Guild Wars 2

messiah.1908:

I think the problem you saying is with the staff and not the trait line
I find the trait line as an alternative to shadow art

My dp thief handle it well and also PP
With staff I theory craft more control build than dmg

Exactly, we do know that trait line has some nice design to it, and we made some builds with it while using Sword / Dagger setup and Pistol / Pistol setup. Bot succesfull to some degree.

But all i presented was indeed about using Staff as main weapon, as we wanted to know how well you can use it. Also yeah it has better control than it has dps i do agree, but i feel like only thing that you really do is applying Weakness, because things like “Impact Strike” is nearly imposible to land if your target isnt just a sitting duck, its really easy to dodge it, block it, or just walk back.

What i really want to say in this topic is statement that:
Adding Daredevil traitline / staff / Physical skills did not improve the situation of Thief as class in sPvP that much. But of course it can be used, but its kinda lacking in my opinion.
Feel free to disagree

Impact.2780:

Nothing is designed to burst down targets using direct damage, which staff is, and Settler’s gear, or even Knight’s for that matter. Berserker and Marauder.

Okay then i will elaborate a little bit what Thief setups we used.
So at first we wanted to check damage that the build is capable of doing, so we used following amulets:
Berserker Amulet
Marauder Amulet
Barbarian Amulet

He was most effective with Marauder as to be expected, but still thief couldn’t stand against most tanky builds. We also tried Marauder thief vs Berserker/Marauder using build, warrior / ranger / guardian and then Thief had any real chances as damage was okay-ish.
But in confrontation with some a bit more tanky build, Knight Warrior for that matter, thief started to fall off hard, also as i said before, ANY Stability shuts most of thief combos down.

So we thaught, hey lets try to make him a bit more tanky, and maybe he will outlast oponent with all those dodges and also a bit of armor.
So we tried following amulets on Thief:
Knight Amulet
Valkyrie Amulet (with sigils of inteligence to compensate for the lack of precision)
Cavalier Amulet (same stuff with Sigils of inteligence)
And Even Soldier Amulet

So yeah he was hard to kill, evading most of skills and clearing conditions with dodge rolls, im pretty sure that some builds cannot kill good staff oriented thief with one of those amulets. But, there is always but, he was doing close to no damage to any build that wasn’t zerker. So yeah he can fight with me for like 30 minutes but whats that for? Shoutbow warrior, or bunker guardian, condi ranger, or D/D elemental will just stand on a point in sPvP and thats it, you as thief cannot really do anything about it, you are tanky but you are not a threat almost at all.

So when i read “Nothing is designed to burst down targets using direct damage” So what is Thief designed for? If in sPvP he cannot kill any “meta” build, maaaybe he can kill rangers, depending on their builds.
And i know that the game isn’t designed about 1vX and important role of thief is +1ing the fights, but with that, honestly you can have any other class and build to just +1 some fight. And you will probably add more to team than thief does.

One more thing
I still don’t have any idea why Thief’s Short Bow has like 900 range when Guardian is happily using his longbow that bouth Outranges and Outdamages thiefs range abilities.

Before HoT was released i did some theorycrafting for Staff using thief with my friend, as skillset seemed to be interesting. And we were generaly curious how well can it fit with current meta in sPvP and also how well it can handle WvW.
We did some teststing tooday, some 1vs1 fights and also damage tests.
So in sPvP my friend was using different combinations of runes / amulets in his Staff Thief, and i was running couple of different setups for warrior, GS/Hammer, GS/SwordShield, ShoutBow. Ranger Power / Condi. Elemental D/D, some other stuff as well.
And its just astonishing how bad Daredevil actually looks:
Problems that we encountered with it:
- Stability completly shuts down most of combos.
- Both “Impact Strike” and “Fist Flurry” are extemly hard to land if your opponent isnt just standing there. (in normal 1vs1 fight he didn’t hit his full combo with Impact strike even once same goes to Fist Flurry, and he is not the bad thief player)
Also both skills are extremly easy to see and/or predict as thief needs to be literaly on your face.
- Damage is really lower than we thaught it will be. I mean sure when i swapped to Berserkers Amulet he could do some real damage, but who uses that anyway.
When i was using Amulet of Knight / Settler / Or anything with a bit of armor damage was barely noticeable.
Even when i was just standing in place, not blocking, not dodgeing, and just giving thief 10 seconds to get as much damage as possible, it was hard for him to really kill. (when i was wearing Knights / Settlers amulets)

Now i do understand that Staff isn’t designed to burst down targets, its for a bit longer engagements, its for surviving while dealing damage, but point is, it does it considerably worse than any other class, with build designed that way.
Especially in sPvP where he offers pretty much nothing to team, unlike any other class.

In WvW we are not sure yet what to think about it, i saw some posts claiming that “its good for roaming” as you are just dodgeing around and your friends are killing enemies that are probably so offended by you that they just need to chase this poor little thief.
It has some potential in WvW for sure as its mobility allows it to get in, kill some staff elemental or zerk ranger and jump out, but thats what any other thief does anyway.
Now let me say that, the staff build has some kind of potential in fights due to Weakness that is pretty strong, but thats pretty much WvW exclusive as in sPvP every decent build will just cleanse it.

And yes +50 endurance is amazing, with 100% uptime of vigor even more, its all pretty and dodgy, it can survive alot, to the point of beeing (almost) immortal in some matchups, but thats it, it almost cannot kill anything in sPvP maybe other than some yolo berserk builds.

I guess we will do some more testing and playing with it, maaaybe its not as bad as it looks, we would like to believe.

In thief we believe.