Guild Wars 2

And I was talking about single-target fights. For AoE, of course a thief isn’t going to top any damage meters.

Okay. So “a lot” is obviously an exaggeration. You know what I meant.

Okay. So we lost 1 second between our stealths. To everyone complaining and asking for the Revealed debuff-even-after-stealth-ends-naturally nerf… honestly, in the end, I think if the tables were turned, we’d have just as many, if not more complaining about the Revealed debuff, and asking for 1 second longer Revealed after attacking from stealth.

It’s not so game-breaking, people. Really. It could have been a whole lot worse than that. Before we start theory-crafting about how bad it is, all of you people in PvE, go try it. It’s not that bad. I still do a lot more damage than most other classes – even berserker warriors. And for PvP… heh. Yeah, didn’t do a whole lot. 1 second. Now a lot are going to say 1 second is a long time in PvP, and it is. But honestly, we can tweak our builds to make up for it if we need to, or tweak our play style.

TL;DR: Yeah, it’s a nerf. No, it’s not as bad as a few threads on here seem to think. Squeaky wheel gets the grease. Try it before you QQ.

Wanderer.5471:

yeah i came across this constant evade thing too – and to the person saying just swim away – what if they’re on a point? they just auto-cap it? there’s a reason invulnerability means you can’t keep a point capped, permanent evade is even more powerful cos they’re doing damage at the same time, It’s absurd.

They may cap the point temporarily, but if you’re swimming away from them, they won’t regenerate initiative from Opportunist (20% chance to gain a point of initiative on critical strikes), and they will run out of initiative much faster, allowing you a better opportunity to kill them, and then capture the point.

It’s not a perfect counter, and I agree it’s fairly ridiculous that this is still possible (and I have pretty much played only thief since beta, so you can’t say I’m crying/whining about them). As far as OP… that’s debatable. There are ways to adapt to defeat it, but most people don’t think about it. The worst thing you could do is send more than 1 person to fight the thief. While half your team is underwater fighting the thief, the rest of the thieves’ team is free to just run over and cap both land-points while he/she distracts you. So it really depends on what we’re calling OP here. I’ve seen necros live just as long on land as I have underwater sometimes, and well-played bunker guardians who take just as long, if not longer.

In the end though, it’s underwater fighting. Who really cares? 90% of the time I just leave when sPvP gets to that map anyways.

It’s pretty easy to do, and has been around since the game was put into beta. As previously stated, it’s our 5th skill with a spear (Shadow Assault).

With a thief, it makes no sense to use any other ability if you’re against multiple opponents underwater, and is far easier to spam than most people think. Running a 10/30/0/0/30 spec on my thief (no, I’m not specced for underwater fighting specifically, it just happens to work this way with my preferred build), I can evade for pretty close to a minute straight, and with the correct procs have fought 5 people underwater for 3 minutes 37 seconds straight, before killing two and chasing the rest off of ruins.

The way it works:

Underwater Heal/Utilities:
Withdraw,
Infiltrator’s Signet,
Signet of Agility,
Roll for Initiative

Spam Shadow Assault (SA), procs from Opportunist will give back 1-2 initiative points on average – you’ll generally get 4-6 uses of SA from this alone. Evade twice, Signet of Agility, evade twice more, spam 2-3 more SA, evade once more. Take a bit of damage, Withdraw downwards into the floor, steal back to target (returns 3 initiative, and 6 more if you get an egg from a ranger/shark), SA spam some more, evade twice, Roll for Initiative, SA spam more, evade twice, Signet of Agility… etc.

Now, after seeing that, it’s probably going to look at first glance like it’s impossible to fight. But it really isn’t. If you’re a Mesmer, you’ve got an area spell (the name of which escapes me) that will cc the thief between the SA spam. A few other classes have similar mechanics, but I’m not going to list it all out. Second bit of advice: Don’t stand right next to me while I use it. You’re going to be tempted to stay on the point and try to keep me from capping it, but that’s just going to get you killed, and give me the point. If you stay out of my range and use a spear gun, not only are you not taking damage, but the number of times I can chain SA drops drastically because I no longer get the Opportunist procs for bonus initiative. I may capture the point, but playing this way you’ll be far, far more likely to chase me off, as I’m really quite squishy and don’t do a whole lot of damage once my initiative is gone.

Question I’m asked the most: Is it a bannable offense?
Answer: I don’t know. Never seen or heard of anyone getting banned for it, as there are ways to defeat it, and it’s been around since beta. The developers would have fixed it by now if it was really that important.

Either double dagger or pistol/dagger works. The primary difference between the two is that in general, dagger/dagger can stack bleeds more quickly and it is easier to keep the enemy on the caltrops, because you are trying to stay in melee where you deploy them. Pistol/dagger is safer, but not as easy as mindless deathblossom spam, and doesn’t tend to keep up with the bleeds as well. Either is viable, but right now I’m prefering the pistol mainhand, as with double dagger a backstab spec you have to be in range to take damage while you deal it, and condition builds tend to have a longer time to kill.

It bounces 4 times as stated above. This means 4 casts are required to hit one target seven times. 4 casts for 19k… sounds balanced to me, especially since the thief is out of initiative at that point. Dancing dagger is at its best vs. 2 targets.

I didn’t scroll through all posts and read them, this is in direct response to the original poster.

Heart Seeker is awful to spam. Honestly yesterday I saw 4 HS thieves, some in tourneys, and it made me cry tears of pain. Not because I died so fast, but because they couldn’t burst my thief down as fast I I was killing them with Infiltrator’s Strike and sword auto attacks.

The skill is entirely useless until 50%, where it is decently useful, but a CnD → Backstab will do greater damage still. It’s finally at 25% it’s worth using, and you may need 1 or 2 to finish the person off. The skill is only useful as a finisher. If you’re spamming it from full health and getting kills after the nerf, you’re either fighting people who are just learning the game, or you’re going to be unsuccessful in the long run.

HUNDRED BLADES AND PISTOLWHIP ARE FINE.

It’s quickness that’s the problem. Honestly if you test a Pistolwhip and then auto attack 3 times, the damage difference is negligable. It’s using quickness WITH the PW that deals all that damage in a stun that kills so quickly, as it literally DOUBLES the DPS.

I’ve been working towards my Flame Legion armour for some time now, and as of the last patch that increased the difficulty have only made 2 runs.

It’s not that it’s too difficult to make the run, it’s that many people are abusing a bug which allows them to skip the “Kaboomium” encounter, complete the last boss, win the “Kaboomium” encounter via glitch, and re-loot the boss’ chest.

I now cannot find a group willing to avoid this bug, and it has made progressing in this part of the game impossible. Has anyone else run into this problem? Or has this been reported before?

Thanks,
Kutluch

@Shukran

It’s not what spec -should- a thief play. It’s what spec does the player prefer to play. I personally like a backstab spec, or sword/dagger daze spec for my own playstyle. Both have advantages and disadvantages. Sword/pistol doesn’t mean you have to spam PW at all, and players who don’t are usually better than the ones who do, because they understand the other situational abilities.

However, people will complain about your HS or PW even if you don’t use it. Least they did when I was playing sword/dagger and had neither of the abilities on my skillbar.

This is all I can think about while I read this…

X class is greater than Y class at A. Y class is greater than X class at B. Y class complains and is buffed to be just as strong as X at A. So now what happens? X class must be buffed to be as good as Y at B. Now you have 2 identical classes. Sounds like fun.

For utilities sake.

Yes my thief has more burst than your warrior. You have crowd control to help your team. Your 100 blades + quickness combo can nearly match my CnD-Backstab burst (or sometimes out-perform it), and you survive much longer. Your ranger can deal damage from range, without being hurt, and kite until the fight’s over, etc.

The issue with 100 blades and pistol whip is not the ability itself, but quickness. The abilities have major flaws which can be abused during the fight, however quickness makes up for this.

As a thief, I actually dislike pistol whip. I have used it in tournaments and sPvP, but feel it’s a clunky mechanic, and having to stand still to deal 4-11k damage (depending on the target) does not appeal to me at all. When hasted, yes, you can get 2 pistol whips off in 4 seconds, and if the squishy is not running any stun breakers they will die, but it is very much a 1-trick pony.

Dodging is very difficult if the thief should use Infiltrator’s Stike first, as you’re immobilized, and it’s very difficult to to time a dodge against a shadowstep like that. However if you’re getting 1-2 shot by this ability, you need to remember 2 things.

1: He just blew a cooldown to kill you. His next fight won’t be nearly as easy.
2: You most likely built glass cannon. Expect to die. The thief is glass cannon as well. Try and catch him before he catches you next time, or avoid him until you have a friend. Don’t keep bashing your head on a brick wall if you can’t beat a player. Outsmart him.

As a thief player who has tried several different specs, anything from daggers to shortbow, and have over 230 hours logged on my thief, I agree and disagree.

Our mobility, while amazing, isn’t so far ahead of other classes as one might think. Greatsword warriors come to mind. Yes, we beat them out, but it’s not by much.

Our damage is great, yes, but there are other classes who can nearly match our burst, however look at survivability. Often the classes who do as much damage as us have hundreds more toughness, and/or thousands more health. To do this insane burst, thieves very often have only 14k health, 900ish toughness and are using 48 seconds-1 minute cooldowns.

99% of the complaints I see about thief are about damage. Yes, they have a lot of damage, but usually these people don’t know which abilities of the thief to dodge, and often have less than 18k health.

Every class has a chance against another class. Rather than seeing people complain about mesmers, thieves, guardians and greatsword warriors, they should spend their time working on specs, theorycrafting, and changing their playstyle with their respective set-ups to counter the class in question.

I’m not a “pro,” but I have come across many of every class who I’ve killed, sometimes without being hit once, and other times the player of that class absolutely outplays me. That’s my fault, their class is not “OP.”