learn how to use a stun break? Venom charges can still be dodged. Knowing how to dodge and stun break used to be a requirement of a skilled pvp player before the rampant power creep. Venom share is only advantageous in a team fight. 1v1 means the thief has wasted a grandmaster trait.

Though I play thief main, I’ve never been a fan of venom share. Shadow arts, and the time spent csating venoms does not play to the decap / +1 roles. However, is there something inherinately wrong about thief playing a support spec?

I will admit that I think daredevil / staff are overtuned – but they compensate somewhat for the bad state of core thief. Core thief was starting to really struggle in competitive games after the June specializations patch.

DeceiverX.8361:

As a side note, I am glad people are starting to finally realize just how overpowered Shadow Shot is.

Jana and I rarely agree, but I think D/P’s strength lies almost solely with this ability. I’ve won a lot of fights playing D/P when D/P players talk trash about me losing a fight while playing D/D. I’ve never had to use anything but Shadow Shot for kills, not even stealth, when against these players.

I’ve also been saying shadow shot is why d/p has been the strongest thief pvp set for a while. Its also worth noting that of all the non staff builds, d/p was arguably buffed the most with daredevil due to bound. However, I would hesitate to nerf anything so soon after seeing the recent tank meta.

d/d #5, C&D, currently does less damage than a thief dodge with bound. #4, dancing dagger, is hardly used. deathblossom, #3, is only good for condi. heartseeker, #2, only works vs very low targets. The issue is simply that d/d has 4 under tuned skills. C&D → backstab does meh damage in the face of safer alternatives. Equally, d/d burst damage potential cannot receive a major buff due to potential 1 shot cheese.

D/D could do with a small damage buff to C&D (maybe 15%), in addition to a small AOE blind. Then utility / survival buffs to #4, dancing dagger (1s superspeed and 1s protection for every target hit? Cripple is a lacklustre condi). Then a 30% damage buff to deathblossom to reward proper use in power builds (i.e. spam doesen’t give great damage, but its not negligable)

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.

Shirlias.8104:

Terrorsquad.4802:

Honestly, as a Main Thief, I have no problem with Ele’s AoE’s…

I cannot grasp why a Mesmer would have any problems as they have skills which allows them to stay on the point + cleans/heal from allies in teamfights..

However, Ele and Mesmer do need to be toned down a bit, together with rev, scrapper and Druid.

Agreed ( still, if the elementalist is good, kitten + SB thief i can’t deal with him. Maybe d/p could, but really i don’t know. Talking about serious elementalists. ).

D/P + S/P is very good vs tempests with pulmonary impact. You can quickly win 1v1 against even decent tempests. VS everything else, this set-up tends to be subpar (lose manoeuvrability, still struggle to 1v1 other classes etc).

MM necros can be hard.

Otherwise, the key to beating necros is lots of interrupts and having condi cleanse available. Their heal is very telegraphed and an easy target for headshot. Withdraw is a must. Trickery, Deadly arts, Daredevil, D/P with pulmonary impact, bound and trickster works quite well.

When they sit in their marks, use bound→ steal, or black powder → bound → steal. Create space and kite when they go reaper. Be prepared to dodge their ice block CC.

S/D does work, but it will take longer. It simply doesn’t have enough damage output. A 1v1 will often turn into a 2v1 before you can beat a necro with lifeforce. Staff also works, but it can stuggle vs condi / hybrid necros, as you have less ability to lock them down and so will so take more hits.

Staff probably has an easier job with MM necros than d/p, but I tend to find MM necros quite rare these days.

For WvW? Marauders armor, zerker trinkets. Marauder gives more stat gain than the 3 stat zerker / valkarie pieces. You can replace some zeker with valkarie if you want even more vitality. Personally I go full zerk in PvE.

Jana.6831:

coso.9173:

it looks like most of the people commenting here just are tinking about PVP. not all of us do PVP, remember that.

Not true – I’m a wvw player which is basically pve, ask anet.

But honestly: I can run with my vanilla thief build (DA, CS, T) through the HoT maps, with D/D SB and am fine – I can do whatever I want in PvE and am fine. Doesn’t mean PvE thief couldn’t use a buff as well but every buff thief might get is because these “pvp kittens” who tried to make the class heard for now 7 months. (I hope you get my point).

ETA: Right, I forgot raids – I don’t think more damage is helping in raids, tbh. But I have yet to be in one – so I can’t really judge.

This is because thieves are still good at eating bad players. We still have one the highest opening in game bursts. Most word vs world players don’t have much 1v1, 1v2 mechnaical skill or knowledge. Look at how many ruby or diamond tier player you see there vs emerald, sapphire, its quite telling.

Cynz.9437:

Azukas.1426:

Cynz.9437:

tbh if all this insta rez wasn’t in game thief would be more viable i think

i down people a lot, i just can’t stomp them fast enough not to mention that cleave is often useless (see mes, dh, ele, scrapper etc.)

The new elite was supposed to solve this, but I hardly see any thief actually bypassing the downed state with it.

The cast is just too long, can be easily countered by CCs, stealth, quickness not to mention it locks thief in long animation in mid of all the aoe spam. Scrapper gyro on other hand is so much better -_-

Adding to this, the final skill in the chain that causes the insta kill does very little damage to the tanky builds you face in this meta. Its also very frustrating to see this skill “absorbed” when an oppoenent goes into down state – this really should be fixed by now.

Its possible. Witness the pain of solo queue thief:

http://i.imgur.com/pIMiklk.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/ugknIWm.jpg

The amount of QQ is insane. Every team failure is placed on the thief, yet I cringe as I see people feeding mid and dying on bunker builds before me.

Commander focus is simply a side affect of the power creep and pirate ship meta. Its currently far too easy for players to safely focus a commander. The risk reward ratio is completely out of whack.

Rather than add yet more mechanics, I would rather see long ranged damage toned down across all classes in the balance pass. Safe, spammable DPS from 900+ units is not healthy.

Otherwise, I am completely in favour of the proposed changes.

In regards to downed rezzing, I would go as far as to limit the number people assisting to 1. Downed -> fast rezz should not be a safe way to quickly regain 1/2 health – bad players decision should be punished with an appropriately.

No crashes on 64 bit client so far, but I do get weird frame spikes on a regular basis on busy maps (mainly WvW). The game will continue at a steady 60fps, then the screen will freeze for approximately 1/2 second. This will happen every minute or so. The 32 bit client is not reproducing these artefacts.

Win 10, 64 bit.
AMD crimson 15.11 driver
Fury X
intel 6700k
8Gb ddr4 ram

Can we stop with the knee jerk reactions? It was a buff much more than a nerf, since you can’t put steal on CD from out of range. When was the last time you intentionally used steal in combat without a target?

Only trait I can think it really affects is stealth on steal, and very few ppl use that.

Why not buff cloak and dagger? As it currently stands d/p has the #5, #2 → backstab combo that does pretty much the same / greater damage than D/D #5 → backstab.

I don’t think backstab itself should be buffed due to permastealth → 1 shot kill cheese. D/P has arguably been the strongest thief build for a while, dps issues are more related to its lack of sustain outside stealth. If anything, skills #4 and / or #5 should be buffed in some way (helps p/p too). PvP really doesn’t need more damage spike creep.

Its not too hard to lead your targets, just takes some practice. The skill is fast enough that your opponent shouldn’t be able to avoid it short of a dodge roll – its simply not possible for them to react that quickly.

Just want to start out saying that I think daredevil is strong and competes well against other classes in PvP / WvW. I would even go so far as to say its overpowered – but only relative to thieves other options. As such, core thief has a plague of issues. These stem mainly from a lack of sustain vs damage. Core thief is capable of good burst damage, but this never works in practice due to AOE, random cleave, invulnerabilities and strong down states.

I would argue that core thief has only 2 widely viable trait lines across all builds: deadly arts and trickery. Deadly arts gives a huge damage boost alongside utility functionality for condis / steal. Trickery is required to prevent initiative starvation and make steal into something useful.

Shadow arts is an exception under d/p power, due to reliable stealth access. Its considered “OP” due to how d/p allows a thief to effectively stealth camp. Under all other weapon sets, it is near useless due to lack of stealth access. Cloak and dagger is very high risk for low reward – it will not work against a competent player.

The critical stikes trait line offers similar dps to deadly arts, but none of the utility. The fury is nice, but fury can more easily be accessed via runes / trickery traits. Contains a handful of redundant / bad traits.

Acrobatics. The whole trait line is a mess. Its not even worth considering with daredevil. Pain response is goodish. Hard to catch sorta okay. But why are these traits superior in every way to the grandmasters in this line? The minors in this line are useless as is.

To surmise weapon set issues:

S/D:
- Damage output is low compared to mainhand dagger.
- Clunky auto attack.
- Sustain is okish, but nothing special.
S/P:
- Damage output unreliable, easy to avoid majority of pistolwhip damage.
- Clunky auto attack.
- Sustain is okish. Worse than S/D due to clunky pistolwhip frames / root.
D/D:
- Burst negligibly higher than D/P, but massive loss in practical dps due to a lack of chasing ability.
- Awful sustain due to lack of defensive mechanics..
D/P:
- Sustain is bad unless traited shadow arts. Otherwise lack of thief condi remove / heal shows.
P/P:
- Initiative hog due to being a 1 skill (#3) weapon set.
- Entirely reliant on utilities for sustain.
- Short 900 range exacerbates sustain issue.
SB:
- OK damage, but the projectile speed is unbearably slow on #2
- Sustain an issue when ranged DPS pressure is so low. i.e. enemy can safely ignore / avoid incoming damage.
- Shortbow #5 is why thieves can’t have nice things? (surely not….. looks at daredevil dash)
P/D:
- Weak in pvp due to lack of condi duration nourishments
- Mediocre condi damage. Reliance on utilities (venoms / traps / deceptions) for good damage.
- Reliant on gimmicky runes (trapper).
- Awful auto attack damage. Sustain an issue when pressure is so low outside of opening burst.

As it stands, I see daredevil staff provides manoeuvrability, cleave, auto attacks, evades, chasing ability and damage in a combination that makes it stronger than any other power based weapon set.

Drop acro for trickery if you want more defensive viability. The extra ini, boon rip and instant stun are much more useful. Acro really isn’t needed for daredevil.

Acro is still a bad trait line.

Acrobatics will have to balanced with daredevil in mind. Otherwise some really nice ideas here.

Your suggested (Major|Grandmaster) Hard to Catch sounds like a weaker version of daredevil’s endurance thief. What about an alternative stun break. e.g. stolen skills break stun and give 2 seconds super speed.

-(Major|Grandmaster) Don’t Stop is weaker version of Unhindered Combatant. I would be in favour of a grandmaster to mitigate ranged damage, e.g:
10% damage reduction from projectiles. 25% chance to reflect projectiles above 600 range. 50% chance to reflect dodged projectiles under 600 range. 100% chance to reflect dodged projectiles under 200 range.

-(Major|Adept) Vigorous Recovery: When you gain vigor you cleanse a condition from yourself. Effectively the same as Daredevil’s Escapist’s Absolution, far too strong. Why not keep the original, but change it to: remove poison, burning and bleeding when at 75% health or below, gain 8s regeneration, gain 2 seconds of resistance. The resistance would prevent AOE condition fields ruining the passive effect.

Also, not entirely sure I agree with the 5 vigor duration on feline grace given how unreliable the “evade” notification can be. Maybe 7 seconds vigor with a 4 second ICD to prevent spam? As you said, even with 100% vigor effectiveness perma vigor isn’t exactly that strong.

UmbraNoctis.1907:

The stealth from trapper rune is very unreliable for ranger/DH, because unlike thieves they are revealed, when somebody steps into those traps.

Yes, but stealth was never really a “profession mechanic” of rangers / guards. By profession mechanic I refer to thieves stealth attacks and the entire shadow arts trait line. How would guards / rangers feel if the random reveals from trap damage disabled one of their weapon skills and a handful of their traits?

JimmydT.7281:

Dragonhunters and rangers also have to use their utility slots go get access to stealth.

Yes, but they don’t sacrifice as much. Rangers still have their pet skills, and guardians their virtues. Both are far better than steal.

Comparing a full trapper ranger build, with the 20% reduction trait I work out up to 35 seconds of stealth every minute. A thief cannot access 35 seconds of stealth using their non trap utility skills; even fully traited a thief can only reach up to 28 seconds or so without traps. Traited thief traps work out at about 32 seconds stealth / min. Most importantly, why are utilities designed solely to stealth a thief inferior to a single rune bonus? The answer is simple, trapper runes OP.

Profession level mechanics like stealth, invulnerability etc should not be easily accessed via runes. Look at the mess vampire runes have made in PvP. I am not saying that ranger nor dragonhunter should not get stealth access. The issue is a rune set giving very easy access to thief tier stealth. Of course the issue is exacerbated on thief, mostly due to d/p in addition to the trap utilities.

By all means, add damage back to thief traps. But they would need a huge defensive buff to make them viable again. Currently you will never see non trapper trap thieves. There is a reason that thief trap damage was originally removed: thieves simply cannot survive without either reliable stealth or evades.

Nonetheless, I still think complete removal of the stealth component from the runes would be warranted. If stealth + traps is a thing Anet wants to see, they should be added to the respective classes trap traits. This way balance issues can be resolved on a class by class basis. Thief simply does not need any more nerfs.

There is nothing inherently wrong with stealth – any mechanic in excess is bad. Lots of long invulnerabilities are equally bad and lazy design. Easy, spammable boon access is bad. Large spammable AOEs, bad design.

Issues with stealth only arise when there is too much easy access to it. Look at the pre nerf prismatic understanding trait on mesmer. Trapper runes are the only issue here, it is breaking thief balance because it was never factored into the class design. It is laughable to even suggest that a class be balanced around a rune set.

No one on a decent build should be losing a fair 1v1 to a thief at the moment outside this cheesy trapper build. The class as a whole is not in a good spot, you only have to look at the pvp forum to realize that.

I would also question why rangers / dragonhunters should get such easy access to so much stealth considering the utility slots and traits mesmers and theives have to sacrifice for comparable up time.

There is nothing wrong with thief traps, they are fine as is. If a thief goes full trapper they have very little in the way of stealth access. Adding damage back to traps will make them unusable again. Why should sacrificing all your utilities be rewarded with random reveals?

What is broken is the runes themselves. The runes are providing stealth uptime equivalent to what a thief can achieve by taking all the of classes available stealth utilties. Either the stealth needs to be removed from trapper runes or made a very short duration.

On a side note, I still think revealed needs to be normalised across PvP and WvW and made 4 seconds. A condi trap thief cannot kill someone with decent condi removal unless they reveal themselves for additional damage.

What the heck

Acro lost might on dodge
Acro lost 10% damage when not at full endurance
Acro lost boon duration
Feline grace lost dodges
Withdraw cooldown increased unless traited
Sundering strikes (The duration is laughable)
Angle shots (just take practised tolerance)
Flawless strike (100 ferocity or so? Maybe an extra 3% damage if you crit above 90% health? hahaha)
Lost as much as 4 initiative every 20 secs from old crit strikes minor
Upper hand (Its ok, but defiantely not grandmaster worthy)
Assassins reward (Healing is god awful bad)
Don’t stop (Can’t we just have an immobilize clear?)
Guarded initiation (just no)
Swindler’s equilibrium (Also just no)
Fleet shadow (Why is this still in acro?)
Condi duration loss from DA has hurt condi thief builds

Every class can decap though. Thief is better than other classes if and only if they take shortbow. At the moment thieves have one build that is okish for 1v1, AKA the d/p Sa/Tr/Da build. Chuck HoT reveal and power creep into the mix and it is likely that this will drop out of the meta too.

S/D was strong, yes. It is likely even to come back with daredevil (or replaced with staff). But equally it needn’t have been nerfed into the ground in the first place. What would have been wrong with a minor nerf?

Thief is a class with a low health pool, little boon access and poor condi cleanse, in return we currently have mobility and mobility alone. Would it really be so much to ask for an ability to win a 1v1? Is it fair to say that a thief is just as likely to lose a 1v1 if their opponent makes x5 as many mistakes?

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQNAsYVl0MhSnYhTw3JQ/EHwEkPNxZJ9CnknoTQA2NA-TVCEABEcCASU9ntUCykyvj2fAhHAQb6DA4QA8wRAIAACwNbz28mBO6zduzduz5m38m38m3sUAlL1C-w

Give that a shot for S/D roaming. It sacrifices some boon rip and damage for initiative sustain and condi removal. Its pretty effective against condi / bunker cheese builds you see when roaming, you just need to watch out for backstab thieves as they can still 100-0 if they catch you off guard.

Its been very frustrating playing a thief main in PvP after the June traits patch. Thieves used to be able to solo join ranked and stand a reasonable chance of carrying a poor team.

Playing S/D meant you could decap and contest points. The burst wasn’t all that high, nor could it bunker – but it could 1v1 most meta builds and stand a decent chance of winning. This meant you could carry a bad matchup.

Now there is absolutely no chance of carrying a bad matchup. If your team aren’t rotating well enough to create decap / +1 opportunities, having a thief will make zero difference.

It has gotten to the point where people are asking for a matchmaking mechanism to prevent 2 thieves in a team. If decap / +1 is so strong, why does 2 thieves equal an automatic loss? And once again, I would like to point out decap is basically short bow. One weaponset should not define an entire class.

The interaction with pistol #5 also needs to change to provide more functionality for s/p and p/p. 20% projectile chance rng on p/p unload means its near useless as a defensive mechanism.

I would go as far as saying reduce pistol #5 to 5 initiative. Increase dagger heartseeker to 4 initiative to compensate.

Then how about a blast finisher on infiltrator’s strike for s/p (stealth access) and making unload 100% chance for the first projectile? Would also suggest pistol #2 is changed.

S/D is very weak compared to D/P now. You may live longer, but you contribute even less to a team fight due to a huge dps loss when taking acrobatics. If you are not taking acrobatics, you may as well just play a dagger spec since you will have bad sustain regardless of your weaponsets.

You can outplay people all day on an acrobatics S/D build – but you won’t kill them, while they will slowly kill you.

D/P and SB have completely skewed people’s view of thief. D/P is providing most of the stealth access. SB the mobility. This meta build is weak when forced into a 1v1. Thieves have another 5 weaponsets that should be viable. These other weaponsets sacrifice mobility and consistent stealth access, yet having even less 1v1 potential than d/p SB. Is thief back capping potential really so strong that the class has to sacrifice all its sustained fighting ability?

Personally I believe daredevil looks like a crutch traitline for these 4 remaining weaponsets, yet these weaponsets should be balanced around core thief. Blast on dodge for p/p. Pulmonary strike for s/p. Damage on dodge s/d. Extra Condi’s for p/d.

Gabriell.4856:

The best PvP class. 1 thief is mandatory.

Gonna call it now. If there are no significant buffs before HoT, the core thief class will not be seen in the moderate to skilled PvP scene. As it currently stands thief has 1 build that is used regularly in PvP. This one build struggles in 1v1 as is; it will be unviable after HoT adds additional reveal skills and class wide power creep granted by the elites.

An evasion spec might come back via Daredevil. The dodge mechanic is not particularly creative and the traits lack diversity, but it undoubtedly has potential to be pretty strong.

I play trickster too usually, the condi cleanse is important if you aren’t running shadow arts + d/p or stealth utilities. Bountiful theft can be pretty meh too, especially after the vigor nerf and the rng surrounding the boon rip.