Guild Wars 2

Nike mentioned that the thief’s blind and stealth role can now be accomplished by other professions and the dps increase in the other professions no longer provides the thief a secure spot in the dungeon meta.

How do you guys feel about this comment?

I believe the damage comment is true. Thief did lose a few damage modifiers in the both the Deadly Arts and Critical Strikes trait lines in the June 23rd patch while other professions seemed to benefit a lot more out of that patch. With the elite specializations, daredevil does seem to give a small boost in dps but other professions seem to benefit a lot more out of their elite specializations.

Now, the thief’s dps isn’t what upsets me. I don’t mind if all professions had similar, or competitive, dps. What bothers me is that other professions got a lot more out of their elite specializations not including damage.

For example:

• Guardians get a drastic change to their profession mechanic (virtues) and access to very unique traps that grant boon support, cc, and utility.

• Mesmer YOU RIP THROUGH THE TIME SPACE CONTINUUM. Mesmer gains a new profession mechanic (Continuum Split) as well as fundamental changes to the original profession mechanic (shatters). Along with TIME WELLS with unique cc, support and utility mechanics. Also, gets Alacrity which is unique to only chronomancers. (It must be obvious now that I’g going to be maining my mesmer now and tossing aside my thief) .

• Necromancer ANOTHER drastic change to the profession mechanic (shroud). All shroud skills are completely replaced. Access to unique shouts with boons, boon control, condi control, tooonnns of chill, and minion summoning.

So what does thief get?

• NO CHANGES TO PROFESSION MECHANIC (Steal). Nothing changes for Steal except for minor GM trait (gain endurance). Instead, we get a change to our dodge mechanic. Why? We get access to physical skills which I really don’t like except for maybe the heal. Distracting Daggers allows you to interrupt stuff up to 3 times. This can already be easily accomplished by Pistol #4. So why do we have this? It’s also getting harder to interrupt enemies now with uninterruptable enemies and break bar. Fist Furry is a bizarre way of dealing damage. Weapon skills deal more damage. Impairing Daggers might be okay for a poison build but great for pve.

I can’t speak for the new weapons for each profession but staff is not that useful. Sure, staff can do a lot of damage, but it’s very hard to pull off. Staff doesn’t provide anything unique to the thief. Staff #2 applies weakness but so does every skill you apply poison with minor trait in Deadly Arts or sword auto and you aren’t forced to change your positioning like Staff #2. Staff #3 is similar to the heal Withdraw except its an attack. Staff #4 is a blinding attack but Pistol #5 works way better. Staff #5 is the only thing thats somewhat unique. An AOE leap instead of Dagger #2 single target leap.

Simply put, unless there are major changes to daredevil, I’ll be abandoning my thief after years of main-ing it.

Staff still seems very underwhelming. I still don’t see how it brings anything new to the table and doesn’t seem very practical.

I think the auto-attack damage is okay-ish and has vuln so it might be good for dungeons runs. But I prefer Sword for cripple, weakness, and more raw damage. Muli-hits may trigger signet of malice more often but not more than #3 on S/p.

Staff #2 Seems kinda weird. Damage isn’t impressive and the weakness is way too short. Would prefer a non-movement or controllable whirl like guardian. Sword auto does a better job.

Staff #3 Seems useful but very situational. May not even get much use if I use the Dash dodge since I’m already using the Daredevil tree.

Staff #4 I guess if you want to negate only up to 3 attacks from 3 different enemies that must be positioned in front of you. Pistol #5 does a much better job and is a dark field. I like the new animation; gives a nice visual cue. Would also like a better sound cue.

Staff #5 I think this skill is okay. It would be better if the cast time was a bit shorter and had more range if you won’t increase the damage anymore. It’s more like a hop than a leap. Sword #2 offers a faster shadowstep and immobilize.

S/P offers a more survivability and sustainable damage than staff.

• blind field
• interupt on command
• evades
• instantshadowstep
• cripple/weakness on auto
• AOE dmg

while staff only offers

• a momentary blind
• slow and short hop
• vuln on auto
• less aoe dmg

Overall, staff does what s/p already does but not as well.

Physical Skills

Channeled Vigor – Healing values seem okay. Not a big fan of channeling though. Mechanic seems a bit weird though. Heal more when you have endurance or heal less but gain endurance.

Bandit’s Defense – Yay a non-underwater block. May not have much use in pve since bosses usually can’t get cced and you’ll be better off attacking trash mobs than passively trying to knock them time. The 1s window must be accompanied by really good timing. Might be very hard to pull off in pvp.

Distracting Daggers – a mantra form of #4 pistol? While the increased cooldown is a nice effect. I don’t know how useful it will be in pve. As bosses and champs don’t get interrupted often and seem harder to interrupt in HoT and trash mobs just die fast already. May be pretty useful in pvp but these daggers must be used sparingly and with precise timing.

Fist Flurry – dmg from the skill and palm strike just don’t seem impressive.

Impairing Daggers – A slow :o I like this. I wish it had more uses or a shorter cooldown but I like it.

Impact Strike(elite chain) – Might not be that useful in pve. Like I said about champs, bosses and trash mobs. Finishing Blow seems kinda useful but not necessary. We can already stealth or shadowstep stomp. Might want to get an elite skill to get them down instead of using it to finish downed people off.

Overall, I don’t see physical skills being better than the current utilities like shadow’s refuge, shadowstep, smokescreen, or even the signets. I find the old utilities far more useful.

Daredevil

Enforcer Training – Okay but not necessary.

Brawler’s Tenacity – I am not big fan of physical skills at the moment so meh.

Evasive Empowerment – I don’t want to be dodging just to be able to use this trait and it’s duration is only good for 1 or 2 quick hits. Maybe a dodge > #4 staff combo?

Weakening Strikes – not good vs champs or bosses. Might be good in pvp.

Driven Fortitude – I won’t be dodging all the time and is pretty insignificant. Only heals like 4% of your hp with no added vitality.

Escapist’s Absolution – I like this. Even though its only on a successful dodge, I’ll take any condition removal.

Impacting Disruption – Dmg from pulmonary impact is okayish, but must have really good timing for those interrupts. Idk how you’ll pull them off.

Staff Master – I’m not really digging staff at all at the moment and 2 endurance per initiative is so insignificant. I wished the endurance not full conditions were the other way around. Having benefits from having full endurance teaches people to save their dodges and makes people watch out for any tells for when to dodge and is a lot easier to maintain.

Endurance Thief – Seems okay. Stealing is suppose to be the “identity” of the thief even though some people rarely use it in pve. Why not make it more useful.

Dodges – I like the overall fluid improvement of the dodges. I like the Dash dodge keep it how it is. Aoe on the Bound dodge is way too small. Requires some really good position and might distract you from its original purpose, dodging incoming damage. Impaling Lotus if you want to run away a lot or annoy your enemy? Condition dmg isnt impressive at all.

As a thief main, I find this HoT elite specialization very underwhelming. I don’t like how daredevil is themed with dodging and almost entirely on dodging. Don’t put all of your eggs in one basket. As it is a good method of survival, it is not always necessary and not beneficial most of the time. As one of the devs already said, they made sure zerk meta dies because dodging won’t save you now.

I was hoping for something more new(to gw2) or creative than a modified old acrobatics style trait line. Maybe make a traitline based on luck. Put some fixed probabilities on things and gamble your way to victory. A thief always takes risks. Maybe bring back Flashing Blades (You have 75% chance to block while attacking) from GW1. Or bring in something similar to Deep Wound in GW1. Dodging is much more harder than just blocking or invulnerability. Since thief has the lowest hp pool, why not give them one or two more of these for pve use especially in HoT? Stealthing doesn’t stop damage in a combat dungeon setting either. I hope all goes well and that my feedback is appreciated. Still excited for HoT release.

I feel the same way with the OP. Dodges do feel clunky and what is the purpose of the staff? The other weapons have a very clear purpose.

Dagger – single target dmg, burst
Dagger(off) – stealth/cripple
Sword – aoe dmg/shadowstep
Pistol – condition/immobilize
Pistol(off) – daze/blinds
Shortbow – ranged aoe dmg/shadowstep
Staff – ???

What does staff have to offer that we dont already have?
“The daredevil is an up-close fighter that can engage multiple enemies at a time with sustained area-of-effect damage while retaining high lethality toward single enemies.”
But we already have the sword. I feel like sword/pistol is much more survivable and does way more dmg than staff.

The dmg from staff is pretty lackluster The stealth attack seems pretty neat but staff doesnt provide any stealth, forcing you to trait for stealth on steal or replacing your utility skills.

The Belinda tribute gs skin made me wish I could use a gs. It looks great on my thief

Mayama.1854:

Which type of engineer and in which scenario.

As always make on yourself and learn how the class works is the best answer.

Sorry, I did enter a mini tournament with my guild and the 1 class that beat me was a turret Engineer I believe.

In a 1v1 situation in pvp, engineer seems to be a difficult opponent to face for me. Does anyone have any tips against engineers?

For fractal runs, for like lvl 40+, a thief can bring a decent amount of weakness on mobs with the aoe shortbow and the trait in the deadly arts line to largely mitigate the damage, but on champions/bosses the duration is cut in half. And blinds are 10% effective and the condition is remove even if it lands.

It is possible that they intended to bring the condition effects as a supporty type build as they buffed the venom share build. I just wished it wasn’t so bad.

So I like to run a lot of dungeons and I also main a thief. I am not trying to say thieves have no place in dungeons, but to say that there are a lot of reasons to choose other professions over them. I know that thieves could potential have the highest dps with an elementalist conjured weapon, but they don’t have much to contribute to the team outside of stealth and blinds.

And no, I am not really interested in a venom share because I don’t believe it’s ideal for speed clearing. And I am also not interested in boon stealing as most enemies do not have boons to begin with.

Several reasons to take ranger over thief is for Spotter and Frost spirit traited with vigorous spirits. An elementalist has might and fury stacking along with the conjured weapons. Mesmers have a lot of utility with stuff like time warp, reflects, and aoe condition removal. Engineers can help maintain 25 stacks of vulnerability. Warriors have banners, empowered allies, shouts and guardians have reflects, condition removal, aegis and etc…

Do thieves need more tools to provide group dps? What do you guys think?

I am quite curious on how Zealots would work with a leeching venoms thief

Any thoughts?

That’s a really nice video you got there. Just out of curiosity, how do you prioritize your targets?

I really like these points you’ve mentioned. Healing signet is getting nerfed though according to their last livestream and they maaaaay consider toning down the warrior’s dmg, but they will not make any changes to that any time soon. :/

But really dude, I spent 1 hour watching the stream just to hear them say they nerfed choking gas. They obviously haven’t spent enough time on balancing the thief. It seems like they only nerfed choking gas just because it was like the engineer’s poison field.

Clumsy.6257:

Sword 2 should never be used in combat, its a waste of initiative. Those traits should absolutely never be used in PvE. But since you mentioned them, I’m guessing you use them so you’ve also thrown efficiency out the window so why would you care about buffs/nerfs. (edit:) Just to clarify, I said pve thieves not all thieves.

Sword 2 became bad after it no longer broke stun and the increased cast time on IR, but it wasn’t a waste of initiative, there’s nothing wrong with a good engage and disengage and you can save your dodges for later. Wth are you using your initiative on anyways? It barely cost anything and you are definitely not spamming it… And you did skip this in your list. :P

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/updates/Game-Update-Notes-June-25th-2013/first#post2339673

But you are correct. PvE thieves have not recieved a lot of major nerfs in about the past year, except for the initiative spammers in the Dec 10th patch, but before January 2013… :/

To be honest, I just want to see the dual swords on my thief. If this came out, I would expect to see more offensive skills (as you are holding 2 frikkin swords) and in return, you would be giving up some utility such as blind and daze from pistol and stealth and cripples from dagger.

What about traps? I dont think traps are great at all except possibly pvp. (talking about thief traps :P)

Well one thing is for sure. Thief builds will have to change. Since we rely so much on crit damage. Maybe we don’t have to be so deep rooted in crit strikes, but we will probably be affected the most. :P

So it is the general consensus that s/d performs poorly in pve compared to other weaponsets except in very situational conditions. :/

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Traiting SA is about staying power vs super dodging from Acrobat. When we dodge, we don’t do damage. Someone will argue that actively dodging is an active play style even being active is about actively participating in combat like dealing damage or party buffs.

Sure enough that Acro provides a lot of reason to dodge and every evasion from Withdraw will heal you more, but every time you do this, you’re dropping lower and lower in the loot table.

I really like your contribution to this thread. You have brought an interesting concept of dps. We all know a dead thief brings 0 dps, but you also state that dodging can also reduce your dps since time is spent dodging rather than damaging.

But wouldn’t you say that every second you stay in stealth, you are also not doing damage (well direct dmg) and essentially reducing your dps? Now, I’m not saying that SA is bad, I just feel like SA would be good if you trait all 30 points into it or 10. Now if you invest in the 300 toughness and healing power and the passive healing in stealth, which is not bad, but you are also sacrificing a lot of dmg for that extra survivability.

The reason I take acrobatics 15 is for the extra dodge is that the best damage mitigation is the avoidance of taking dmg and I can also keep the 25 in DA. Of course, you can’t dodge everything, but I really feel like the extra dodge helps a lot. For withdraw, I usually don’t take it because i either take hide in shadows or prayer to dwayna for the burst heal to counter the burst damage which happens a lot with zerker gear. With that being said, I don’t pick up vigor on heal. Too much dodging, like you said, can lower your damage output.

But I do agree with you. More than 15 points in acro is just bad. Especially with the skills they moved around like hard to catch and assassin’s reward. :/ I’m not a big initiative spammer so thats why i was okay with giving up trickery.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

And you’re right about the cast time on FS and IR, it’s clunky and unreliable. This is due to the after cast and precast delays. There is an after cast delay after the AA chain, then if you try to FS or IR after that, you’ll be standing there doing nothing for 3/4s, due to precast delay, on top of the casting time while getting bashed in the face. Anet really need to fix this.

Yea, it seems like the only reason they chose to nerf IR was to affect s/d in pvp.

JonPeters.5630:

Infiltrator’s Return
The thing I have heard the second most discussion regarding. This is a big change to this skill, but we beleive it is a necessary one. In many cases this is not going to matter. There are only 2 situations where this is a truly impactful change.
1) It stops you from using this skill while stunned, which puts more burden on Sword/Dagger thieves saving their stun breakers. This is the kind of gameplay we want to encourage because it puts more risk in using a rewarding skill like Infiltrator’s Strike.
2) Mostly in PvP, this skill can no longer be used by S/D thieves to teleport stomp someone. This is actually the more impactful moment as it occurs more often, but I think it puts the burden on these players to run a second weapon set that can help them in these situations (OH pistol for instance.)

Why they decided to carry this nerf into PvE to one of the weakest weapon sets (s/d) in PvE is beyond me.

Actually, I’ve been seeming to talk a lot about some of the Dec 10th patch changes. With s/d, vigor, IF, survivability in acrobatics. A lot of wrong has come out of this patch for PvE.

I was wondering where s/d finds it’s place in PvE, especially with the Nerf to infiltrator’s return and since I like to run a lot of dungeons and fractals, with pugs. :/

Sword/pistol does really well against multiple enemies with cleave and aoe blinds.

S/d can essentially imitate this with traiting Cloaked In Shadow but I wouldn’t like to trait into SA unless I swapped between d/d too. I’m not impressed with the DMG on the stealth attack on sword. I’m not sure why people trait into SA with s/d. This is why I’d rather use s/p. The DMG difference between s/p and s/d is not significant which makes s/d seem okay to me.

D/d performs really well against single target with high DMG with c&d and backstab and aggro drop with stealth if you are with other ppl. I heard that s/d can do almost the same dps against single targets with aa1 >> aa2 >> flanking strike >> aa2 >> aa1 >> larcenous strike and can burst harder by how often you use the dual skill. I might test this but if someone can confirm this then I would gladly use s/d more often.

The only time I would use s/d is in the dredge and against the monks in the ascalon fractal for the boon steal which is waaay better than the bountiful steal trait.

Which also reminds me. Do you guys still use the vigor on healing/stealing anymore? I find it a bit too short and it is only useful when your endurance is not full. So healing after dodging seems kinda weird and dodging into stealing is okay unless you mistimed the dodge and bring yourself to the enemy. :/

I don’t really find myself stealing very often in dungeons and in fractals too. When equipping sword, I just use infiltrator’s strike, but I guess I sometimes use it when I’m using d/d so I’m not sure why people like to use steal with s/d. I also feel like the cast time on flanking strike and Infiltrator’s return makes it less reliable than plain old dodging. It may be because of my ping but maybe not. It is sort of why I invest a little into acrobatics when I tried s/d.

Feel free to leave below your thoughts and helpful comments.

Its rather strange really. The only time I ever DC in this game is during Teq, but EVERY time I’ve done Teq, I’ve DCed at least once. :/ Having missed out on some of the chests, this is becoming a problem. I have tried messing around with this like turning on the lowest graphical setting, but that doesnt seem to work. I’ve also seen other people DC too, including turret users.

After some changes in the Dec. 10th patch, have you guys made any minor/major changes to your builds for dungeons and fractals? This patch has really gotten me interested in exploring other builds, but I’m currently on 25/30/0/0/15, swapping between s/p, sb, and p/p. What do you guys usually use?