Guild Wars 2

That is more than tanky enough. Since you are running acro you do not need that much more. Your main defense is evades and some stealth, no need to overdo it. Might even swap the staff to marauder as well? (or even zerk)

As long as you avoid falling for the vault repeat pit it should be fine.

Gold, full solo queue thief.

There are by far too many DH’s. Average would be above 4 a game easily. As others have mentioned, they offer quite a bit at a low skill level. But on reaching gold they are less of the pure glass traps and more a mix of survival and a trap.

Second up would be warriors. So durable and in team fights its hard to avoid them landing bursts and stop the regen.. However when my team knows what to do they aren’t the biggest trouble.

Most other classes seem balanced to me. Skill to dictate where they fall really. But obviously Necro needs support and Ele needs someone to kill for them. In coop between those two you can see sick results!

My biggest issue right now is the insane differences in both my teams and the enemies you face. Most matchups seem pretty set after the first engage. Guess I’ll try and find a duo partner and see how much can be done that way..

All that could do with a slight toning down is the overall survivability of a lot of classes. Trap heal on DH, invulns on warrior, sheer amount of healing out of eles, to name a few.

Overall I’m really quite happy with the season. Much better than the previous ones for me. Even though some blowouts still occur and there are still a lot of idiots around. Really looking forward to being a few more weeks in, when ratings will settle more.

TheDarkSoul.1938:

@Puz, well to that I’d say that most players, unless they’re braindead, wouldn’t hit Headshot whilst you have your weapons stowed anyway. << Or Stab…

I might be a tad pessimistic. But I really doubt most players actually realize the enemy stowed or has stab.

TheDarkSoul.1938:

The point I’m (poorly) trying to make is that yes PI is rewarding properly timed and executed interupts, but it’s also rewarding random use of skills like Headshot that previously were situational and now aren’t so much.

And I agree with you there. Even to the point where Id love to change it to reward only skilled plays. But in the current state of the game it really isn’t the thing I’d suggest anet to put effort into.

I personally like PI. It makes skillful play more rewarding, on BOTH players. If I spam headshot while the enemy just has their weapons stowed then I’m down on ini without anything in return. But if the enemy is a mindless spammer then I just punished them with their own ‘skill’.

I’m not sure about PI not working on AA. Some classes can just spam auto to win if that is the case.. And it would take away the counter skill in stowing and using skills at the correct time.

So for now I’d say PI should interrupt on AA. Especially since you have to consider all specs when balancing PI, not only those using offhand pistol.

The change to IS looks nice. I do wonder how the extra immob works out with S/P chaining into pistolwhip. Might get some crying about that, especially with quickness on engage setup.

I’m not sure if the P/D change will really have enough impact. But its good that they are considering making more builds viable and giving an alternative to D/D condi spam.

TheHeretic.3529:

1. You can already buy ascended items with Badges of Honor and Ectoplasm

2. I’ve gotten more ascended drops in WvW than in PvE, including FotM, and I have Ad Infinitum.

Which just reinforces this topic, which is about making it less RNG!

And yes, you can buy jewelry with badges, not armor or weapons. Which is very nice. But it would be even better if you could buy weapons and armor that way as well. Doesn’t have to be cheap, just achievable!

On a side note, I just gained another box from pvp, where I play less than 10% of my gametime. No other mode gave me any weapon or armor box yet..

I really enjoy your videos Tom, keep it up. And I agree that too many people focus purely on the assassin style for their thief. And then in turn call the thief UP, just because their playstyle might not be top dog..

That will still not allow me to keep my clears in check until I really need them. Or it means I cannot engage with Shadowstep to begin with.

We as thieves don’t have a whole lot of condition clears. And most that we do have are restricted to certain types of conditions. This means that I have to use my other clears, like Dash or Withdraw first, in order to clear cover conditions. Then I use shadowstep return to clear the actual damaging ones.

Your solution would take away my choice of when and what to clear!

A lot of things can be done to improve thieves. However, the change you propose for Shadowstep I cannot agree with. It would mean that on a very often used shadowstep + steal engage you already use your condi clear! And then when you need to remove condis, it will be on cooldown.. If you want more remove on the first step make it 2 on step and 2 on return.

Things that should be looked at by the devs:
1. Make thieves less reliant on Trickery. The line is good and often required for pretty much any playstyle. This hinders diversity. Some of this should be baseline, especially the minors.

2. Take a good look at the balance between damage output and how much a thief can take / avoid in damage. Our damage has been nerfed in the past to prevent from blowing up people too harshly, which is fair enough. But we haven’t been compensated in our defense enough. And now with the powercreep on all classes, our damage is only medium to high, while our survivability is down at the bottom.

3. Look at the roles that a thief can play in the game. In pvp we are down to only +1 and decap. In wvw we can pick off lone targets, but anything bigger means we melt with one tiny mistake. If that is the way the thief should be, then our damage should actually be a bit burstier!

To sum up. My take on the thief is that we are pretty okay right now. However, our roles are limited and we lack something that we truly excel at. Give us another role, or give back some damage to actually be the one to pick for our burst and out role.

Furious.1283:

My MMR is so low, according to the system apparently, that I don’t even deserve to wear the amber tag.

I’m on the last tier of sapphire for over a month now which really makes me feel ashamed of myself and I really shouldn’t be there at all because I’ve been fed to much better teams than the ones I’m set on.

I guess it was too much asking for matches with equal chances of winning/losing…. I thought wrong.

Just take a break. I had several sapphire > ruby matches bugging up on me. Made me believe there is a system in place to hold people back. Went from 68% winrate to 55%. It kinda annoyed me, so I took a break. Now I started up again last night and won all my matches shooting up to ruby..

The problem is that this is a team game and that my preferred toon is a thief. Many people still insist on doing the thief job when I’m around. And they mix up rotations in a way that I couldn’t ‘make up’ for them.. I’m sure a pro league thief could, but I can only play 10 games a week or so..

To answer the OP:
- Puz
- Not MMR Hell, but there are times where the system feels rigged
- Ruby
- Diamond (could grind out legendary or swap class, but with low play times this is where I think I’d belong)

Another of these pips lost today. Necro is afk 2 mins @ spawn. Then goes ld for another minute+. So a total of more than three minutes 4vs5. We lost 4xx-502 and still lost the kitten pip..

BeepBoopBop.5403:

Thief main here. If you play thief in ranked, get on the other team. I know exactly what odds this class is against with the current meta. While its not as bad as last season (NOTHING could be that bad), it is still foolish, selfish, and arrogant to roll thief in ranked unless you are in a premade that is OK with it.

It is NOT a class to solo with as pugs will often not know how to play with a thief and dealing with aspects such as dealing with an outnumbered team fight while you decap.

I have to disagree. Playing any class is selfish if you look at it like this. Thief brings special abilities that can change the game. But you need others on your team to play as a team, along with the thief! However most people keep on playing their own game, just as selfish, and call out a thief for doing what the thief should be doing..

Problem is, you need to be a decent thief (and player in general) to pull off the advantage a thief can bring. And it is way easier on other players if you bring that tank everyone wants on their team.

If you like playing a thief, play a thief and you can do well. If others complain, tell them they could adjust just as much as you could.

In short, show them thieves can be valuable. Just like any other class.

That is obviously not legal or in line with the Code of Conduct. Make sure he reports it and gets that idiot banned..

For a very short answer, No..

The problem with this system is the extreme polarization it produces. The high MMR players all get teamed together. Their chances are above 75% to get a lower MMR opponent (due to the spread of teams and them getting the higher MMR rated ones as team).

What this means is the high MMR players will continue to grow, increasing their chances on getting better teams and easy wins. Which again further increases their chance on winning again and again.

On the other side are the ones with lower MMR, getting the bad end of the same stick.

What a reset of MMR would do is push people even harder into either direction. Get a lucky three wins, your MMR means you will be carried. Whether you are good or not. Same in the losing direction, three losses with LD’s or absolute beginners means you keep fighting against better teams.

Best thing to do is make sure that teams are in range brackets. Where the top players cannot meet the absolute bottom. With a slight overlap in brackets this would mean you could still go up and down, but the matches wouldn’t be so horrible tilted..

Resetting MMR completely is a bad idea. Make new players start in the low MMR bracket. If they are good enough they get wins vs ‘less good’ opponents, rise in MMR until they reach their 50/50 point.

tldr: Resetting MMR is a bad idea, for everyone. Split matchmaking into brackets to make gains and losses in MMR meaningful.

Thief doesn’t suck. But people only remember the bad moments.

The thief still excels at changing it up. Move around the map and play to your teams strengths and the enemies weaknesses. Then you can really make a difference.

The problem is, a lot of other players don’t want to give the thief the chance to play their role. Which means they are reducing the teams effectiveness by doing our job..

At the highest skill level we lack something, but until you meet coordinated bursts and heals, we can handle things.

Just because I like research type things I’ll try this the coming week.

My matches so far have been up and down, landslide style. But I main thief, and you cannot solo carry a team as power thief all the time..

So I will pick up a guild mates old bugged account that has barely seen any playtime. And see if I can get my winstreaks there easy.

My question to you all is the following, do you want me to research this as thief main? Or swap to a carry class, engineer in my case, and do it that way?

The problem with thief being able to beat necro’s is that you cannot hold/cap/decap a point while doing that. Which means your win is futile in most situations..

Orion.3812:

The basis of this thread is that berserker thief’s ability to gank people was fine as-is and that the excessive damage output post-patch negatively affects gameplay in WvW/sPvP by encouraging thieves to be as squishy as possible in order to make everyone else as squishy to them as possible and end fights in fractions of a second regardless of outcome.

Show us how the change to the AA chain, gaining 1k over 2.4s(?) is excessive. You talk about burst in a fraction of a second. But that does not come from AA. So please, give us a detailed description of damage done in a fraction of a second where this AA buff made such a big difference?

Orion.3812:

Fights should not be decided from full health in less than one second, no matter who is fighting who. This is not a first person shooter.

This is a personal standpoint, not one that arenanet has stated is their ultimate goal. And if it was, they should tone down a ton of other abilities over a wide range of classes before even looking at the thief. Also, if a thief can do a kill in a fraction of a second, then the other player should reconsider their berserker gear..

To conclude, we have weak damage on a character that has weak options to survive. Yet people still complain..

As a quick example, a burst mesmer does more damage, does it AoE compared to single target and has more tools, including automatic traits to survive. Perhaps it is time to consider that the fight you created here isn’t actually what you are aiming for? I’d say, open a new thread where you ask how the thief class can be fixed for pve and pvp by giving it group utility, since to me it seems that is what you want to see.

Chicho Gosho.6507:

Omg PvP is dead again

Must be why necro’s are so strong!

I quite like the new version. The block is very handy as stun breaker and the margin to use the kick afterwards gives room to outplay enemies.

So erm Evilek, first you post the completely biased post about dagger being 6k+ on the pvp forum. And now you say staff has 6k+ DPS.

Stop sprouting silly numbers about thieves, which even if they would be true don’t mean crap in a real game environment..

@Kicker, the post by Evilek here has been shown to be biased and has no data behind it. So please don’t repost his numbers.

My personal opinion is that we didn’t need any AA dmg increase, but it doesn’t hurt anyone that they brought them up a little. I would much prefer BV to become instant now, so we can actually choose which skills to make unblockable, but that might be too much?

The new version of BD is nice though, quite like it!

It really changed nothing tbh. Stuff I killed before the patch goes down just a tiny bit faster. Enemies that know their class and how to counter are still just as hard, but a tiny bit more doable without the tanky amulets.

The basilisk venom is the only thing that impacts real fights and it’s just 2 hits on a decent long cooldown. Perhaps if they made this instant, so I could choose when to apply it would make it work.

Evilek.5690:

I have one question. Who test this patche before release ?

Revenant with full berserker gear and full DPS build vs Thief with same armor/traits.

Thief

Dagger AA DPS – 6k!!!!!
Sword AA DPS – 4.6k
Staff AA DPS 4.7k

Revenant

Sword AA DPS 3.2k !!!

Hahaha, way to post biased crap my friend. In your picture, you are running Assassin’s signet and signet of Agility. Both up base dmg by a lot and cannot be run like that in any semi competitive environment.

If you want to do a real comparison: show logs, video and setups. Do this for all classes. Then think about the other options all classes have besides AA. Once you’ve done all that, explain why this is too much (even if your numbers are correct, which is doubtful). Do this without utilities and other stuff equipped so you don’t dilute the evidence, also remove all sigils for a pure baseline..

Stealth requires two buttons! :P Or a utility..

But for a complete view, show all classes and their AA dps on a full zerk full crit buffed spec. Wouldn’t surprise me if this isn’t even the weirdest of them all.

I’ve only played on my thief, so might have to try that character swapping (or use my lowbie thief perhaps).

There is however one thing I’ve noticed. I play roughly 3 games every other day and had a steady run up to halfway ruby. But there, it suddenly changed. Meeting teams with double diamonds vs my all rubies. And we got wiped, not even near fair.

I lost a few points, back to under 50% ruby and it changed back to old rates. Until I had that one point over the 50% line again and I got horrible matches.

So to me it feels like the spread somehow goes from 50% top of league to 50% bottom of the next league. If under the line you have easy matches. When above, you are in for hard matches.

Just something from this weekend, but it seemed interesting!

ZvolTx.3165:

D/P 3 needs an init cost increase, a cast time increase, or a damage reduction (or a combination thereof)
So in that vein, D/P does need nerfed and other weapon sets buffed as well to allow for a more equal field amongst the weapons.

This however is assuming the other professions are nerfed/changed as well as to not completely push Thief out of viability.

Why? What would that help anywhere else?

Same with Jana, I agree utility is lacking. But why would you nerf D/P for it? Why wouldn’t you add in blind to Dagger 5? Which would help both S/D and D/D? There are plenty of ways to bring those lines up without gutting our only semi struggling line.

This might be pretty hard to implement, the matchmaking system will have to take into account classes besides ranks. And then also enforce not rejoining with a class that is already on your team.

Better to just balance crap enough so people don’t choose to go the easy mode. If games get 4 DH you know balance is wrong!

The problem with all of this is that there still has to be a sizeable skill gap between the thief and DH to make this a reliable win for the thief.

The fact that traps can be placed and then the cooldown timers start means you have to remove them twice at least. And even then the re-use timers are short. They can hide in blocks or invulns while they come off cooldown.

And that is completely ignoring the sick ranged damage the DH gets from its bow.. Which knocks back as well.

In short, don’t bother, perhaps after the patch..

Please stop giving the devs’ stupid ideas. I agree with you that D/D needs help (remember, dd now is the acronym for daredevil :P ). But you don’t go gutting the last straw power thieves have just to get a look at X/D.

Because that is where the problem lies, the offhand pistol makes up for some of the squishy bits that are thieves. Which is fine and fair, even slightly under balanced(when looking at other classes, not just thieves. Since it requires a kitten ton of ini).

The problem lies within the way D/D is put together. The #3 is now being used for conditions. Where the rest of the set is power based, with a nerved #4 and #5, which was done partly to reduce S/D builds. So you cannot change up these skills without making the other styles stronger, which might put them over the top.

Your attempt to get D/D looked at is something I’m sure all thieves could rally behind. But gutting D/P for the sake of getting looked at is insane. Especially, as mentioned by others, with the time it usually takes arenanet to look at weak classes.

This does sound rather strong! Sadly, it might be too much for pvp/wvw and just right for pve. Let’s see how they respond to the incoming cries of woe!

Impact strike is a great skill, but it is very unreliable. You cannot count on a set amount of damage or on not getting interrupted. Which means that in most situations it falls just short of insta stomping.

In those instances where it does work it can really shine though. Come upon a downed teammate getting stomped, steal, backstab, impact strike and the tables have turned. But whether it is still worth it after the buff to BV, Im not so sure.

I guess it’s the rock-paper-scissors working here. Since I’m pure glass and the condition type necro can counter that. I’m assuming you have the same issue.

I tested going D/D whirley spam and destroyed the same type of necro with scary ease though..

Nice video, gives me some hope that I will be able to play thief again in sPvP. Will require training that awareness and putting some more focus on interrupts!

Also interesting to see how the cheese I meet in Ruby lessens higher up. Hope to see that myself. It’s a bit boring having to run away from the trap campers for the first 20s until their second/third set is gone and I can move in.. But once those are gone it isn’t hard to punish them.

Also good to see how quickly you move away from ‘fights’ that you cannot contribute in. Sad part is, people in my matchups only complain about me making such decisions..

Thumbs up, keep on bursting!

So, how do you cap points if you are in ‘bunker-stealth’ all the time?

I solo queue all the time, sadly I lost too many games going in as thief. You get people to afk or leave the game just because a thief is in their team. Meaning you’ve lost before you get started.

It has made me play my engineer mostly. Joined a new guild for hopefully some pre-made groups where I can thief again! Unless there are coms and people understand the thief role, I’m afraid it’s simply just not worth it atm..

We really need our 1v1 burst back. Because as it stands, we have no role that others cannot do. Heck, my engineer has 25% perma and can actually hold a point vs 2.. So it’s better in all regards..

On a class so squishy, each boon steal should be accompanied by gaining protection. That might mend a small bit of our survivability!

I get the same stuff, and to be fair, in random games they might be right. A thief cannot carry a team of randoms like some bunker type can.

But when there is a bunker or two and you can be a real thief, then you can just become the mvp! Sadly, people don’t realise that sort of thing and simply like to complain instead.

I really hope we could get some slight push into becoming a pure anti-bunker tool. That would give us a niche. And one that is needed in this meta!

Sithaco.4673:

Shadow step stomping is far from the easiest “cheese” ways to stomp people, at least it was still counter able. Elementalist’s Mist Form stomp has no counter at all.

Well, thieves could stealth up. But other classes without someone near to stealth them are screwed.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

snip

If it undermines the downed skills, sure why not. Another thing they can do is improve the downed skills so they are actually useful. Or they can just remove the whole downed state since everyone tries to undermine it anyway.

Sadly that means this topic can be closed. You are saying that you find downed state is being ignored by a certain type of skill and it should not be.

Whether we agree or not doesn’t matter, since the design team working on this game just implemented exactly that as their new thing → Function Gyro.

IGN: Puz
Thief Type: Teartisan
Server: Piken
Experience:
I’ve played ‘sneaky’ characters since I can access a computer. Online starting with d2 assassin, through daoc sb/ns and in any games in between and since. The type I’ve liked most was that I:A in SW-ToR, because it could combine sneaky burst with healing/dotting in one main (different specs ofc).

GW2:
In GW2 I main Thief, being 90%+ of my playtime. In the last year I’ve played standard D/P, Cheesey P/D, tested venom sharing (but hated it) and had a dabble with S/D. In the past I used to wvw 90% of the time, but lately I haven’t had much time, so I’ve been doing some pvp when I get a short run nowadays.

Sadly, I have to agree that for the time being, it’s easier to ‘reroll’.

I’m also about to change my gear to vipers, for an engineer. Which can in fact also work for some gimmicky wvw play on the thief.

I decided to stick to the medium armour classes, so trying thief stuff will stay possible and I can easily use the gear on all three chars. I’m still working on the druid spec/setup I like!

Sir Vincent III.1286:

BeepBoopBop.5403:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

If they finally nerfed shadowstep stomping then good. I support it 100%. Keep it that way.

Why? Makes no sense. It is a 50 sec CD and one of our only safe stomps. Even if you decide to use the SB 5 trick, it still requires at least a 20 sec CD (steal) to work. Balanced the way it was IMO.

What makes no sense is that something like this undermines the downed state, makes the whole downed skills useless, and takes away the risk of trying to stomp someone due to a long casting time.

All theses are in place to counter or delay a stomp, yet it’s being bypassed by shadowstep stompping.

The only acceptable “safe” stomp is faking it to bait the counter before actually stompping.

So, they should also nerf stomping in:
elementalist mist forms.
engineer elixir forms.
Any block/aegis should cancel stomping.
And any other option(s) that I surely missed.

If they take away all those because they also interfere with the normal stomping rules, then yes, then and only then I could agree with you.

Thank you for listening to us!

+1
I also pm’ed a dev to see if I could get at least a response whether this is a change they implemented on purposes or a mistake. Let’s see if I get a response (and then what sort!).

Thanks Arenanet, we really needed that quality of life nerf. Since we had it so amazingly brilliant lately…

Please add a few skills and their coefficients from other classes as well. Since stated like this some not so smart person capable of changing these things might think it’s best to once again nerf a thief skill..

Jim Hunter.6821:

As someone that likes to solo roam I have found the new maps to be awful..

+1

I’ve played wvw as my one and only thing in gw2 for years now, but I just cannot be bothered to log in and roam on empty maps. And even if the maps would fill up, something need to be done for those who like to roam.

Hope the devs can respond to a topic like this, really wanna know if Id better be looking for another game, or if they will balance it for all again soon.

This might actually be a thing! I had a Zap drop for my thief last weekend. The first one I ever got!

+1 for thieves getting more precursor drops for being so weak.

I’m afraid that is the way the devs are pushing the thief. Instead of straight up nerfing our abilities they just made everyone more on par with burst. However we did not get the defensive creep in return.

My advice to you would be, play the way you like. I’m sticking with the thief myself. But am sometimes swapping to our ‘cheese mode’ p/d condi when I’m just meeting other cheese builds all the time.

I know others are simply playing other classes every now and then to not get burned out. And there is a few special snowflakes that still are and will always be pure glass S/D or D/D.

As long as its fun it’s all good! :P

My first question would be, are you stuck on the runes? Or can they be changed.

I’m working on a new (finally ascended) setup for when HoT launches. Still keeping the mats saved up for any last minute changes that can totally alter what I need.

My current ‘best’ stats are: 45% crit chance (high fury uptime), 15995 hp, 237% crit dmg, 2211 armor and ‘only’ 2450 power. Trying to push the power a bit more though. Now this does use expensive food to make it all get together. But it could probably be tweaked if that is a problem, losing some crit dmg but gaining power.