Guild Wars 2

Devildoc.6721:

Padstone.1685:

Devildoc, just turn off auto attack on your daggers?

You’ll end up losing more damage over time if you do that actually.

DPS doesn’t kill people in a BS centered build – burst does. And burst means activate signet before C&D, then C&D, Steal, BS + 2x HS will all have a 15% buff. No auto-attack needed ever.

Besides, you noticed your skills are queued once you press them? Even if you do need autoattack, just hammer the 1 key (or whatever you mapped that to) a few times and you will keep autoattacking. I can still move easily with WASD + mouse with 1 one finger bound hitting ability keys.

Ichishi.9613”

I just thought that this will also apply to that air sigil proc during backstab

It does. And I didn’t feel any difference in damage over all in WvW yesterday comparing to pre-“nerf”. Ok BS does do less damage, but you actually have 4 other attacks with increased damage. If you pull a combo of mug, c&d, bs, hs, hs you do about the same amount of damage. People still die to it the same as before if they do not evade (and most don’t). The problem remains that you tend to remain invisible for at least 2 hits after BS if it’s in a crowded WvW situation.

Have you checked that you don’t have the revealed debuff on you when using it?

Since in WvW I mostly downed people in 2 hits with the last one usually being a huge overkill in a 20 30 20 0 0 spec with the assassins signet 50% buff I think it will still work to kill a target with a bs combo… just not any longer with basilisk + c&d + mug + bs.
My guess is, those who died to 30 30 0 0 10 specs will do so still… as they died to 20 30 20 0 0 in the same time. The BS damage with assassins signet was just a huge overkill in most cases anyways – so I guess against a lot of target you will not notice any significant difference… btw. I think that 20 30 20 spec saved my life on more occasions than the 30 30 0 0 10 killed the enemy that wouldn’t have died otherwise anyways. The times I got away with less than 1000 life were rather numerous.

Let’s see… I think I havemore than 2k power – but for the sake of that, let’s just assume it’s 2000 exactly. Since power is multiplied into damage calculations, 15% damage would mean my power would have to rise by 300 points, to even out the bonus – or in other terms, 60 power equals a 3% damage increase at 2k power. Do the math, it’s rather easy.
Especially when you activate the signet and gain 5 stacks of might, you have the might stacks + 15% damage increase – that is way beyond 60 power passive.

Ixal.7924:

Lan.1968:

I don’t understand why people ask for advice on how to beat a thief in a thief forum section. While we may know the potential weaknesses to our class, no thief player can give you an adequate answer in how to defeat us with your class. Seriously, the best advice I’m going to give you is to search for answers on the engineer and elementalist forums.

And strangely whenever someone talks about thief bursts angry thief players pop in, accuse everyone of being noobs and tells them to play a thief. And now you say playing a thief doesn’t help either.

As a thief it’s easy to say. Be better at the stealthing game and avoid his burst and land yours – or avoid his burst and land your conditions.
As for other classes – I can tell you what I do as a thief to not get killed. I can’t tell you what I’d do against another class to not get killed by a thief. As for not getting killed as a thief it is all about movement and stealth. Anticipate what the enemy is doing and avoid being there where they use a skill – if you don’t, you die… and you do so horribly fast.

There are a good chunk of professions that a thief can’t do anything about it if in BS setup also. I’d consider it a rock paper scissors situation then, which is just what different classes is all about. Otherwise you could just use one singular class and be done with it. :P

BishopX.6453:

2001- DAOC, remember when nightblades could backstab with a 2handed axe and not lose stealth if they killed you in 1 shot…. but since it was with a TWO HANDED AXE… they could kill anyone that wasnt a tank or healer outright. Remember IWINfiltrators?

And yet I never had any problem in particular with those two while playing nightshade unless they had buffs and I did not. Besides, the impact on group and large scale RvR was about nil.

BishopX.6453:

i can name you MANY games that got the melee healer and didnt make it overpowered. you only remember wow
I remember DAOC monk (LOL) daoc warden daoc aug healer daoc valewalker, daoc valkery were FAR from op.

Aug Healer was NEVER EVER intended to do 1 vs 1 RvR… and aug healer was quite overpowered in a melee dps group… and Valkyries got a buff that made them pretty insane for one patch – even being able to win a 1 vs 4+ if it were melee classes…

Besides, I’ve played most of these op stealther classes, I’ve played them before the nerf bat hit and afterwards. I had to change tactics and equipment, but in the end i definitely ALWAYS was an a positive W/L ratio if you count 1vs1 fights.
Btw. you missed SW:TOR operatives / scoundrels. 10k opener with 3 second stun against non-50 chars while they were all in one pvp zone with about 12k HP by then. THAT actually was op, got nerfed three times I think, but you could still play the class and it still worked although the initial damage wasn’t even 50% in the end. You just had to be a little more picky.

Most people don’t seem to realize that the problem is not about BS or any other skill combination but about reaction time, preparation and tactical thinking.
GW2 is a fast paced game and it does have several combinations that can end a fight quickly if done right – and it has several possibilities to avoid such situations.

That begins well before any 1 on 1 even starts – by identifying your opponent. If you know what you’re up against, you can prepare yourself for the best counter tactics against that class/build you are likely to face. Thus you know what to do and when to do it, once it happens. Every class has it’s pros and cons. If you don’t think about what those are and just blindly rush into them, you will most likely lose. If you allow to fight and enemy on their terms – don’t be surprised if you have severe problems.

The key here is not to think about that you are dead in 3 seconds (honestly most classes can do that in one way or another) but to think about what you could have done to avoid it.
If you know you will face a thief using BS as the main damage ability, you know what to do. Avoid that BS damage at all cost – and yes, that means if you know your reaction is too slow and you don’t have any defensive abilities up – don’t engage. If you do engage however, know how to avoid or mitigate the damage that is likely to come. There are usually more than one way to solve such a problem – evade it, block it, trick him into using his stuff to early…

A fight is mostly won before it starts – unless one of the participants makes a grave mistake. And it usually is not won by one single skill in particular.

Btw. the thing that I would wanted fixed first is the delay between getting out of stealth and actually seeing the character again, which can occasionally be several seconds. That is WAY more annoying than any damage they do.