Guild Wars 2

I grew fond of the way how Flanking Strike works, you get a buff which changes your third weaponskill to another one.
To add more choices for thiefs, I think that this could be extended to all thief weaponskills, so you get additional effects on all of your skills on every weaponset, after using a dualwield skill.

To give a rough example:
You use flanking strike and now you got the lacerous buff, now you weaponswap to D/D and do a deathblossom. Since you have still the lacerous buff, you steal boons from every person you hit with Deathblossom.
Now since you used Lacerousblossom (or howevery you want to call it) the lacerous buff fades away.
Or you use heartseeker and instead of stealing a boon, you let some boons explode at your target.

I just took lacerous as example, but that way Anet could give some weaponsets a more specific role like the current S/D, which is used against boons.
D/D and deathblossom could give you some additional condition effects as buff and with that D/D would be more condition focused.

No it wouldnt. Dazes and Stuns work on durations of full seconds. Tactical strike dazes for 2 seconds, now you add 15% and with that it dazes for 2.3 seconds. Since dazes and stuns take full seconds, the game rounds it up to 3 seconds.

Since the daze duration in sPvP got nerfed down to 1.5 seconds, you will only achieve a 2 second daze there with tactical strike, even with the sigil and the mesmer rune.

The testing with the rune and sigil already was made by someone else too:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Daze-durations-test/first#post681031

The increased Revealed time translates to a dropped max sustain dmg from D/D. But thieves werent really the top DPSers in the first place. Warriors and Mesmer could easily beat thieves in a DPS race.

Problem with thieves in PvE is, that they dont bring anything (except stealth) to the group which other classes cant provide while even offering additional benefits. Espeacily at bossfights nearly all tools of a thief suddenly become useless, but for trash fights the thieftools are pretty nice (who cares about trash?)

Since Anet is not known for reverting changes, it seems unlikely that they change revealed back to 3 secs.

What I would hope for though is changing some minor traits in the shadow arts tree. Just take last refugee, shoot it, stab it, hang it, drive over it with a car, cut it into tiny pieces and burn it…. and then make a new minor trait which reduces the revealed time for one second.
Now either put that minor trait in 5 points in shadow arts, or switch it with meld with shadows. That way we can have fluid gameplay again which is stealth centered and at the same time get rid of last refugee.

Mackapacka.9462:

The dmg is low and stealth debuff need to get reverted to 3 sec again. The 4 sec debuff screws our rotation. Thief got no support thats good/better then other professions. And our dmg is now lower then most professions by a large margien, on top of that we are one of the harder pve professions to play and can easily get 1 shotted in some exp mode dungs. Why bring a theif instead of a warr?

Sadly if u wanna be able to play this game in non noob grps its time to reroll warr or mesm…..

or guardian

I also suggest you to pump your first traits into acrobat. It helps alot with kiting espeacily if you have vigor on heal and endurance return on dodge. The other traitlines have pretty bad first traits, which hardly favor low level thieves, except maybe shadowarts, yet it wont help you with kiting.
You still can go the blind autoattack way, but it is boring as hell and beeing mobile and dodging like mad is more fun.

rootnode.9546:

…
So, do you also mind the lowest health pool your ele shares with your thief? Even more if you take into account that an ele has even worse armor?
…

Since most Eles are D/D your assumption is wrong. The protection boon gives Eles more effective health as the med armor of a thief can provide.

Scootabuser.4915:

If you take any initative recovering traits you will see a MASSIVE drop in DPS, the power and the crit tree have so many 5% and 10% damage modifiers, you really can’t move any points around without losing dps.

You gain might stacks and survivability from healing and condition removeal though.
Its hardly the case that you can stick all the time on the boss and if you can, then Mesmers and Warriors will both be able to outdamage you by far anyway.

In a real PvE enviroment, a good thief can stick to an enemy longer as other classes due to the stealth mechanic and dodges, if they trait for it. With that their damage output should be higher as with classes who only range the enemy…. at least that is how it feels for me in fractals.

Enemies often dont let you stand the whole time behind them though, but if they do and you have some initiative recovery traits, then you can also toss in a heartseeker after your AA-Chain. Espeacily when your enemy is below 50% or 25% you will get a higher DPS output. Still even with Quick Recovery and Infiltration Signet you will eventually run dry on initiative.

You can try to postpone that effect with Smokescreen, dropping it when you are low on init and do a heartseeker through it. The duration of smokescreen is enough for you to do:
Smokescreen→HS→BS→AA-Chain→HS→HS→BS

Problem with HS though is that you are stuck for 3/4 sec in the animation, which can give a boss enough time to turn around and smack your face.

In case we dont have to dodge often and with that arent able to apply BS every 4 sec, then the whole point is moot anyway, but if we are able to do that then we probatly need to choose from different rotations, depending on our initiative.
CnD→BS→AA-Chain→AA-filler→CND→BS….
CnD→BS→AA-Chain→HS→CnD→BS…
Smokescreen→HS→BS→AA-Chain→HS→HS→BS…

Kyrion.2749:

Panacea.4927:

I think you just withnissed a ranger with his sword leaps and took him for a thief due to his med armor and not carrying a bow, since all rangers need to carry a bow, dont they?

Today I was on WvWvW, when a guy with two daggers jumped on someone that was some meters ahead of me.

After a blast of lightning, the poor fella got launched… Few seconds later earth exploded around him, and a ring of fire engulfed him. Some sparks later, the poor guy was dead.

The evil-doer fled, as my zerg was heading in its direction, and I stopped to rez the poor fella. As son as he gained conciousness, he screamed: “I HATE THOSE FKIN THIFFFFSSSS!!!!”

Now that I think of it, that explains why so many people think that thieves are so OP.

I once was in sPvP in battle of Khaylos (the one with the trebs, if I wrote the name wrong). I went to the middle and was about to attack a person there, then he suddenly got into downstate from a huge explosion…. our treb was hitting him.
Of course he said “OP thieves” to me, till I explained him that it was the treb killing him and not me.

Maybe we should rename the class just to Larcenist or something like that and let the players still complain about thieves, as they clearly just mean things which they cant handle or understand and not the class itself.

Knowledge of the thief provides you with enough “counterplay”. Stealth isnt a invul skill, nor does it suddenly teleport the thief away. They are still at the place where they stealthed and will either try to go for you or run away. With abit of knowledge about the movement speed of a class, you can easily hit the thief before he can backstab you. I play a thief myself and CnD on alot of stealthed thieves already.

The only real issue with thieves is and always was culling. Besides that you can try to avoid the CnD of the thief on you. Either blind them, get aegis, CC them or dodge. As thief I tend to kill thieves with S/D. I infiltration strike to them, immobilize them for 1 sec, CnD and daze them, do some autoattacks, scorpion wire them, CnD them again, daze them again and switch to D/D for some final burst.

Thieves itself arent overpowered, it are the players they fight against who are underpowered (and I dont mean the class here)

Kyrion.2749:

If thieves already have to justify their usefulness in a group, it only means that they are in a bad position to begin with.

Sure, you can be very imaginative with thieves and pull some rabbits from your hat… Voilá!!! a venom share!!!, Tah dah!!! a comboblast!! … But at the end, that’s everything they are… White, cute rabbits from a hat.

Now I want a bunny outfit for my thief :/

randomfightfan.4091:

Lightning: Use it in combo after smoke field to super speed your team as you run past stuff to get to the bosses. If that’s not good enough, whirl is cleansing bolts, projectile is cure conditions.

And again we fight Trash Wars 2, or rather Skip Wars in this case. The swiftness is pretty unimportant at bossfights and only helps you to a minor part, with kiting a boss.
Cleansing bolts and projectiles are again a “drop it and dont care” approach.

randomfightfan.4091:

Poison: Weakness doesn’t mean you stand and tank the hits, hell protection doesn’t mean that either. It just means that IF you do get hit, it won’t be so bad. Always useful.

Wrong, it means that you play a revolver on your head and hope that the bullet isnt in the chamber. Weakness is unreliable and unreliable things are not desired at bossfights.

randomfightfan.4091:

Smoke: Drop a smoke field near downed guy and spam blast, boss is now deagroed off you for long enough for you to res the guy in safety. If you use smoke screen, added protection from projectiles while doing same thing. Use hs through it to do dmg with the hs then do a back stab. Smoke field now adds dps.

We were talking about combo finishers and not smokescreen, so please dont mix up topics.
Smokefields offer only stealth if you do a leap or blast finisher through it. It can help to drop agro at a downed person, but why stealthing in the first place if the boss is melee? You will just get yourself revealed. It might help at projectiles though but the time to set it up doesnt justify the outcome again. You will be better of doing something else as thief like refugee, blinding powder, smoke screen as projectile block.
Smoke fields are another source to get into stealth for thieves but dont offer much utility in bossfights.

randomfightfan.4091:

Water: Healing, nuff said. Did you know using leap finisher here

Nice to see that you basicly ignore everything I wrote and claim me wrong. I already told you that water is one of the not sucky combo fields, but hey, you need to be right no matter what, dont you?

randomfightfan.4091:

With that said, we have 8 fields out of 9 that are amazing 5-6 that are good-great vs bosses. Thanks again for demonstrating that you truly knew nothing about the usefulness of fields and finishers. Hopefully now you know the rest of the story (sorry, inside joke)

And you have shown us that you have no clue about usefullness and just look blandly at some words and numbers and think it is great.
When combofinishers are so great, who does no one uses them active and just takes their passiv effect and is fine with it? Its simple, combo finishers do suck and only Trash Wars 2 players find them all good and usefull.

randomfightfan.4091:

Dark: don’t need to apply that blindness to bosses, you apply that blindness to the mobs on the way to bosses, you know, the kind you CAN’T SKIP like in cliffside, ac p1 burrows, ta spiders and wardens, etc.

So you play Trash Wars 2? Good to know. Trash is not dangerous and shouldnt wipe a team, except they are bad.

randomfightfan.4091:

Ethereal: What are you talking about? Use PROJECTILE FINISHER here for the CONFUSION STACKS. That or leap finisher for the chaos armor or the whirl finisher for the confusing bolts.

We were talking about the uselessness of combofields as utility. I dont call a field which you drop and be fine with it as utility, its more a “well just drop it and dont care” stuff. Basicly all combo fields do something tiny when you shoot through it but again, it is something tiny which you drop and do not care about in the end.
And chaos armor sucks as you dont want to get hit, except you play your Trash Wars 2 and whirl finishers shoot bolts out in random directions, so you maybe dont hit anything with it.

randomfightfan.4091:

Fire: Also has burning on projectile and whirl, fire aura (might when you get hit, dmg to boss, and pretty sure dmg mitigation). Don’t need to spam that cluster bomb if your team already has high stacks.

Like above at Ethereal, drop it and dont care as its a little gimmik you apply. Fire armor also doesnt mitigate damage
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Fire_Shield
So thanks for agreeing that you play Trash Wars 2 and get hit by trash to get might stacks.

randomfightfan.4091:

Ice: Only need the 1 for the armor for the team then go back to dpsing the boss. Also when the boss hits a guy with that armor, it gets chilled. You actually got that one right!

The forst armor doesnt last that long and cant be reliable applied. Applying it also drops your own dps, as you just stated and with that hinders your team. Furthermore you need a halfway coordinated team for it but again, if your team is halfway coordinated then they dont need frost armor as they will have other tools at their disposal which are easier accessable.

randomfightfan.4091:

Light: isn’t optimal but if you’re already using finishers in the vicinity, mine as well poor our some boons. Some classes deal more dps per boon on them.

At least you agree now that combofields and finishers are mainly stuff you dont care about and take its passiv effect while not really working for it. Drop the field and some random stuff will happen which isnt bad, but not really good either.

^ What Zepidel said.

Dark fields life drain only is usefull if you can use a projectile spamming ability like rapid shot, unload or sneak attack through it, which not all classes have.

Setting it up for others to regen enough life with that leech also requires more coordination as the outcome is worth it.

Dasorine.1964:

Panacea why do you think blind is useless vs boss? And weakness? because the person getting hit wont be glad of taking less damage right?

and saying those armours are useless because you don’t want to get hit… what about the person who is actually getting hit and is the one actually getting these buffs?

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Unshakable

Blindness works only in 10% of all cases and weakness:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Weakness

" 50% of Non Critical hits are glancing blows (50% damage)"

That means that only 50% of all this which are not critcal will do half the damage. So it is rather a coinflip if the boss does pretty low damage or just one shots you. Hence I call it russian roulette.

And about the armor.
The person who is actually getting hit will either die or need to pull back. Means they maybe applied a little burn on the boss while dying for it. Bad tradeoff if you ask me.
Only frost armor is halfway decent there as it lowers the incomming damage for 10%… I’m just not sure if it stacks with protection.

randomfightfan.4091:

I have no idea what this guy is saying, stopped trying to read after the 1st paragraph. What I did get (I think) is that he doesn’t believe combo finishers are good enough. If that’s the case I didn’t know that giving the entire team 25 stacks of might, while doing solid dps to the boss, all in melee range wasn’t strong. Same deal with insane heals through water field, mass invis through smoke, frost and chaos armours in respectively fields, etc. And that’s ONLY IN BLAST FINISHERS! Thieves have access to every finisher and all but whirl are spammable (and can you guess which finisher is the worst of them all?)

Please stop people, just don’t comment until you at least look up the effects of fields and finishers. It’s a huge part of this game.

Thank you for showing that you have not the slightest clue about Combofinishers. I already explained it to you once in another thread but here we go again!

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Combo

Dark field:
Blast finishers only apply blindness which is useless against bosses.

Ethereal:
Blast finishers only apply chaos armor which is useless against bosses as you dont want to get hit in the first place.

Fire:
Best field for blast finishers due to 3 stacks of might.

Ice:
Blast finishers give frost armor, which gives a 10% reduction of incomming damage. It is kinda nice but not worth to focus on it.

Light:
Retal, useless against bosses as you dont want to get hit in the first place.

Lighting:
Blast finishers give AoE swiftness… seriously swiftness at bossfights? Hardly usefull to focus on it again.

Poison:
Weakness on a blast, useless on bosses, except you want to play russian roulette.

Smoke:
Stealth, has its use to get past trash, usefullness dimishes at boss fights.

Water:
Healing at blast finishers and with that finally a usefull field again.

So congratulation out of 9 possible combofields, 2 dont suck kitten

Projectile and leap finisher often dont offer anything for your team either and are rather there for your team to apply passive some stuff. Again its not worth to focus on these tiny stuff you can apply with that.

tl;dr
Except 2 fields, blast in combofields suck and are mainly meant for your team to apply passive some stuff and dont care about its effect.
Maybe if you play Trash Wars 2 and enjoy the fight against trash mobs and go afk at the boss fight, you might find combofields and blinds and weakness usefull.

It was just an example for the buffs they can apply, but timewarp already gives quite a boost in damage. Mesmers even themself do tons of damage if they go zerker and put 3 phantasms out, they just need 25 sec to do so.

achensherd.2735:

Sometimes it seems like the ones that are the most critical/negative about a given profession are the practitioners of said profession. I haven’t been browsing the Thief forums for long, but Thieves having problems in PvE/dungeons, true or not, seems to be a common utterance around here, which is funny because Rangers, Engies, and Necros are constantly QQing about pretty much the same things, i.e. having people bail because there are too many of their profession, getting kicked from parties, etc. It kind of paints the picture that unless we’re playing Warriors, Guardians, or Mesmers, PvE/dungeons are pretty much not for us. And now I’m wondering if even those professions are complaining about similar things, i.e. “Aside from speed-running CoF, we have no purpose in life!” O_O

If you want to compare notes with Rangers on virtually the same subject:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Feeling-useless-as-a-Ranger/first

Welcome to the “no trinity” setup where you dont need healers/tanks/dps but only dps and some classes which buff you.
Guardians excell at buffing others and taking some heat from enemies while Warriors are good for damage and Mesmers excell at buffs and damage. (Rune of Lyssa+Timewarp+Boonshare = every boon+quickness on your whole group)

Consumables are more a crutch for missiong tools a character has… or doesnt has. The goal of Anet was probatly to promote more groupplay and more coopoerative play with the combofields, yet hardly anyone uses them as the gain of it just hardly isnt worth it.
Thieves have alot of combofinisher and access to all of them (hence I often see thieves as wrenches, tools to utilize other ones utility stronger), but the weakness of combofinisher defeats the purpose as thieves as enhancement for other ones utility skills.

Either buffing combofinishers to be VERY strong, or giving thieves more native combofields would help to give thieves better utility for their team.
Also stolen combofields are pretty random. Sometimes you get goo, sometimes the healing tree, sometimes only crap and with that it isnt reliable.

I already made a post about steal in the “Thief QQ thread”. The base idea was to give several possible steals of which you can slot 2-3 only. Like steal a heal skill, steal a CC, steal a dmg skill, …. with that you can use your steal more tactical and even use it for a little heal burst when you steal a waterfield. Further traits in trickery/acrobat/shadowarts/… could buff the duration and effect of certain steals and with that let the class feel more like a thief and not like a assassin with a serious case of cleptomania.

I wouldnt say it like that, as a thief relies alot on other classes to spam clusterbombs into certain combofields, yet other classes apply passiv random fields which overwrite the field you want to use actually.
The time it takes to stack up 25 might stacks combined with the init you use puts the usefullness in high doubts for me, except in very special situations.

PvE is just too kitten easy to bother with highly coordinated teams so passiv effects and utility are much more desireable as tools which require your whole team to work like a clockwork together…. its just too much of a hassle your team has to put up to use the clusterbomb spamming of a thief effective and the work is hardly worth the benefit.

You also mention blind over and over while blind is actually one of the weakest condition you can apply on a BOSS and trashmobs are not worth the sweat to bother with blinds to begin with. Even weakness is not that usefull against a boss as it is pretty much playing russian roulette with the boss as revolver.
I for one prefer aegis, which will always soak up the hit of a boss over blind and protection, which will always take 33% dmg of me (which equals about 1300 toughness iirc) over weakness which can reduce 50% damage, but only in 50% of all cases.

To sum it up:
Combos in combofields tend to be too weak and the conditions a thief applies are hardly worth it at bossfights.
Solution:
Buff combos in combofields so thieves can utilize it better and apply their utility with that and give thieves a few combofields which are combined with their class mechanic-steal.

Clusterbomb is only decent at most. The long travel time of the cluster combined with the slow shotspeed of the shortbow itself makes the weapon only decent at damage. You can try to offset that with hugging the enemy and shorten the distance your cluster has to travel, yet that puts you in additional danger espeacily when you will mainly use AoE skills agaisnt multiple targets. There are some exceptions of course but you will mainly try to stick on range to your enemy with a shortbow.

You could now add that the blast finisher is worth it, yet I have to disagree as you will not often have all your teammembers sticking together to you and with that your heal and buffs will be wasted. The blast finisher will also buff the area where it hits, means when all your teammembers range the target, then you will buff no one.
There is still the possibility to buff your allies and dont hit your target at all, yet you will lose alot of damage you could do due to the initiative system which lets me put doubts how effective that will be.

Yet in the best case scenario where your whole team sticks together and you can spam clusterbombs at your feet to apply group buffs and do AoE dmg, clusterbomb is very good… but how often do you have such a situation to begin with?

Also when its about damage, Warriors and Mesmers are theoretically both ahead of thieves.

It still isnt a leap, its just a dodge.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Leap

Evades are no leaps though

Not to mention that heartseeker doenst let you evade and is affected by cripple which you automatically get for carrying the orb. Only thing which lets you leap and evade is Deathblossom but that thing has no travel distance at all.

I think you just withnissed a ranger with his sword leaps and took him for a thief due to his med armor and not carrying a bow, since all rangers need to carry a bow, dont they?

Pistolwhip doesn’t give you perma stun. The stun duration of it is 1 second while the hit+windup time is much longer. Basicly when you start to hit your enemey the stun is already gone.
Furthermore you lose dps if you go with a sword/x build as D/D will offer a higher DPS (Pistolwhip does less damage as autoattacking with your sword). Other classes also don’t need to use their only ressource for either CC or Damage as the cooldownsystem allows them to toss in CCs when their damage combos are on cooldown.
Thieves have 3 hard CCs, which is daze from tactical strike, which won’t help you when you want to stop a mob from running, headshot which is a really short daze and doesn’t do damage and the stun from pistolwhip which has also a very short duration and cuts into your damage (as I said above, Pistolwhip does less as autoattacking with your sword). The spammable immobilize also can only be used a few times till you are out of innitiative and provides only a 1 second immo which isnt very long and cuts ALOT into your damage.
Other classes have more usefull hard CCs which are not as much spammable but for that have a longer duration and dont cut that much into the damage of them.

So the question still stands, why picking a thief when you want utility which other classes can offer much better without cutting into their damage?
Why picking a thief when you want damage when other classes can apply more damage?

There is a reason you see so many ppl prefering Guards and Warriors in group PvE and its not because they are kitten from thieves in WvW. (well maybe for some of them it is the case)

randomfightfan.4091:

You obv didn’t see the stunlock/perma cripple on grawl and as I said in the video description, that is just a taste of what thieves are capable of doing. The water super swim isn’t a big deal but it still helps and thief can do it significantly easier than any other class… Every bit helps. Also, in kitty fractal, no reflects work against old tom, only blocks… like smoke screen (granted summon shield and sanctuary both work if placed right). Lastly, this video wasn’t to say thief>guard, not at all. This was just to say thief is good in fractals (they are in the top 3 with guard and mes).

The cripple helps, but its not something other classes cant do either. Everyone has their bunch of CCs and with that it is not something a thief can alone bring to the table. In the end it would be better to have more dedicated CCers there and some who burst them down instead of letting CCs overlay on each other.
The water one was pretty useless as you just can swim as a group and you are fine.
Smokescreen is usefull against Tom and one of the only things which work on his poison bullets, but it only blocks one side and yet again a guardian could have done it better and more reliable, so again not a reason to take a thief with you.

I wouldnt put thieves under the top 3 classes for group PvE. Thieves can do something, that is true but that tiny something gets outclassed by other classes. So the question still stands: Why taking a thief with you if another class would help your team more?

Its funny that in the whole video the guardians shine much more with their wall of reflection, stability and sanctuary as you as thief. The only noteable things here was melting the ice wall with stealth and disableing the trap with the 3 switches, yet these 2 things are not really a real burden anyway.

The fractal at which thieves shine the most is ironically the one where blinds dont work. Stealth at the dredge fractal is pretty helpful for using the gears, bombing the door/melting the door.

Good thieves still can hold their own, but why taking a class which doesnt offer much for the group, which other classes can offer too while they also have some other things to offer which thieves dont have?

Withdraw works pretty well for a dodge build, espeacily if you combine it with Vigor on Heal and Runes of the Adventurer, but you will lose orb or rune dps then.
This combination allows pretty much 9 dodges in a row and with 20 points in Acrobats you can even take might on dodge and maintain 12-14 Stacks of might on your own, with 30 points in shadow arts for Might on Stealth.
Furthermore you dont need to “waste” utility slots for a few more dodges and can slot caltrops for more damage (your might stacks will boost your condition damage) and also smokescreen to leap through it and block projectiles.

If you desire runes or orbs in your armor, just slot Sigil of Agility as it fills 100% of your endurance every 30 sec instead of 50% endurance every 15 sec of the rune.

You can trait pretty much everything you want for a dodge heavy build, but 20 points in acrobat with Vigor on Heal and Withdraw and Might on Dodge is important. You can even put 25 points in Acrobat and take the 10% additional damage when your endurance isnt full, in case you go direct damage.
Despite the lack of boons which a thief can apply alone the 20% boon duration from Acrobat can come in handy too. Your might stacks on dodge and stealth will last 2 sec longer and in case you take a shortbow, the might stacks from blast finisher in a firefield (and all in all every boon applied from combos) will last longer too.
Due to that much points in acrobat you get also 200 vitality which allows you to wear more zerker gear while still having abit higher health.

I would prefer a utility “Cheap Shot” which is basicly a kick in the groin, knocking down and stunning your opponent, would fit the thief archtype much more. :P

Thieves dont really have access to the best combo fields as most of then are random steals. The goo you can steal is pretty decent at a stationary target and aswell when your team shoots through and the water field is very decent too, but besides that the blind fields are very lackluster when it is against bossfights and the poison field just applies tons of poisons against bosses which dont heal themself anyway. Thieves only get points for weakness with their poison field if they have 15 points in DA.

Even the point about access to every combo finisher is a moot point.
Leaps will mainly offer you fire armor, chaos armor and frost armor. All these armors only have an effect if you get hit which you want to avoid as thief. The only use there is frost armor as the damage reduction will be 10% if you have it on you.
Whirls will shoot random bolts and are more suited against group fights and even there the amount of bolts and the effect of them is not that overhelming
The blast finisher is really the only thing thieves can excel at, but since most bossfights tend to be a ranged battle with your group beeing spread out, you cant really utilize blast finisher proper. Either you need to place the combo field far away from your enemy and with that waste initative and with that damage with spamming clusterbombs at your feets, or you only buff maybe 1-2 targets. Other classes have it easier with just pressing a button and giving out buffs without a big sacrifice of damage and time to invest to apply those buffs. Yet it is still one of the best things a thief has to offer and when you buy healing seeds, you have at least a waterfield on demand. (Now I see alot of thieves google for healing seed and doing the event, stacking up 250 of them for dungeons :P)

The part about good AoE damage should be put into brackets aswell. To apply a really good amount of AoE dmg, you need to drop clusterbombs very close to you as the travel time of them is too high to use them effectively at high ranges.

The whole design of thieves to work with conditions rather with buffs is a pretty bad design for PvE bosses.
Blind is the condition counterpart of Aegis and blinds are only 10% effective on boss mobs.
Weakness is the condition counterpart of Protection and besides that it only debuffs the damage of 25% while protection removes 33% damage, it also lasts only 50% of its duration on a boss.

The only really usefull thing at thieves is caltrops, if you ask me. Bosses are still fully effected by cripple and when a guardian immobilizes them while you drop caltrops, you dont only get some nice bleed stacks on them, you also get a pretty high cripple duration which helps your team to kite the boss.
Smokescreen is nice too if you have alot of ranged persons shooting through it while it protects them.
And of course shadow refugee for stealth revives or some stealth jobs like door bombing at the dredge fractal.

To sum it up, thieves need to work much harder to be at least as valuable as other classes in PvE. A rework of combo’s and more access for thieves to combofields could help there alot. Since steal is pretty lackluster aswell, it could be used as tool for thieves to steal and apply more combo fields and utilize their effect.

DanH.5879:

Runcore.5107:

Bad idea. No need to say more.

A levelcap increase would upset me as it means we get new gear and will get powercreep with vertically progression which gets added more and more.

New gear also means that old content becomes obsolete and that everyone will only do the new stuff to get the new gear. Old content will also become too easy.

For gear I would prefer if they go away from straight numeric increase and add more different things your gear is capable to. Why not armor which has only 2 stats but for that a 5% dmg decrease on you if you get stunned and add more stuns in the new zones? It would also open up the possibilty for players to remove stun breakers from their utility bar if they dont mind to sacrifice stats for it.
Or just a simple range increase for your weapons in your armor for which you again sacrifice some stats.

It is possible and I pulled that off aswell, but your damage will be kinda low still.

Just as base Idea:
Try to get rampager gear and stack your critchance up with it. You can also toss in some charrion pieces if you want abit more HP.

Due to the high crit chance you can utilize a sigil of air of fire pretty good, which will boost your damage with every sneak attack. Since you fire 5 bullets with every sneak attack, you have 5 times the chance that one crits and everyone of them has a chance to trigger your sigil of fire/air when it is off cooldown. The Cooldown of the sigil is about 5 seconds, revealed time is 3 seconds and you stay abit longer in stealth to regen HP and wait for the sigil cooldown to reset.

You should put 30 points into Shadow Arts for that and maybe some points in Acrobatics aswell to get some vitality and be able to dodge more.
The remaining points should be distributed according to the traits you choose.

Maugetarr.6823:

Softspoken.2410:

oZii.2864:

Vigor on heal- I think is good if you don’t have 15 points in acro but why not just take the extra 5 points to get feline grace?

You could take both, really. If you pair it with withdraw, which is itself a dodge, the chain dodging is exceptional, and you have nearly 2/3rds uptime on vigor from your heal alone.

Exactly what I’ve been doing lately. Makes thief pretty survivable in dungeon runs.

Now add also rune of the adventurer (if you dont mind to lose some dmg) and you get 2 more dodges from withdraw (if you put 15 points in acro) together with vigor which are again alot of dodges.

Same issue here, no idea if it is maybe related to the bodytype though as I have choosen the same one.

I suggest to remove Columba as he is totally useless and with that he isnt needed and can freely be removed!

Because some suddenly up popping smoke screens and black powders are totally not obvious…

Walabone.6713:

…It doesn’t even make sense if you think about it… how can you stealth when you’re two feet away from me? That’s not stealth, that’s a cloak of invisibility. If the core concepts of a thief and stealth are actually examined logically, the current implementation of these mechanics are not legitimate. I.e. It’s a thief, not an assassin; stealth is not invisibility. Look at how thieves are played in PvE vs how thieves are played in PvP/WvW. Given there are some inherent differences between the two game modes, you can see a vastly different style of play. I’d argue the PvE thief is more representative of how the class was intended to be played, while the PvP/WvW thief is some kittenization of that.

Because thieves utilize magic in order to stealth themself. The magic they use is the same which mesmer use, which is called denial http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Bloodstone
That enables the thief to stealth/go invisible and shadowstep. At least as far as I know.

Furthermore the gameplay in PvE and PvP doesnt differ that much. With a stealthbuild you also try to go into stealth as often as possible to maximize your damage. Thieves only real damage comes from stealth and without it they mainly can only do autoattacks.
Only problem is now the game which resets the mobs and bosses pretty fast when you stealth which can make it pretty annoying as thief to fight something.

frans.8092:

Panacea.4927:

The reputation of flanking strike is justified as it do miss very often. Flanking strike consists out of 2 attacks.

I can read my combat log just fine. Flanking Stab rarely missed (that’s the second one), actually neither did Flanking Strike (that’s the first of the combo).
This was in PvE, I doubt Wvw is any harder.

Yes because players in WvW will stand still and do nothing the whole time. As soon as your target moves, the second hit will very likely miss.

The reputation of flanking strike is justified as it do miss very often. Flanking strike consists out of 2 attacks.
A tiny stab with the dagger which removes one boon and after that a clumsy whirl which gets followed by the stronger hit with the sword. The second his is the one which tends to miss very often while the first hit doesnt.

The regen stacks, but the trait itself has an internal cooldown I think. The cooldown is even longer as the regeneration itself, at least I noticed that my stealth didnt always reapplied the regeneration when I went into stealth.
Maybe it would be worth a try to get the stealth reg, let someone strip that reg and see if a new stealth applies it, to see if it really has an internal cooldown.

If you limite the access on the amount of stealth, you also need to buff certain stealth related things.
For instance backstabs need to do much more dmg to not kitten up the constant dps of thieves, but at the same time it will promote burst builds too much.
Or you buff the autoattack which again will turn the thief into an autoattack class.
Or you buff other skills like heartseeker which again will promote spamming just that one skill.

Stealth itself and the revealed debuff is nothing else but a hidden cooldown system which is tacked onto the init system of the thief. Hence stealth related attacks are often stronger as the skills which only need initiative.
Thieves just lack alot of usefull skills on nearly all of their weapons and only stealth and the related attack from stealth is pretty viable. (if we dont consider the Unicorn-build)
Thieves also lack protection/aegis/regeneration/condition removals/invulnerability which stealth tries to offset and only succedes with the shadowarts tree.

If you want to take such a big step to double the duration on stealth and the revealed buff, you would need to revamp the whole class from scratch as stealth is just too much tied into the whole class to be viable in PvE and PvP.

A bad idea as it would turn the thief into using nearly only autoattacks and would gimp their DPS which would make them even less desired in PvE.

P/D right now requires you to hit the enemy with CnD to apply any damage at all, with your suggested change they will only autoattack.

S/D equals P/D in its playstyle, but instead of ranged condition, it tries to control an enemy on melee range, it would turn into autoattackign only aswell.

D/D – direct dmg would be pretty gimped if you dont go with a burst build. With a more survival build you would try to stealth often and apply backstabs often, with your suggested change you couldnt do that and thieves would turn into autoattack thieves.

Shortbow would profit from that change alot and I predict that this change would result in thieves mainly using shortbows or going with the insta-gib burst build.

D/P would spare some init for stealthing but it would turn that weaponset into autoattack spamming aswell as you cant apply constant dmg with backstabs anymore.

P/P would gain stealth but hardly profit from it. Unload is direct damage while the sneak attack from P/x is condition damage. It might end up with an interesting gameplay for that weaponset but its hard to say if it would be worth it.

Yes, Warrior does sooo less DPS…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKy67S6uvNU

Ralathar.7236:

Panacea.4927:

The combo of that one trick consists out of basilisk venom which triggers when you get hit by steal+mug, then a cloak and dagger which got molded into the steal and covers its wind up time for the most part, reducing it to… lets say 0.1-0.25 sec and after that the backstab which has again a windup time of 0.25 seconds.
That leaves you at about 0.35-0.5 seconds to react while the normal human reactiontime is around 0.25 seconds.

snip

To sum it up:
Get a stupid stunbreaker and/or use one of your invul abilities. A GC thief only has one chance and one trick to instagib you and if he has used that he is killed easily.

Horrible omission on your part. You are not accounting for network latency and you only have a “safe” window of 0.1 – 0.25 seconds by your own account. Thus to even stand a chance in a lag free environment I would have to have twitch reflexes. Even then I’ve only earned myself a fight, I could still easily lose.

Needing to have twitch reflexes on such a small window that can be eliminated by latency AND still having a large chance to lose even if everything goes your way initially only shows how bad the design is.

Of course, I forgot that the thief gets a perfect clean connection to the server without any lag since he has choosen to play a thief and I also forgot that most ppl who whine about thieves have a reaction time of 1 second which is severely above the average of a normal human beeing and I also forgot that you want to watch TV while you pvp, so you dont watch your screen and see that your char is suddenly stone/stops moving and dont hear the obvious sound of a dagger hitting you.

Glass Cannon one-trick-pony backstab thieves like in the video provided by jan are beaten pretty easily with just one simple press on your keyboard…. your stunbreaker when he hits you.
The combo of that one trick consists out of basilisk venom which triggers when you get hit by steal+mug, then a cloak and dagger which got molded into the steal and covers its wind up time for the most part, reducing it to… lets say 0.1-0.25 sec and after that the backstab which has again a windup time of 0.25 seconds.
That leaves you at about 0.35-0.5 seconds to react while the normal human reactiontime is around 0.25 seconds.
So you just have to press your stunbreak/invul skill and you just have won the fight as the one-trick-pony thief cant do anything else but this one trick and dies fast. Now you just HAVE to put pressure up that thief and not run away like most do (OMG I get attacked from someone with high dmg who has a armor of wet paper and dies when I look evil at it, lets run away so my chaser can kill me more easily!!!)

Put now a slow on the thief so heartseeker will just be a puny little joke jump and try to stay on range. It should take long till the thief lost most of its health and with about 50% left they will tend to pop hide in shadows. Try to stay defensive and dodge back or do something to prevent a possible backstab (blindfield for instance works too there, or just try to run and stay mobile).
Now after 3 seconds the thief will be visible again, either he will bailed out, is bailing out or tries to attack you still. After he used his hide in shadows he has blown his last defense and you can unload heavy conditions into him as hide in shadows is the only cleanse they have. Now you can keep fighting on range, keep him in a control ability and try to keep conditions on him. Maybe he will run or use shadow refuge but due to the lack of condition cleanse they will just die.

To sum it up:
Get a stupid stunbreaker and/or use one of your invul abilities. A GC thief only has one chance and one trick to instagib you and if he has used that he is killed easily.

A thief lacks alot of supportive tools which pidgeon holes them into dmg builds.
Other classes often get supportive effects tacked onto their normal skills or tank skills and with that put lots of combo fields or blinds or weakness and so on on the enemy.
When a thief tries to go more though, then he will survive more but dont offer any more support but just less damage, except you use all your initiative for blackpowder, but then you dont do much damage anymore anyway.

What I would like to see is a bigger steal revamp to give it a stronger tactical value.
I posted an idea on how to change steal once on the forum:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/The-thief-and-its-gameplay-Your-feedback/page/6#post852944

It would give thieves better tools to support a team and even make steal more attractive for ranged thieves.
You can even put several traits which make certain steals stronger in the traits, like a stronger heal-steal in the shadowarts tree, a better CC-steal in deadly arts, a better dmg-steal in critical strikes and so on. With that you can even remove some stupid traits which nobody uses anyway and offer an alternative to play a thief more as thief and not as a wannabe assassin who sometimes steals green goo from mobs.

For more evasion, if you dont mind to drop some condition duration, you can also slot Vigerous Recovery and use Runes of the Adventurer in your armor. That combination gives you 50% endurance and vigor when you use a heal, if you now combine it with withdraw, you get all that on top of healing, removing an immobilize and dodging and you will be able to pretty much dodge 8 times in a row. That way you can dodge much more often, espeacily dodging after you used CnD on an enemy so you avoid stray hits.

If you love diversity you can even try out a hybrid build with D/D and P/D as against some enemies your P/D sneak attack wont work and in PvE bleeds are capped at 25 stacks aswell.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQRAqY4YlYmiOndy9E9JFx+hdy9woOtp+C6Uw14D;ToAKtMaJ0yqlTLpWLCGBspYSB
You would just need to get crit jewelry/daggers and condition armor/pistol/dagger to get halfway decent stats in crit and condition. But you wont shine with conditions and your crit damage could be much better aswell, for that you can adapt to situations better.

Another possible way to spec for not so big fights could be one revolving around shortbow.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAV4alYmiO3dy9E95Ex2jeqTe6pgsjtTBX1KA;TYAA2CnsoYYxugJFA

It gives you sustained DPS from clusterbombing and your autoattack and as soon as your target drops below 50% health, you get quickness and fury. You have alot of stunbreakes with withdraw and shadowstep and even heal for every initiative used.
The weaponset D/P provides you with stealth with blackpowder+heartseeker and headshot if you need to interrupt things like stomps.
Shortbow also allows you to dodge away alot with disable shot, which even cripples your enemy and clusterbomb even has a nice synergy with your teams combo fields.
That and your 21k health (try to get high health) would even help you alot to soak up some hits.

I didnt changed anything at the link, I just changed the last line he wrote in his post.

But Sarrow gave a good example on uselessness in a trait tree with the shortbow trait example. There are also other ones like “Exposed Weakness” in the Deadly Arts tree. Deadly arts focus alot on poison dmg, yet Poisons/Conditions dont benefit at all from this trait. The condition duration helps other builds who take Deadly Arts for its power and direct dmg not much either.
Also the pistol traits which are in Trickery (Condition dmg based) and at the same time 2 traits which are in Critical strikes (Direct dmg based) dont fit together with the weaponset pistol.
The weaponset pistol all in all is pretty strange anyway as the auto attack of it is condition based, so is the sneak attack while double pistol unload is direct dmg based.
The same problem is in the D/D setup which has a strong condition attack but otherwise only direct damage abilities. For me it feels as if Anet tried to make thieves into half condition/half direct damage chars to add more diversity at their ability rotation, but failed in the end at it. You see that even at the shortbow, while the autoattack is direct damage based, clusterbomb is both and the poison field is also rather condition damage and duration based and shines with the deadly arts tree, which is again somekind of condition/direct dmg hybrid.