Guild Wars 2

pola.5832:

Have you tried spvp yet? Im hoping it will be a good fighter, instead of a sneak in-sneak out assassin, or the classic +1 meta stuff im used to

Also, maybe a little offtopic, but do you think thief will be viable for raids, using staff? considering the dodges and everything

It’s solid in sPvP if you wanted your thief to be able to sustain more in fights while still doing consistent damage (5-8k aoe crits, small radius). I rarely, rarely die running acrobatics/deadly arts/dare devil. You can keep up evades almost nonstop for a very long time with constant initiative and endurance regen.

While I really like the staff and some of the new additions, I wish aNet had given thieves more group utility. Staff doesn’t offer much in the way of it. Though, finishing blow is very good.

I have 2250 badges and about 1 million karma sitting on my thief. Haven’t played really in nearly a month due to the Wintersday patch making the game completely unplayable for me.

I’ve never had network lag since Headstart until the past few weeks. Now I am getting a ton of lag ever since the Wintersday patch which pretty much makes the game completely unplayable. I’m fine for about 30 seconds when I log on and then it just sets in into 5-20 seconds spikes. Every other online game I have runs fine and my ping is fine.

Ranc.7192:

I have played every mmorpg out there.(Besides Tera.)

One thing all MMO have in common is each has atleast one OP class.

And in Gw2 case, it would be a Thief. I Play a Guardian, No I dont get one or two shotted by thieves, but I run in a 5 man gank group with 1 or sometimes 2 thieves, and I have watched them down single target enemies in under 2 sec. 1000x times.

imo, every class has 3 stats, Burst,Defense, and Mobility. If one class has the best 2/3 stats in the game=OP. In a Thieves case Burst and Mobility.

I am fine with a Thieves burst, but I have a problem with there mobility, a good thief should never lose in a fight.
1.They eather burst you down in under 2 sec.
2. They try to burst you down in under 2 sec, but you dodge roll out/block of all of it, then they beat you straight up, because they are a better player then you are.
3.They decide they are about to lose the fight, so they stealth and heartseeker away, and by the time they come out of stealth they are halfway across the map.

I am trying to get rid of a thieves 3rd option, I have no problem being burst down in under 2 sec, I have no problem losing a fight to a better player, I have a big problem that a Thief can run away from a fight anytime he or she chooses.

I am sure I will get alot of replies saying, It is the Culling issue, not thiefs fault, its Anets.

Gw2 culling issue will never be fixed, it cant be, the engine is to its limits. The only way Anet can fix the culling issue is to have every player wear the same armor in WvWvW, and that will never happen.

Anyway…………..my solution to the thief problem is a 10% slow, when they are in stealth.

Let the flames begin!!!!!!

You are playing THE best wvw class in the game and you are complaining about another class. You could replace both burst thieves in your group with 2 guardians and if played properly you would have access to WAY more utility and still maintain about the same damage.

You mention every class has Burst, Defense, Mobility. Guardians can obtain some of the best aoe damage in the game, while having some of the best group utility in the game, which is far more important than a single thief’s mobility.

Don’t get me wrong, thieves need an overhaul (imo). Stealth and quickness mechanics needs to be completely reworked. But its amazing how many wvw players aren’t complaining about guardians, which have access to some of the best WvW skills available.

You’re just not used to playing against servers with even mediocre respectable populations in WvW. BP has had more players in one area today than I’ve ever seen in a zerg so far playing this game. Saw a 30+ BP zerg walk by, and then within 10 seconds another 30+ BP zerg going the same direction. And the amount of rendering issues going on tonight was insane.

We barely even saw any Darkhaven zergs other than at SM once and once at Durios. Everything else I’ve seen has been Borlis Pass all over every map in gigantic blobs.

Not sure how other people are playing with the lag being like it is. Getting 10-30 seconds spikes of nothing happening. 3 or 4 DCs already.

edit: apparently its just me :P

Thadren Calder.1397:

ASP.8093:

Thadren Calder.1397:

Do I really need to give other examples of thief skills that can do over 30k damage in a few seconds? Really? Lets see…. Unload and cluster bomb comes to mind.

30k with Clusterbomb in “a few seconds”?

By a “a few seconds” do you actually mean 7-10 attacks? (If so, that’s a long time.)

Or does “30k damage” actually mean “6k spread around to a bunch of different targets”? (If so, that’s not at all the same as “30k damage.”)

No as in 30k+ damage to 1 target, multiple targets, it doesnt matter. 15+ stacks of might, shadowstep onto the enemy and just shoot the ground. Getting the damage numbers is easy if you wanna do it in a few seconds add haste.

Shortbow is my favorite weapon for a thief. Out of all the nerf we might get the only one that would sadden me would be clusterbomb. Even though it’s needed. I know people say its bad because it travels slow or doesnt have 1200 range but that’s not where the ability’s strength lies.

As much as I agree with you, this is not just a problem with the thief class. Multiple classes and specs are capable of putting out 2000-7000 damage aoe bombs resulting in 20-30k+ damage done while still maintaining the ability to offer as much utility or far more than a burst thief build would. It is not just the thief class. And honestly, WvWvW really skews the damage numbers because those kind of damage numbers just don’t happen in sPVP (with cluster bomb) and if they do those are pretty rare situations.

Kontrolle.3514:

Shrack.8013:

Kontrolle.3514:

EnoLive.2367:

Def has to be the Thief and Mez even more so when they are teamed up and over 60% of GW2 plays those classes now they are becoming the only 2 classes you get to see or not see lol in WvW these days

This! Every second enemy is a thief, every 4th a mesmer.
I rerolled a mesmer too because engineer is nearly unplayable atm due the ridicoulus amount of projectile reflection which comes from ….right thiefs roflstorm and mesmers in generell.

Memser is so easy, i play him with a steering wheel, while my engineer …. naahh it makes me to sad to talk about.

Well, according to the Anet September 15th statistics, the most played classes (in order) are:

1.) Warrior
2.) Ranger
3.) Elementalist
4.) Thief and Guardian
6.) Necromancer
7.) Engineer
8.) Mesmer

I’m going to make a guess and say it hasn’t changed THAT drastically in 3 months. Though thieves/mesmers have probably seen a bit of an increase. http://www.gamerevolution.com/news/guild-wars-2-gender-profession-race-and-craft-statistics-released-15061

What really scares me is a well played ranger because most of them are incredibly bad at the game. You walk up to rangers pretty much expecting free kills only to finally find someone who actually knows how to dodge roll and kite. Then you’re doing the ‘o’ face because this ONE ranger out of hundreds is actually at least a decent player. He is not just a keyboard turning backpedaling free loot bag like all of the others. He is the highlander. There can be only one.

Dude, are you a troll or something? ahhh wait, you play thief right?
If i say every second enemy (and ally btw.) is a thief im NOT exaggerating, not a single bit. So why do you respond with such a nonsense like gamestatistics from september?
Are you trying to insult me?

Edit: ok obviously a biased troll and i was right about the thief part as well rofl.

Shrack.8013:

There are plenty of broken things about it, but it amazes me how people fail to see the obviously broken aspects of other classes. Everyone is so tunnel visioned on this one class that they can’t see the overpowered aspects of other professions in the game, especially in COORDINATED group situations. You know, the part of the game that actually matters.

1. This thread asked about which enemy is the most annoying and 99% of players have the same answer, so take it, just get over it.

2. COORDINATED group situations…? srsly? in GW2?

Did you even visit WvW? just once in the last 2 months?

Yes, contrary to popular belief, there are people who actually play in coordinated groups in this game instead of running around solo (or solo in a zerg) using 1v1 builds. And you clearly didn’t even read my post, but that’s okay.

And no, your “every other person is a thief” is garbage. Is every other player a thief in every spvp game? No. Is every other play a thief in dungeon runs? No? I didn’t think so. So chances are it’s not in wvw either. Though, I’m glad you managed to figure out that I’m a thief since it is in my signature and I was making a post about the class. Good job. I’m promoting you to detective.

edit: and like I said, I’m not defending the class. Personally I’d be okay with stealth completely being removed from the game as long as another viable mechanic was given in its place. But I don’t see that ever happening.

Kontrolle.3514:

EnoLive.2367:

Def has to be the Thief and Mez even more so when they are teamed up and over 60% of GW2 plays those classes now they are becoming the only 2 classes you get to see or not see lol in WvW these days

This! Every second enemy is a thief, every 4th a mesmer.
I rerolled a mesmer too because engineer is nearly unplayable atm due the ridicoulus amount of projectile reflection which comes from ….right thiefs roflstorm and mesmers in generell.

Memser is so easy, i play him with a steering wheel, while my engineer …. naahh it makes me to sad to talk about.

Well, according to the Anet September 15th statistics, the most played classes (in order) are:

1.) Warrior
2.) Ranger
3.) Elementalist
4.) Thief and Guardian
6.) Necromancer
7.) Engineer
8.) Mesmer

I’m going to make a guess and say it hasn’t changed THAT drastically in 3 months. Though thieves/mesmers have probably seen a bit of an increase. http://www.gamerevolution.com/news/guild-wars-2-gender-profession-race-and-craft-statistics-released-15061

What really scares me is a well played ranger because most of them are incredibly bad at the game. You walk up to rangers pretty much expecting free kills only to finally find someone who actually knows how to dodge roll and kite. Then you’re doing the ‘o’ face because this ONE ranger out of hundreds is actually at least a decent player. He is not just a keyboard turning backpedaling free loot bag like all of the others. He is the highlander. There can be only one.

edit: what I do find funny is this: if Anet completely just flat out removed Cloak and Dagger from the game, people would still cry about the class. Sure, culling is a monumental issue that needs to be fixed. But if and when culling is fixed, people will continue to complain about stealth and thieves ability to burst in general. People don’t seem to understand that thieves offer barely any viable group utility. Their utility is their fast ability to down players and mobility (allowing them to actually run glass cannon if played properly whereas most other classes cannot). That’s it. They have shadow refuge, blind spam if specced for it, and traited Steal group buffs for their true group utility

I really think people only mainly complain about thieves right now because it is a rather easy class to jump on and start killing bad players. Single target damage is the easiest thing to notice. People don’t seem to realize or care that Guardians can pump out group stability, full group heals, aoe pullins, and still manage to pump out 2000-7500 aoe damage bombs near constantly. They don’t notice the mesmer who puts multiple stacks of confusion on a gigantic glob of players for the duration of a fight. They don’t seem to care that an engineer just invulnerability dunked them and half of their team causing the whole enemy zerg to rally, effectively winning the fight. All they see is the one thief that burst them down in their combat log because they never have their camera panned back far enough to notice who is behind them.

Thieves will continue doing incredibly high damage until glass cannon is not a viable spec for them. It has nothing to do with backstab, heartseeker, dancing dagger, pistol whip, cluster bomb, etc etc (basically every thief skill has been complained about) but it has everything to do with them being able to go full glass cannon spec/gear and get +40 to 50% damage output from traits alone and still survive due to shadowstep, infiltrators arrow, stealths, etc. And honestly, I’m not really defending the class either. because personally I would like to see it completely overhauled. There are plenty of broken things about it, but it amazes me how people fail to see the obviously broken aspects of other classes. Everyone is so tunnel visioned on this one class that they can’t see the overpowered aspects of other professions in the game, especially in COORDINATED group situations. You know, the part of the game that actually matters.

Yes, but having one high damage blast finisher aoe skill that you can use repeatedly (at your feet) is an option that most classes don’t have.

Is this good or bad aoe damage to you? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PgL1Gwgc_8

And this is almost all post-nerf clips. With the old dancing dagger and 15% more cluster bomb damage our aoe damage really was through the roof.

So they’re “one of the best aoe classes” because they can “spam” an ability which has the slowest movement in the game and can’t be used again until it lands (Cluster Bomb), an ability with a 90 second cooldown (Dagger Storm), and one that can only be used once every 45 seconds, and only if there happens to be an enemy warrior around (Whirling Axe). I think you might need to look up what “spam” means.

Yes, you can use Cluster bomb 6+ times AT YOUR FEET with ease, effectively downing 5+ people easily in a zerg. That is spam.

I lol’d. I really hope you don’t believe this. Cluster Bomb at point blank range is good AOE, but even then, it’s still slow. Whirling Axe is unreliable and can’t be considered a legitimate reason for thief AoE. Dagger Storm is our elite on a 90s CD, and the daggers thrown out are random.
Thief is terrible at AoE. Elementalist has more AoE on regular abilities than thief can get out of anything. Hell, a warrior using Hundred Blades vs. a zerg is more dangerous than a thief using Cluster Bomb by far.

There are 8 classes in this game and thieves are ONE of the best aoe classes in the game. You effectively named 2 classes who you think have better aoe than thieves, and I would only agree with is elementalist. Guardians do great aoe damage too. Thieves have a spammable 5 target aoe skill with 1-1200 range. If you don’t see why that makes us one of the best aoe classes then I don’t know what to tell you, especially since we’re able to run generally far higher damage stats than other classes in WvW.

edit: and though I will say, I agree that daggerstorm isn’t op and pretty easily countered.

Every thief should be using DS vs zergs…that is how the class is played and what it is meant for.

Dont know anything about the exploit but you realize that thieves are a single target beast, with little or no aoe. Dagger storm is the best aoe we have. It can be suicidal if not timed right, but even if you die with dagger storm i love running back to the fight with 300xp’s ticking all the way back.
It does it job.

Thieves are one of the best aoe classes in the game. Spammable cluster Bomb, Daggerstorm, Whirling Axe.

Honestly, this is coming from someone who is a bit more unbiased than most of you most likely in this thread. We just transferred our small guild to Dragonbrand from GoM since that server feels completely dead in the past 2 months due to free xfers. Many xferred to Blackgate when that server became a zergy power house and then a lot of guilds went to Borlis Pass during our month+ long matchup with them. It is now only slightly less dead than Eredon Terrace and HoD.

When we first got to Dragonbrand (last Sunday) the NA presence from about 3pm CST to 11pm felt nearly nonexistent. Rofl, there was NSP and DH zergs both hitting our EBG spawn point when we first got there. This Saturday and Sunday were the only days where it felt like there was SOME sort of NA presence. Outside of that we’ve had outmanned buff in nearly every bg most of the time during NA prime time. And yes, I realize DB has a lot of oceanics.

As far as double teaming goes, everyone likes to yell that out, but it generally doesn’t even happen especially not in a matchup as close as this. We run a small 3-8 man group and we were getting sandwiched most of the day between DH and NSP zergs with nearly nonstop fighting going on between us all. There’s been some really good fights so far though.

I don’t see how any thief can sit here and argue that Steal is a bad class only skill… it gives you access to some of the best skills in the game (hello Whirling Axe and Consume Plasma). Of course I am talking pvp here. You can’t just sit here and be all “oh well it’s basically just a shadowstep!!!!111” because it isn’t. Depending on the situation, it gives you some pretty overpowered options to choose from for that class skill. Likewise it allows you to use 2 stolen skills by saving one from a previous fight.

Now what I won’t argue about is the fact that the thief class itself is just relatively boring. The steal mechanic itself is BORING. It really feels like they didn’t know what to do for f1 skills for the class (outside of the initiative system) so they just threw something in. And honestly, the whole thief class design as a whole is a bit lacking.

DirtyBird.6093:

Shrack.8013:

Use Ruby orbs in your armor slots instead of runes. And have an offhand dagger you can toss on to build up 25 stacks of precision, then move your main dagger back over. And if you really don’t want to use Omnomberry Ghosts, you can use plate of truffle steak dinners for +200 power and +10% crit dmg more to make it 114% crit damage bonus. Though omnomberry ghosts give you a lot more sustain when AOEing so you don’t die to random splash damage.I could have even more base crit, but I use vitality instead of precision on a couple of my accessory pieces.

You really think the damage output from having ruby orbs is better than having a full stack of divinity runes? Is the difference that noticable? Just curious. You’re obviously doing a kitten ton of damage, not sure if its vs bad geared, or lowbies havent looked at the video in detail just spot watched it. Would love to know if you’ve tried the divinity runes in comparison before i go buy a new set of gear for ruby’s for a test drive. Couldn’t you run divinity with a full set of zerker’s jewelry instead?

It’s really just a slight sacrifice either way and not a huge deal. Do you want a little more damage or a little more survivability/well roundedness? It’s really up to you. The positive is ruby orbs are way cheaper than the alternative, but it is not like money is a big deal.

Yes Plok, but you don’t see me spamming cloak and dagger constantly in the video. I’m literally using shortbow for 75% of the time at least. So I’m not sure how you come across saying its a /faceroll /abuse rendering bug video. I didn’t post a video of me 1v2ing 2 scrubs while i spam cnd every 4 seconds like most thieves. I’m in plain sight for a majority of the video. And we generally save stealths for combos, rezzing, and dunking people.

But once again, if and when the culling issue is fixed, it will only benefit me because we constantly have 2-4 thieves spamming cloak and dagger on us in large fights.

edit: but honestly, whatever, we can agree to disagree.

You mean I’m trying to play a class to it’s full potential and I’m using teamwork with a good group? There are multiple other classes that do damage (thought not as much) in a similar fashion and yet offer much more utility, but most people don’t play them properly: Guardian, Elementalist to name two. Of course I spammed auto attack, auto attack is free and costs nothing while I wait to do something else. Auto attack is everyone’s main skill. If your auto attack sucks you probably should make sure you have a weapon set with a good auto attack…or you’re dumb. At the same time I can be insta killed in that spec vs multiple classes/specs if I play poorly. It’s risk vs reward play. I can’t play poorly or I will die, a lot. Especially since the enemy zerg only has 3-7 targets to choose from. It’s not like I’m some random thief in a sea of 40 players. We’re using each class to its strength in the video.

edit: the good play comes in the small things: Dodging the right skills, proper positioning, staying with my team, rezzing at the right time, NOT DYING and letting the 8 people we have downed rally off of me. Each individual class in this game isn’t that hard to play. The HARD things that most players can’t seem to grasp are positioning, group play, dodging properly, communication, etc.

I could rephrase this:

“LOL do you think you play well or something, 90% of the time you just spam auto attacks and hit for 400+ with them from ranged and stack bleeds as you dodge multiple times and spam cloak and dagger all day to abuse a rendering error with a bunker build with 20k health and high toughness and regens and condition removal and play vs bad players and and and” (. /end run on sentence)

Lol, your bad logic can apply to any class or spec. And I DO think thieves need a damage nerf, but they need a utility boost and overall more complexity added to the class. Anet needs to raise the skill floor on the class.

Me? I play a Guardian. Not sure what that has to do with anything. I did not post another /faceroll /abuse rendering video.

Don’t get me wrong, I have been in fights with you guys and I am not taking anything away from you.

Culling issues vs a 5 man? If anyone has to deal with a culling problem in a 5 vs 30 it is us, not the 30 people who already have 30 people loaded. You’re telling me those 30 players running into a camp don’t see us until its just too late? Come on man.

My point earlier was that EVERY class has a way of dealing with a zerg, thief is just the more straight forward version since they are literally just a pure damage and mobility class. They have negligible group utility other than shadow refuge and Steal + thrill of the crime. People still only think thieves are overpowered because soooo many people haven’t found out how to properly play their own classes. D/D Elementalists are downright amazing (and overpowered) and yet you only see a threatening elementalist every once in a blue moon because people are bad and don’t know how to play their characters. The point of the video isn’t to be a thief showcase, but a video showing teamwork. You could have replaced me and the other thief in the video with other classes and the result would have been the same, and in some cases much more effective.

And I’m not going to argue that there isn’t a culling issue with stealth. I am on the opposing end of the culling problem very often and it drives me crazy. But by fixing the culling issue it will only make our group that much harder to kill.

Others do it too brother, and it is just that much easier on a Thief. I have 4 80s; Ranger, Warrior, Guardian, and a Thief. When I get on my Thief, it is a world of difference, and I can enter into a massive fight, and come out with 30-50 badges of honor.

It seems the second I steatlh, no one can see me for minutes from that point on, I just wade through, and pick my kills. Every now and then throwing one Cloak and Dagger if I start to take damage.

Stealth and their mobility allows a thief to be great solo class. It does not make them better in a group setting (the point of the video) than the other classes listed (except maybe ranger). If you can’t dominate in a good group setting as a guardian, warrior, mesmer, elementalist, necro, etc something is wrong with you. The only classes that really have any right to complain about the state of the game are rangers and engineers. And I think both of those can still be debatable.

I don’t even understand the argument either since every side has access to the same classes. There are plenty of times in the video where we INSTANTLY destroy thieves. “HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE? BUT THIEVES HAVE BUGGY RENDERING ISSUES!” Because we’re not stupid. And on top of that we’re going up against possibly 4-5 thieves every time we fight vs a zerg and they only have 3-7 targets to choose from, I.E. they can just go single target dps and be much more effective vs us. We don’t have the same luxury and have to aoe down as many people down as quickly as possible or we’re going to die. When we do lose, it isn’t because of the thief class, it is usually because of smart play by mesmers, guardians, or elementalists.

Nothing is technically hard to do in this game. If I were to completely swap to a condition spec bunker build then I could make mistakes all day and not have a remote chance at dying. I can’t think of a build or class that is really that difficult to play. The difficult thing is getting enough competent people together who play as a team, which I haven’t seen many people actually do well in this game yet. I can literally count the decent small groups we’ve ran into over the past 3+ months on one hand.

And let’s be honest here: I mainly just spam cluster bomb in the video and yet I still rarely ever see thieves even using cluster bomb. It is literally one of the best skills available for the class. 5 target aoe, blast finisher, bleed, 1200 range, no minimum range, gtaoe, only 3 initiative. Yes please

What class do you even play Plok?

Spec is 25/30/0/0/15

Deadly Arts: I go Mug and Dagger Training, though that 2nd option-able trait is really up to you. The important one is Exposed Weakness for the +10% damage boost.

Critical Strikes: Side Strikes (7% crit), Critical haste (10% chance to proc quickness on crit), and Executioner (20% more damage on targets under 50%). All of these flat 10% and 20% damage boosters are whats making people cry about every thief skill doing too much damage. Plus you want a high crit rating to proc as many heals from Omnomberry ghost as possible. As long as you’re attacking from the back or side you should have around a 60-66% chance to proc a 300 point heal on yourself for every single hit. So assume you’re cluster bombing 5 players, chances are you are self healing for nearly 1000hp every time you spam the skill. It really helps you have some sustain in fights.

Trickery: Thrill of the Crime for the group/self buffs, and the +3 initiative at 15 points.

Armor is all just berserker’s gear with Ruby Orbs. For accessories I’m using all berserkers except for a valkyries ring and necklace for a little more vitality.

As far as weapons go: I actually am using the badges shortbow at the moment so my crit damage is only 94%, while cluster bombing one day I might just go to a berserker shortbow, but not at the moment. I use superior sigil of fire on the shortbow. Rage + Air on the two daggers. I also use a perception offhand when I’m working up to 25 stacks of precision, which will probably get nerfed one day :P.

In general I go S/P + Shortbow for fractal/dungeon runs. Sword for the obvious aoe damage, sword #2 for free condition removal, Pistol whip for spamming down trash mobs. Shortbow is obvious. I also run high crit % with omnomberry ghosts so I can sustain myself as much as possible while spamming pistol whip.

in WvW I go D/D + Shortbow in a small scale zerg killnig group. Clusterbomb + Daggerstorm are your friend.

A burst thief should be one of the easier things for you to kill as a mesmer.

Use Ruby orbs in your armor slots instead of runes. And have an offhand dagger you can toss on to build up 25 stacks of precision, then move your main dagger back over. And if you really don’t want to use Omnomberry Ghosts, you can use plate of truffle steak dinners for +200 power and +10% crit dmg more to make it 114% crit damage bonus. Though omnomberry ghosts give you a lot more sustain when AOEing so you don’t die to random splash damage.I could have even more base crit, but I use vitality instead of precision on a couple of my accessory pieces.

You learned that cluster bomb is the most overpowered skill Thieves have? :P

Honestly I could roll a few classes and still do crazy AoE damage. People just don’t know how to spec or play properly. Most people don’t even play or spec into the role that makes their class extremely viable. And all 8 classes have at least one.

Part 1 of my world pvp videos with my guild Newlanders [NEWL]. Music is all old school game music with a few random tunes thrown in. This is NOT a video where I only show “perfect” situations or clips. I picked a lot of random clips from my recordings to put in, so there are PLENTY of mistakes available. I mainly upload this to help new players and for entertainment. All the clips are taken from the Gates of Madness, Borlis Pass, and Anvil Rock server matchup. Our group sizes generally range from 3 to 7 players. Watch on 720p. Hope you enjoy it.

The video is pretty long (30 minutes) so feel free to skim the video for larger fights.

And sorry for the shoddy editing, had to use WLMM :P.

Spec is:
25/30/0/0/15
Omnomberry Ghosts
Maintenence Oil
Stats generally range from around 2300 power, 69% crit, 104 % crit damage unbuffed to 2500-2600 power, 89% crit, 104% crit damage buffed.

Group makeup is generally 2 thieves, 1 mesmer, 1 guardian, 1 engineer + 1-2 random others.

Here is a new NEWL video of various fights from the last few weeks from my perspective:

It’s a pretty long video (30 minutes), but feel free to skim through for larger fights. Group sizes in the video range from 3 to 7 players. The fights are probably about 60% Anvil Rock and 40% BP. with a couple of three way fights.

I log on the forum.
Go to this thread.
And all I see is a bunch of BP player posting screenshot of domination and listing how they are better then everyone else.
Stay Classy guys.
Seems like Everybody can 5 vs 30 a Zerg, I’m still waiting for the video.

I can post videos of our group of 4-7 aoeing down 15-40 man BP and AR zergs, but I just haven’t cut them together yet. I regularly record and our guardian records, so we’ll post some videos soon and I’m pretty sure the guardian has already uploaded. We also have some really rather sad video of Borlis Pass having to mesmer bomb our 7 man with 40+ players a couple of weeks ago (and they still somehow manage to lose 8+ players):P, but whatever. Do what you have to do.

Actually here’s our guardian’s more recent video, no idea what clips are in it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdJgVZ4eAUQ&feature=plcp

Sums up Borlis Pass:

edit: and lets get real here, I could’ve easily juked back in the shadow refuge, but this was far more entertaining.

Grumpdogg.6910:

Gates of Madness struggling in Tier 7. Lol nice work.

Yeah it sucks that we didn’t have a gigantic alliance and a ton of random guilds across multiple servers transfer to us to make the game a joke.The one time GoM and Sea of Sorrows were actually in the same bracket, we both got destroyed by a zergy Tarnished Coast within 2 days.

I realize you said you’re not criticizing my post, but if you play on a North American server and a server captures 100% points during what is generally considered nighttime for most players on those servers, it will probably be referred to as “night capping” :P. So a general NA server timezone for most players would be EST, CST, or PST. But I’m not accusing anyone of cheating, or bad play, or anything like that. It just is what it is. GoM doesn’t have a night time presence, and due to the fact, won’t have much of a WvW presence at all anymore tbh as it dropped from a tier 2-3 server right before weekly matchups started to a tier 7 server (what it will be this Friday). People have left/are still leaving for greener pastures.

I mean honestly, if I was playing on the Oceanic servers I would be night capping points on some servers with very little opposition. I wouldn’t be upset over someone saying I was “night capping” them because it would be true. Because it’s an Oceanic server where the prime times are completely different.

We tried to actually make the fight fun last night by holding Umberglade and Pangoss supply camps with a guild group of 6 [NEWL] and and one other guild group and then catapulting Ogrewatch, but we finally got zerged down/3 orb’d after about 45 minutes with Ogrewatch gate at 15%.

We took the lead the first 24 hours of this match up. But it wasn’t through sheer outnumbering. I believe our server was mad at last week’s loss and we were way organized across all maps.

It was pretty obviously just night capping, you can just look at the server data and see that the match was completely even until your server 100% capped everything between 1-6am Saturday morning. GoM is such a dead server (especially with large guilds transferring away) unless its between 6pm-12am and that’s not anyone else’s fault. It just is what it is. The server used to at least be competitive on Friday-Sunday to start a matchup, but now people don’t even play much on the weekends.

http://mos.millenium.org/servers/view/43

100% Night capping is just getting so old for people now, I don’t think a lot of people even care to try anymore. Just a really sad flaw with the WvW aspect of the game.

And they aren’t even the most mobile. Engineers can have perma swiftness for example, which trumps our ONLY skill that provides movement speed (signet of shadows) as it’s 8% more speed.

Thieves are by far the most mobile class in the game along with plenty of snares and immobilizes to keep people from getting away. If the thief plays 100%, a single player (other than a thief) will never, ever get away from their group. Engineer isn’t even close, seriously?

I play a thief and have pretty much been preaching this for a while: Thieves multi target abilities combined with being able to play specs with 2600 power and 100+% crit damage and still have survivability/mobility make the class overpowered in WvW. Dancing Dagger (4 hits, equivalent of a heartseeker, cripple effect, 4 initiative) and Clusterbomb (5 targets, blast effect, can be spammed at your feet, 3 initiative, crits for 3-8k easily on most targets) unfortunately just have too many things going for them.

Another problem is, most people who play just have poor reaction times. It’s very easy to dodge thieves burst considering a majority of thieves just burn their initiative from the beginning and down you as they laugh in ventrilo because you don’t know how to use your dodge key or have any defensive abilities on your bar. Rangers are probably the biggest offenders of this for some reason I have noticed (plus the fact that most rangers don’t move their pet away from them so dancing dagger destroys them). I’ve literally only ever fought 2-3 rangers at most who remotely pose a threat to our guild group in WvW and they actually played well + were geared properly. Every other ranger has felt like I was fighting a walking npc who were just playing to give me 2 badges.

Well honestly, in WvW clusterbomb does crit for the 3000-7000 (8000-9000 happens occasionally against targets under 50%) range pretty often if you have a glass cannon spec and high crit damage (100-110% or so). Cluster bomb is nearly the equivalent of a 25-50% Heartseeker off the top of my head, so I don’t see how people can argue that it isn’t a high damage skill regardless of what its doing in tPVP or WVW. Being able to spam it at your feet and the fact that is a Blast finisher are what make it so incredibly good. Aoe pullin + timewarp + clusterbomb spam

Pretty much what Shneaky said though: it needs some sort of change to bring it more in line with just being a good skill, instead of a ridiculous one.

You’re forced into standing near your team if you’re trying to focus down a player. Period. There’s no real avoiding it unless you have this crazy luxury of running an all ranged team, not even to mention being pulled in by a guardian. I’ve also still never had anyone destroy me for spamming DD tbh, sorry and I’ve played against half of the current “top tier servers” so far. Also, you can pretty easily tell if someone has projectile reflection up. Its not like you just play on auto pilot and run in DD’ing everything constantly without using any of your other skills. There’ a time and place for everything, but its pretty easy to just spam DD and watch the bodies start to pile up.

Okay, once again, steal and backstab do not take initiative. Dancing dagger is an initiative based ability and currently it is the highest multiple target damage ability we have for very little effort (cluster bomb is just a different story). That was the point and has been the point since I posted this thread. With proper dodging, Shadowstep, multiple stealths, passive +25% run speed, and Infiltrators arrow it is very easy to just NOT take damage as a thief and run a glass cannon build, even vs good players even if you don’t believe so. Honestly I’m not sure what to make of it yet because I don’t necessarily want an ability to just be nerfed as I think the thief class is already a bit pigeon holed into just spamming abilities and doing as much damage as possible. I wish the class took a little more thought into combo’ing skills.

But in all honesty I’d love to see your condition build

If I was talking about a gear issue then I would have brought up why every skill I have is overpowered because generally everything does a lot of damage. But no, I brought up dancing dagger due to how quickly it kills multiple people with very little effort over any other initiative based skill we have and the fact that most thieves don’t even seem to recognize how powerful it is.

Clusterbomb? has a longer travel time generally.
Pistol Whip? Much more difficult to actually land, especially on multiple players
Heartseeker? Single target obviously, same damage, only hits once.

Why would you insult my stats in a game where everyone has easy access to level 80 exotic gear, especially where the gear is EXACTLY the same across the board. We have the same exact stats exxept I have about 80 more vitality and you have 80 more precision. Big difference there rofl. Obviously I wasn’t counting in me stacking 25 stacks of precision, because critical hit CHANCE isn’t going to factor into how much my max damage could be with dancing dagger as this is what the thread is actually referring to. If I did my crit rate would be much higher, but who honestly cares? As far as food, I generally use plate of truffle steak for the +10% crit dmg and 200 power after a kill. And yes I steal crit glass cannon people for 5-8k pretty often too. And obviously I’m not referring to stupid situations where Id use a 3 signet build (because good players DONT actually do that and you’ll get wrecked). I generally run Shadow Refuge, Shadowstep, and 25% passive move speed with double daggers. I was referring to actual gameplay situations, not made up ones where you sit at the portal in.

As for your second post, who cares about 1v1? “Whoa guys, i can spec this useless 1v1 build and not actually be useful, but I could totally kill that thief in a duel. Oh wait, he just wrecked 2 people in my 5 man because I do trash damage and can’t stop him” Seriously man?

And yeah , I’m sure the countless guild groups we’ve come across have just been mega bad and in full level 30 greens. Feel free to watch our guardians weekly youtube videos. And sure, maybe a few months or so from now groups will overall be stacking higher toughness/vitality and going generally for more outlast specs, but as of right now that just isn’t the case.

And just for reference: The more common critical hits I get on dancing dagger are from 3000 to 5500 per hit. Hitting two targets each for 6-11k damage is a ridiculous amount of damage for 4 initiative :P. 7500 is obviously an extreme number, but it still happens a few times a day under certain circumstances.

Obvious troll…
3/10 thou,cuz he states he is thief too.7500 crit?Give me a brake…SS or it didn’t happen.
And comparing Dancing Dagger to the Moa bird skill is like i don’t know like comparing chair with electric chair….

It happens on a daily basis. And I’m not sure who compared DD to Moa?

Up to 14k damage from a dancing dagger? If that’s true you must be able to backstab for almost 40k and insta-gib anyone….

14kdamage TOTAL after hitting twice to a single target. so 7k, 7k, 7k, 7k, ie 14k damage to two targets. Not enough thieves seem to take Dancing Dagger seriously even though it is the equivalent of using an above 50% heartseeker FOUR times for 1 more initiative and it snares….AND it is ranged. There are a lot of things that are possible with how much sheer +crit damage you can get in this game by min/maxing and the use of +10% crit dmg food. Along with haxing max power and might stacks. I’ve had clusterbombs crit for up to 8500 in WvW, though they usually crit in the 4-6000 range.

And obviously the damage varies with 1-3 orbs, however, we usually never have more than 1 orb. Regardless, I still maintain 2300-2400 power with food and always have at least a 70%+ crit rate after using Steal.

You’re in full exotics berserker gear against people in WvW who have level 20 gear.
Let’s complain about mesmer illusions dealing too much damage, or a warriors greatsword adrenaline attacks can 1 hit anyone. This, is how the game is meant to be played. One false move, and you’re dead.

I’m not on some crusade to get my OWN class nerfed. When it really comes down to is I think damage across the board needs to be lowered: One easy way to remove the extremely high burst damage is to just remove quickness all together. The fact that I have 3 ways to get quickness on my own is pretty ridiculous.

One of my guild mates has a full exotic engineer and he says he can kill groups of lowbies with the autoattack skill of the grenade kit. Its not the thief its the scaling of lowbies that needs to be buffed.

The scaling of lowbies is fine. You can get up to 2300-2600 power as a level 40ish in WvWvW with the same crit rate I have as a lowbie by just buying ridiculously cheap gear off the TP, you just lack the hard +damage % traits past 20 skill obviously and lowered crit damage overall.

My final thoughts: Honestly, everyone can sit there and scream “undergeared noobs” all day. But this happens to everyone we fight and we play as a guild group constantly. Obviously I go after squishier targets first, but that doesn’t change the fact that I’m insta killing 2-3 people by just hitting Steal > DD > DD > DD > DD. And yes, this is WvWvW related and not really sPvP related. Its not like 8v8 sPvP even remotely matters. 5v5 tPVP does but dancing dagger being this powerful doesn’t really apply to that situation.

And I agree with people saying that any class going full berserkers and glass cannon spec is going to hit incredibly hard, the difference here is that we have Infiltrators arrow, Shadowstep, Shadow Refuge, etc to get away with ease and wait for initiative to refresh, which is how we regularly deal with groups of 20 with 5 people running as Thief/Thief/Mesmer/Guardian/Engineer. We down 5-6 people and finish them then string them along a bit until initiative refreshes and repeat while they poorly attempt to rez. Once 70% of the players are dead we just clean up. There just aren’t very many classes that can maintain that amount of burst damage and still have a high level of survivability.

I’m a thief in nearly full level 80 exotics use dagger/dagger and I can pretty much instantly kill 2-3 people, no matter the class or gear level (except for the occasional guardian who isn’t garbage at his class) by just spamming Dancing Dagger. Don’t get me wrong, I am a good player, but I shouldn’t be able to do this in my opinion.

A skill that hits 4 times (and doesn’t have to be grounded targeted) should not be able to critical hit for up to 7500. Consider there are 2 players walking by (or the most common case: a ranger + pet) They are dead instantly. I don’t care who you are or how good you are. If you don’t dodge within 1-2 seconds you’re both going to be in the down state. And some classes don’t really even have the option to avoid it. It’s sort of depressing and at the same time can be boring to play. I mean honestly, I consider most rangers to just be walking npcs. Very rarely does one get to actually participate in a fight.

With 100% crit dmg, 2300-2400 power and a 70% crit rate and the ability to spam this skill 4x before I need to wait (15 initiative + 1 will refresh before the 4th DD is thrown): Each player is going to be hit by a minimum of 4-6k damage all the way up to 14k damage for every 4 initiative I use, not to mention the snare spam. So thats 32k damage minimum on two targets up to a possible 112k damage (give or take) just for unloading my initiative. I understand Cluster bombs weaknesses, Heartseeker’s weaknesses, etc etc. But Dancing Dagger is nearly impossible to avoid unless you’re just out of range or are luckily dodging it at the time. Sure, projectile reflection is a good thing to use as well against it, but who honestly walks up to fight vs a guild group and thinks “Yeah, I’m ready for this thief to instantly down 3 of us”. The ability’s base damage just probably needs to be lowered and possibly have the skill do something else along with the snare.

Or maybe I’m just bias and think damage needs to be lowered across the board :P.

I didn’t read the whole thread, but to anyone who thinks people die too slow…that’s crazy talk. If anything, damage needs to be reduced across the board. I can kill multiple players of nearly any class and gear level (except for tough/vit built guardian) at the same time within 2-4 seconds of a fight beginning. It just feels incredibly stupid, but maybe it will balance out once the majority of the player base has level 80 exotics. Could those people play better to avoid instant death? Sure, but it still shouldn’t even be possible.

They do need to add names of players (imo) in your combat log. Knowing who someone is when you’re fighting them is really part of the fun. Or at the very least some sort of WvWvW leaderboard for individual players and/or guilds.